lavendertook

Happy Baggins Birthday to any Baggins to whom it applies and all who love them!!! (-:

Pickles the Hobbit Cat celebrates the Bagginses birthday in typical cat fashion. Party on, you crazy cat!



Here are pre-quest Bagginses bonding by Atariel on DeviantArt.

Happy Bagginses Birthday to all the hobbit-hearted here! Yes, you!!!! <3

Happy Birthday to Professor Tolkien! Thank you for the worlds you created that we love to dream and play in. In his honor, I bring you some tree spam.

First, a mallorn:

Pics of a beech from November. The Professor would be happy to know this beech is in the woods behind the Catholic church on my way down to the lake.

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So is anyone up for a Maryland Moot next year? Our last was in Dec of 2012 for the first Hobbit film.

The end of April, beginning of May is often beautiful here, but not so good for those of the hobbit posse on academic calendars.

So I was thinking, how about the first weekend in June (6/3-6/6)? Is everyone's semester done then?

The weather is often still temperate here the beginning of June and roses are out, and it's usually quite lovely--though sometimes it can be stinky hot. This would be the week after the Memorial Day weekend. I figured air fares and airport congestion would be worse on Memorial Day weekend, but would be just as happy to have it then, if it were better for people, but I suspect that would be cutting it close for those finishing out semesters.

Or would you not be available until autumn?

What say you? Who is up for it?

Also posted at http://lavendertook.dreamwidth.org/180055.html with comments

Happy Birthday to the Professor!!!



I'm sorry I'm falling behind on commenting on so many posts because ya'll are posting so much lately--it's glorious, actually! I can deal with this kind of guilt. Keep it up! :-D

Addendum: A new translation of the Red Book of Westmarch? This is good. Thanks to mererid for the link.

I enjoyed PJ's big AU Hobbity Adventure Part 2. It needed more dialog and character interaction and development and less orc fighting, wizard wall-pressing, and smart dragons being bad at hide 'n' seek, but yay for pretty, pretty Middle-earth. Some of the changes were good, doing a better job of pulling the narrative into Tolkien's Legendarium than Tolkien did himself, some intensify the antisemitic link with Dwarves, which is very disappointing to say the least, and some were a bit silly, but it was overall a fun romp.




BREE

It was nice to see them work the Appendix's meeting between Thorin and Gandalf into the film. I liked seeing more women there, including Katy Jackson waiting tables. And cats.


BEORN

Totally, absolutely wrong. This Beorn is in no way a bear-man--he was way too lean, and looked much too wolfy. So I'd buy him as a wolf man, not a bear man. I mean, we all know bear men, and this one so did not look like one. But I have to say, I liked this AU Beorn far better than Tolkien's more arrogant Beorn. He was melancholy, other worldly, and with the mouse in hand, he came off as a gentle champion of nature's underdogs. He and Radagast would make the cutest naturalist couple. In every episode, Beorn would make a daring rescue of some imperiled woodland creature, bringing it home close to death for Radagast to heal and set free, and then Radagast would do something goofy and funny. Yeah, they're both terrible house keepers, so there would be no Odd Couple thing going between them, still Radagast would say or do something humorous to melt Beorn's aloof butchiness into sunshine smiles before they go off to make love like Rhosgobel rabbits together. End episode.

I really did imagine Tolkien's Beorn to be a better house keeper and gardner and longed to see his lovely gardens, which the film didn't deliver, but it was still a cool house--a lot like Radagast's--see, another connection! I did NOT miss the dancing dogs and livestock. Baaaaay-orn. Off with Hasselhoff of Bayorn Watch.

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And Happy Tolkien Reading Day, which I am participating in by reciting my part in the read_lotr_aloud project community after I post this entry. All my readings can be found at bbolger_baggins. One day I hope to sit down and listen to everyone's readings. And it is an especially good day to post pics of trees in JRRT's honor. From last October:





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Continued from Part 1 here on DW and here on LJ.

( SPOILERS and SPECULATIONS Go Ever On and On . . .  )

WHO AM I? 24601 . . .

