[Added August 26: Turns out that my online writing about the Tolkien films has not come to an abrupt end. I won’t be posting here, but I’ve accepted an invitation from TheOneRing.net to join their staff and contribute occasionally. I’m sure most of you are TORn readers, so I hope you’ll find my posts when they appear. More details here.

As many of you know, I have been hoping to write a follow-up book to The Frodo Franchise, dealing with the making of The Hobbit. My plan was to examine the impact of digital filmmaking technology on the way the production team. I also wanted to look at how globalization has affected the composition of that team.

After three and a half years of enquiries, I now learn that I will not be able to do such a book. Naturally I am disappointed, since I find the two topics fascinating ones, and a book dealing with them would have made a big contribution to the field of film studies. It would have been welcomed by the loyal fans who have been following Peter Jackson’s film adaptations for so long. Indeed, I know from many kind comments on the message boards of TheOneRing.net and elsewhere that fans enjoyed my first book and were hoping for a second.

Now that I know I will not be tackling a second book, I’m going to stop posting new entries on this blog. I’ll be turning my full attention to other projects. One of these is a book-length analysis of stylistic and narrative techniques in Tolkien’s two hobbit novels. That’s already well underway, and I have over 150 manuscript pages drafted. Some of you are aware that I am also an Egyptologist. I’m in the research stage of a large book project on the statuary of the Amarna period. I am primarily a film historian, and will keep my husband’s and my two textbooks up to date, as well as contributing to our joint blog and tackling other film projects. I have also been asked to write a short account of the films for a reference book on Tolkien to be published by Oxford University Press.

I’m very grateful to all of you who have sent me links over the roughly four and a half years during which I have been blogging on this site. You have helped make my coverage far larger than I could have managed as a one-person operation.

I am also grateful to all the filmmakers and other people connected to the LOTR film franchise who allowed me to interview them for The Frodo Franchise. Thanks also to those who weren’t interviewed for the book but who helped me in other ways during my visits to Wellington. I am still amazed that I was able to write the book entirely as I had planned it, despite the fact that my topic was huge. My many interviewees are largely responsible for that.

As to The Hobbit, like other fans I shall follow its progress and look forward to finally seeing its two parts as the rest of Tolkien’s saga comes to the screen.

I shall leave the Frodo Franchise blog online, since it could prove useful to other researchers. It provides a pretty thorough record of the events that took place during the many delays and obstacles that the Hobbit project endured. (In particular, last year’s labor dispute and the dealings between the New Zealand government and Warner Bros. were covered here in, as I recall, 110 postings!) My email address remains at the top of the page, in case you want to get in touch.

Inevitably Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of The Lord of the Rings has attracted scholarly attention. Apart from my own book, there are about half a dozen anthologies in print and undoubtedly more publications will follow. A notable new one, Picturing Tolkien: Essays on Peter Jackson’s The Lord of the Rings Film Trilogy has just become available. The table of contents is at the end of this post. (Amazon doesn’t seem to have started shipping yet, so I’ll link to Barnes & Noble, which has.)

[Added August 20: Amazon is at least taking orders now, though they list the book as out of stock.]

Its editors, Janice M. Bogstad and Philip E. Kaveny,  have been friends of mine for many years. I asked if I could interview them about the new collection via email, and here is the result. more »

TolkienNut16 has posted an auditorium version of the video introduction given by Peter ahead of last night’s screenings of the extended version of The Two Towers. Most of the production background he described will be familiar to fans who have seen the supplements and listened to the commentary tracks of the extended-version DVDs.

Peter did say one thing that seemed new to me, though perhaps he has said it somewhere before and I just missed it. He says that Fran Walsh suggested and wrote the famous “Go away and never come back!” argument between Smeagol and Gollum. She also directed it, since it was a very late addition to the film. Fran has always been quite modest about this and said she simply directed the scene the way Peter wanted her to. But it does sound as though that scene was pretty much hers from inspiration to execution, and here Peter graciously gives her credit. Of course, it has become one of the most famous scenes in the film.

I have an analysis of it in an essay, “Gollum Talks to Himself,” in a forthcoming anthology of essays about the film, Picturing Tolkien, to be released by McFarland on July 31 and edited by Jan Bogstad and Phil Kaveny. (It’s available for pre-order on Amazon, and given how these things go, it may well come out before July 31.) I hope to post an interview with Jan and Phil about the book in July.

I’m rather belatedly announcing the publication of an essay by me, “Stepping out of Blockbuster Mode: The Lighting of the Beacons in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003).” It appears in an anthology that the British Film Institute published in December: Film Moments (pp. 144-48). The idea behind the book, edited by Tom Brown and James Walters, was to bring together a large group of film scholars, each analyzing a single sequence from a film that he or she found interesting for one reason or another.

The lighting of the beacons is my favorite sequence in the LOTR trilogy, and I know a lot of other people love it, too. To me, it has always seemed like a little experimental film dropped into the middle of an epic Hollywood narrative. It goes one much longer than its simple contribution to the story would warrant. It challenges the viewer to moving the position of the tiny beacons around to completely different places from shot to shot, forcing us to scan the huge screen (theater screen, that is) to figure out where the next one will flare up. To top it all off, the final beacon appears in the far upper left of the frame, a place we don’t typically glance at all that often. My point is that, as in an experimental film, the filmmakers quickly teach us the rules of their little spot-the-beacon game and make us appreciate the composition of the shots, the colors, and other somewhat abstract qualities that we often ignore when we’re paying attention to the plot action.

