Salon.com > J.R.R. Tolkien http://www.salon.com Wed, 19 Jun 2013 12:12:41 +0000 en hourly 1 http://wordpress.org/?v=3.2.1 Watch the first trailer for “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug” http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/watch_the_first_trailer_for_the_hobbit_the_desolation_of_smaug/ http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/watch_the_first_trailer_for_the_hobbit_the_desolation_of_smaug/#comments Wed, 12 Jun 2013 12:52:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13324072 Warner Brothers has released the first official trailer for Peter Jackson's second "Hobbit" film, "The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug," but fans will have to wait until December 13 for its debut in theaters.

Tolkien's cast of dwarves and hobbits return as they begin their search for Smaug, "a most specially greedy, strong and wicked worm" of a dragon, played, fittingly, by "Star Trek" villain Benedict Cumberbatch.

"Lord of the Rings" star Orlando Bloom makes his debut in the "Hobbit" series as Legolas -- and it looks like his first encounter with the dwarves does not go well:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/06/12/watch_the_first_trailer_for_the_hobbit_the_desolation_of_smaug/feed/ 3 Inside the Aryan Brotherhood’s prison heroin empire http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/inside_the_aryan_brotherhoods_prison_heroin_empire_partner/ http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/inside_the_aryan_brotherhoods_prison_heroin_empire_partner/#comments Tue, 19 Mar 2013 17:58:00 +0000 http://www.railrode.net/?p=13245848 the fix Prison is a place where racial hatred is routine, where gangs rule the roost and heroin is the most valuable commodity. “A white person in prison is in deep trouble if he doesn’t have people to stand with him,” one prisoner tells The Fix. “The guards can’t do nothing. All they can do is prosecute the winner.” And there are few bigger winners in the feds than the Aryan Brotherhood.

Despite some high-profile crackdowns against the gang in recent years, its grip on many facilities remains strong. “I just came from USP Lompoc [in Southern California] and the AB is running that yard,” the prisoner says. “The drugs are flowing. They got Atwater, Victorville, Canaan, Hazleton, Florence, Marion, Big Sandy and Coleman on lock. They are all over the system. The feds can’t stop anything.”

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/03/19/inside_the_aryan_brotherhoods_prison_heroin_empire_partner/feed/ 1 Previously confidential report reveals intense labor dispute on the set of “The Hobbit” http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/previously_confidential_report_reveals_intense_labor_dispute_on_the_set_of_the_hobbit/ http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/previously_confidential_report_reveals_intense_labor_dispute_on_the_set_of_the_hobbit/#comments Thu, 28 Feb 2013 18:11:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13214744 After a Jan. 31 government ruling, New Zealand officials have released a previously confidential report on a 2010 labor dispute between local actors in "The Hobbit" and the film's producers and director, Peter Jackson. The Hollywood Reporter describes it as "an unusual glimpse behind the scenes of a nasty public dispute," explaining that it "ended in a stinging defeat for the local actors union -- and in a stunning outcome for the country’s government, which ended up paying Warner Bros. an additional $25 million in tax incentives and other fees to quell the threat that the production might be moved to another country."

The government has also passed legislation making it nearly impossible to unionize motion picture production in the country, according to THR.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/02/28/previously_confidential_report_reveals_intense_labor_dispute_on_the_set_of_the_hobbit/feed/ 1 Weird news: Hobbits are still real! http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/weird_news_hobbits_are_still_real/ http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/weird_news_hobbits_are_still_real/#comments Fri, 11 Jan 2013 22:03:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13168686 It's been almost a decade since scientists first discovered the remains of real "hobbits" -- 18,000-year-old prehistoric creatures -- on a remote Indonesian island. Researchers named them after the J.R.R Tolkien characters because their skeletal remains were pint-sized. And because scientists are nerds.

Much like the debate over whether or not "The Hobbit" should have been split into three movies, real-life hobbits are a terribly controversial topic. Claiming they are a kind of hominid closer to Homo erectus than Homo sapiens disrupts many established theories of human evolution, but new research suggests hobbits were part of an extinct species known as Homo floresiensis.

How can they tell? It's all in the wrists.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2013/01/11/weird_news_hobbits_are_still_real/feed/ 0 “Hobbit” beats “Lord of the Rings” with $84.8 million opening http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/hobbit_beats_lord_of_the_rings_with_84_8_million_opening/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/hobbit_beats_lord_of_the_rings_with_84_8_million_opening/#comments Mon, 17 Dec 2012 14:29:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13147269 NEW YORK (AP) -- Peter Jackson's "The Hobbit" led the box office with a haul of $84.8 million, a record-setting opening better than the three previous "Lord of the Rings" films.

