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LORD of the Rings author JRR Tolkien trained as a spy in the years leading up to World War II, it has emerged. The Oxford University professor - who also wrote The Hobbit - was one of 50 intellectuals chosen by the British Government singled out to crack Nazi codes as it appeared increasingly likely Germany was preparing to declare war. Tolkien was reknown as one of his generation's most respected linguists, and according to The Sun, was believed to have passed the training course “with flying colours”. Start of sidebar. Skip to end of sidebar. End of sidebar. Return...

LOS ANGELES (Reuters) - The Hollywood studio behind a film based on "The Hobbit" and trustees for author J.R.R. Tolkien's estate said on Tuesday they had settled a lawsuit that clears the way for what is expected to be a blockbuster movie based on the book. "The Hobbit" is a 1937 book by Tolkien about a diminutive character named Bilbo Baggins who goes on a treasure-seeking adventure, and it sets the stage for Tolkien's "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy, with its epic tale of magic and warfare.

New Zealand film-maker Peter Jackson may have more in common with JRR Tolkien's heirs than he thought - they are also complaining about big studio accounting methods. Tolkien's family and a British charity they head, the Tolkien Trust, are seeking more than $US220 million ($276.94 million) in compensation for the Lord of the Rings trilogy Jackson made in New Zealand. The Tolkien heirs sold movie rights to the LOTR books 40 years ago for 7.5 per cent of future receipts, but say that three films and $US6 billion ($7.55 billion) later, they have not seen a cent of the proceeds....

From a "shining city on a hill" to false "hope". How did it come to this? And who will be our horse and rider in 2012?

August 3rd, 2008 by Calisuri | Source: The Hunt for Gollum | Discuss If you haven’t heard of it yet, you will want to check out the non-profit collaborative short film being produced by writer/director Chris Bouchard - The Hunt for Gollum. Like the name suggests, this short film is a prequel to The Lord Of The Rings, set in Middle Earth and depicts events leading up to the Fellowship of the Ring. The story follows the Heir of Isildur as he sets out to find the creature Gollum. Mr. Bouchard has just released the second trailer for the film...

Sir Ian McKellen returns to the big screen in The Hobbit film By Nick Squires in Sydney Last updated: 1:28 PM BST 25/05/2008 Sir Ian McKellen will reprise the role of Gandalf the wizard for two films to be made based on Tolkien's classic book The Hobbit, it has been confirmed. The two movies - The Hobbit and a sequel which has yet to be named - will be filmed in New Zealand and released in 2011 and 2012. Andy Serkis, the actor who played Gollum with the help of digital wizardry, will also return for the Hobbit film, but...

Ian McKellen will again take up the robes of Gandalf the Wizard in the cinematic adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien's fantasy classic "The Hobbit" a British film magazine reported Wednesday. But McKellen's publicist warned that final arrangements were yet to be made. "Of course he wants to do it, but nothing's been agreed or signed," Clair Dobbs said.

LOS ANGELES - The estate of "Lord of the Rings" creator J.R.R. Tolkien is suing the film studio that released the trilogy based on his books, claiming the company hasn't paid it a penny from the estimated $6 billion the films have grossed worldwide. The suit, filed Monday, claims New Line was required to pay 7.5 percent of gross receipts to Tolkien's estate and other plaintiffs, who contend they only received an upfront payment of $62,500 for the three movies before production began. The writer's estate, a British charity dubbed The Tolkien Trust, and original "Lord of the Rings" publisher...

I watched the movie versions of Tolkein's "Lord of the Rings" over the last three days and tried to sort out the symbolism in Christian terms. Here's what I came up with, would love the insights of any regarding. Hobbits: Your home and hearth Christians. Humble and happy, not seeking power and acclaim to the same extent as others, perhaps, and content with small things. Elves: Angels. They are superhuman in their understanding and abilities and they can choose to leave middle earth unlike the other races. Orcs: Demons. They are a race of elves abused, corrupted and changed by...

War On Terror: A sketchy diagram of al-Qaida's defenses left behind by Abu Musab al-Zarqawi may prove to be the key to victory in Iraq. Sometimes in the fog of war, the fog lifts.It may not rank in the annals of warfare with the breaking of the Imperial Japanese Code, which led to our naval victory at Midway in World War II, or the cracking of the Nazi Ultra Codes, which Dwight Eisenhower said was decisive in the Allied victory. But a map left behind in a safe house by the deceased leader of al-Qaida in Iraq may have helped...

