Too Much To Dream

Escape to Middle-Earth

In lieu of looking at pictures of idiots and their stupid signs (I'm sorry, but the intellectual level of the antiwar protests as displayed in these photos is on no higher level than "infuriatingly, blockheadedly stupid") I will post some Lord of the Rings tidbits.

First, for all you Billy Boyd (Pippin) fans, here's his diary. It is a very infrequently updated, and rather generic "to the fans" sort of thing, but the latest entry with the missing letters due to a wonky keyboard is promising.* Get that man a wee blog of his own.

Second, the Baltic Blogger finally went to see The Two Towers in Tallinn today. He has the cheering news that they get their Hollywood movies pretty soon after their domestic debut, so we can start on the cultural indoctrination right away. Also, he says they never dub their movies either; subtitles are cheaper. Good, I hate dubbed movies in any language. So if I ever find myself in Estonia and have an urge to see a non-Estonian movie, I won't have had to learn the local language to understand it. (You know Americans don't want to lurn no danged foreign languages. Speak English, world!)**

[GEEK] A couple of minor quibbles with his review: 1) Saruman did not build the tower, the ancient men of Numenor did, back when they had the technical shizzle. It wasn't intended to be a fortress, but a kind of astronomical observatory and (at some point) a place to keep the palantír when they were used by the Numenorians as communications devices, pre-Sauron. Saruman just decided to live there one day after it was left vacant. Also, in the book, the reason the Ents were able to flood the plain around it was because they diverted a bunch of rivers and streams, and dammed up the valley, and one reason for all the water was to put out the fires in the caves underneath Orthanc. This was described in the book as a slow process, and the dam-smashing, sudden flooding scene was not in the book at all; that was made up for the script for dramatic effect; and 2) the fortress of Helm's Deep was considered impregnable because of its outer walls, which were described in the book as sheer, with an overhang, nearly impossible to scale. The builders obviously didn't count on explosives. Once the outer walls were breached, it didn't matter what the door was made of. I don't remember what the doors were made of at the Helm's Deep fortress; I do remember that the gates to the outer wall of Minas Tirith were made of iron and steel, and they were no match for the gate-smashing hammer and the spells of the Captain of the Nazgul during the siege of the battle of the fields of Pelennor. And in that part of the book the only reason the orc forces didn't invade immediately after the gate was smashed was due to the fact that a) Gandalf was in the way, and b) the Rohirrim appeared in the nick of time, and the Captain of the Nazgul unwisely decided to attack them instead. You all know what happened next. Well, all of you who have read the book anyway. I have no idea what Peter Jackson did with this part of the story; we'll all find out in December. Anyway, people with more knowledge of medieval-type warfare than I have feel free to barge in here. [/GEEK]

*Well, I thought it was funny.

**All this is supposed to be only semi-serious. Yes, for some reason I feel like putting up disclaimers for the humor-impaired. Maybe it was sights like this that reminded me that there are so many morons in the world and some of them might visit this blog by mistake and become confused.

Posted by Andrea Harris at February 15, 2003 10:00 PM