Posted on 12/14/2002 6:35:39 AM PST by Valin
Movies have their own special magic, of course, but it helps a lot to have a great book and great words behind them.
A supreme recent case in point: the visually spectacular and absolutely mesmerizing "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers," a state-of-the art epic opening Wednesday that surpasses its predecessor (last year's "The Fellowship of the Ring") for sheer thrills and visual splendor. Yet, packed with technological marvels and rousing scenes and characters as it is, "Two Towers" could not have spirited us away to all those lands of wonder if it weren't for the shy Oxford professor of Old and Middle English who dreamed it all up: John Ronald Reuel Tolkien.
No recent movie exploits all the various modern resources of cinema - from computerized effects, animation, sound recording and crystalline location shooting - with more flair than Peter Jackson's film of the adventures of Frodo Baggins and the Fellowship of the Ring. Few movies this year have been more faithful to their source - in this case, one so universally familiar. Yet few have a source more consciously literary, more drenched in academia and learning, than Tolkien's fantasy novel cycle.
Tolkien hardly seems a likely candidate for cinema canonization. He was a lifelong academic; student of literary texts and comparative linguistics; and devotee of Norse, English and Icelandic epics who put his vast knowledge to use creating his own world and inventing the history, languages and people - and wizards, orcs and hobbits - who flourished there. Though Tolkien may have lived in a kind of sequestered academic paradise, the three linked novels of "The Lord of the Rings" ("The Fellowship of the Ring," "The Two Towers" and "The Return of the King") are a sustained feat of imagination that has entranced millions since their British publication in 1954 and '55 - especially since their explosion of American popularity in the mid-1960s. Tolkien conceived and wrote the books seemingly as much for his own pleasure as for the financial success that was at first slow in coming: planning and writing them over a 15-year period beginning in 1937, composing much of the work during the Second World War in segments he sent to his soldier son Christopher. The novel's huge battle between good and evil probably reflected his and his son's WWII experience (and the elder Tolkien's service in the Boer War.)
But they were also part of an even longer sustained effort of imagination. The author, born in 1892, spent most of his life (to his death in 1973) creating and describing the imaginary fairytale world and history of which the "Rings" cycle is only a part, inventing at least four languages, hundreds of characters and a voluminous history and archeology stretching over many centuries. That's what lies behind the onscreen richness of the movie "Rings."
Can you imagine the pipe-puffing, hugely well-read, devoutly Catholic Tolkien, who liked to compare himself to his home-loving hobbits, hobnobbing with the big-movie sophisticates who put his novel so smashingly on film: the wild-man New Zealand writer-director Jackson (whose first features were the gorefests "Bad Taste" and "Dead Alive") and high-flying New Line executives Robert Shaye and Mark Ordesky? Or trading quips with the studio people to whom Jackson went first: Miramax's Weinstein brothers? ("J.R.R., baby, here's how I see Bilbo: Robin Williams crossed with Herve Villechaize. By the way, I'll tell you upfront: We've got to cut it.")
Incongruously or not, "Lord of the Rings," which survived an earlier failed attempt at filming by animator Ralph Bakshi, has proven ideal movie material - and more than that, ideal material for the technologies and special strengths of movies today. A "Lord of the Rings" made in the '50s, '60s or even the early '90s, probably couldn't have had this opulence and fantastic spectacle. It couldn't have given us so intensely the huge bloody battle of Helm's Deep, couldn't have visualized so perfectly the hobbits' loathsome guide Gollum or transported us so convincingly to the ancient land of good and bad wizards Gandalf and Sauron, with its cathedral-like caves and talking trees, its vaulting towers and horrific, mysterious dark riders.
There are silent epics that have something like the special majesty and magic of "Towers," including the Babylonian sequences of D.W. Griffith's "Intolerance," the quest scenes of Raoul Walsh and Doug Fairbanks' "Thief of Baghdad" and the forest scenes of Fritz Lang's "Die Niebelungen": three movies that might have influenced Tolkien. But we're lucky that it took all these years to realize "The Rings" - and that Jackson and his New Line bosses eventually committed to making three movies instead of two, that he made them altogether in one shoot - and that, despite some liberties, he committed himself so fully to Tolkien's original vision.