The Warner Bros. Middle Earth epic was the biggest December opening ever, surpassing Will Smith's "I Am Legend," which opened with $77.2 million in 2007, according to studio estimates Sunday. "The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey" also passed the December opening of "Avatar," which opened with $77 million. Internationally, "The Hobbit" also added $138.2 million, for an impressive global debut of $223 million.

Despite weak reviews, the 3-D adaptation of J. R. R. Tolkien's first novel in the fantasy series was an even bigger draw than the last "Lord of the Rings" movie, "The Return of the King." That film opened with $72.6 million. "The Hobbit" is the first of another planned trilogy, with two more films to be squeezed out of Tolkien's book.

While Jackson's "Rings" movies drew many accolades - "The Return of the King" won best picture from the Academy Awards - the path for "The Hobbit" has been rockier. It received no Golden Globes nominations on Thursday, though all three "Rings" films were nominated by the Hollywood Foreign Press Association for best picture.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/17/hobbit_beats_lord_of_the_rings_with_84_8_million_opening/feed/ 1 Don’t mess with “The Hobbit”! http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/dont_mess_with_the_hobbit/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/dont_mess_with_the_hobbit/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 16:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13123270 This weekend, I will join millions of J.R.R. Tolkien fans all over the country flocking to theaters for the first installation of the story of the unlikely, pint-size hero, Bilbo Baggins, and his defeat of the fire-breathing, treasure-hoarding dragon, Smaug. A classic David versus Goliath tale, Peter Jackson’s $270 million return to Middle-earth in "The Hobbit," nine years after "The Return of the King," can easily be called one of the most anticipated cinematic events of 2012.

If not for the noble efforts of federal Judge Philip S. Gutierrez, I may have accidentally watched “Age of the Hobbits” online instead. Luckily for all of us planning to trek to Middle-earth this weekend, Judge Gutierrez agreed with producers Warner Bros., MGM and Saul Zaentz Co. that the $500K straight-to-Internet-and-DVD “Age of the Hobbits” starring Bai Ling would confuse consumers and cause the big studios “irreparable injury.”  On Tuesday, the federal district court in L.A. issued a temporary restraining order against the release of the straight-to-the-Internet knockoff by “mockbuster” production company Global Asylum (the studio behind such well-known and critically acclaimed films as "Transmorphers" and "Snakes on a Train"), stopping it  from releasing its movie, conveniently scheduled to make its debut the same weekend as "The Hobbit" hits American theaters.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/dont_mess_with_the_hobbit/feed/ 4 “The Hobbit”: Middle-earth faces a phantom menace http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/the_hobbit_middle_earth_faces_a_phantom_menace/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/the_hobbit_middle_earth_faces_a_phantom_menace/#comments Thu, 13 Dec 2012 01:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13123323 So let’s jump right in: Is Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” a gaseous and self-indulgent disaster, a “Phantom Menace”-scale overinflated blimp of a movie that casts retroactive shadows across Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy? Counsel is leading the witness, as they used to say on “Law & Order,” but those were among the thoughts I had after leaving a screening of the first installment of Jackson’s prequel trilogy, especially as seen in the eerie and distracting 48 frames per second 3-D format. (The best single description of which came in a tweet from Salon contributor Bob Calhoun: It “looks like Jehovah’s Witness art.”)

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/13/the_hobbit_middle_earth_faces_a_phantom_menace/feed/ 35 Bilbo Baggins says, “Buy this!” http://www.salon.com/2012/12/08/bilbo_baggins_says_buy_this/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/08/bilbo_baggins_says_buy_this/#comments Sat, 08 Dec 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13110760 After Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings” ruled the megaplexes for most of the early years of this century, it was inevitable that “The Hobbit” would follow. What was perhaps also inevitable — given the way the film industry and popular culture, in general, operates these days — is that after turning J.R.R. Tolkien’s massive three-book fantasy trilogy into a massive three-film fantasy trilogy, Warner Brothers and New Line Cinema would turn the slender folk-tale prequel into … another massive three-film fantasy trilogy.

