February 18, 2003

Hobbit World News

Taking a break from peace fools and cybertrolls, here's some news from Middle Earth:

This interview with Billy Boyd reveals that he will be in upcoming high seas adventure film film Master and Commander, with Russell "Ladies' Man" Crowe. Hmm. Watching the British Horatio Hornblower series last year gave me quite the taste for high seas Napoleonic-era adventure movies. (Iaon Gruffudd helped.)

Scroll down on this page to the entry titled "JRD Shoots 'Dragon' In Bulgaria" for news of a film that John Rhys-Davies will be in. Excerpt:

The film is called "Dragon Storms" by director Stephen Foerstein. Filming will take place in the medieval fortress Baba Vida and the dungeons of the "Venetian depot" in Vidin for 18 days. John Rhys-Davies plays the role of the evil king.
For more news on this, check out Sofia Sideshow -- this is the film jkrank is working on. Oh, and by the way, add another actor to the list of Actors Who Are NOT Idiots.

For those of you who did not know: Orlando "Legolas! Squeal!" Bloom is going to play Paris in the upcoming film Troy. And Sean Bean (who played Boromir) is cast as Odysseus. Can't wait for that one either.

This interview with Ian McKellan contains the following amusing tidbit:

But, yes, it’s agreeable for a one-time Burnley boy to sit next to Meryl Streep at the Oscars, or have Colin Powell introduce himself as “your mailman” at the same ceremony and drop a missive from his niece into his lap[...]

Smoke 'em if you've got 'em.
Googling around, I came upon this stash of old online chats with Elijah Wood:
The Elijah's World AOL Chat (April 30, 1995)

Lionrobby: Elijah, I've noticed you sign "God Bless You" on autographs, What religion are you?

Guest EJW: lion, I'm Christian
***************
The Prodigy Chat (September 12, 1997)

Question: What are your religious beliefs?

Elijah: Well, I'm a Christian. I was raised a Christian. I'm not highly religious in some people's eyes because I don't go to church. It's not that I've made a choice saying that I do not want to go to church... It's more circumstantial than that. But since our family has not been to church in so long, it's not really something we've considered doing.

I don't feel that in order to be a "good Christian," that you have to go to church. You can be religious without going to church by just praying and living your life for God. And living your life by God's teachings, or the bible. It interesting...every bible for every religion says basically the same thing.

Heh.

And here's a favorable Christian review of Fellowship of the Ring. However, there is one puzzling note: a "moderate" rating on the film for "drug alert." I can't understand what they mean: are they referring to the "leaf"? Repeat after me, people: "leaf" is just what Tolkien calls "tobacco." It is not cannabis: ignore the hippies.

Posted by Andrea Harris at February 18, 2003 02:02 PM
Comments

Having once long ago read Harvard Lampoon's "Bored of the Rings", I read that last paragraph of yours and briefly found myself wondering if I'd missed the version of Fellowship that included the visit with "Tim Benzedrine".

Posted by: Kevin McGehee at February 18, 2003 at 02:43 PM

Andrea, you may want to give Patrick O'Brian Aubray/Maturin series a chance. It starts a bit slow, but sucks you into entirely convincing, fascinating world. I was never crazy about Hornblower (movies are way better than the books), but O'Brian is someting altogether different. Language is great, humor is subtle and altogether wicked, and characters are most convincing. I rank O'Brian right up there with Tolkien.

Posted by: Katherine at February 18, 2003 at 03:18 PM

Russell Crowe? Russell Crowe? Jack Aubrey is big, often overweight (he does love to eat), blond, and not even slightly quick. His intelligence is slow, elephantine almost, and comes alive only when he's playing music or when he's preparing for or engaging in battle. I suppose there are worse choices than Russell Crowe, but I'll have to think a while.

The books are quite lovely, though.

Posted by: Jack at February 18, 2003 at 03:32 PM

BTW, they misspelled the name of the director for the Dragon film...it's Stephen Furst, the guy who played "Vir" on Babylon 5 (oh, yeah, and "Flounder" in Animal House)...and he's not an idiotarian, either! Huzzah!

(Info courtesy Sofia Sideshow)

Posted by: Brian Swisher at February 18, 2003 at 04:02 PM

Tolkien himself called LOTR a very Catholic book. Its appeal is based in large measure on its unflinching recognition of the absoluteness of evil.

Church-going aside -- and that really is a minor point -- it sounds to me, if I may borrow a phrase from the Sixties, as if the young Mr. Wood's head is in a very good place.

Posted by: Francis W. Porretto at February 18, 2003 at 05:37 PM

Woo-hooo, Patrick O'Brian's books as movies!

Some of the worst puns ever recorded in the English language!

"The lesser of two weevils", indeed.

If you haven't read them, start today!

The ship-to-ship fights are based on actual events: there really was a fight between a British sloop and a Spanish frigate that the sloop won by sailling so close to the Spaniard that it couldn't depress it's guns enough.

Posted by: MonkeyPants at February 18, 2003 at 05:48 PM

I'll admit to looking forward to an Aubrey movie, but I'll also agree that Russell Crowe doesn't seem the right fit.

A young Peter Ustinov would be more like it, and with today's digital animation technology it can be done.

Posted by: Kevin McGehee at February 18, 2003 at 07:06 PM

Per Master and Commander...guess who is drooling at the bit to see BILLY BOYD?????? Russell Crowe looks like he will make a fine Aubrey...have only read 1 1/2 books of the series...

whoops...excuse the splatter...the thought of Boyd as wet sailor was a bit too much.

Posted by: Sharon Ferguson at February 19, 2003 at 04:54 PM

Yeah, and those eighteenth century uniforms have real tight pants, as I recall. ;)

Posted by: Andrea Harris at February 20, 2003 at 01:15 AM

Go out this week and obtain three Patrick O'Brian Aubrey/Maturin novels (your library should have some). Forrester's Hornblower is fun, but O'Brian is levels above him.

Posted by: Gary Farber at February 20, 2003 at 01:26 AM

They are on my list (the very long list) of things to read. So many books, so few hours in the day... stupid sleep impulse.

Posted by: Andrea Harris at February 20, 2003 at 02:00 AM