March 17, 2019

All Things RArmitage: Nostalgic Discovery(see tweet below) + Trailer New Film 'Tolkien' (see below)

More from House Guysie...

Posted here by me at 'All Things RArmitage' on Nov 27, 2012..
Immediately after viewing Captain America with my two fav men in the world, I made a date with both of them to return on Dec 14 to see The Hobbit:An Unexpected Journey.  Neither of them had shown previous interest in LOTR and were amused at my suggestion.

Yesterday, one of Mr Ricrar’s monthly magazines arrived and he seemed surprised to find on the cover the headline “The Knights of Middle Earth” In fact, he admitted to me that he really didn’t realize what a phenomenon the new Tolkien film represented until seeing that cover.

Here are a few extracts from the article written by Stratford Caldecott, director of Second Spring Oxford:
--Based on JRR Tolkien’s classic novels, the films depart from the original storyline in significant details, but go to great lengths to respect the author’s vision of Middle-earth -- a world of great natural beauty and intense moral drama,set in the distant past.
--Many will argue that translating such a story from book into film, no matter how impressive the result, is a mistake.  A movie presents the audience with the filmmakers’ visualization, not the author’s or the reader’s.  Conversely, reading or listening to a story engages the imagination at a deeper level than watching it on screen.  Yet if a film had to be made, we should be grateful that efforts have been made to remain faithful to the spirit and texture of Tolkien’s stories.
--..Born in 1892, the author was a devout Catholic who grew up under the influence of John Henry Newman’s Oratory in Birmingham, England.  …busy life as an Oxford professor and popular writer… His eldest son became a Catholic priest.  The stories that Tolkien wrote were more than entertainment; they were written to express a profound Christian wisdom.
--that wisdom can pop out at readers in unexpected ways, but most often it simply sinks in at a deep level without distracting our attention from the story.
--…We see both in The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings a learning process that Tolkien called “the ennoblement of the humble,” which he believed was an important theme of his writing as a whole.  In both novels, the hobbit heroes are lifted from the narrow, comfortable world of the Shire into a much vaster landscape to play key roles in battles that decide the fate of Middle-earth.  **This was a process that Tolkien observed among the soldiers he fought beside in the Battle of the Somme, in World War I.
--…Tolkien wove the idea of “nobility of soul” very deeply into his mythology…
--The “chivalry” that reveals this nobility is shown in behavior towards others, such as kindness and mercy..
--The knights of Middle-earth defend the weak from their oppressors and remain faithful to friends…
--…they learn to submit to discipline and overcome their fear to achieve great deeds without hope of reward--just because it is the right thing to do.  This is Tolkien’s challenge to us: to become, in our own way, the Knights of Middle-Earth.
Stuffed in a bag, with a crumpled Episode 1 of North and South; all my notes scribbled over the pages. The road is long but we’ve been on it together for some time now. Xxx
RAworld seems to have it's Guy on at the mo....so....