That Hollywood is driven more by market forces than by artistic ones is a cliché so old it’s almost become axiomatic. Blame the collapse of the studio system in the 1960s. Hollywood did just fine when all the major studios were in the business of creating, as well as financing, the films bearing their logos; they even went so far as to seek out new talent, nurture it, and develop it over the course of years. Today, studios are just the money men, and projects are developed by independent production companies — every actor and director has his or her own — and then brought to MGM or Fox or Disney in supplication with the hope of a big, fat bankroll.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/08/bilbo_baggins_says_buy_this/feed/ 6 Why does “The Hobbit” look so weird? http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/why_does_the_hobbit_look_so_weird/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/why_does_the_hobbit_look_so_weird/#comments Thu, 06 Dec 2012 18:38:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13117132 No movie all year arrives with the crazy fan anticipation of Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey,” which has morphed from being a straightforward adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s 1937 children’s novel into the first installment of a full-blown (and perhaps overblown) prequel trilogy to Jackson’s “Lord of the Rings.” I’ll have a great deal more to say about all that next week, when “The Hobbit” finally reaches theaters. But without jumping the gun on a full review, there’s a technical and aesthetic issue we can talk about right now, one that has provoked considerable anxiety among LOTR fans ever since Jackson previewed some footage last year, and one that could poison the movie for many viewers.

“The Hobbit” looks really, really strange. At least it does when projected in 3-D, at the 48 frames per second rate (known as high-frame rate, or HFR) that Jackson intends as the preferred format. (The movie was shot on the latest iteration of cutting-edge digital video, using a brand-new camera called the Red Epic that was developed alongside the film.) Granted, most viewers probably won’t see it that way; outside major cities, theaters will primarily screen “The Hobbit” in more familiar formats, either 3-D or 2-D, at a conventional frame rate of 24 frames per second.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/06/why_does_the_hobbit_look_so_weird/feed/ 62 Watch behind-the-scenes footage of “The Hobbit” http://www.salon.com/2012/12/04/watch_behind_the_scenes_footage_of_the_hobbit/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/04/watch_behind_the_scenes_footage_of_the_hobbit/#comments Tue, 04 Dec 2012 19:11:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13114566 Much to the delight of "Hobbit" and "Lord of the Rings" super fans, Warner Bros. has released six clips from the upcoming film, along with 20 minutes of behind-the-scenes footage.

Watch scene-by-scene takes of dwarves entering Bilbo Baggins's home and Peter Jackson directing Andy Serkis (Gollum) and Bilbo (Martin Freeman) inside a dark cave:

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/04/watch_behind_the_scenes_footage_of_the_hobbit/feed/ 0 “The Hobbit” is not a hipster! http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/the_hobbit_was_not_nor_should_it_ever_be_imbued_with_irony/ http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/the_hobbit_was_not_nor_should_it_ever_be_imbued_with_irony/#comments Sun, 02 Dec 2012 21:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13107120 There’s a sequence in the most recent trailer for Peter Jackson’s “The Hobbit” that worries me. It’s at the very end: The dwarves are tentatively emerging from the debris of some colossal battle or other, and one of them says, “Well, that could’ve been worse” — and then a Volkswagen-size goblin carcass crashes down on them.

This is more Chuck Jones than J.R.R. Tolkien, and if there’s more of the same in the coming feature film — whose scope, as we already know, has expanded far beyond that of the original novel — it may not be just Tolkien’s lovely little picaresque adventure that gets swallowed whole, but its plucky, whimsical tone as well, consumed by modern irony.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/12/02/the_hobbit_was_not_nor_should_it_ever_be_imbued_with_irony/feed/ 48 Next week is “Hobbit” week on “The Colbert Report” http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/next_week_is_hobbit_week_on_the_colbert_report/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/next_week_is_hobbit_week_on_the_colbert_report/#comments Fri, 30 Nov 2012 16:33:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13111220 It's safe to say that comedian and "Lord of the Rings" superfan Stephen Colbert is pretty excited about the Dec. 14 premiere of "The Hobbit." Colbert, who already has a cameo in one of the three "Hobbit" films, will next week host four guests from the trilogy, in what Comedy Central calls "A Tolkien-Themed Week." Ian McKellen, who plays Gandalf, Martin Freeman (Bilbo Baggins), director Peter Jackson and Andy Serkis, better known to audiences as Gollum, will appear on the show from Monday to Thursday, respectively.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/30/next_week_is_hobbit_week_on_the_colbert_report/feed/ 2 Are Hobbits’ feet hot? http://www.salon.com/2012/11/17/are_hobbits_feet_hot/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/17/are_hobbits_feet_hot/#comments Sat, 17 Nov 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13073144 If there’s anything that can shut down a healthy libido — anything that might be reasonably considered the opposite of “hot” — it’s tragic nobility. And if anyone's bearing such an affliction in literature, it's J.R.R. Tolkien's heroes — to the nth degree.

