Posted on 12/17/2002 7:32:02 AM PST by HairOfTheDog
Come on! Come in! -if you would like to have some seedcakes and a pint and relax a while. (If it is a special occasion, we still have a few bottles of the old wineyards left!)
Our first thread ( New Zealander builds Hobbit hole ) reached 4,100 posts, and we thought that was big. Our second thread (The New Hobbit Hole ) held us for over 48,000 posts, and we loved it dearly. We talked about moving to a new thread for the last 38,000 posts, but we are really slow to muster! Finally, the time has come. Tomorrow (at 12:01 am, to be precise!) The Two Towers comes out, and we start a new chapter.
Oh, fellow Ringers, I lost my whole system, am now without all the wonderful articles, pictures and links.
Please if you could send me even one link each I would appreciate it. I had the Departing Elves, Treebeard and a beautiful pic of the fellowship in Moria for wallpaper, and have spent a lot of time this a.m. looking for them.
You can Freepmail them to me, or use lshatch@bellsouth.net I'd appreciate any of your favorite links or pics.
One amazing thing was how these actors could morph into really accurate mimickry of each other -- right down to capturing the voices of the other actors. The two actors who play Merry and Pippin both have pronounced accents (Scottish and Irish) in their natural speech -- yet the fellow who plays Merry could morph instantly into a dead-on impersonation of John Rhys-Davies. About knocked me over the first time he did it! You can really see the range of their talent come out in these simple documentary interviews.
Well, I guess their having to spend 18 months with just each other would give them an advantage in that ability! What a commitment that was! Most actors will sign on for 6-9months at the most, for any movie. These men and women apparently loved this material so much that they stayed almost three times the normal time, but then again, they WERE making three movies!
To me, even just the first movie (particularly the DVD extended version) is like being this age's "Wizard of Oz", "Gone with the Wind" or "It's a Wonderful Life". Let alone this set will be well over 10 hours of such material in total. Truly epic in every sense. For the ages. If an actor won't give 18 months to that, then he should have his head examined - he's in the wrong business!
Can you imagine the younger lead who was to play Aragorn and got replaced just as shooting started? That will do serious psych damage to that guy. He'd have had it (his career) made forever, and just at the last moment it was gone.
On the other hand, some of those actors may never find work in front of a camera again. They will be so totally identified with a giga-hit that nobody will touch them, especially the younger ones. The older actors had plenty of other roles before, and still might be employable. I think Orlando Bloom might be at greatest risk. It's rotten, but look at Star Trek, nobody but Shatner and Nimoy could find work again, and the gigs those two had were less than stellar.
This phenomenon is brought out in a funny and touching way in Tim Allen's "Galaxy Quest". It's also dead-on in its portrayal of Trek fandom. I recommend the movie highly.
I'm still going through the fourth DVD, and I find the optional material almost as fascinating as the movie itself. There was a cast of thousands behind the scenes, and they all put in a labor of love. As a geek, I was particularly impressed with the computer stuff. The scene where they load the Gulfstream with the final films, tapes, and hard drives struck me as momentous, the results of millions of manhours of love and work being sent to Hollywood for production. I sure hope they kept backup copies of that stuff.
Speaking of copies, when do you think they will sell off the tens of thousands of lesser props from the three films? A friend already wants some of that plastic-tubing "chain mail" made for the orc extras.
He had already been in a couple of other movies. We received the movie "Blackhawk Down" from Netflix yesterday. We hope to see it tonight. I had heard that Orlando Bloom did a good job in that film. If so, he's already gotten some other face time on screen that has nothing to do with Legolas!
Elijah Wood and Sean Astin were already established 'child actors', moving into more grown up parts in the last few years. Elijah played a great teenager part in "The Ice Storm" and Sean was the title character in "Rudy". I remember reading, when it became known that Sean would be Samwise, people were saying "Rudy is going to be in FoTR?" Well, he did a great job, so that should be a wake up call to those who want to typecast after a big movie.
Dom is a well known actor in England, even playing sidekick to "Hetty Winthrop" in the Mystery series on PBS. I had never seen Billy Boyd in anything else, but he's playing a big part in the next Russell Crowe movie "Master and Commander" so that should be a good starting point for him to leave Pippin behind in the minds of casting agents and moviegoers alike.
I am looking forward to that one. I hope they have authentic and accurate ships and also that sea conditions do not change dramatically from rough to calm and back with wildly swinging wind directions every few seconds like they seem to in most movies shot on the ocean.
I read all 20 something of them. They are lots of fun, and have surprising depth. There is even a cookbook, written by 2 ladies from Long Island, but approved by O'Brian, that goes with them, Lobscouse and Spotted Dog, that gives 18th century recipes for most of the dishes described in the series.
It has recipes for 2 suet puddings (suet, the fat surrounding the kidneys, is one of the prime ingredients) called spotted dog and boiled baby that I want to try making.
Mostly fat and sugar, can't be good for you, but they sound good.
spotted dog
boiled (drowned) baby
Doesn't sound too appealing to me! I think this dish was mentioned in "The Golden Ocean" which I read a few weeks ago. I couldn't imagine what it would look like. Thanks for the pic!
I like that but it might detract from the hula dancers and the reindeer kick-line...
Seems like an Elfbash! or two would take care of that...
Hmmm, I need to check the poll results...
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