Faulty Electrics

[poliphilo]

The thing that was wrong with the boiler was the same thing that was wrong with it in January- the electrics had been flooded with some sort of light, oily, slightly sticky, liquid stuff. The guy in January was mystified. The guy yesterday said it was caused by "the coating coming off the wires". He replaced a part- not the part the other guy replaced- and things are working again.

I watched bits of The Fellowship of the Rings yesterday evening. I don't like it any better than I ever did. Tolkien's book is about the industrialisation of the Midlands- with occasional flashbacks to the First World War- and is the product of a peculiarly English, conservative-romantic imagination.  Peter Jackson doesn't understand the first thing about it- and his film is a coarse, empty, dim-witted travesty. 

Comments

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Criticising Jackson's movies? Aren't we the brave one.

I think WWI had somewhat more influence, but otherwise tend to agree. Jackson's elves are horrid. Gimli the Dwarf is reduced to a pathetic, two-dimensional thing, embarrassing to watch and fit for little more than comic relief. By the end of the third film, I began to cringe every time Sam and Frodo appeared on the screen.

I also doubt we could have got a better movie and think it could have been far, far worse. I liked the costuming and set design. The combat choreography was done rather well, I thought.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

The interior set design was good, but the setting itself was painful: Tolkien's Middle Earth to me was British, and the landscape wasn't so... New Zealandy in my mind. Given his attention to describing the land as they traversed it, it was particularly awful to me to see it look... well, nothing like he'd described. :/

[michaleen.livejournal.com]

Having never been to either New Zealand or Britain, I don't think that was a problem for me.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Jackson doesn't have Tolkien's feel for landscape. The landscapes in the movie, though often magnificent, are generic and unloved.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

What can I say? I think there are some good performances. I think Ian McKellen did himself proud. I suppose I have to applaud the ambition...

[jfs.livejournal.com]

I enjoyed the movies, but the fact that Jackson deliberately cut the most important chapter of the trilogy - "The Scouring of the Shire" - really drove home to me that he'd missed the point of Tolkien's story.

[haikujaguar.livejournal.com]

Oh yes. :(

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Scouring of the Shire is my favourite part of the book.

[lblanchard.livejournal.com]

Tolkien didn't like industrialization, yes, but I don't think that's what Fellowship was "about." Fellowship and all the rest are byproducts of Tolkien's life-long linguistic quest to uncover/recreate an original English language and, by extrapolation, an original English creation narrative.

Another of your commenters was unhappy about the removal of the scouring of the Shire. I understood that this was because the money people were already restive about the long denouement. Many (but not all) of the Shire-scouring themes were touched on elsewhere -- the washing away of the industrialization of Isengard; the entire quest narrative wherein a pair of ordinary people did the extraordinary deed of defeating Sauron while the heroes and wizards could, at best, only provide a covering distration; and the fact that saving what means most to you may exact a terrible price.

I thought that Peter Jackson did an admirable job of transmuting a 50s novel to a 21st century film.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I'm being deliberately provocative, of course.

I think Tolkien's intentions are one thing and what he actually wrote quite another. I see Lord of the Rings as a very late product of the Georgian romanticism that produced works like Kenneth Grahame's Wind in the Willows.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Call me a heretic, but I also hated the books.
As for the movies, they won the awards because of the special effects. There's too much of that mentality in the motion picture academy lately. I rented the videos and forced myself to watch them, and came to the conclusion that it's not me, it's them.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

I like and admire the books, but I'm not a huge fan.

[daisytells.livejournal.com]

Thank goodness that they were able to fix your boiler. This is a bad time of year to be without heat. Here's hoping that it's fixed for good now.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

Thanks. The boiler sems to be working OK, but we're still having problems with the lights. I think we're going to have to bite the bullet and have the house rewired.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

While I personally loved LOTR as Jackson wrought it, I do not have roots in the Midlands. Hence that whole background in Tolkien's writings is lost to me. If it were a part of my own personal history or those of the region I grew up in, I would no doubt to upset as well. (Perhaps this is another reason that if you love a book, beware of the movie).

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Books are the product of a very particular and very English sensibility. That's what I value them for. Jackson's versions expunge all traces of that sensibility.

[calizen.livejournal.com]

Jackson's first movie fame, as I remember, came from some film about a monster. I doubt that the finer details of LOTR would have gotten to him.

[silveredmane.livejournal.com]

It seems that this is another example of the adage 'Where you stand depends on where you sit'. I'm unfamiliar with the geography and so don't have that same critique.

And, I perhaps give extra emphasis to the note in the preface that says "Belladonna Took was the mother of us all". In the '60s, when I first encountered the books, that was a very significant remark.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The difference between Tolkien and Jackson is that one has a feel for landscape and the other doesn't. Jackson's Middle Earth is just an assemblage of backdrops.

I hadn't thought of Tolkien as being in favour of matriarchy, but I suppose that note shows he was- at least to a degree. On the whole the absence of women from his stories annoys me. If there's one thing I applaud Jackson for it's for beefing up Arwen's role.

[algabal.livejournal.com]

Oh, I totally agree. Romantic conservative English fantasy is not my cup of tea but I can only imagine that the books were infinitely better than that mind-numbing film.

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The books are deeply felt. The movies are just inflated role-playing fantasy.

LotR films

[methodius.livejournal.com]

I've never seen the Lord of the Rings films, nor has anyone in my family. As my son puts it, we don't want to spoil the pictures we have in our heads when we read the book.

I'm not quite sure why it is that I don't have the same objection to the Harry Potter films -- I've seen most of them and generally enjoyed them, though I think the longer books are more difficult to present on screen without leaving out too much.

Re: LotR films

[poliphilo.livejournal.com]

The Harry Potter films are a lot better than the LOTR films, though, as you say, the later, longer books fare worse than the early ones.

I think it's because Tolkien is a deeper (better) writer than Rowling. The more there is in a book the harder it is to film it adequately.