tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post5643938568049559638..comments2024-03-14T06:20:59.015+00:00Comments on The Notion Club Papers - an Inklings blog: Review of the 1968 BBC Radio 'experimental' dramatization of The HobbitBruce Charltonhttp://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comBlogger10125tag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-6621455634049310302023-04-01T19:58:11.432+01:002023-04-01T19:58:11.432+01:00@DLD -I too was a David Munrow fan, listened to Pi...@DLD -I too was a David Munrow fan, listened to Pied Piper on the radio, and enjoyed many of his recordings (several of which I own). When he died by suicide, the media kept it so quiet that I did not find-out for several years. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-82433983782308950212023-04-01T17:59:26.352+01:002023-04-01T17:59:26.352+01:00"There is a complex, high quality, medieval-s...<br />"There is a complex, high quality, medieval-style musical score" - how I have enjoyed everything recorded by David Munrow et al. which I have every encountered - but I don't think I realized until now that he did this, too!<br /><br />Inquisitor Benedictus,<br /><br />Finally catching up with the suggested YouTube links, with thanks!<br /><br />David Llewellyn DoddsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-19913652853917730292023-03-31T06:43:49.581+01:002023-03-31T06:43:49.581+01:00@Don - Making a good movie is very difficult - and...@Don - Making a good movie is very difficult - and impossible if you are not really trying. This is the problem of having leftist goals - which no permeate almost every creative decision: scripting, casting, direction etc. The creators take their eyes off the ball (a good movie) - it ceases to be the priority. <br /><br />With The Hobbit, I get the feeling that Jackson didn't much like the source, the book itself; as if he had no confidence in the story - so he changed almost everything. Including such core features as Bilbo's point of view throughout, and Bilbo's psychological (and moral) development. <br /><br />Then swamping The Hobbit story by all sorts of made-up nonsense and drivel; lacking basic motivations, a revealing (through grating juxtapositions of style and situation) an appalling lack of taste and judgment of tone. Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-64757340590806856022023-03-31T01:22:07.239+01:002023-03-31T01:22:07.239+01:00And it was only a few years after the Lord of the ...And it was only a few years after the Lord of the Rings, yet it couldn't have been more different. Special effects have only improved year after year, but here they were intrusive and obviously fake. Fight choreography gets better, better angles, fighting skills, camera work, and it had all the flair of a roadrunner cartoon. Less really. Script writers had the better part of couple decades to make a story out of it, and it was both far too busy and simplistic for any audience.<br /><br />It's like they were trying to get it wrong. <br /><br />DonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-29421377657633358722023-03-28T07:04:07.898+01:002023-03-28T07:04:07.898+01:00@Don - I disliked the Jackson Hobbit movies - in f...@Don - I disliked the Jackson Hobbit movies - in fact I did not get any further than the first one as a movie theatre experience, because I could see (and later confirmed, when they became free on TV) that they were fundamentally flawed in motivation.<br /><br />https://charltonteaching.blogspot.com/2012/12/hobbit-movie-review.html<br /><br />Despite its grating vulgarities, the old animated version (by Rankin and Bass) I regard as much better, a sincere attempt:<br /><br />https://notionclubpapers.blogspot.com/2017/01/review-of-hobbit-animated-movie-1977.html<br /><br />Whether there will ever be (what I would call) a good adaptation of the Hobbit? Well, I don't think our Western civilization will survive much longer/ will succeed in killing itself soon - so it would have to be soon. <br /><br />But The Hobbit is not a difficult book to adapt, and a good adaptation would be very popular - the problem is that the system of movie and TV production is now thoroughly rotten (and that rottenness is baked-in with laws and rules) that nobody is even trying to do *good* adaptations of classic stories, so its hard to imagine. <br /><br />Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-78658747752252547982023-03-28T02:55:48.431+01:002023-03-28T02:55:48.431+01:00I am trying to rewatch the Jackson Hobbit movies. ... I am trying to rewatch the Jackson Hobbit movies. It's difficult as I know the book as well as my own life. <br /><br />I am approaching it as a fantasy movie separate from the Tolkien story. Perhaps something written in a foreign language and incorrectly translated. It's not horrible in the way The Wheel of Time was. But it's not really the hobbit.<br /><br />It's more of a children's cartoon than the old animated version. Tolkien's illustrations had more magic and mystery than this movie series. <br /><br />Do you think there will be a better adaptation in any form? <br /><br />Do we have enough time before wholesome adaptations are no longer possible?<br /><br />Thanks,<br />DonAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-78527417048204444662023-03-27T21:00:16.629+01:002023-03-27T21:00:16.629+01:00Kathryn Wehr notes that the BBC has a copy of the ...Kathryn Wehr notes that the BBC has a copy of the original broadcast, but not how one might ever manage to get to hear it.<br /><br />From Wikipedia, I learnt that the one commercially available from the BBC is the one for the "World Service 1967, first aired domestically 19 January 1975" - and that it "reduced the episodes from one hour to forty-five minutes, and condensed the casts in various ways". If I remember aright, the late Rex Walford directed a live stage production, but do not know if it was recorded in any form, and, if so, how one might get to see or hear it.<br /><br />Maybe something will follow in the wake of this new edition! (The Dorothy L. Sayers Society website does not, so far as my very quick check can discover, list recordings - though they do have a Zoom reading of one of the plays planned for this coming Friday 31 March and "Members and guests are invited to attend and/or participate.")<br /><br />David Llewellyn Dodds<br />Anonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-52352976067856916522023-03-27T16:33:45.435+01:002023-03-27T16:33:45.435+01:00@DLD - I have not yet found a decent audio version...@DLD - I have not yet found a decent audio version of Sayers's MBTBK - I'd like to give it a try one day. <br />Bruce Charltonhttps://www.blogger.com/profile/09615189090601688535noreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-40402687315291914892023-03-27T14:56:51.482+01:002023-03-27T14:56:51.482+01:00Thanks for this! I should probably listen again - ...Thanks for this! I should probably listen again - my memory is, enjoyable, yet frenetic - at least the beginning - and with a lot of (so to say) audio weirdness. The (old) Dutch radio play is much to be preferred, for intelligibility and repeated listening pleasure (for Dutch-speakers, that is!) - though I cannot immediately find any details about it. But then we got a copy of Rob Inglis's complete Hobbit and have tended to listen to that (many a time). <br /><br />I'm just rereading Dorothy L. Sayers' The Man Born to Be King in Kathryn Wehr's handsome and interesting annotated edition and the name Heron Carvic leapt out here - having seen from Wikipedia that he not only played Caiaphas in the original production, but "originally suggested by the writer, [he] played Caiaphas in every version of the cycle (as well as in the broadcast of Sayers' Lichfield Passion in 1947)" - and from the cast-lists, other characters in the original broadcast as well.<br /><br />David Llewellyn DoddsAnonymousnoreply@blogger.comtag:blogger.com,1999:blog-2410716623228444076.post-3462505755387996282023-03-23T07:45:51.614+00:002023-03-23T07:45:51.614+00:00There's a whole genre of music of this style c...There's a whole genre of music of this style called Dungeon Synth...<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xfHaGywtLu0<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IqsfMu_K5Xs<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=XKSu-wZChcQ<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fpz7GNig8IU<br />https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DffQVP6UqVQ<br /><br />It started in the 1990s but has become quite popular in the last decade.Inquisitor Benedictushttps://www.blogger.com/profile/00362357123181369436noreply@blogger.com