Tolkien drew inspiration for his invented world from the ballads and sagas of the Anglo-Saxons, who ruled England intermittently (there were a few awkward Danish occupations) for a handful of centuries preceding the Norman Conquest. After the Conquest, Anglo-Saxons remained the predominant demographic in the country, but the Normans completely took over as the ruling class, establishing one of history’s first examples of the 1 percent versus the 99 percent, which lent the Anglo-Saxons a kind of tragic nobility in the imaginations of succeeding centuries.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/17/are_hobbits_feet_hot/feed/ 15 “Bilbo’s Last Song” http://www.salon.com/2012/11/15/bilbos_last_song/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/15/bilbos_last_song/#comments Thu, 15 Nov 2012 15:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13071717 Day is ended, dim my eyes,
but journey long before me lies.
Farewell, friends! I hear the call.
The ship's beside the stony wall.
Foam is white and waves are grey;
beyond the sunset leads my way.
Foam is salt, the wind is free;
I hear the rising of the Sea.

 

Farewell, friends! The sails are set,
the wind is east, the moorings fret.
Shadows long before me lie,
beneath the ever-bending sky,
but islands lie behind the Sun
that I shall raise ere all is done;
lands there are to west of West,
where night is quiet and sleep is rest.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/15/bilbos_last_song/feed/ 2 Man creates Bilbo Baggins’ home with 2,600 balloons http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/man_creates_bilbo_bagginss_home_with_2600_balloons/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/man_creates_bilbo_bagginss_home_with_2600_balloons/#comments Fri, 09 Nov 2012 17:03:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13067417 Jeremy Telford, the "balloon guy," spent over 40 hours turning his living room into one corner of Bilbo Baggins' hobbit home in the Shire. Watch the time-lapse video, below:

h/t Geekologie

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/09/man_creates_bilbo_bagginss_home_with_2600_balloons/feed/ 4 Geek love: How a fantasy hater fell in love with J.R.R. Tolkien http://www.salon.com/2012/11/04/geek_love_how_a_fantasy_hater_fell_in_love_with_j_r_r_tolkien/ http://www.salon.com/2012/11/04/geek_love_how_a_fantasy_hater_fell_in_love_with_j_r_r_tolkien/#comments Sun, 04 Nov 2012 23:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13061141 I’m not generally comfortable with the kind of grown man who embraces the word “geek” as a self-identifier because most of those who do so seem to be making an active attempt to forestall adulthood by barricading its way with sky-high piles of endlessly replicating, increasingly self-referential, post-juvenile pop-culture junk. But when the trailer for "The Hobbit" first appeared nearly a year before the film’s Dec. 14 release (which is just plain goofy — like marketing on geologic time), it prompted what one Facebook poster termed a collective online “nerdgasm” — and I wasn't immune. And so it must be said that those of us who do manage to move comfortably about in the larger world are evidence that a certain Y-chromosome tendency to gibbering fannishness does in fact exist, and many of us have points of contact with this phenomenon that we tend to coddle and then feel guilty about it later.

And some of us wonder why.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/11/04/geek_love_how_a_fantasy_hater_fell_in_love_with_j_r_r_tolkien/feed/ 36 “The Hobbit” uncut, at last http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/the_hobbit_uncut_at_last/ http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/the_hobbit_uncut_at_last/#comments Thu, 18 Oct 2012 14:53:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=13044194 We're on the brink of what I think of as the season of rereading; if there's any time of the year when people are prone to returning to old favorites, it's the holidays. And chances are that the books they come back to -- for comfort, for nostalgia, for another taste of the wonder that infused them the first time they fell in love with reading — are written by J.R.R. Tolkien.

Until last week, the only downloadable recordings of Tolkien's most celebrated works, "The Hobbit" and "The Lord of the Rings," were either abridged or dramatized. About abridged audiobooks, the less said the better; I am not sure why anyone ever bothered with them (I guess they reduced the expense and bulk of physical media like tapes and CDs), and publishers seem to be phasing them out.

