Hobbit MF

no way will it be better than time bandits, that film is soooo ace. and indeed skill.

Willow = urgent+key. And I sang on the soundtrack.

It would have to be very very bad indeed to be worse than D & D.

Yes genre fiction can beat modern contemp. I'd say. The best modern contemp. I've read affects me more than the best genre stuff I've read but at the top end the lines often blur anyhow nowadays, and also the worst modern contemp. is really unspeakably terrible.

From the trailer it looks like it will beat the shit out of any sword and sorcery type thing evah. Even if Ian McKellen does speak like Cartman in it. 'We must defeat the enem-AH!'.

Oh and Time Bandits is great but hardly in the same vein as LOTR.

I read that like Mark E Smith# that Kelis song-AH

"Time Bandits" has to be the ultimate stumpy flick.

"Dungeons and Dragons" has to be the worst fantasy genre film of all time. Utterly execrable, especially given that it cost a small army to produce. And putting the hitherto top notch Chris Rock into the role of an Uncle Tom sidekick who inevitably gets killed was unforgivable. Even Jesus wept.

I'm with Ricky, saw the trailer at the weekend and it totally blew me away... looked like the kind of film that the special effects had been waiting for.

I used to be really into Tolkien... haven't read any in donkeys years, not out of snobbery but just cos I don't read much. The pretentious indignation every time he tops the "Best Book in the World... Ever!" polls always make me laugh though.

I really liked the animated film, I'd have liked to have seen that finished off.

Seriously, though, is it worth me reading the Lord of the Rings? I tried when I was 15, and failed. But I don't want to waste precious hours of my life if it's, basically, pants.

I used to love Tolkien as a kid, then disliked him, read LOTR again a couple of years ago and surprised myself by how into it I got but found the last volume a massive flolloping unexciting drag. A problem replicated throughout the fantasy genre - good on build up, short on delivery.

I think the outrage when it wins best book in the world is more based on people not thinking it's the best book in the world, honestly.

"Gandalf among men, Mithrandir among the elves, Cartman I was called in South Park when I was young. To the East I go not."

I direct everyone once again to the top piece by Jenny Turner on Tolkein.

Bored of the Rings is a monumental lumbering gargantuan of a yawnfest. I advise spending your time painting a wall and watching it dry, at least then you'll have something to show for your efforts.

The actual Bored Of The Rings is the least funny thing I have ever encountered in my life.

I too was obsessed with it as a kid, probably as much for realisation of the imaginary world as the book itself. Re-read a coupld of years ago and thought it was really bad. The first book is a solid piece of fantasy brouhaha but goes all over the place after that. Pivotal scenes are over in the blink of an eyelid (eg confrontation between Grima Wormtongue and Gandalf at Edoras) and weird non-events clog up the narrative. The landscape and history of the world seem much realer than the characters, which meant I ended up not giving a flying arse about most of them. And the prose it's written meanders between stereotypical high olde stile and twee folksiness. I'd say it's not worth the time, unless you're into big good vs evil fantasy epics or have a fascination with imaginary cultures/languages/geographies.

I still contend that only someone with a severe paucity of imagination could find LOTR any more than mildly engaging.

That Turner piece is wicked, Mark! Thanks.

Do you think that's a flaw in the fantasy 'genre' itself though Trevor or do you just think JRRT is particularly bad at it?

Trevor's contention = wrong.

Genre fiction is usually better than mod contem literary fiction.

taking sides: thomas the covenanter vs bridget jones's diary (not that i haf read either)

Bridget J is better than Thomas C.

I have nothing against the whole fantasy genre per se, I just find Tolkien to be an incredibly bland writer. I found LOTR terribly ritualised and formulaic, with huge chunks devoted to dull, prosaic passages devoted to travelling and journeying, and very little devoted to the destination itself. It's like listening to a song that you expect to change in pace or tempo and reach a crescendo, but never does.

Why Tolkien is still lauded as the best fantasy writer is an absolute mystery to me. The first fantasy novel I read was Aldiss' "Helliconia Spring" at the age of seven. The second was the Hobbit shortly thereafter.

It was like freebasing cocaine followed by a sherbert fountain.

I agree with Trevor vis a vis the genuine dullness of LOTR and most knock-offs, and yet it is a genre I enjoy dipping into every now and then, much like I enjoy the odd Mills & Boon romance. Not challenging, big world to get lost in. I think a lot of people think reading LOTR is quite impressive because it is so long (qunatity of quality) - which is also the most notable thing about the fantasy genre. You just don't get short fantasy novels. You get doorstops plus trilogies.

