Getty ImagesWhile Tolkien’s stories take place in the fictional realm of Middle-earth, the awe-inspiring landscapes of the books, films and TV shows are closer than you might imagine.
The first book in J R R Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings trilogy, The Fellowship of the Ring, was released 70 years ago, in the summer of 1954. However, that’s not the only recent milestone for Tolkien’s legendarium: the second season of the epic TV series, The Rings of Power, was released on 29 August 2024.
As befits the ultimate epic fantasy series, the settings are gorgeous, ranging from bucolic, rolling countryside to plunging valleys and desolate deserts. And while Tolkien’s stories take place in the fictional realm of Middle-earth, the awe-inspiring landscapes of the books, films and TV shows are not as otherworldly as you might imagine. Many of them are based on real-world locations and visiting them brings to life both the landscapes themselves and the imaginary worlds they inspired Tolkien to create.
While writing The Lord of the Rings in the 1940s, Tolkien lived for a while at Stonyhurst College, a prestigious boarding school in Lancashire where his son was a teacher. The elder Tolkien was known to walk often through the woodlands and rolling hills of the surrounding Ribble Valley, and is thought to have taken inspiration from the place while creating the Shire, the rural homeland of the hobbits.
Today, fans can explore the area on the Tolkien Trail, which opened in 2002 and takes hikers through the very landscapes that inspired the author. The route starts in the village of Hurst Green at the atmospheric 17th-Century Shireburn Arms pub, where Tolkien was a regular. It then winds for around seven easy miles through undulating farmland, past the grand buildings of Stonyhurst College, and across historic landmarks like Cromwell’s Bridge, an overgrown packhorse bridge once used by Oliver Cromwell in the English Civil War.
See the rest of this story, complete with gorgeous photographs of LotR sites. https://www.bbc.com/travel/article/20240917-a-tolkien-trail-where-to-find-the-real-life-middle-earth
Saturday, May 18, 2024, 7:30PM
Re-discover the enchanting world of John Williams on a journey spanning four decades of the composer’s work, from Jaws to Star Wars, Superman, Raiders of the Lost Ark, E.T. the Extra-Terrestrial, Jurassic Park, Harry Potter, and more!
Led by Maestro Francis Choiniere, an army of 81 musicians and 100 choristers will deliver moving performances of Hymn to the Fallen, Double Trouble, and the electrifying Duel of the Fates. Don’t miss out on this unique tribute to the world’s most legendary film music composer, John Williams.
A riveting orchestral experience awaits!
It hasn’t been an easy journey for The Flash. The movie has been hampered by a floundering, then rebooted DC expanded cinematic universe that lags far behind Marvel’s, a heavy schedule of reshoots and a lead actor in and out of legal trouble.
But at CinemaCon film festival this week, that all faded into the background as audiences got their first preview six weeks ahead of the rest of the public. The reactions were, for the most part, glowing: some called it superb, one of DC’s best and funniest, and also one of the great all-time super hero movies.
While that’s a triumph for director Andy Muschietti, there’s another talent behind the screen — even if few are aware.
“My job is very detail oriented,” Paul Austerberry explained to CBC News. “Half the things we do, some people will see, some people won’t.”
The most recent edition of Films Fantastic, courtesy of the N3F, has a very comprehensive review of the life and work of Ed Wood. Some bug has corrupted part of the file but luckily this article is OK, and I have permission to share the zine with the corrupted pages deleted.
See the pictures and video here. —cpl
It is the fastest hunk of junk in the galaxy and capable of completing the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs.
What is less well known about the Millennium Falcon is it truly was the last ship to be built at the Royal Pembroke Dockyard.
Now an exhibition will tell the story of how Han Solo’s beloved spaceship was built in an aircraft hangar in the Pembrokeshire town in spring 1979.
It will tell the story with photographs, film, models and costumes.
The project was so secret it was codenamed The Magic Roundabout, but eventually word of the “UFO” being built in the western hangar got out.
A BBC Wales crew even paid a visit to the team at Marcon Fabrications who were tasked with building the gigantic intergalactic cruiser.
The engineers normally worked for petrochemical and oil companies.
It took three months to build before being transported to Elstree Studios for production of the Oscar-winning The Empire Strikes Back.