Dramatizations are trickier. There are some very fine ones, such as the 10th-anniversary edition of Neil Gaiman's "American Gods." More often, however, a dramatization radically multiplies the peril every audiobook is subject to: a narrator who's simply inept or (just as bad) one with a misbegotten interpretation of the text and its characters. No matter how accomplished the rest of the cast, all it takes is one bad voice in a dramatization to ruin the whole thing. This is a particular problem with comic characters, who tend to be portrayed too broadly, with a risible over-jollification that provokes a sensation I can only describe as a full-body wince.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/10/18/the_hobbit_uncut_at_last/feed/ 4 Peter Jackson’s “Hobbit” trilogy: Terrible idea or geek opium? http://www.salon.com/2012/07/31/peter_jacksons_hobbit_trilogy_terrible_idea_or_geek_opium/ http://www.salon.com/2012/07/31/peter_jacksons_hobbit_trilogy_terrible_idea_or_geek_opium/#comments Tue, 31 Jul 2012 20:30:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12968814 There are two major strains of reaction to Peter Jackson’s announcement that his long-brewing film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit,” which had already swollen from one movie to two, will now be a trilogy extending into the summer of 2014. I feel both of them at the same time: I’m excited, and I fear the worst. (Of course, that’s how I feel almost every time I watch a movie, but never mind.) On one hand, surely this is the most serious case of sequel bloat and metastasis in pop-culture history. On the other, if anybody can pull it off, Jackson can, and the idea of transforming his “Hobbit” movie into a wide-ranging “Lord of the Rings” prequel has enormous fan appeal, not to mention enormous financial appeal.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/07/31/peter_jacksons_hobbit_trilogy_terrible_idea_or_geek_opium/feed/ 100 Is “Game of Thrones” too white? http://www.salon.com/2012/04/01/is_game_of_thrones_too_white/ http://www.salon.com/2012/04/01/is_game_of_thrones_too_white/#comments Sun, 01 Apr 2012 13:00:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=12766651 Ser Jorah’s face grew thoughtful as their horses trod together down the godsway. “When I first went into exile, I looked at the Dothraki and saw half-naked barbarians, as wild as their horses. If you had asked me then, Princess, I should have told you that a thousand good knights would have no trouble putting to flight a hundred times as many Dothraki.”

“But if I asked you now?”

“Now,” the knight said, “I am less certain.”

-- George R.R. Martin, "A Game of Thrones"

Epic fantasy -- sprawling stories full of swords, castles, magic, kings and lots and lots of white people – is slowly finding its way into America's cultural mainstream. In the age of the anemic box office, Peter Jackson's films of J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings trilogy remain a gold standard of blockbusterdom – and his forthcoming version of "The Hobbit" will almost certainly follow suit. Newer writers like Brandon Sanderson and Patrick Rothfuss have sold hundreds of thousands of their "door-stopper" tomes of wizardry and courtly intrigue. And tonight, countless viewers will be glued to their sets for the return of what is arguably the hottest show on television, "Game of Thrones," HBO's adaptation of George R.R. Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire fantasy novels.

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]]> http://www.salon.com/2012/04/01/is_game_of_thrones_too_white/feed/ 260 If Tolkien were black http://www.salon.com/2011/11/09/if_tolkien_were_black/ http://www.salon.com/2011/11/09/if_tolkien_were_black/#comments Wed, 09 Nov 2011 19:45:00 +0000 http://www.origin.railrode.net/?p=10177605 Looking at the most visible exemplars of epic fantasy -- from J.R.R. Tolkien to such bestselling authors as George R.R. Martin and Robert Jordan -- a casual observer might assume that big, continent-spanning sagas with magic in them are always set in some imaginary variation on Medieval Britain. There may be swords and talismans of power and wizards and the occasional dragon, but there often aren't any black- or brown-skinned people, and those who do appear are decidedly peripheral; in "The Lord of the Rings," they all seem to work for the bad guys.

Our hypothetical casual observer might therefore also conclude that epic fantasy -- one of today's most popular genres -- would hold little interest for African-American readers and even less for African-American writers. But that observer would be dead wrong. One of the most celebrated new voices in epic fantasy is N.K. Jemisin, whose debut novel, "The Hundred Thousand Kingdoms," won the Locus Award for best first novel and nominations for seemingly every other speculative fiction prize under the sun. Another is David Anthony Durham, whose Acacia Trilogy has landed on countless best-of lists. Both authors recently published the concluding books in their trilogies.

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