Pages Tagged “LOTR”
Blog Posts
- Mount Doomscrolling
The way the Palantir network compromises Saruman and Denethor shows the danger in who controls the algorithm that manages your newsfeed.
- Keep Going
I find myself thinking about Sam’s speech a lot. About how in the stories that really matter, people faced overwhelming darkness, and had a lot of chances to stop, but they kept going. Geek Mom’s A Reminder About Story Middles was written before the coronavirus pandemic hit the US, but it’s even more important now: […]
- Doom and Gloom are Not Enough
Doom and gloom alone aren’t enough to help us deal with climate change, or any of the other problems we face. Fear sustained turns to despair, and to inaction – because why bother? We have to celebrate successes to keep hope alive so we can keep going. We do need to know what we’re up […]
- Gondor Calls For Aid!
Actually it’s just the last light of the setting sun reflecting off of a structure (the observatory?) atop Mt. Wilson. Also, you can see the sign on the Wilshire Grand tower is seriously bright, even from this far away.
- ‘Round Here They Call it Strider’s
I was amused to find that Serenity, a restaurant first spotted in 2012 during the Firefly 10th Anniversary, is now known as Strider’s. Different verse, but still matches a well known SF/F name. Five years ago:
- How The Hobbit Will (and Won’t) be Like the Star Wars Prequels
A visionary director returns to his high-profile trilogy years later with a prequel in which some of the same characters establish key elements of the original backstory. Hmm….
- Lord of the Rings as an “Event” Comic Book
No doubt it would have tie-ins, side stories, spinoffs, and a bunch of extra tie-ins added to plug the inevitable gaps in the schedule.
- Gandledorf
Go ahead. Tell me Dumbledore doesn’t look like Gandalf in this poster.
- Waitaminute
Listening to “Into the West” (end credits song from Lord of the Rings: Return of the King). Lyric, “Across the sea a pale moon rises.” It’s all about crossing the sea into the west to go to elf heaven. Presumably the speaker is standing at the Grey Havens, waiting for the ships to arrive and […]
- OC D&D
Something like 10 years ago, Katie saw a self-storage place in which the opening S was unlit, making it read, “Elf Storage.” She’s been looking for another one ever since, and we finally caught one in Newport Beach a few months ago. This one was even better, because the S had actually fallen off. Of […]
- Rambling On
On the subject of filk, and trying to define it, there’s a whole subset of songs by professional musicians that just rides the edge. (Half of “Weird Al” Yankovic’s repertoire, for instance.) Twice in the last week I’ve heard Led Zeppelin’s “Ramble On,” which is apparently about Aragorn and Arwen from Lord of the Rings. […]
- Fantasy Feuds
Epic Pooh – Michael Moorcock on the state of fantasy literature, originally written in the 1970s but updated for the 21st century. The title comes from comparing the style of Lord of the Rings to Winnie the Pooh. I have no problem reading and enjoying both his work and Tolkien’s, and it doesn’t bother me […]
- From DM of the Rings to Chainmail Bikini
After a year, DM of the Rings is finished. The comic recast Lord of the Rings as a Dungeons & Dragons campaign, using stills (sometimes brilliantly chosen) from the Peter Jackson–directed movie trilogy in a comic-strip format. The series poked fun at RPG tropes and player types, with the players’ dialog given to the LOTR […]
- Con Sundae
Sunday at SDCC was, oddly, more crowded than Saturday. Maybe it was the desperation of the last day combined with the fact that it was still on the weekend. We got in later, closer to 11:30, since we spent the morning packing. I did a final round of back-issue hunting, and ended up not buying […]
- Going to the Movies—Not!
Apparently the movie industry is trying to come up with an ad campaign to get people back into theaters. The LA Times doesn’t seem to take the idea terribly seriously, as they’ve suggested the slogan, “Movies: Just like DVDs, but Larger.” Meanwhile, theaters and studios are blaming each other for the decline in attendance: Theater […]
- One Time-Turner to rule them all
I keep calendars displaying both the current month and the next month up in my cube at work. I figured I’d better post this configuration before it stopped being what I got to look at every day:
- Viking Catering
Here’s an interesting storefront window: Just what kind of food would vikings serve? Mead, I suppose. Probably with “roaring fires, malt beer, [and] red meat off the bone!”
- News from Comic Con 2005
Jedi costumes, Fellowship! The Musical, Jim Henson 50th Anniversary, Groo vs. Conan and a ton of movie previews: Serenity, Mirrormask, HP4, Fountain & more.
- Sequelitis is profitable
An interesting read on the Most Lucrative Movie Franchises, not so much for what it gets right, but for what it gets wrong. Tonight’s premiere of Batman Begins marks the sixth in the series. And that’s only counting the “modern” era of Batman flicks, dating from 1989’s Batman from director Tim Burton. Sixth? Are they […]
- Gondor Found!
After four drive-bys, I finally managed to get a picture of the Gondor street sign. It was far enough away that it’s barely readable (this is the native resolution on a 5 megapixel image — it’s not shrunk, it’s just cropped). Eventually I ought to turn onto a side street, park the car, and walk […]
- Living in Middle Earth
A few years ago I lived in the city of Lake Forest (formerly El Toro) for a bit. One of the interesting things about Lake Forest is its collection of streets named after characters and places in Lord of the Rings. (And yes, these were around long before the movies were made.) I still drive […]
- Hobbit Center
On our way out of Laguna Beach, we ended up on a side street parallelling PCH. Fortunately, we spotted this gem of a corner shopping center: Now, the nearby city of Lake Forest has had Tolkien-named streets for years (Gondor, Elrond, and others), and of course UCI has its Middle Earth dorm complex. I have […]
- LOTR caption madness
For those of you who haven’t seen these yet: Feel free to copy and distribute/re-post these so long as I get the credit.
- An interesting proposal from the folks at the IMDb
Now I can’t get “The Scotsman” out of my head.
- Must…control…poinging
J. Michael Straczynski likes ROTK. Kenneth Turan likes ROTK. If I bounce off the walls much more, I’m going to leave dents.
- What’s my line
In The Matrix: Revolutions, when Smith asked Neo why he kept fighting, I thought he answered, “Because I’m too stupid.” It wasn’t until I went to the IMDb discussion forums that I figured out he said, “Because I choose to.” I can’t decide if this is better than thinking that, in The Two Towers, Sam […]
- OotP and LotR
I don’t know why it didn’t occur to me before, but recently I started to wonder if, given the prophecy stuff and plotlines of Order of the Phoenix, Neville could end up Sam to Harry’s Frodo. “Who are you? His bodyguard?” “His gardener.”
- Comic Con! (2003)
Photos and comments from our day at Comic Con International in San Diego
- Second Look: The Two Towers
OK, first I’d like to stress that I did like most of The Two Towers the first time through. It was mainly the non-ending that bugged the heck out of me, and that was the impression I was left with leaving the theater. I can say now that not only does the movie hold up […]
- Movie Review: Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers
A few months ago I read an article about filmmaking which talked about why the ending of a film is so important: it’s not just that the audiences want to see it come out a certain way, but the ending is the last impression the audience is left with. A film can be fantastic all […]