I also have a section on press and fan reaction to the beacons sequence. It was mentioned in many reviews, and I note that it often crops up on fan-site message boards when people discuss their favorite or most memorable scenes.

Doug Adams’ site on the music of the LOTR trilogy has posted a press release giving the publication dates of his book, The Music of The Lord of the Rings Films. That’s September 28 in Europe and October 5 in the USA and other countries. Here’s the description of the book itself:

The 416-page full-color volume features a Foreword by Howard Shore, an Introduction by The Lord of the Rings screenwriter/producer Fran Walsh, original sketches by John Howe and Alan Lee, and numerous images from the films. Also included in the book, courtesy of Howe Records, is “The Lord of the Rings: The Rarities Archive” a CD presenting 21 tracks of previously unreleased music created for the films, and an audio interview with Howard Shore.

Doug has been working on this book for years with full cooperation from Howard Shore, so it should be the definitive study of the subject. It’s not available for pre-order on Amazon, but I’ll try to alert you as soon as possible when it is.

Wandering around the internet today, I discovered that yet another book about the LOTR films is forthcoming. I know nothing about it beyond what little I have been able to find via googling. Based on such slight information, I am not recommending it–just letting you know that it’s on its way and available for pre-ordering.

The title is The Lord of the Films: The Unofficial Guide to Tolkien’s Middle-earth on the Big Screen, and it’s by J. W. Braun. Here’s what Amazon tells us about it:

Product Description

A unique scene-by-scene breakdown of all of the Lord of the Rings movies, this guide provides in-depth analysis of the live-action trilogy and other related films, alongside games, puzzles, and interviews with the filmmakers. Each scene is explored in four different ways: a closer look at the plot and the action, a look behind the scenes, a reveal of mistakes that slipped through, and audience reactions. In addition to covering the stunning Peter Jackson trilogy and the animated versions, details are also revealed about the prequel films currently in production, making this an essential volume for any Lord of the Rings fan.

About the Author

J. W. Braun has been a Lord of the Rings fan since the 1980s and followed every detail of the film adaptations from beginning to end on his website, the first dedicated to the movies. He lives in Burlington, Wisconsin.

I was intrigued by the idea of the first LOTR film-related website. Alas, now the URL for that website takes one directly to the Amazon pre-orders page. My assumption is that the website has been turned into a book and hence is no longer online.

I have to confess to being a bit dubious about a book in which two of the four approaches to the film are lists of mistakes and audience reactions. What could the source of those audience reactions be? Is the “closer look” at the plot anything more than elaborate description? As one who has done a fair amount of “in-depth analysis” of films, I’m also dubious about the idea of such analysis being juxtaposed with games and puzzles.

I did find a contribution by Braun on TheOneRing.net, “The Future of the Nine Walkers.” I couldn’t detect a date on it, but it was written before the release of the first part. Braun mentions asking Ian McKellen a question, so obviously the main casting had taken place. Whether Ian is one of the people interviewed for the website/book isn’t clear. Anyway, the TORN piece is a bit of speculation on how audiences will react to the film’s main characters. I can’t say I learned anything from it or would have even at the time.

I wish I could provide more information about this book, but there’s none to be had, either on Amazon or on the publisher’s website. The publisher is ECW Press, based in Toronto. The book is due out on September 1 of this year. Perhaps between now and then one of these sites will give a more detailed description or even provide a table of contents.

If any of you can provide some information about Braun’s website, I’d be most grateful. Naturally in my book I couldn’t cover all the fan sites or even a large sampling of them. I went instead for fairly in-depth looks at representative sites. But of course the topic still intrigues me.

Film historian Stephen Prince has reviewed The Frodo Franchise for the Winter issue of Film Quarterly. My apologies to anyone who tried to follow the link I posted last night. Following it would just take you to our university library site, through which I was able to access the review. So I have removed the link and scanned the print-out of my pdf file of the review. more »

Over the holidays I finally found time to read John Howe’s new book, Forging Dragons: Inspirations, Approaches and Techniques for Drawing and Painting Dragons, which was published in October by Impact. (Amazon.com offers it in hardback here and paperback here; Amazon UK’s hardback is here and paperback here; and not to forget John’s country of origin, Amazon Canada’s hardback is here and paperback here.) Given that John will almost certainly be involved in designing Smaug for The Hobbit, the timing is felicitous. more »

Today I was delighted to receive a new book in the mail: Studying the event film: The Lord of the Rings, co-edited by Harriet Margolis, Sean Cubitt, Barry King, and Thierry Jutel. It is published by Manchester University Press, copyright 2008. more »

On my recent trip to Jordan, one of the books I took along to read was Melissa Anelli’s new title, Harry: A History. The cover describes is as “The true story of a boy wizard, his fans, and life inside the Harry Potter phenomenon.” It’s one of those books that’s ideal for traveling: a lot of prose in small print packed into a light-weight, compact volume.

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