Tag: Middle-Earth
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Review of Rankin/Bass “The Return of the King” (1980)
This cartoon… This is the one that broke me… I feel drained after watching this. Before there was Peter Jackson, there were three cartoons almost unrelated to one another, and I made the mistake of deciding to review all of them. The first was a children’s animated TV special by Rankin/Bass that removed almost every…
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Review of Ralph Bakshi’s “The Lord of the Rings” (1978)
Last year I reviewed the 1977 Rankin/Bass cartoon adaptation of The Hobbit. Today I’ll be taking a look at another such cartoon: Ralph Bakshi’s 1978 attempt to bring The Lord of the Rings to the screen. As I did with the Hobbit cartoon—and as I’m planning to do with the final instalment in the cartoon…
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Review of Rankin/Bass’ The Hobbit (1977)
In the first article I ever wrote for this site, I reviewed a 1966 cartoon loosely derived from The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien. Now, this cartoon was actually calculated to be as faithless an adaptation as possible for use as a tool of blackmail, and this eventually led to the existence of a…
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On the Heroism of Hobbits
Happy Hobbit Day! In case you weren’t aware, the twenty-second of September is the birthday of both Bilbo and Frodo Baggins, and among Tolkien fans it is a time to celebrate Tolkien’s greatness. Although Tolkien’s works are well-known, few are aware of just how great an impact they have had not just on literature but…
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The Battle of the Five Armies – Extended Edition
My birthday, being on the fifth of January, falls upon this day. By coincidence, Tolkien’s birthday is on the third of the same month, and therefore several days ago I celebrated the birthday of my favourite author by watching the “special extended edition” of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies for the first time,…
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Response to Criticism of Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit
What I suspect is a very vocal minority has, on the internet, made very clear their dislike of Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. Now, I could explain in great detail why most (if not all) of the changes and additions to the story are either innocuous and trivial and/or necessary due…
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Review of 1966 The Hobbit Adaptation
We all know that the Rankin/Bass cartoon adaptation of The Hobbit, while not quite as bad as their attempt at The Return of the King, was still a childish mess that fails utterly to communicate the dark and timeless themes of Tolkien’s original work, but it wasn’t the first such attempt. And, believe me, it…
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New Citadel Paints
This post was migrated from my earlier blog: Painting The Lord of the Rings Miniatures. The world is changed… I feel it in the water… I feel it in the earth… I smell it in the air… Citadel recently added six new paints to their already vast collection: Blood for the Blood God, Typhus Corrosion,…
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Brown Masonry
This post was migrated from my earlier blog: Painting The Lord of the Rings Miniatures. This statue from the Ruins of Osgiliath set has not been painted specifically to look like a part of that city of Gondor. Instead, I decided to paint it in a more generic manner, meaning it would look great anywhere,…