Three times I have gone to a movie specifically to see a trailer. In the dark times before the internet, I saw Saturn III, a horrific stinkfest with Harvey Keitel, Kirk Douglas, and Farah Fawcett solely for the previews. This was the worst movie ever to feature naked Harvey Keitel or Farah Fawcett. However, this crapulence was the first time eager fans got to see a full trailer for The Empire Strikes Back. I went to see “The Bounty” to see the trailer for Star Trek III. The last movie I saw just for the preview was the Cuban Missile Crisis movie Thirteen Days, directed by the same guy who made “The Bounty.” Thanks, Roger Donaldson, for creating vessels for two such fine trailers! I sat through Kevin Costner’s terrible “Thirteen Days” Boston accent just to see the trailer for “Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.” If the internet did not exist, I would have been in the theater today watching whatever crappy new Roger Donaldson movie was showing the trailer for “The Hobbit.” Thanks, internet, for sparing me “Thirteen Days II” or “Return to the Bounty”! Here it is, the trailer for “The Hobbit.” Continue reading
Hobbit
2 posts
Crazy Russian scientist, Kirill Eskov posted up a free English translation of his LOTR re-work, this time from the perspective of Orcs living in Mordor. This retelling casts Gandalf as an overly-spiritualist war-monger, intent on destroying the scientific and industrial innovations Mordor and Sauron have established.
This isn’t some flash-in-the-pan slashfiction, this is serious stuff. Eskov is a HUGE fantasy author in Russian language fantasy circles. I’ve been hearing about this guy for the last couple of years, one of my ex-girlfriends tried to get me to read a fan translation but it had the prose and subtlety of, well, a Russian language fan translation of a Russian trying to write in the prose of Tolkien. (It takes balls of a distinct Soviet/Russian variety to re-tell LOTR with an emphasis on technology as opposed to magic.)
This is an authorized translation, and its pretty interesting (at least to LOTR fans.) Tolkien had a huge mythology made for the Middle-Earth series, one of which is the map of Middle-Earth. Its basically Europe, turned 90 degrees, with the Shire being England and the Soviet/Balkan states representing Mordor. I can’t help but think that Eskov is trying to turn the tables at this perceived slight.
You can find it here: http://ymarkov.livejournal.com/270570.html
Note: You’ll probably need to update to the latest version of Adobe reader to view it.