Unthinkable Wings

Some of you have seen a version of this on FB

2013-01-13T20:40:24Z

As the last Tolkien fan in the world to have seen "The Hobbit 1", I wish to report my impressions, which are:

1. Martin Freeman and Richard Armitage are excellent as Bilbo and Thorin.

2. The dwarves are mostly good and not taken too far in the direction of comic relief, though I was worried in the Bag End scenes before Thorin appeared. Honourable mention to Ken Stott as a very likable Balin.

3. The depiction of Barry Humpries' Great Goblin as a distinctly different kind of orc to Azog was surprisingly effective in resolving/ bridging the differences between The Hobbit's goblins, who owe a heavy debt to George MacDonald, and the darker orcs of Lord of the Rings. I wasn't entirely convinced by the jowly prosthetics/ CGI, but that's a relatively minor point.

4. Jackson is getting as bad as George Lucas for self-indulgent lingering shots of Cool Stuff and completely implausible fight sequences.

5. I've no objection to backstory about the White Council appearing in the film, and it was particularly nice to see Christopher Lee reprising Sauruman, but Radagast and his bunny-driven sledge? Really? He's supposed to be Franciscan, not a complete loon... (and see above re: 'completely unbelievable fight/ chase sequences').

6. Excellent soundtrack, with good use of the Lord of the Rings leitmotivs, and a haunting new tune for the dwarves - and I did love the scene where they sing "Far Over Misty Mountains Cold" in Bag End.

I feel I enjoyed the evening and got my money's worth, but it's far too uneven to be called a good film, though there were aspects I did enjoy a lot.

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Music for Epiphany

2012-01-06T14:07:06Z

There's a lot of good music for Epiphany, which unfortunately often doesn't get heard as much (unless, like my first choice, it gets co-opted for carol services).

So: here's King's Cambridge doing Cornelius' "Three Kings." The soloist is more forward than he often is in performance/ recordings, but I don't think it's a bad thing, though it may be partly explained by the difficulties of recording in Kings, which has a rotten acoustic.*

I tried to find a decent recording of "Brightest and Best" - an unusual hymn, in that the first verse is addressed to a star, although one might chose to read the star as an image for John the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, who is often linked with the star in patristic (and later) writings.** But this is surprisingly difficult, and not helped by the proliferation of tunes. The following recording, a bluegrass tune sung by the McLain Family Band, was not what I was looking for, but I think it's rather charming:

And, although the Russian Orthodox don't celebrate Epiphany for another thirteen days, I like this snippet of the Epiphany liturgy, the troparion (a stanza chanted at various points in the services throughout the day, if I have got that right - Orthodox liturgy is a bit of a closed book to me, as it's very different to the Western tradition):

You will notice that the troparion seems to be more appropriate to the Baptism of Christ, but this is because, as the name suggests, the fundamental point of the Epiphany is not the wise men or the gifts, but the simple idea of Christ revealed to the world, and thus revealing God to the world; so there's an obvious thematic link. This is also picked up in the very Anglican hymn, Songs of Thankfulness and Praise (horrible audio warning!), which goes from the visit of the kings, to the baptism of Christ, to his first miracle at the Wedding at Cana, to his healing ministry, and looks forward to his 'great Epiphany' at the end of time, when he will judge the world and be recognised by it. It's actually one of my favourite Epiphany hymns from the point of view of lyrics, although Salzburg is not an exciting tune, and on balance "Brightest and Best" still just wins...

(This is a poor quality recording, but there wasn't a lot of choice!)

* It's not as bad as St Paul's but few things are. I have never understood the psalms, or even the readings, there, and it's not down to the failures of the choir.

** There is, for instance, a plausible interpretation of the famous line from Crist:
Éala, Éarendel, engla beorhtast,
ofer middangeard monnum sended,
(Hail, Earendel, brightest of angels, sent to men over the earth) where, although Earendel seems to be the name for the morning star, it would refer to John as the herald of Christ, as is certainly the case in the Blickling Homilies.

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Yes, yes, it's another fic rec

2009-07-11T10:59:50Z

Once again, something that you wouldn't think could work, yet does: a Discworld/ Silmarillion cross-over, in which Sam Vimes applies his brand of policing to the matter of the Silmarils.

Evidence, by Camwyn.

I know it sounds ridiculous, but it's really rather good.

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The 15 OTPs meme

2009-06-04T12:47:53Z

I'm awfully behind the curve on this, but you were supposed to list 15 OTPs amd draw conclusions from them. Or were you supposed to let your flist do so? IDK.

Anyway, my conclusions are (i) I have a great tendency just to follow canon (though the fact that a pairing is canonical doesn't mean I'll necessarily be interested in it)
(ii) I like my romantic heroes, by and large, to be intellectual, but also to know one end of a sword from each other (metaphorically speaking)
(iii) I may also have a thing about older men and younger women (though this is not reflected in my own romantic history, such as it is). Although to an extent this may just reflect that in older fiction the men are always older than the women.
(iv) there are friendships which I find fascinating but that I don't see as sexual, so I made a separate heading for them.

( Ten ships, and five friendships )

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