Like all moviemakers, Jackson makes changes - even major ones. (Liv Tyler's character Arwen comes not from the story but a footnote, obviously a ravishing one.) But if you see the movies right after rereading the novels - which I did - you may be shocked at how close they are. That's only Tolkien's due, I think. After all, he spent a lifetime imagining Middle Earth, Bilbo, Frodo, Gandalf, Gimli, Aragorn, the Gollum and all their voluminous back story - which is exactly why "The Lord of the Rings," despite a notable lack of enthusiasm from Tolkien's colleagues in university literature departments, long has topped reader polls for the 20th Century's best novel.
Jackson deserves his success partly because he did what most cinematic adapters should: stick to the text. Certain authors - Charles Dickens, William Shakespeare, Jane Austen, Tennessee Williams and John Steinbeck, for example - translate to the screen very well because their works were imagined with cinematic richness and because their adapters usually film them faithfully. (Robbing Henry James' novels of their convoluted interior narration, which usually happens in the movies, may seem justified, but it reduces their impact and shrivels their meaning.)
Consider David O. Selznick, a producer notorious for his endless memos and high standards of quality - and a man who firmly believed that any movie adapted from a popular novel should retain as much as possible the original story and characters or risk alienating devoted fans. Selznick should know. In his heyday, he produced scores of successful films, from classics such as "David Copperfield" or best sellers such as "Duel in the Sun" - and he always stuck to the book. Two towering cases in point: his Oscar-winning films of "Gone With the Wind" and "Rebecca," two films that pleased (and continue to please) audiences who knew the novels well and audiences who didn't know them at all.
I think Selznick is right - and that those modern-day producers who ignore his advice and trash or radically change their novels-into-film often do so at peril. Sometimes it works. Often it doesn't. But with "Hamlet" or "David Copperfield" or "Don Quixote" - or with Tolkien's "Lord of the Rings" - you want the words to inspire the image, because it was those words that first inspired us.
I haven't seen the movie, but was he involved with two women at the same time in the same bed? If so, why are you arguing with me? Argue with your dictionary.
A publicity stunt. Homosexuals get lots of work in Hollywood, but teases get even more. He probably paid the fan to call The Star.
And really, why do you care? Aren't you being just a little bit obsessed?
Why do you care why I care? Are you a psychoanalyst wannabe? Why would that comment make me obsessed? I just find narcisistic people like actors (and politicians) to be pretty predictable. I think I heard on FOX news that Wynona could have avoided a trial, but NO! Shoplifting trials = publicity.
Oops, there I go again...
I realize that in the scope of things in the real world, this is quite trivial, but still, if I was completely true to my convictions, I wouldn't see this movie.
However, I will avoid anything new with Vigo in it.
Mark
I don't have to visit a whorehouse, a drug house or a porn movie house to know they are evil. The Bible says I would have you wise unto that which is good, and simple [innocent] concerning evil. It says to set nothing wicked before one's eyes and describes sorcery and enchantment in detail in Deut. 18 and condemns it. Have you read the Bible? If not, try it...and google:
Google Search: "Lord of the rings" occult OR satanic - 11,300 hits
First site up above is a witchcraft link; try the second:
Tolkien's Lord of the Rings: Truth, Myth or 'Discovered Reality"? -- Berit Kjos [C.S. Lewis discussed here]
The Lord of the Rings: Paganism, Christianity or Syncretized.... -- Cutting Edge
I can play the game!
Google Search: Christian "Lord of the Rings" - 90,100 hits.
I win!
legend
/"led()nd/ noun 1 traditional story, myth. 2 colloquial famous or remarkable person or event. 3 inscription. 4 explanation on map etc. of symbols used.
1 epic, folk-tale, myth, saga, story, tradition.