Grr.

Thomas Covenant is super-shit. The Gap In Whatever is much more interesting as a thoroughly despicable set of characters rape their way through a space opera.

Oh god, I waded through all those Stephen Donaldson novels too. Such wasted youth!

The only trilogy that ever worked for me was Brian Aldiss' Helliconia trilogy. Aldiss proves that it's possible to be epic without losing your sense of focus.

travels and journeys and attention to landscape thru which journey = BEST BIT of LoTR, and generally lousy in fantasy

the bits i really liked were the bits where the fantasy ran out of steam somewhat, eg there were FIVE wizards, grey, white, brown and 2 x blue, but the blues ones had no names and never appeared.

between ages 8-18 i read LoTR ten billion billion times and only ned or my dad can prolly catch me out on story details; it is full of GIANT THINGS WRONG WITH IT as litch because Tolkein = orthodox catholic afraid of middle of body etc etc. The langwidge stuff is nevah bettered, and a v.bad example to set NON-philologist fantasy-writers unprepared to spend forty yrs working on unused backstory (= ?seven? *indepedendent* langwidge systems)

He is good on visualised fear, of landscape or incident: he is also good on borderline-moral characters, eg somewhat-good- become-somewhat-bad. He = haha MASSIVELY useless on wimmin.

I always preferred the second book — very bleak and unclear and odd — to first (too much homeliness) and third (good bits but yes too much of it rushed).

Fine fine, HAVE this discussion without me, you people, GRR GRR! I think I'll install an alarm in my room so that way I am woken up whenever this subject is invoked.

Going over the full range/impact of LOTR on me is a bit like me going over exactly why I like Loveless -- words eventually/inevitably fail me. First read when twelve, I believe...*thinks*...yeah, that sounds about right, and have reread it every year since then. In that time I have changed from a sweet little Anglican to a crabby atheist, among other things, and yet the impact of the story remains clear and heartfelt.

I recently reread it to gear up for the movie, and also because I wanted one last vision of it all my own before the movie inevitably colors the experience, for better or worse. And what occurred to me -- especially after 9/11 -- is how brilliantly evocative Tolkien is, and Mark S hinted at this, about questions of morality. Dismissing him as simply a hidebound product of Victorianism misses many points. I am particularly thinking of the core exchange -- the one part of the book actually repeated via a flashback -- when Frodo wishes Gollum had been killed long before. It's partially a linguistic game -- Frodo thinks it's a 'pity' Gollum wasn't killed, Gandalf notes that it's 'pity' that kept him from being killed -- but then ratchets up more when Frodo boldly states Gollum deserves death. Gandalf's response, as best as I can recall it from memory -- this is certainly partial paraphrase:

"Deserves death? I daresay he does. Many live that deserve death, and many die that deserve life. Can you give it to them? Then do not be so quick to deal out death in the name of justice, for even the wise cannot see all ends."

After all the destruction from Sept. 11 onwards, what more needs/can be said, really?

It has to be said that one of the greatest thrills of my life is that a paper I cowrote was cited -- and I was specifically named -- in one of the manuscript collections Christopher Tolkien edited. And Trevor, I've read the _Hellconia_ books and I agree they're most imaginative and quite great -- but they and Tolkien can be equally enjoyed. :-)

Unfortunately 'Time Bandits' is unbeatable.

It is a wonderful film, my first exposure to anything vaguely Python-related, actually...

(erm on sexual morality btw i pronounce him dud-du-dudz, tho the queer tran-species buddylove of gimli and legoland = a nice try)

Something that struck me earlier today - how much of your radical subjectivity, Ned, do you think arises from having as the two poles of your aesthetic life something routinely adored by critics and something routinely damned by them?

I'd like to suggest that anyone with a passing interest in Doctor Who pick up Lawrence Miles' novels. They're phenomenal!

I'm halfway through _Fellowship..._ right now and am wishing that I was born in an earlier age so that I could easily get my NaNoWriMo novel published. (Of course, if I was born too early, I'd be too busy picking cotton to write, so I should stop bitching.)

how much of your radical subjectivity, Ned, do you think arises from having as the two poles of your aesthetic life something routinely adored by critics and something routinely damned by them?

