Lord of the Rings

I still picture that whole scene with the fairly corny Nazgul from Rankin Bass, with the floating eyes/crown and metallic echo Skeletor laugh. Not exactly as effective as their Gollum or Smaug, but striking in its way.

The translation of how to do the eyes visually has always been a bit of a trick. Rankin Bass did that while the rest of their Nazgul were more withered skeletal types, Bakshi did the red eyes in the hood deal from the start but of course never did that scene, and Jackson used the helmet/crown as a bit of a visual trick for their version.

Meanwhile at Rivendell, Glorfindel spits his drink out

Our new episode next week but another Spouter-Inn episode on Tolkien with my cohost Oriana so check it out!

But we're not totally done talking Tolkien! Oriana Schwindt (@Schwindter) from Tolkien podcast @BytheBywater joins us for a bonus episode, where we discuss rivers, stars, and, OK, a little bit more about Tom Bombadil.

Listen at https://t.co/64cg3Yo00f

— The Spouter-Inn (@TheSpouter) April 30, 2021

Christine Kelley at Eruditorum Press (Elizabeth Sandifer's mob) has a psychogeography of Middle Earth going on as well, not as far as I can tell linked itt yet: https://www.eruditorumpress.com/blog/category/nowhere-and-back-again

Oh that looks good!

Just reread the bit in Sam and Frodo's initial scouting of Gorgoroth where the diminutive, big-nosed tracker orc tells the big mean orc to fuck off with his criticism because it's his own fault for being slow and shit at his job, and furthermore he hopes the Witch King really is dead because he's a twat, and then shoots him in the eye and runs off when he tries to attack him, and let me tell you that guy has main event charisma

That guy is your billion dollar Amazon show right there

I'd be down with that.

Anyway, our new episode is up!

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/26

oh boy! just listened to the Denethor family showcase and working on the Ent one today. :) relevant to my above comments on legend/chronicle/lore: i like your observation that maybe Denethor's attachment to the traditions, politics and details of the office sort of marks him apart from the way others in the universe relate to the past. and so perhaps me reaching for more concrete, graspable history is a bit Denethor-ish, and not really encouraged by the text.

Denethor is a civil service

The only other character we see attached to such a position is the guardsman showing ?pippin? around Gondor's barracks

Denethor is also that most overplayed archetype, the cautious governance that has kept the place running in between would-be inspirational leaders actually getting it right as opposed to wrecking the fucking gaff

Big fan of Merry bringing low the enemy's hated, hitherto-invincible captain with a one-in-a-million sword he plundered from a place of great danger and carried south for many miles, preventing Eowyn from being splattered into paste in the process, and then goes up to a dying Theoden and immediately apologises for not doing anything useful while in his service

― hiroyoshi tins in (Sgt. Biscuits)

Merry Sue nest pas

Just listened to the latest episode of By-The-Bywater, on the scouring of the shire. Cracking ep, one of the best yet!

Thanks kindly! We do our best.

‘Mortal Kombat’ Star Accuses Amazon’s ‘Lord of the Rings’ of Lacking Asian Actors
https://www.hollywoodreporter.com/tv/tv-news/lord-of-the-rings-amazon-diversity-1234953348/

The most recent of the Eruditorum posts makes me think that's probably a good thing...

I finally watched the “Tolkien Edit” of the Hobbit movies, a fan edit that chops the trilogy down into one 4-1/2 hour movie.

It’s decently watchable, if not actually anything like good. About on a par with most of the Marvel movies I’ve seen (which is not high praise). But if you take it as canon, at least it doesn’t taint & stain the original LOTR trilogy the way the theatrically released Hobbit movies did.

Whoever put that together is kind of a hero.

area fan

There are a couple of those Hobbit edits floating around -- I have two, plus a separate one that's just the Dol Guldur arc. One of those edits did a pretty great job of reducing it down to three hours that followed as closely to the original text as allowed and basically did what I felt could have been done at the start, just tell the story in one film. From the moment they announced it as two films I had my doubts and we all knew what happened after that.

yeah, i’d prefer a single hobbit movie and a dedicated dol guldur movie

.. but then if LoTR movies came out now in the MCU age we’d also get a dedicated Tom Bombadil movie, so..

i want to see Lord of the Rings: Paradise, where they all get drunk on the beach and flirt in the pool

featuring tom bombadil, i mean

Tom Bombadil: Love and Thunder

xxp pretty sure that’s all what’s going on in the Undying Lands, thus why they’re in such a hurry to go sail there at the end

The Lord of the Rings 2: The Scouring of the Shire Part 1

: Genesis

Directors final cut

The Two Towers 2: Electric Boogaloo

by 2050, reflecting the continuing evolution of the IP and a need to make clear to younger fans why they should bother watching them, the original Jackson series will have been rebranded "The Scouring of the Shire: Origins"

Lord of the Rings: The Snyder Cut

Its the ewok crossover will really tear it

The Gondolorian

.. a series about Aragorn’s life as a Strider would probably rock actually

a videogame as well

the thing that people don't yet know about aragorn/Strider is that he often travels via a chain that he throws diagonally up and forward, swinging across any obstacle like tarzan or harry pitfall over the alligators

Isn’t that Bionic Commando!?

Nope, it’s my idea!

Listen, I didn’t have a sega genesis!!

i think it should be a Mega Man clone called Dúne Dain.

shit why didn't I go with Dúna Dan

And here I thought you were making a deep-cut reference to actual NES game Strider.

2 towers 2 furious

I know that once you start on the LOTR tumblrs you can spend your life there - but this is lovely

https://prismatic-bell.tumblr.com/post/189586763336/ekjohnston-kyraneko-kittyknowsthings

i mean, honestly it’s amazing the Elves had as many languages and dialects as they did, considering Galadriel (for example) is over seven thousand years old.

english would probably have changed less since Chaucer’s time, if a lot of our cultural leaders from the thirteenth century were still alive and running things.

(and other less couth things)

That's pretty cool, will have to share that.

Another team of Tolkien podcasters -- more well-known than us! -- bagged a pretty good interview with Ralph Bakshi about his film version

https://luke-shelton.com/2021/05/28/tep-32-ralph-bakshi/

Anyway as for our own podcast, latest episode is live!

https://www.megaphonic.fm/bythebywater/27

Meanwhile, not inaccurate

Canonically, the Lord of the Rings is a memoir by hobbits, which has several detailed descriptions of meals throughout, so maybe the whole saga is just one of those recipe blogs where they have to tell you a whole epic story before getting to the food.

— Sean Kelly (@StorySlug) June 3, 2021

lol otm

this applies a lot to A Song of Ice and Fire (and gets worse with each book with multi page descriptions of various meals)

i just purchased the first wheel of time book. i guess i will soon be learning about the cuisine of the time world