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Dear Diary: Some people look like their dogs; some like their spouses. You see they belong together, and you smile. This subway rider looked like, and belonged to, his thick book. Ginger hair, pulled back in a tail away from his ruddy baby face, matching his scruffy beard. Youthful and burly, rustic and earthy, dressed for the outdoors in a jacket and a pale red flannel shirt. Not yet spoiled by city life, innocent, unadventured, but poised to begin, clutching his treasured story in readiness. What was that book to him? Fiction? History? Autobiography? No clue from his silent eyes,...

Those on a quest to rethink small-space living build tiny houses, install pop-up rentals on vacant lots, and design portable 10-square-foot microkitchens tucked inside armoires. Presented over the weekend at Toronto’s Interior Design Show, Cubitat is a 10-by-10-by-10-foot cube that houses a kitchen, bathroom, bed, laundry, and storage.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies – Main Trailer

The soundtrack to the Lord of the Rings film trilogy has been deemed the best of all time, beating John Williams' 1977 Star Wars score into second place.Composer Howard Shore's accompaniment won the Classic FM listeners' accolade for the fifth consecutive year.Hans Zimmer's music to Gladiator, Schindler's List by John Williams and John Barry's soaring Out of Africa score made the top five.

The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies' Release Date, Cast, Trailer and News: Things We Know So Far In December, Warner Bros. will release "The Hobbit: Battle of the Five Armies", the final installment in "The Hobbit" series. Peter Jackson returns to the helm in what promises to be an action-packed film. The new film continues Bilbo's journey in Middle Earth with Thorin's company and their attempt to recover the Dwarves home. The following is a list of things we know about the film:

1. Nicolas Cage passed up the role of Aragorn because of “family obligations.” 2. Daniel Day-Lewis also turned down the role multiple times. 3. The same fight choreographer and fencer who worked on Lord of the Rings also worked on The Parent Trap and Star Wars. 4. And he said that Viggo Mortensen was “the best swordsman [he] ever trained.”

'The Hobbit' Part 3 News: Climax Of 'Battle of Five Armies' 'Sets Tone' For 'What's Going To Happen' In 'Lord of the Rings' Trilogy Letteri went on to speak about how the ending of this movie would lead into and help fans better understand the Lord of the Rings trilogy. "Yeah because it is the climax, and you really just need to know that there is another battle for Middle-earth," he said." The whole extension of The Hobbit's story has really been to get us to the point where we understand when we leave it what's going to happen when...

Peter Jackson's Middle Earth franchises 'The Hobbit' and 'Lord of the Rings' had for a long time been the cream of the crop for fantasy entertainment, but now there's a new contender for the throne in HBO's 'Game of Thrones' 'Lord of the Rings' is regarded by many as one of the best film trilogies of all time, fantasy genre or otherwise, it's third film smashed Academy award records and to this date holds the record for highest number of Oscar wins, winning in every category it was nominated. 'Game of Thrones' doesn't quite have the same awards success, although...

Shadowfax has died http://www.theonering.net/torwp/2014/04/06/88420-in-memory-of-shadowfax/

March 25 is officially Tolkien Reading Day. Yes you heard us! In 2002 a New York journalist inquired with the Tolkien Society if there was such a thing and low and behold they set it up. So why March 25? Well it's Tolkien’s birthday Jan 3 and Bilbo & Frodo’s birthday on Sept 22nd but March 25 is the perfect day as it's the date of the downfall of Sauron! To honor the Tolkien Reading Day we thought it apt to look at the fact that his world of Middle Earth is based on the Burren, in County Clare.

Peter Jackson has made some remarkable movies. There’s no denying that his sprawling Lord of the Rings trilogy was the very definition of epic—filled with massive battles, touching moments, and beautiful cinematography, not to mention a lovely score.

WH Auden attempted to persuade JRR Tolkien to drop the romance between Aragorn and Arwen from the storyline of The Lord of the Rings, describing it as "unnecessary and perfunctory", an unpublished letter by the author has revealed. The 1955 letter sees Tolkien writing to his publisher about the difficulties of completing The Return of the King, the third and final part of his magnum opus, in which Aragorn and his men face a final battle with Sauron's troops, as the hobbits Frodo and Sam continue on their journey to destroy the One Ring. At the end, Aragorn is crowned...

Its creation paved the way for the gaming world of today -- adding social elements and changing the definition of what constitutes a game. It led the way for World of Warcraft, Fable, Final Fantasy, and many more -- and it's turning 40 years old. Happy birthday, Dungeons & Dragons. We're not part of the 20 million people who've put a player character into the game and rolled the polyhedral dice to see how the events of D&D unfold. We've never purchased any of the $1-billion worth of game merchandise sold over the last four decades, but we do know...

In the male-dominated realm of Middle Earth, only a few female characters are given a chance to shine - notably Liv Tyler's elf maiden Arwen and Cate Blanchett's elf queen Galadriel in the "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. When adapting Tolkein's prequel "The Hobbit" into three films, Jackson worked with producers to create a new character not featured in the original book. Unlike Tyler and Blanchett's characters, the elf warrior Tauriel, played by Evangeline Lilly, is not high-born - she is a working class 'Silvan' elf, who guards the Elven kingdom.

eter Jackson has picked up the pace. He began his Hobbit trilogy at an amiable, meanderingly wayward canter, and tried the patience of believers and non-believers alike with that initial supper scene, almost an epic in itself. But this second episode commences with a narrative whipcrack – a quick flashback to Gandalf and Thorin tensely discussing their great plan in the snug bar of the Prancing Pony – and then we're off, at a tremendous gallop. The Desolation of Smaug is a cheerfully entertaining and exhilarating adventure tale, a supercharged Saturday morning picture: it's mysterious and strange and yet Jackson...

With the end of the third season of Game of Thrones in sight (June 9th), a global audience of over 5 million is debating whether or not George R.R. Martin is the rightful “American Tolkien.” I argue that while The Lord of the Rings and Game of Thrones have striking similarities, Martin is actually pioneering a distinct genre—a new kind of fantasy novel informed by historical fiction and politics. Martin admits that he was influenced a great deal by Tolkien, and mirrored the structure of his novels off of Tolkien’s work: “Tolkien begins his story in the Shire with one...

In what was once the housekeeper's office of a Tudor mansion in Hampshire, a very odd golden ring glitters on a revolving stand in a tall perspex column. In chapter five of The Hobbit, Bilbo Baggins finds a ring in the gloom of Gollum's cave. Not just any ring. "One very beautiful thing, very beautiful, very wonderful. He had a ring, a golden ring, a precious ring." A new exhibition opening today at The Vyne, now owned by the National Trust, raises the intriguing possibility that the Roman ring in the case, and the ring of power in JRR Tolkien's...

We went to see The Hobbit yesterday and we thought it was awful. Been surprised that since it's release there haven't been any posts to the Hole. Are you all disgusted with Part 1?

<p>Although the first installment of Peter Jackson's three-film adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy novel "The Hobbit" carries the subtitle "An Unexpected Journey," it wasn't entirely unexpected that the director would revisit Middle-earth after the worldwide success of his "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy.</p>

A New Zealand volcano that featured as Mount Doom in "The Lord of the Rings" movies is in danger of erupting as pressure builds in a subterranean vent, officials have said. The Department of Conservation (DOC) warned hikers to avoid the summit of Mount Ruapehu, saying that temperature readings by scientists indicated there was an increased risk of eruption at New Zealand's largest active volcano. "The current situation can't continue, Ruapehu is so active that the temperatures have been going up and down a lot," DOC volcanic risk manager Harry Keys told Radio New Zealand... Official monitoring body GNS Science...