Nicker on 4/1/2012 at 06:16
Oh what fun hearing Middle Earth historians tackle the thorny issues Sauron's rise and the magical mechanics of invisibility rings...
Ha ha - Ring Nerds!
Guilty.
In high school, back when the dragons were young and long, straggly hair was hip, we were offered an English course called Tolkien, Sword and Sorcery.
Easy credits, we all thought. There we were, with our well thumbed copies of The Guide to Middle Earth, itching to resolve many a burning issue, when in walks the fresh out of university teacher they threw into the nerd pit.
She had never even read the Hobbit, let alone The LOTR. How can you take a teacher seriously when they don't even know the difference between a Goblin and an Orc, FFS!
She read The Hobbit out loud, in class, while we muttered to each other in broken Elvish. Oh the horror!
Fafhrd on 4/1/2012 at 07:20
Quote Posted by Nicker
How can you take a teacher seriously when they don't even know the difference between a Goblin and an Orc, FFS!
There isn't one. At least not exactly. Goblins are sort of an Orc sub-species. Goblins, Uruks, and Saruman's Uruk-Hai are all technically 'orcs.' D&D and Warhammer make more specific distinctions between goblins and orcs, but Tolkien didn't.
SubJeff on 4/1/2012 at 10:47
I think we all know who should have been teaching that class.
And of course all Orcs are really Elves, and if you didn't know that already it's my pleasure to bring you that shocker.
henke on 4/1/2012 at 12:35
Quote Posted by nbohr1more
Mikael Persbrandt plays Beorn...
Oh cool! :D
I liked the character of Beorn(whose name is probably derived from the Swedish word for bear, "Björn") and Persbrandt is usually good in pretty much everything I've seen him in.
Thirith on 5/1/2012 at 10:47
I'd imagine that Beorn comes from Anglo-Saxon, which roots in the same language family as Swedish. Mikael Persbrandt is definitely a cool choice for the character and a great actor to watch.
hopper on 6/1/2012 at 09:39
From (
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beorn#Concept_and_creation) Wikipedia:
"In naming his character, Tolkien used beorn, an Old English word for bear, which later came to mean man and warrior (with implications of freeman and nobleman in Anglo-Saxon society). It is related to the Scandinavian names Björn (Icelandic and Swedish) and Bjørn (Norwegian and Danish), meaning bear. The word baron is indirectly related to beorn."
This confirms what I've already learned from other sources.
Chimpy Chompy on 6/1/2012 at 15:54
Orcs come from another planet. Elves are an offshoot of Trolls, I believe.
Sombras on 6/1/2012 at 17:52
Quote Posted by Chimpy Chompy
Orcs come from another planet. Elves are an offshoot of Trolls, I believe.
Exactly, and Dwarves are dragon turds that took root.
Muzman on 5/5/2012 at 03:46
So what do you hobos make of the whole (
http://badassdigest.com/2012/04/24/cinemacon-2012-the-hobbit-underwhelms-at-48-frames-per-secon/) 48 frames per second business?
They need to do higher frame rates for 3D, so it looks less shit. That's the just the physics of the thing. But I've always been broadly supportive of higher framerates, thinking it'd be a better new development than 3d actually. The juddering of 24 on a big screen is quite apparent to me and gets annoying on a nice panning shot of a landscape or something. I saw a Tru-motion TV just the other week though and marvelled at its ability to magically turn a normal looking film into a fake looking video on a cheap set. If 48fps does that (as people are saying) it's a bit of a problem.
I always thought it was the interlacing of video that gave that effect (it causing different motion blur horizontally than vertically). Apparently not, according to reports. Scary to think a bit of shutter blur might be the difference between something seeming "proper" and not, in any case.
It's hard to say, not having seen it in person, of course. Advocates say you just have to get used to it and ultimately it's better. I hold out some hope that there's some tweak in post or way of shooting that gives the best of both worlds.
Charlie Brooker pointed out the other day that we're entering a weird place if this is adopted on a large scale. With digital video having striven for a couple of decades now to get "the film look" and recently achieving it, if movies move to 48fps across the board we'll be in a period where the movies look fake and TV looks real.
