Del Toro to helm The Hobbit!

[Alatar]

[Pearly Di]

Oooooooh!

Guillermo babe, I likes ya!

Well, now I'm feeling properly excited about how he's going to portray Riddles in the Dark. And Smaug. YEAH.

Says the girl who said she wouldn't get excited about a Hobbit movie.

I lied.

Hey, you just anticipated a thread I was going to start!

So start it already, Toshy!!!!!

I have quite a few pieces of music in mind.

By the way, I can't believe how mean you guys were being yesterday about Stuart Townsend, poor bloke.

[Mrs.Underhill]

And have you seen GDT's own Riddle in the Dark?
He posted it on TORN 2 weeks ago to tease fans with the imminent announcement.

And the last GDT interview is so great, it makes me wanna purr!

Pearly, as for epic battle in Moria: for some reason it didn't even register on my radar when I was first reading the book. Moria was the ultimate suspence/horror story for me, a culmination of a pretty hair-raising ride from the very start of the book: Nazgûl, Old Forest, Barrow-Wights, Weathertop, Wargs, Watcher in the Water - and Moria still managed to beat them all.
It's a classic children horror story setup: dark, dark place with skeletons and bottomless wells and dark, dark creatures who touch you with their dark, dark hands and then oh vow pounce on you. Kidding. But it was such a grand story: dark, mysterious, ancient place with lots of history and truly unknown dangers. I loved Gimli's poem and his reverence and longing for this place. And Balrog vs. Gandalf was the catharsis, finally meeting the hidden monster and horror face to face. Orcs vs. Fellowship just didn't have a chance in my eyes, after all of this.

But big kudos to PJ for filming the battle of Amon Hen live - one of the best scenes in FotR!

[kams]

I have quite a few pieces of music in mind.

Like what?

[Pearly Di]

I've answered in the new thread Tosh has opened.

Mrs U, yep the battle at Amon Hen rocked!

[Primula Baggins]

The new thread is here:

viewtopic.php?t=1548

[kams]

thanks Prim, smooches!

[Primula Baggins]

Del Toro has written an extremely interesting post at TORN:

Link

Excerpt:

I have read Moorcock, Clark Ashton Smith, Lord Dunsany, Lloyd Alexander, Fritz Leiber and a few others. At the age of 11 I read THE HOBBIT and it enchanted me as only a classic Fairy Tale can- it had enough darkness and dread and emotion to make a profound impression that lasted me until now. Beorn, Mirkwood, the Wargs, Smaug, the Riddles in the Dark, they all have lived in me for many years...

Nevertheless at that early age, the rest of Tolkien proved to contain Geography and Genealogy too complex for my prepubescent brain...

I was never propelled into an aleatory addiction to sub-genres like Sword & Sorcery or indiscriminate fantasies about magical this or that- Like any other genre or subgenre there's a great abundance that makes it hard to discern when a new "trilogy" or "chronicle" comes from as genuine a place as Tolkien's or derives from genuine fervor -religious or otherwise- like C.S. Lewis' did.

And here I am now: reading like a madman to catch up with a whole new land, a continent of sorts- a Cosmology created by brilliant philologist turned Shaman.

As if he grasped an existing universe outside our Platonic cave, Tolkien channels an entire world, weaving expertly from myth and lore. The oustanding virtue is that all this scholarly erudition doesn't reduce his tales to mere Taxidermy. He achieves an Alchemy all of his own: he writes new life in the freshly sculpted clay of his creatures.

I have, through the years become familiar with the very roots of Tolkien's myths and the roots of Fafhrd or Elric or Hyperborea and many a time I have relished the intricate ways in which demonic wolves, shape-shifter and spindly-limbed pale warriors can be woven into those many tales that become, at the end, the single tale, the single saga- that of what is immortal in us all.

In creating Pan's Labyrinth I drank deep of the most rigid form of Fairy Lore and tried to contextualize the main recurrent motifs in an instinctive rhyme between the world of fantasy and the delusions of War and Politics (the grown man's way of playing make-believe) and in re-reading THE HOBBIT just recently I was quite moved by discovering, through Bilbo's eyes the illusory nature of possession, the sins of hoarding and the banality of war- whether in the Western Front or at a Valley in Middle Earth. Lonely is the mountain indeed.

And now, I'm here- about to live amongst you for many years to come and it is my dearest hope to push and expand the filmic incarnation of these Myths: Emotionally, visually and in their resonance within all of us. Whising me luck won't be enough- therefore I invite you to join us in another beautiful place created by on Parker Lyons, namely-

Deltorofilms.com

-and to become acquainted with my many flaws and the error of my ways, for I am -much like a Hobbit or a foul Dwarf- a mere mortal facing an enormous task ahead.

May the task become lighter by receiving the blessing of your trust .

(Ellipses in original)

Okay, I'm bad, that's most of the meat of his post, but I thought it might be worth discussing here.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Okay, I am officially excited. And anyone who thinks he is going to remove Beorn should read this post.

[WampusCat]

Wow! He gets it! He gets it!


I particularly like this bit:

...it is my dearest hope to push and expand the filmic incarnation of these Myths: Emotionally, visually and in their resonance within all of us.

Or should I say it resonates with me? That is exactly what I think films should attempt to do: incarnate -- put flesh on -- the great myths in a way that we can enter and connect emotionally and visually with their truth.

[Frelga]

Beorn, Mirkwood, the Wargs, Smaug, the Riddles in the Dark, they all have lived in me for many years...

Well, yes, yes, great. But what about Bilbo?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Frelga, you haven't heard? Bilbo's been dropped from the film.

[WampusCat]

No, he hasn't been dropped. They've just changed his name to Bilba and made him a her to increase the appeal to female movie-goers. I think they've tapped Britney Spears for the role.

[yovargas]

Nope. Orlando Bloom. He's a much prettier girl than she is.

[Voronwë the Faithful]

Nope, sorry. Miley Cyrus. Filmed nude by Annie Leibovitz and then motion captured a la Angelina Jolie in Beowulf (which no I have not seen).

Yes, I know I am bad.

[Primula Baggins]

Very bad indeed.

TORN also has a transcript of a radio interview with Michael Regina about his conversations with del Toro. About the only new nugget I found was that they will be filming the Shire scenes in the exact same spot and will be replanting and refurbishing everything.

That was one of the loveliest and most perfectly "right" locations in LotR, and I'm glad we'll get to go back there again.

(I wonder if they'll think to make the Party Tree smaller? )

[Alatar]

I hope this time they build it to last! It was starting to fall apart I hear, and that Farmer was in danger of losing a goldmine in tourists!

[Primula Baggins]

Saturday night we watched a film that was produced by del Toro: The Orphanage. The director was a first-timer, and del Toro apparently influenced the shooting quite a bit.

It was a horror film (a ghost story), and wonderfully good. The script was tight and economical, the performances fine, the cinematography excellent. (It's in Spanish, with subtitles, and is set in Spain.) We rented it because I read a review that described it as both creepy and moving, and that was exactly right.

It contained a few shocking images and would not be for kids under 12 or so, but it was not violent or bloody. It was extremely tense and creepy, though, and in a few spots my daughter and I yipped and clutched at each other. I also watched much of it through my fingers (because, you know, you can still see everything, but of course nothing bad can see you).

Anyway, I highly recommend it for the not-faint-of-heart. A horror film where you cry at the bittersweet ending. . . .

[kams]

Well. I am impressed. Mr. del Toro speaks very poetically.
Was the post/article translated from Spanish, or does he speak better than I in what is my native tongue?

[Voronwë the Faithful]

It was written in English.