caitri: (Default)
 I almost forgot last night's dream! I dreamed that we had a Tolkien Research Collection--which was not things that Tolkien wrote, or that were about Tolkien, but were instead the things he used to research Middle Earth. Primarily artifacts, all of which had purple outlines like epic items in WoW. Anyhow we had a researcher come visit and they looked at the materials, and then they started talking to us and we realized that what they were REALLY researching was the effects of proximity to magic artifacts, and what they REALLY REALLY wanted to know was if any of us were turning evil because we had some rings around. Well one thing we had to explain was that proper archival boxes really minimize the effect of Maia-engineered crafts, but that good librarians naturally could resist the urge to power. (Somehow we knew that Faramir became a librarian in Ithilien after the War.) However not as good librarians were more susceptible and then we had to be super careful how we worded things because of librarian politics.
caitri: (Default)
Posted under f-lock because I'm not sure what I'm going to do with it, but I feel pleased with it.

Read more... )
caitri: (Eomer)
I loved it. Of course I loved it. Was there ever gonna be any doubt? I will say I thought its pacing was greatly improved from the first film; everything flows together really well. I also like Smaug; I really, REALLY like Smaug, and my reaction to him (much like the funky birds in Avatar) was that we are SO READY for a Dragonriders of Pern movie*.

*Minus the creepy rapiness,please and thank you.

Anyways. Last year I saw the first film in both 2d and 3d; this year it was 3d, and I think we got the fancy filmstock version that's hyperfast and hyper-real. It takes some getting used to; in some places people move so fast while talking that I almost wonder if they were dubbed as the fluidity of their movements do not seem to line up with the measuredness of their words.

Before I continue my review under the cut, I'm also going to admit that I've never finished reading The Hobbit (though I've read and reread LOTR a couple times). I tried as both a child and an adult and could just never stand his writing-for-children style; it made me grit my teeth. So all of the notes that follow are from the perspective of someone who likes the films and who has a fair bit of extra-textual knowledge from scholarship and other sources. So.

So. Many. Spoilers. )
caitri: (Default)
*is excited*

The whole Tolkien area is pretty sweet. Check out the geeker joy:

Paper proposals: Tolkien at Kalamazoo 2012

Tolkien and Women (Christopher Vaccaro, presider)

Eileen Moore: Wo-man: Tolkien’s nomenclature for the feminine in his invented languages
Amy Amendt-Raduege: Revising Lobelia
Robin Anne Reid: Women and Tolkien: Amazons, feminists, and slashers
Catherine Coker: Constructing Lothiriel: rewriting and rescuing the women of Middle-earth from the margins

Tolkien and Ideology (Brad Eden, presider)

Chris Vaccaro: Tolkien and the Old English Apollonius: medieval and modern constructions of masculinity
Edward L. Risden: Tolkien, classical myth, and Said’s orientalism: othering the East and the South
Gina Weckwerth: Reflecting the eternal: medieval origins of Tolkien’s depictions of paradise
Amber Lee Baker: Creating and redeeming: a look at J.R.R. Tolkien and St. Thomas Aquinas

The Hobbit on its 75th anniversary (Douglas Anderson, presider)

Jane Chance: The mythology of magic in The Hobbit: Tolkien’s source in Andrew Lang’s “Story of Sigurd” from the Red Fairy Book
John Rateliff: ‘A fragment detached’: The Hobbit and The Silmarillion
Jane Beal: The hidden war in The Hobbit
Jason Fisher: Creation from philology: echoes of the Voluspa in Tolkien

Legend of Sigurd and Gudrun (Amy Amendt-Raduege, presider)

Gerard Hynes: Sigurd’s second coming
Larry Caldwell: Morris, Tolkien, and the logic of medievalist feminism


Tolkien’s Shorter Poems and Lyrics (Yvette Kisor, presider)

John R. Holmes: Metrical variation as characterization in Hobbit verse
Brad Eden: Musical allusion in Tolkien’s poetry and its Victorian counterparts
Kristine Larsen: Songs and stars: celestial motifs in Tolkien’s poetry

Teaching Tolkien (roundtable)(Robin Anne Reid, presider)

Kristine Larsen: There and back again in the classroom: preparing for the release of The Hobbit
Rachel Fulton Brown: Tolkien: medieval and modern
Nagy Gergely: Teaching Tolkien in another culture: non-English speaking, non-Anglo-American students
and Tolkien
Janice Bogstad: Lord of the Rings: reading vs viewing
Craig Franson: Is there a class for this text?: J.R.R. Tolkien, J.K. Rowling, and Romantic aesthetics
Jack Baker: Tolkien and theology for undergraduates

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