I can understand this. Although on that point, u should confess that The Hobbit was the first book I didn't finish. I quit reading it midway through, which was highly unusual for me. I just.didnt.understand.it. Oh, sure, I could read it...but I absolutely could not wrap my mi d around any of it. At all. ...and that's how I learned that I just don't *get* fantasy at all. Too literal minded. I had the same experience just a couple years ago with Game of Thrones (or one of the books in the series, or something). I just could not understand what was going on. Period. Defeated by the fantasy genre yet again.
I wonder if that would hve worked for me. It was for a summer reading assignment years ago, so doing the book on tape wouldn't have been allowed, but I wonder if it would have helped just from an understanding standpoint.
That's how I learned to love Shakespeare. I bought the (damn hard to read) plays, then rented the PBS adaptations ( which were very faithful to the actual text) and read while I "watched."
Yet Empire is widely believed the best of the three Star Wars films, whereas IMO the best of the three LOTR films is Fellowship.
i went off theatre a long time ago, but I like Shakespeare in DVD sized doses..but watched "Anonymous"; An Elizabethan film on the premiss that the plays were written by the Earl of Oxford, Edward de Vere..as historical fiction it has some good casting footnote.. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Oxfordian_theory_of_Shakespeare_authorship
True, Joe. I think that Empire WAS the most enjoyable of the three films to sit through. But D is also right. Empire definitely left you hanging and waiting for some sort of resolution of the story line. And I agree about the LOTR series. Fellowship was the most enjoyable of the three, even though it, too, left you hanging. At then end of Fellowship, Boromir got savaged by orcs. Merry and Pip were abducted. Frodo and Sam set off to Mordor/Mt Doom. Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli set off to kill orcs. Everything was unresolved, but it felt good. At the end of The Two Towers (which I saw on opening night/day at 12:01 AM in the theater) I felt like, "Oh great. Now I have to wait a year to see what happens." No resolution at all. I think it was in the film-making, not in the story.
One "history channel" treatment drew on Tolkien's battlefield experiences in WWI to explain his descriptions of battles and old battlefields. And earlier analysis from decades earlier saw LOTR as allegory for Hitler's rise to power. Tolkien had invented Elvish in his youth, from what I recall. If you ever read through the description of Tengwar, the Elvish alphabet, you will see that it is very logically laid out according to the principles of phonology. I believe that I once obtained the source code for the Perl language. Each file contained a quote from Tolkien. And Babylon 5 borrowed very heavily from LOTR, including "Watch the shadows. They move when you're not looking." Be forewarned about Steppenwolf, though. Many would find it depressing.
It's not at all a stretch to see Sauron and his hoards as the Axis powers, seemingly defeated in WWI, only to reemerge bigger and badder, so to speak, in the run-up to WWII. It's easy to over-analyze, though. Somehow, I can't see William Shakespeare agonizing over using just the right flowers for Ophelia when he was writing Hamlet. But oh boy, did we 9th? 10th? graders ever have to know the symbolism behind each flower that was named. Blech. So who knows what was in Tolkien's mind? *shrug* I read the Hobbit when I was in high school and again in college -- for fun, not because I had to (Keep your comments to yourself, Peaches .) I started LOTR back then too, but just could not make myself finish. I actually finished the trilogy in the months just before the release of The Fellowship of the Ring on film. My dance teacher at the time was a fantasy NUT (also gay and in love with Orlando Bloom lol.) Anyway, Teach and I helped each other through the books by comparing notes during the day after reading all night. The fact that he'd read it before probably helped, as well. Annnnnyway ... I say all that to say that the version of the trilogy I bought was a promotional, pre-movie volume that had a very comprehensive foreword and lots of notes. It contained fascinating information about and diagrams of the Elven languages and tons of information about Tolkien himself. IIRC, The Hobbit and LOTR grew out of Tolkien's love for and study of language, not the other way around. VERY cool, if you ask me.
As Tolkien grew up in Mosely and Edgbaston, by rights Hobbits should speak with a Brummie accent... a guide to Black Country English....
But then nobody except people from that part of England would have a clue of what they're talking about. *ducks and runs*
a comedian recently said that no famous speech could ever be made in a Brummie Accent, its hard to write...but Oy yavv a droim that wan doi the red 'ills owf Jawja.....
