Theoden's redemption arc across the second and third movie was one of the most fascinating side-stories for me, and Bernard Hill portrayed him in all stages brilliantly with range and nuance....
"I have the map and the key to the mountain that was used in the film in a frame," he notes. "And I have Thorin's sword and his oaken shield. It's on my bookshelf!"...
On occasion of yesterday's leap day, I remembered that Tolkien had devised his own calendar system, called Shire-reckoning, that I find very elegant....
Nice teaser. Still comes across to me more as fanfic. I wish we were getting a Silmarillion anthology adaptation, but alas, that may not happen in this universe....
There is a lot of stuff in Middle-Earth — exquisite gems, magic rings, fabled swords, and ancestral talismans — as well as the more general matter of clothes and armor, megaliths and monuments, food and drink. A supernatural aura suffuses many of these things: stones (standing stones, Seeing Stones, ruins), trees (waking,...
Why do we have such an enduring fascination for all things Tolkien half a century after his death? Author Nick Groom believes it’s because his works remains acutely relevant today...
I was binge-watching the DVDs with my wife, Sarah, when it hit me: Middle-earth does exist, and I don’t need a portal. I can fly there in 23 hours. I turned to Sarah and said, “Shall we move to New Zealand?” One of the many things I love about my wife is that she listens to my madder ideas with a careful seriousness. Six...