AUKLAND, NZ, August 30, 2007 (LifeSiteNews.com) - British Actor Ian McKellen who has used the mega-stardom he achieved playing Gandalf in the Lord of the Rings films to promote homosexuality, has admitted to ripping out pages of hotel bibles that refer to homosexuality. In an August 10 interview on New Zealand's TV1 Close Up program McKellen was confronted by the interviewer questioning the truth of the rumour "He's the one, that when he stays in hotels rips the part of the bible out that criticizes homosexuality." "Yes it is true," responded McKellen in even tones.  "Its Leviticus 18:22 that...

Asked to design a fitting repository for a client’s valuable collection of J.R.R. Tolkien manuscripts and artifacts, architect Peter Archer went to the source—the fantasy novels that describe the abodes of the diminutive Hobbits.“I came back my client and said, ‘I’m not going to make this look like Hollywood,’” Archer recalled, choosing to focus instead on a finely-crafted structure embodying a sense of history and tradition.The site was critical too—and Archer found the perfect one a short walk away from his client’s main house, where an 18th-century dry-laid wall ran through the property. “I thought, wouldn’t it be wonderful...

A Review of New Edition of "The Children of Húrin" ATLANTA, Georgia, APRIL 27, 2007 (Zenit.org).- With the release of a new edition of J.R.R. Tolkien's "The Children of Húrin," fans of this deeply Catholic author may be surprised by its biblical tone, says a Tolkien expert. Jef Murray, artist-in-residence at the St. Austin Review, speaking with ZENIT, said, "'The Children of Húrin' has a more biblical tone than 'The Lord of the Rings.' It is a story of human fallibility and sin and may be prophetic for our times." Painstakingly reconstructed by Christopher Tolkien from his father's manuscripts, the...

 WELLINGTON, New Zealand, July 17, 2006 (LifeSiteNews.com) – Profits from the Lord of the Rings film trilogy are being used to fund destructive human embryonic research at the University of California, reported the Mainichi Daily News. Filmmakers Peter Jackson and Fran Walsh, who brought the J.R.R. Tolkien epic to the screen, together donated US $310,000 last Saturday to fund research using the stem cells of human embryos. “Stem cell therapy has the potential to treat a multitude of diseases and illnesses which up until now have been labelled ‘incurable,’” the pair said in a statement released by the University of...

How could the American Film Institute have missed The Return of the King when picking its list of the 100 Most Inspiring Films of All Time? And not a single movie about Jesus? What's up with THAT? Last week, the American Film Institute posted its list of the 100 Most Inspiring Films of All Time. It's a good list, especially with It's a Wonderful Life and To Kill a Mockingbird occupying the top two spots. Rocky, Mr. Smith Goes to Washington, and Breaking Away are all in the top 10. Very nice. But like all such lists, it's certainly open...

Here’s a quick reminder, in case you needed it: Just because an actor portrays a character in a movie you really, really like, and even if he does it really well, it doesn’t mean he’s not an ass. Just so you know. On a related note, Ian McKellen, who played Gandalf in “The Lord of the Rings� and who plays Leah Teabing in “The Da Vinci Code,� replies to demands that move include a disclaimer by saying that the Bible itself should have a disclaimer. In an interview on the “Today Show� as transcribed on the NewsBusters blog, he says:“Well,...

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Possibly taking a cue from the controversial film "Brokeback Mountain," marketers at the cable network TBS are broadcasting a promotion for this weekend's showing of two "Lord of the Rings" films that suggests characters Sam and Frodo are homosexual lovers.

Flash animation - click below for the two parts. WARNING: Contains foul language, hobbit abuse.Part 1Part 2

Mortensen Defends Bush Criticism The Lord Of The Rings star Viggo Mortensen refuses to apologize for his recent attack on President George W. Bush - maintaining the political leader is a "beast." The outspoken actor hit out at Bush after his controversial handling of Hurricane Katrina, but also disagrees with the President's Iraq policies, gossip site The Scoop reports. He fumes, "I'm not anti-Bush; I'm anti-Bush behavior. In other words, I'm against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by Bush and his administration. Cindy Sheehan (peace activist whose son was...