Hmm, interesting question. *rubs chin, ponders* I don't think it's conscious, let's put it that way. As it is, most of what I've ever read about Loveless has been positive, so that might not be the best comparison point. If anything, I think my particular vision comes from the understanding -- and this is not something that was revealed overnight or in a flash, it just evolved, as it were -- that one can be a nice person and have radically different tastes to yourself, and that one can have comparable tastes to yourself and be a total asshole. That may be an oversimplification, but I think it captures more of what I see as the crux and source of my stance than anything else -- taste is not subject to standards of ethics, it is not by default 'right' or 'wrong,' it just is.

And as a quick follow-up -- somewhere in that 'bad' thread on ILM I raised the point that ethics themselves are socially shaped and all, so my referring to a difference between taste and ethics here is an oversimplification of further thoughts on my end. Ultimately what concerns me is the line of demarcation between fact and opinion (fact: LOTR exists; opinion: I think it's great).

As others have hinted at, I think the main attraction of Tolkein is the largesse of unspoken details. I love the fact that all in all the collected history of his world (half-supposed to be prehistoric earth, korrekt?) has countless golden ages and decline-and-falls and goods and evils and voyagses and pocketses - the effect when reading is something close to the vague memory of a powerfully affecting dream you have no concrete recollection of. Yeah, it's weakly and bizarrely plotted, but that's almost beside the point.

half-supposed to be prehistoric earth, korrekt?

Yup. "Mythology of England" and all too. Some of the recently published manuscripts indicate he took quite a bit of serious time to explore the implications of sub-creation, to use his term. It's a stretch here, perhaps, but I think he saw it almost as a form of prayer.

Another great random moment in the books that I've always liked which has a deep relevance right now just occurred to me, when Sam watches a battle in Two Towers and suddenly one of the enemy soldiers stumbles through some brush and dies in front of him. His reaction, described as happening all in a flash, is to wonder about the soldier, to wonder if he was truly evil and if threats and force made him join the army that led him to death. I half suspect the same could be said, should be said, for so many of the corpses now likely rotting somewhere in Afghanistan.

As Cartman might say, 'Horsemen, I'm gonna kick you in the nuts!' Think it'd add an interesting twist to the story.

top piece by Jenny Turner on Tolkien

Interesting essay. I'm glad to have read it, but I have some significant objections to certain passages in which rhetoric glosses over logical fallacies or incomplete thoughts (for instance, the description of the quote from Tree and Leaf as "anti-modernist" is very limited and inexact, and the whole passage about depression and the politics of LOTR misses the point entirely). And the tone teeters wildly from prim condescension, to chummy asides, to smug aphorisms and one-liners, to near-sentimentality. Still, there is some good stuff in it, by compilation for one -- the Shippey quote about "glamour" (aka "glamer", btw) is a bullseye. On the whole, though, it's just a bit too self-consciously clever for my taste.

btw I think Tolkien's legitimately among the greats, though I haven't reread the books in quite a while. I'm not a fanatic like some, and I found the Unfinished Tales (or whatever it's called) unreadable (and haven't tried the Silmarillion. But the Hobbit - LOTR series is pretty magnificent.

I can't hold back any longer - the title of this thread has got me singing, in a syrupy Prince falsetto, ....waaaaaah - bamp bamp BAMP - "you hobbit mutha fuck-ahhhhh". End communication.

BREACH IN THE HOBBITRON... BREACH IN THE HOBBITRON...

RAGGETT IN THE HOLE! ON A DANGEROUS POSTING BINGE. MUST FULLY CONTAIN ASAP. OVER

I can't hold back any longer - the title of this thread has got me singing, in a syrupy Prince falsetto, ....waaaaaah - bamp bamp BAMP - "you hobbit mutha fuck-ahhhhh" Why the hell are you singing that when you could be singing:

Ethnic hairstyles / Sloppy male hippies / Retro punks / People with thick glasses / Glorifiying serial killers / Hobbit Motherfuckers / No guts / No glory / No riots / I've had enough / My generation sucks! / I agree / My generation sucks! / Cyber idiots w/ pierced scrotums / Copulating with animals / In cars / Parked outside the rave parties / Not enough war / Not enough famine / Not enough suffering / Not enough natural selection / I've had enough / My generation sucks! / I agree / My generation sucks!

-- Turbonegro "Hobbit Motherfuckers"