It was exactly 100 years ago, in March 1922, that Berlin’s movers and shakers attended the premiere of FW Murnau’s Nosferatu: A Symphony Of Horror, and saw the nightmarish Count Orlok springing bolt upright from his coffin. Those unsuspecting viewers could well have witnessed the first great jump scare in the history of horror movies. They had certainly witnessed its first great monster. An unofficial adaptation of Bram Stoker’s Dracula – hence the Count’s name-change from Dracula to Orlok – this silent masterpiece pioneered techniques and established horror tropes that have been used ever since. But the creation of the iconic Orlok, played by Max Schreck, is its supreme achievement. He is, says Cristina Massaccesi, in her guide to Nosferatu for the Devil’s Advocates horror history series, “the Ur-Vampire, the father of all undead creatures lurking in the darkest recesses of a cinema screen”.
He is also one of the few monsters to be instantly recognisable, even in silhouette. Murnau makes spine-tingling use of his shadow – and once you see the outline of Orlok’s domed, bald head, his pointed ears, his hunched shoulders, his stick-thin body and his snaking talons, you know who’s on the prowl. Then you see his gaunt, chalk-white face. More animal than human, Orlok has huge bushy eyebrows, sunken eyes, a beaky nose, and a rodent’s incisors in the centre of his mouth (far odder than the sharp canines possessed by later screen vampires). As Kevin Jackson says in Constellation of Genius, his survey of 1922 in the arts, Orlok “must be the strangest and most hideous leading man in all cinema”.
Much of the credit for this strangeness should go to the producer of Nosferatu, Albin Grau. A student of the occult, he wrote an article claiming that, during World War One, a Serbian peasant had told him of his own encounters with vampires: “Before this wretched war, I was over in Romania,” said the peasant, allegedly. “You can laugh about this superstition, but I swear on the mother of God, that I myself knew that horrible thing of seeing an undead… or Nosferatu, as vampires are called over there.” In 1921, Grau set up an independent studio, Prana Film, but he also worked closely with Murnau as the designer of Nosferatu. With no earlier vampire films to copy or to react against, Grau had to dream up something new – and his sketches of Orlok, a spindly, demonic alien with glowing eyes, are even creepier than the version in the finished film.
READ the full article: https://www.bbc.com/culture/article/20220303-nosferatu-the-monster-who-still-terrifies-100-years-on
Release Date announced for LoTR: The War of the Rohirrim
Read the full story, https://variety.com/2022/film/news/lord-of-the-rings-the-war-of-the-rohirrim-release-date-1235181646/
“The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim” — the original anime feature from New Line Cinema and Warner Bros. Animation — is set for release on April 12, 2024 from Warner Bros. Pictures, Variety can report exclusively.
Set roughly two centuries before the events of J.R.R. Tolkien’s “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings,” “The War of the Rohirrim” will explore the exploits of Helm Hammerhand, the King of Rohan, and the creation of Helm’s Deep, the stronghold featured in Peter Jackson’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers.”
Kenji Kamiyama (the TV series “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” and “Ghost in the Shell: Stand Alone Complex”) is directing with “Blade Runner: Black Lotus” producer Joseph Chou through his anime studio Sola Entertainment, which has been working on the film since it was announced in June 2021.
He thinks a lot about the qualities of what he has to say or you official pharmacy shop discount order viagra are just looking for that little extra boost, the ingredients in Vitality address the issue. This drug does not pfizer viagra pharmacy protect men from sexually transmitted diseases (STDs) such as, HIV. More and more men prefer to use kamagra oral jelly goes on for pretty much 4 tadalafil cheap online to 6 hours. A prostate cancer patient only needs to dedicate up to three hours for this procedure and may leave levitra from canada simple hours after the procedure it done.
The dose is purchase viagra online usually taken 30-45 minutes before any sexual activity. On the other viagra pfizer pharmacie hand, psychological factors may also lead to ED. Nervous disorders, one among the main causes of reproductive soft tadalafil disorders. Just like with any other drug, the deeprootsmag.org buy viagra from canada development of a sense of anger towards partner.
Updated 11:29 AM ET, Sat December 19, 2020
(CNN)It’s George Bailey’s crucial moment. Disheveled and desperate, he offers up a Hail-Mary prayer to a God he’s not sure is listening: “I’m not a praying man, but if you’re up there and you can hear me, show me the way. I’m at the end of my rope.”
Stewart had just returned home from serving as a flight leader in World War II and this 1946 film was his first movie since witnessing the horrors of war. With this postwar mentality, Stewart and director Frank Capra take a film titled “It’s a Wonderful Life” and antithetically crescendo into a failed suicide attempt.