Viggo Mortensen isn't backing off his stinging critique of George W. Bush.The Lord of the Rings hottie took some heat from criticizing some of the president's policies, and in a recent interview Mortensen was unrepentant.'Im not anti-Bush, I'm anti Bush behavior,' Mortensen told Progressive Magazine. 'In other words, I'm against cheating, greed, cruelty, racism, imperialism, religious fundamentalism, treason, and the seemingly limitless capacity for hypocrisy shown by the Bush Adminsitration.'Mortensen also blasted the adminsitrations handing of Hurrican Katrina and discussed why he supported anti-war activist Cindy Sheehan.'Cindy Sheehan and how badly Katrina was bungled are two shots to the heart,'...

I just saw the Chronicles of Narnia. I have only one thing to say: don't listen to the media critics!!! It is easily one of the best fantasy/mythology movies that I've ever seen. I expected to have wasted good money on a ticket, but it actually turned out to be a clean and decent movie that still managed to be extremely entertaining. I would have to say that this movie is better than LOTR Fellowship and Two towers.

That’s what Barbara Nicolosi, who teaches Christians the art of screenwriting, told Godspy, an online magazine, in a recent interview. “A Christian project saved the global box office from 2001 to 2003 with Tolkien’s trilogy, The Lord of the Rings. Then another Christian project, The Passion of the Christ, saved the global cineplexes in 2004. And yet another Christian story is going to save the entertainment industry this year with C.S. Lewis’ The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe.” That’s the movie that opens Dec. 9 and is based on the novel by Christian apologist C.S. Lewis, the 20th-century Anglican...

To judge from the way the weekend's box office is breathlessly reported in the news bulletins on Monday morning, more people seem to be interested in movie grosses than in the movies. Evidently, Hollywood's now recovered from this summer's all-time record "box office slump." Or at any rate news stories about the box office slump have themselves slumped. In a breathless dispatch on the opening weekend of ''Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire,'' the Associated Press reported that ''the latest Potter movie led a lineup that helped reverse the Hollywood box-office slump." I wouldn't say the boy wizard and...

• This essay is an excerpt from Peter J. Kreeft's new book, The Philosophy of Tolkien: The Worldview Behind The Lord of the Ring. Can any one man incarnate every truth and virtue? Throughout the New Testament we find a shocking simplicity: Christ does not merely teach the truth, He is the truth; He does not merely show us the way, He is the way; He does not merely give us eternal life, He is that life. He does not merely teach or purchase our wisdom, our righteousness and sanctification and redemption, but "God made [Him] our wisdom, our righteousness...

Is anyone else watching this hollywierdo make a complete ass of himself? Probably the most ignorant psuedo-intellectual lib I've ever seen.

Correction AppendedCRAWFORD, Tex., Aug. 12 - This is not the place to expect a sighting of Viggo Mortensen, the star of "The Lord of the Rings." Or at least it wasn't when President Bush began his annual vacation here earlier this month.But something has happened to Crawford over the last week. The sleepy summer air has been punctured by a blast of antiwar energy, with carloads of activists appearing every afternoon to join a vigil begun by the mother of a soldier who died in Iraq. Flowers are delivered by the dozen at Camp Casey, as the muddy outpost established...

The always eminent writer and historian Victor Davis Hanson compares modern Europe to the Middle Earth of J.R.R. Tolkien’s epic “The Lord of the Rings”, recently turned into one of the most successful movie trilogies in history by New Zealand director Peter Jackson. Like the inhabitants of Tolkien’s imaginary world, Europeans are accustomed to living in peace and prosperity. But their sedate way of life is starting to come under threat, although not all of them have noticed it yet. The shadow of an ancient foe is rising in the East, an enemy that has not threatened us for so...

J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings triology is about the epic struggle of "the free folk of the West" to ward off and defeat the temptations and the enemies that would destroy them. As such, the movie version has had a powerful cultural resonance for the free folk undergoing the war on terrorism. Now all three movies are available in extended DVD versions, forming a single 12-hour saga that sheds light on one of the strangest phenomena of our current war: the alliance between our left-wing intellectual establishment and radical Islam. In Tolkien's epic, all of Middle Earth is under...

J.R.R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings triology is about the epic struggle of "the free folk of the West" to ward off and defeat the temptations and the enemies that would destroy them. As such, the movie version has had a powerful cultural resonance for the free folk undergoing the war on terrorism. Now all three movies are available in extended DVD versions, forming a single 12-hour saga that sheds light on one of the strangest phenomena of our current war: the alliance between our left-wing intellectual establishment and radical Islam. In Tolkien's epic, all of Middle Earth is under...

