The news was no sooner out that Peter Jackson was, after all, going to be working with New Line Cinema on two (two?) films based on J R R Tolkien's The Hobbit, and that Guillermo Del Toro (Pan's Labyrinth) was slated to direct, than Christopher Lee and Elijah Wood were being quoted as saying that they wanted to be involved. The excitement even percolated down to my neck of the woods and I started getting e-mails and Facebook enquiries from people who hoped I might be able to help them get involved in the filming process...
As if I have any actual contact with the man whose biography I wrote!
Now, it turns out, the Tolkien Trust are suing New Line Cinema for allegedly not paying them their share of the loot from the sacking of Middle-earth and, once again, the whole project seems to be back in the melting-pot...
Of course, despite all these shenanigans, the franchise is bigger than all the players involved and I've little doubt that a settlement will be struck and then we can seriously start bracing ourselves for another round of Baggins bonkersness...
Not, of course, that it's ever really gone away: it's merely been lying dormant in the way that the spores of alien life tended to do in 1950s sci-fi movies...
For example, just the other day I came across a Tolkien oddity on YouTube that unites Peter Jackson and Yours Truly with... um... Mike Oldfield!
Jackson visuals from The Lord of the Rings film trilogy are accompanied by dialogue excerpts from my 1981 BBC radio dramatisation and Mike Oldfield's film score for The Killing Fields!
Contrary to expectations, it works rather well, though it is decidedly curious to be looking at visuals of Sir Ian McKellen as Gandalf while listening the recorded voice of Sir Michael Hordern!
And what is most bizarre is seeing the movie-Bilbo, Ian Holm, speaking with the voice of the radio-Bilbo, John Le Mesurier --- followed, almost immediately, by images of the movie-Frodo, Elijah Wood, being spoken for by the radio-Frodo --- Ian Holm!
The video is the work of jimsim and you can view his other films on his YouTube channel.
6 comments:
Weird! Surreal!
As a Hobbit myself, I am definitely looking forward to the new film. Strange that I read LOTR before I read the Hobbit.
GILL comments...
I think the film works really well. Rather impressed!
Keep us in touch on the progress of 'The Hobbit', you may not be in contact with himself, but you do seem to hear things!
I think they should forget filming 'The Hobbit' and just wait until Price Caspian comes out - then they can watch a real quality fantasy film :-)
Well now I know that I have to get this BBC adaptation with Ian Holm that everybody's always talking about...
Just promise me there'll be less crying in it!
SUZANNE - Not at all strange: 'The Hobbit' is a prequel, you always look at it later!
GILL - Will do... My ear is to the ground as I type this... which is difficult - and painful!
BOLL - I can't get over the fact that the Narnia films look a bit like 'extras' from the LOTR DVDs...
BRIAN - Yes, BUY it! Buy it! Now... NOW!!!! (By the way, Everyone Else, I did not post this comment myself!)
BENTOS - Not so much as a sniff or a snivel!
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