To sum up about movie Bilbo, I have to say this Bilbo is quite different from Tolkien's Bilbo. He's not just more competent, but much more self-possessed from the beginning. Tolkien's Bilbo fumes inwardly, but is polite to a fault when the dwarves take over his house, and he shrieks like a tea kettle and squeaks a lot. Movie Bilbo doesn't hide how cranky he feels and has no problem saying no, even if his objections are as ignored as book Bilbo's inner fuming. He is sardonic with Gandalf ("Is he a great wizard, or more like you?") and knows how to speak with strangers, as he plays for time with the trolls.

In fact, he's not book Bilbo at all. He's book Frodo! It's Frodo who starts out with this level of competency, aaaaand crankiness. Tolkien's Frodo would not drop his sword and fall on his bum when beset by ringwraiths, but Tolkien's Bilbo, before he reached the middle of Mirkwood, might have. And don't tell me it's because Elijah Wood couldn't project this level of competence and sardonic quippiness, because he can, and does so in his initial talk with Gandalf and in the extended Green Dragon scene with the Gaffer.

Movie Frodo never does get to display the level of competence and wisdom that book Frodo shows, and that book Bilbo develops in the latter part of his arc, and I'm not just talking about Frodo's inner struggle, which film does have some unique ways to portray that PJ did not take advantage of. So Boyens, Walsh, and PJ seem to have reversed these two characters and plopped them in each other's stories. Crackfic central! It makes me wonder if they're just bigger Bilbo fans than Frodo fans, since they took away much of Frodo's strength of character and gave it to Bilbo. Or if they loved beginning Bilbo's fish-out-of water-ness so much they wanted Frodo to have it when he went on the road. And with this new trilogy, they don't want Bilbo to seem too much like their Frodo, so they are dispensing with his fear, vulnerability, and difficulty with the road.

Since they're making Bilbo competent from the outset, maybe they feel that must naturally culminate in battle prowess, because they equate being competent with being a macho warrior--FAIL. I do not want Bilbo to fight in the Battle of Five Armies, but I'm suspecting he will. He will probably have to fight spiders that are bigger and scarier than Shelob by the Law of The Audience Expects More and We Must Deliver, the poor fellow, but we'll see how that goes. Whether he is really book Bilbo or Frodo, I do love Martin Freeman's Bilbo thus far.


LEGENDARIUM AND SCOPE

I will continue to ponder all these issues into the next movie as I watch where they take this hobbit, whoever he is, and his companions. I do love the bigger scope of this story made by the incorporation of the LotR Appendices. I am eager to see what changes they make for the internal logic of their adaptation and how big and operatic it makes it, along with what they try to preserve of Tolkien's textual work and what parts of the Legendarium they can bring in without copyright infringement and Tolkien Estate battles.

Speaking of the Tolkien Estate, I love how Boyen's, Walsh's, and PJ's larger scope gives greater sympathy to the "jealous love" of the creator, that is a major theme in The Silmarillion in a predominantly cautionary vein. In this movie, that jealous love of creation among the Dwarves is also about communal production and cultural identity formation, what makes a people with family and cultural traditions, not just a clinging to objects for greed's sake. Tolkien's The Hobbit brings to this issues of rightfully contested cultural ownership and shared territory that the last movie installment should explore. PJ's team have the potential here for revealing a greater emotional and ethical complexity than Tolkien elaborated in his Legendarium, in what is, in essence, Feanor's quest in the Dwarves quest for Erebor. I hope they do more with this.

What do you think?

I saw The Hobbit for my third viewing on Saturday morning. It's really grown on me each time and now I give it two thumbs up, with a few reservations. It is a lot of fun and, mostly, very beautiful. I attribute my initial lukewarm reaction to being cranky from an earlier headache and bad traffic, further exacerbated by the 3D straining of my eyes, which made the lengthiness a bigger flaw than it normally would have been for me. I'll talk about the viewing technology issues in the second part of this review.

(  SPOILER ALERT: Thoughts, Complaints, and Squeeage about the film and the book . . .LONG POST IS LONG )