The Hall of Fire

Well, I really like it and I see plenty of Hobbity whimsy in there. The trailer does play up the gravitas more than the humor, but I think it's clear the movie will still ahve plenty of thelatter. I love the song, both the dwarf singing and the instrumental version. It really makes the trailer. I'm ...

Part of me wants to hold off watching it online and see it in theaters first...but then, I don't really want to pony up the money for Tintin (even though it may be good).

The fact that the White Council/Necromancer subplot isn't mentioned in the synopsis (except perhaps a cryptic mention of "sorcerers" that could mean a lot of different things) bodes well for Bilbo's storyline remaining at the forefront.

Well...the dwarves ARE funny in The Hobbit. Even in LotR, Gimli has his comic moments (of course, the movie version did go too far at times - though I don't think ALL the Gimli humor was bad) and Tolkien couldn't resist throwing in another Bombur fat joke. :D If we get 13 movie-Gimlis I won't be ver...

Have you read it, Voronwë? How is it?

I'm guessing Bard's role is going to be bigger. With the addition of Alfrid as the Master of Laketown's crony (which I don't mind, a corrupt leader needs henchmen) I imagine they'll be playing up the "Laketown politics" element. Remember when some people thought Legolas would replace Bard?...

So Tom Shippey "reviewed" Dance with Dragons (Martin's latest book) in the WSJ. But it's really more a description and overview of the series than a full review. Shippey doesn't say much about his own opinion on the books, besides that he sees the appeal of them and that in Martin's world ...

I'd say that is the place where the movies have the greatest chance of going wrong, especially since much of it will need to be invented.

Quite a reading list you guys have! I only want to get one secondary book right now and I figured Shippey was the best because people bring him up the most, but maybe the biography be a better starting point?

It doesn't really bother me...but then, I tend to be more tolerant of PJ's excesses than a lot of people.

I laughed when I saw Gandalf towering over them. All the scaling must be a nightmare.

I'll concede the point on Merry and Pippin. But while hobbits don't have "gentry" in the traditional sense, it seems like going from gardener to mayor is about as socially mobile as you can get in the Shire (and Sam's family does well for itself after that too).

Road to Middle-earth or Author of the Century or another one? I haven't really read any secondary work on Tolkien besides Fonstad's atlas (and a bit of Christopher's stuff if that counts).

Well I do wonder how much this was intentional. Tolkien liked to write about which fictional sources he used for his stories, so it would make sense that some parts are from the Hobbits' memory of the characters and some are just from more straightforward historical records. On my most recent re-rea...

And I see that axordil and I both posted the same basic idea on the narrative structure of LotR at the same time. Another thing - I think the statement that "LotR reflects Tolkien's belief that the high noble class or low class is the way you are and you shouldn't move beyond your station in li...

Written for an age where the hero did not have to have an affair with his neighbor to appeal to an audience. But this sort of thing (flawed heroes, etc.) had been around for ages. It's not something that just became popular after the 50s. American dime-store detective novels in the early-mid twenti...

Wow, I really like Thorin! Kind of surprised by how much I do, I was afraid of another Kili. The character description is encouraging too.

I wonder if we'll get Thror and Thrain soon? Probably not.

I was pretty hard on Martin in that previous post, so I should say that while I haven't read them in a long time, I do like his first three books, though in the same sort of grumbling critical way some people here like Peter Jackson's movies. But based on the fourth book and the spoilers and excerpt...

It's not just that his world is morally ambiguous. Two of my three favorite authors (you can guess the third) are Fyodor Dostoevsky and Kazuo Ishiguro, and they have plenty of ambiguity. It's also the way his books seem to revel in graphic gory violence, (basically) softcore porn, and highly detaile...

Dwalin, Balin, and Thorin. I'm guessing it'll be the first two today and Thorin tomorrow. They might start on the non-dwarves after that, but probably not immediately.