The Real Atrocity in Tolkien's Middle Earth By Jeff Alexander and Tom BissellMcSweeney's Internet Tendency | January 7, 2005Part I: Chomsky: The film opens with Galadriel speaking. "The world has changed," she tells us, "I can feel it in the water." She's actually stealing a line from the non-human Treebeard. He says this to Merry and Pippin in The Two Towers, the novel. Already we can see who is going to be privileged by this narrative and who is not. Zinn: Of course. "The world has changed." I would argue that the main thing one learns when one watches this...

For education and discussion only. Not for commercial use. Peter Jackson´s JRR Tolkien-inspired film trilogy Lord of the Rings features enormous eagles swooping down to rescue Sam and Frodo from a desolate New Zealand landscape masquerading as Mordor. The image of giant eagles flying around New Zealand, while fanciful, is not so far-fetched as it might appear. New genetic data published in the freely-available online journal PLoS Biology this week from researchers at Oxford and Canterbury Universities shed new light on the evolution of the extinct giant eagle that once ruled the skies in New Zealand. Before human settlement 700...

Pied Piper Pitt, aka William RIVERS Pitt, after having his promise of something WONDERFUL happening on Monday (after the snow dog ate his homework last week) go up in smoke, is now trying to change the subject and cheer on the DUmmies with a dopey pep talk as we can see in this Dummie THREAD titled, “This is a great time to be alive.” This posting follows on the heels of a dopey story that Pied Piper Pitt posted yesterday about some guy who is a milkman who tries to be a dogcatcher (or was it the other way...

With the release this week of the Extended Edition DVD of Return of the King, here are some LOTR resources: A Triumphant Return http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/BreakPoint_Commentaries/20031/December_2003/A_Triumphant_Return.htm In J. R. R. Tolkien's Sanctifying Myth: Understanding Middle-earth http://www.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/1882926846/terraspacedock J. R. R. Tolkien and C. S. Lewis, a Legendary Friendship http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/134/52.0.html Myth Meets Real Life http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/BreakPoint_Commentaries/20031/December_2003/Myth_Meets_Real_Life.htm Escape into Reality http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/BreakPoint_Commentaries/20031/December_2003/Escape_into_Reality.htm Saint J. R. R. the Evangelist http://www.christianitytoday.com/ct/2003/110/54.0.html Tolkien, Transformer of Culture http://www.pfm.org/Content/ContentGroups/BreakPoint/Columns/At_the_Movies/200212/Tolkien__Transformer_of_Culture.htm

Gollum gets a health check LONDON (Reuters) - Gollum, the creepy character in "Lord of the Rings" with the dual personality and eerie voice, suffered from a schizoid personality disorder, according to a group of medical students. Thirty students at University College London were asked to explain the odd behaviour the character displayed in the films based on the J.R.R. Tolkien trilogy. The students noted his solitary habits, spiteful behaviour, odd interests, difficulty in forming friendships, emotional changeability, nervousness and paranoia. "He fulfils seven of the nine criteria for schizoid personality disorder, and, if we must label Gollum's problems, we...

Poor diet, inherited disease made Gollum mad Fri Dec 17, 1:50 PM ET Offbeat - AFP PARIS (AFP) - The "Lord of the Rings" character Gollum was paranoid and had a split personality but this was because he probably suffered from vitamin deficiency, anaemia, hyperthyroidism and a metabolic disease called porphyria. That's the conclusion of a group of British doctors who sift through Gollum's symptoms in a tongue-in-cheek diagnosis published this Saturday in the British Medical Journal (BMJ). "Gollum's diet is extremely limited, consisting only of raw fish. Vitamin B-12 deficiency may cause irritability, delusions and paranoia," they say. "His...

For those who've seen the Extended Edition of the final movie of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, "The Return of the King."If you haven't seen it and just want to mention how superior you are to everyone else and, though you've never created anything in your life that anyone would want to see, you're sure you'd have done a better job and the pictures are total irredeemable trash... please start your own thread with that as the title.Otherwise, this is the place to discuss what you loved, what you loathed, what you found baffling, and basically other of the...

