Categories
Mythology and Folklore

Myth Podcast

I’ve been listening to a lot of Podcasts at work recently and feel compelled to recommend Myth Podcast.

This is a weekly podcast telling legendary stories as closely to the originals as possible. Some are incredibly popular stories you think you know, but with surprising origins. Others are stories that might be new to you, but are definitely worth a listen.

These are stories of magic, kings, Vikings, dragons, knights, princesses, and wizards from a time when the world beyond the map was a dangerous, wonderful, and terrifying place.

Thanks to Myth Podcast I finally know the plot of the Nibelung. I have books of Arthur Rackham’s art, I know the influences on Tolkien, and I’ve seen What’s Opera, Doc? more times than I can count but I still didn’t really know how just how many characters have names that start with Sig and how they’re all related. It’s really good. I thought once Fafnir was slain (the one part I knew relatively well) that I might not be too fussed about how it went but it’s really good. And that’s just one episode arc.

It’s well researched and well told, Jason collects and tells stories and sagas from around the world so you get a nice mix of stories. Most episodes are 30-40 minutes, they have just the right amount of witty observation, and each finishes with a Monster of the Week. There are some 40+ episodes up already, plus if you want to get your hands on more content (and support Jason) for just $5 a month you can get bonus episodes and source texts.

Categories
Film

The Halfing Hobbit

The first of The Hobbit recuts has arrived, trimming the 8+ hours down to a 4 hour film (no doubt Steven Soderbergh’s isn’t far behind).

I haven’t watched it yet (and no doubt by the time I get around to it it’ll be long gone) but you the notes give you an idea of just how much fat there was in the trilogy:

The investigation of Dol Guldor has been completely excised, including the appearances of Radagast, Saruman and Galadriel. This was the most obvious cut, and the easiest to carry out (a testament to its irrelevance to the main narrative).

The Tauriel-Legolas-Kili love triangle has also been removed.

The Pale Orc subplot is vastly trimmed down. Azog is obviously still leading the attack on the Lonely Mountain at the end, but he does not appear in the film until after the company escapes the goblin tunnels (suggesting that the slaying of the Great Goblin is a factor in their vendetta, as it was in the novel).

Several of the Laketown scenes have been cut. However, I’ve still left quite a bit of this story-thread intact, since I felt it succeeded in getting the audience to care about the down-beaten fisherfolk and the struggles of Bard to protect them.

The prelude with old Bilbo is gone.

Several of the orc skirmishes have been cut.

Several of the action scenes have been tightened up, such as the barrel-ride, the fight between Smaug and the dwarves (no molten gold in this version), and the Battle of the Five Armies.

A lot of filler scenes have been cut as well. For example, the 4-minute scene where Bard buys some fish and the dwarves gather up his pay.

I have to say I didn’t mind the addition of Tauriel so much, the book has precisely female characters (and she was a bit of a badass), but if you’re going for purity she has to go (in which case I hope Legolas’s cameo has more to do with the necessity of a shot than fan-service).

Categories
Film

Battle of the Five Armies

As I walked out after The Return of the King (still a little brain-bending to think that was 11 years ago) I wanted more. I couldn’t wait for the Extended Editions on DVD, I wanted to see all the bits that had been cut, I wanted as much Tolkien on screen as I could get.

When I walked out after The Battle of the Five Armies I wanted less. It’s definitely the weakest of the Rings films and feels stretched and disjointed. I guess the way to look at it is that this isn’t a Hobbit trilogy, it’s part of a wider Middle-Earth saga: a six film Ring cycle in which Peter Jackson gives us his nearasdammit complete Middle-Earth. Even in that context it’s stretched: it’s a lot of fighting and it’s very little Hobbit, but it bridges the gap between the two trilogies and it ties up its threads.

What I want to see now is a two-film cut, worry a bit less about setting up LOTR, keep the fun action sequences (trolls, goblins, spiders, barrels), but cut down some of the extended chases/battles. There’s a cracking 5 hour Hobbit story somewhere in there just waiting to have some of the fat trimmed.

 

Categories
Books

Middle-Earth Mythos

Quite a neat little intro to the early mythology of Tolkien’s Middle-Earth.

Categories
Books

Soviet Gollum

From a Soviet-era Russian edition of The Hobbit:

gollum

For some reason it makes me think he should be a character in Spongebob.

(via Boing Boing)

Categories
Words

P’tahk

Wired has a list of the Top 10 Geekiest Constructed Languages – it’s pretty much what you’d expect (Klingon, Sindarin, Fremen) but I was surprised that Lapine didn’t make the list, especially when Blade’s ‘Vampirese’ did:

An ancient vampire language from the Blade movies. The most noticeable aspect of this language are the glyphs, symbols tattooed on grunts to show their allegiance and drawn in UV ink defining the boundaries of various vampires’ territories. There’s even a vampire holy book written in the language, the Book of Erebus, featured in the first movie.

Do I believe the Book of Erebus was a book actually written in Vampirese? Or were they just sheets of parchment covered in glyphs suspended between glass to:

  1. Look cool
  2. Have vampires kicked through them

That aside Blade Runner’s City Speak isn’t one I would’ve thought of but is an inclusion I wholeheartedly agree with.