I. Legend and Myth
The English term "legend" is derived, through Middle English, Old French, and Medieval Latin, from the Latin legendus, meaning "that which is, or has to be read." Originally, a legend was something to be read at religious services or meals, a story supposed to provide spiritual uplift, such as a saint's or a martyr's life. In modern usage legend is a traditional narrative, handed down for generations among a group of people, and popularly believed to be true - that is, to have a historical basis. However, although legends often do include historical personages and facts, the stories they tell are not verifiable and cannot be considered historical records. Frequently the legends tell of wonderful or miraculous events, and their protagonists are kings, princes, heroes, saints, and pious individuals.
Introduction to:
Gates to the Old City
A Book of Jewish Legends
Selected and translated by
Raphael Patai
A book of Jewish Legends and including Bible, Apocrypha, Talmud, Midrash, Kabbala, Hasidism and Jewish Folktales
***
Just as God gave great powers to the forces of holiness, as is plain from the exploits of patriarchs and prophets, so He gave great power to the forces of profanity. This was in order to create tests of faith, so that people could choose between good and evil. Now, in his desperation for counsel, Saul resorted to this forbidden device to call upon the spirit of Samuel.
Notes on 1 Samuel 28:11
Oh my, a story of occult behavior! Oh no, run away!!
***
Frodo : "Pity Bilbo didn't kill him when he had the chance."
Gandalf : "Pity ? It was pity that stayed Bilbo's hand. Many who live deserve death, and some who die deserve life. Can you give it to them ? Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment. Even the very wise cannot see all ends, but my heart tells me that Gollum still has a part to play, for good or ill. Before this is over, the pity of Bilbo may rule the fate of many."
Frodo : "I wish the ring had never come to me. I wish none of this had ever happened."
Gandalf : "So do all who live to see such times, but that is not for them to decide. All we have to decide is what to do with the time we are given. There are other forces at work in the world than the will of evil. Bilbo was meant to find the ring, which means that you also were meant to have it. And that is an encouraging thought. Ah ! It's this way."
The Fellowship of The Ring
So, Do not be too eager to deal out death in judgment.
You said that. I didn't.
>You DO understand that these are at the foundation of all western lit.?
America's foundation was built on Judeo-Christian principles from THE BIBLE along with a sin nature driven by the Masonic Illuminati. The Biblical foundation has been destroyed and the Constitution trashed as Americans have yielded to sin and unrighteousness and its dark side has taking over, promoting homosexuality, abortion, licentiousness, satanism and the occult, despising its Biblical heritage and honoring Muslims instead.
Ps 11:3 If the foundations be destroyed, what can the righteous do?
>Iconoclasts begone.
I am not the inconoclast. You are. Be careful what you wish for. If you want freedom to sin, G~d will give you over to believe a lie (He may have already), and you will reap the consequences.
iconoclast (ì-kòn´e-klàst´) noun
1. One who attacks and seeks to overthrow traditional or popular ideas or institutions.
2. One who destroys sacred religious images.
[French iconoclaste, from Medieval Greek eikonoklastês, smasher of religious images : Greek eikono-, icono- + -klastês, breaker (from Greek klan, klas-, to break).]
- icon´oclas´tic adjective
- icon´oclas´tically adverb
Word History: An iconoclast can be unpleasant company, but at least the modern iconoclast only attacks such things as ideas and institutions. The original iconoclasts destroyed countless works of art. Eikonoklastês, the ancestor of our word, was first formed in Medieval Greek from the elements eikon, "image, likeness," and -klastês, "breaker," from klan, "to break." The images referred to by the word are religious images, which were the subject of controversy among Christians of the Byzantine Empire in the 8th and 9th centuries, when iconoclasm was at its height. Those who opposed images did not, of course, simply destroy them, although many were demolished; they also attempted to have the images barred from display and veneration. During the Protestant Reformation images in churches were again felt to be idolatrous and were once more banned and destroyed. It is around this time that iconoclast, the descendant of the Greek word, is first recorded in English (1641), with reference to the Greek iconoclasts. In the 19th century iconoclast took on the secular sense that it has today, as in "Kant was the great iconoclast" (James Martineau).
? Don't you have anything better to do than pester adults?
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