New Line Entertainment released the definitive "Extended Edition" of The Return Of The King . Peter Jackson worked over a year to bring this out for the fans. New and extended scenes have brought the total running length to over 200 minutes. Plus extras on the supplemental discs.

Lords of the Rings star embraces Buddhism Item 9652 • Posted: Wed, Dec. 08 2004 • Weblogged by ReligionNewsBlog.com Permalink to this article (Click link to copy to clipboard) Hindustan Times (India), Dec. 6, 2004 http://www.hindustantimes.com Another Hollywood star Orlando Bloom is to become a Buddhist. The Lord of the Rings star, 27, took part in an hour long ceremony at a centre to commit himself to the faith, according to a Mirror report. Orlando, who jealously guards his private life, joined 60 other fledgling Buddhists at the Soka Gakkai International Buddhist movement HQ at Taplow Court Mansion in Maidenhead,...

Crosswalk.com News Channel - LOUISVILLE, Ky. (BP)--Near the end of his life, J.R.R. Tolkien (also spelled Tolkein) received a letter from a young girl posing a question concerning the chief end of man.Tolkien, author of "The Lord of the Rings" trilogy which has now become a motion picture, provided the youngster an answer that lends insight into the worldview of the realm in which he casts his fantasy novels. "It may be said that the purpose of life for any one of us is to increase according to our capacity, our knowledge of God by all the means we have ...

"One ring to rule them all" – Those are the words that echo in my head as I watch the Israeli opposition to Prime Minister Ariel Sharon's proposal to leave Gaza and portions of the West Bank. As an American Jew who has visited Israel over a dozen times, I have a natural enthusiasm and empathy for the Zionist project. However, like many, I believe that Israel's current geopolitical course is unsustainable. As I watch the attempt of settlers to hold onto settlements scattered through Gaza and parts of the West Bank, I am forced to conclude that a segment...

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One of the most controversial and provocative films of the year, Fellowship 9/11 is Academy Award-winning filmmaker Michael Moore's searing examination of the Aragorn administration's actions in the wake of the tragic events at Helms Deep. With his characteristic humor and dogged commitment to uncovering - or if necessary fabricating - the facts, Moore considers the reign of the son of Arathorn and where it has led us. He looks at how - and why - Aragorn and his inner circle avoided pursuing the Saruman connection to Helms Deep, despite the fact that 9 out of every 10 Orcs that...

Now, a call for help. I am trying to fashion a LOTR analogy to the events of Rathergate.

Our Own Private Tower of Cirith Ungol If I were Thórr, I’d be pretty ticked. Someone has stolen my thunder! To be precise, two different guys have made off with my big rumble this month. Way, way back last December, I started assembling the editorial plan for the year’s Lord of the Rings features on Hollywood Jesus: twelve monthly guest features, twelve featured interviews, the make-it-up-as-we-go email-of-the-month, and twelve hard-hitting, incisive (and somewhat insightful) features in the vein of the pieces I’d done for the previous two years. Now, this was no great hardship, and I didn’t have too hard...

More Lord of the Rings movies — oh, yesss, preciousss, we wantsss them. And within the next twenty or thirty years, we'll get them. Children who watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy will take their own children to a complete remake of the Lord of the Rings trilogy. It's inevitable. Most great movies will never be remade. We will never see remakes of The Godfather, or Gone with the Wind, or even Star Wars. But Lord of the Rings is different. Why? Consider these five reasons. • The pre-existing fame of the LOTR novels prevents the actors in the...

Upon reading and rereading Atlas Shrugged and The Lord of the Rings, I find comparison of the two tempting, for both of these novels display firm and compelling visions regarding personal philosophy and the rejection of Evil. One of the most unique aspects of Atlas Shrugged is its rational definition of Good and Evil based on the principles of Objectivism. Good is that which is free, independent, thinking, and productive. Evil is that which attempts to feed upon others through false premises. But fundamentally Good is strong and Evil is weak, for Evil can only perpetuate itself through the consent...

When as a boy I read “The Scouring of the Shire” near the end of J. R. R. Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, I could not understand why Tolkien felt the need to tack on such an anti-climactic and shabby bit of evil. Only later, as I began to notice modernity’s penchant for ugliness in the world beyond Middle Earth, did I understand that the scouring of the Shire bespoke a present evil, a malevolence insidious precisely because it lacked the stark drama of the trenches or the gas chambers. I came to understand that the demolition of the...