Heroic Dreams - All Things Medieval

The hotly anticipated cinematic prequel to the Lord of the Rings trilogy is finally gathering steam. It was announced earlier this year that The Hobbit, the latest silver screen foray into Middle Earth, will be split into two halves, released in December 2011 and 2012. That gives Tolkien fans about two years to speculate and fervently hunt for leaked set images for clues into how this version of Hobbiton, the Blue Mountains, and every place in between, is shaping up.

Following the massive success of Peter Jackson’s big screen adaptation of J.R.R. Tolkien’s beloved fantasy tome, it only made sense that a movie version of The Hobbit would follow. In a Star Wars-like move, The Hobbit will go back to before the events in Lord of the Rings took place. Approximately 60 years before the motley group of men, hobbits, elf, dwarf, and wizard formed the Fellowship, in fact.

This time around, though, Jackson won’t be sitting in the director’s chair shouting for “one more take for good luck.” After a messy and lengthy legal dispute with New Line Cinema, which even led New Line’s head executive Robert Shaye to announce that Jackson would “never make any movie with New line Cinema again,” Jackson passed the Middle Earth torch to Guillermo del Toro, the directorial mastermind behind Pan’s Labyrinth and Hellboy. The Lord of the Rings veteran will instead be donning his producer’s cap for The Hobbit while del Toro takes the directorial reins.

Del Toro is a fitting replacement for Jackson, as he has done his share of fantasy flicks. If the creepy Pan’s Labyrinth is any indicator, The Hobbit may see a darker Middle Earth than Jackson’s, which is not necessarily a bad change. Yet, the movie will still hold a welcome familiarity for fans with a cast mini-reunion of sorts. Andy Serkis will return as the slimy Gollum, and Ian McKellen and Hugo Weaving have both expressed interest in reprising their respective roles of Gandalf the Grey and Elrond, though nothing has been officially announced. Interestingly, Dominic Monaghan, who previously portrayed Merry the hobbit, told MTV that the original quartet of hobbits may be returning for the new film. How this would be accomplished without extensive rewriting and a huge flash-forward in the timeline remains to be seen.

This post was contributed by Rose Jensen, who writes about the associates degree. She welcomes your feedback at Rose.Jensen28@ yahoo.com
 

If you read my blogpost about the big old flamberge Two–handed sword I recently bought you know I was very satisfied with it! It got me thinking about another sword. So I have been keeping an eye on swords and watching the prices. I found a super deal on another two hander called “The William Wallace Sword” and the price was only 38 dollars plus 12.50 shipping for a grand total of about 50 dollars. I couldn’t resist this sword. It is going to be a perfect match for my flamberge. I am going to mount it on the wall on the other side of the window. When it comes in I will post my thoughts and comments about it and take some pictures for you.

I have bought a lot of things from amazon.com and I have been tremendously happy with everything. It seemed like a risk to buy a sword through a website, because I couldn’t actually see it or heft it but so far so good! This next sword will probably be pretty nice too. If you want to look at it, here it is: William Wallace Sword…#1 Medieval Sword

Do you have expertise in use of or history of Scimitars?

I have been contacted by someone working on a project for an A list media company. This is a for a film project and they are looking for someone who has scimitar expertise. They contacted me but I really don’t have that kind of expertise and I thought maybe someone out there might. So, if you have some expertise with them you can either submit a comment or send me a message and I will get put you in touch with the person who inquired.

Now I don’t think this is any kind of a paid gig but I really think it might be a nice opportunity to have some fun and who knows, depending on how much expertise they are looking for, maybe you would get a film credit

I have been on a quest to read or re-read a lot of great epic fantasy books. (I have been posting the reviews either her or to my Fantasy Guide website.) Well, at the moment I am re-reading the first book in Terry Goodkinds sword of Truth series Wizard’s First Rule and I have been thoroughly enjoying it.  It’s been many years since I first read it and a lot of the story is again new and fresh to me.

Anyhoo, I am getting into the meat of the story and last night I read a couple more chapters. Funny thing about it is that this morning I open my mailbox to find a couple more promotional pictures from the upcoming Legend of the Seeker show which is based on the Sword of Truth series.

The great thing about one of these pictures is that it looks to me like it depicts a scene that I had passed through last night. It really was kind of cool.  You read a novel and you build all these pictures in your head and voila a picture appears in your mailbox. The universe bends to deliver what you want

I don’t really know if the picture is really of the scene I had just read in the book or not but it looks an awful lot like it. Which tantalizingly leads me to believe the TV show will get a lot of its story and inspiration from the book which would be great because the book is simply fantastic. This is one of the best Epic Fantasy books out there and it kicks off a phenomenal series of books.

One More Little Clue: You can see in the picture that Richard has something hanging around his neck. This thing is very important in the book and it’s good to see him wearing it in the show - it’s another clue that the spirit of the book is maintained in the show.

Okie, heres the picture: It depicts Richard Cypher, Kahlan Amnell, and Chase heading toward what is referred to as “The boundary”. And you can tell by the look on their faces that they are seeing something…. Well, I can only speculate that this is the scene depicted in the picture

The show airs with a 2 hour opening episode on November 1, on ABC and I am really looking forward to it. We don’t get this kind of stuff on one of the big three networks very often. The official Legend of the Seeker Website

ps. Tonight I am going to read a book about winning the lottery. Let’s see what turns up in my mailbox tomorrow!! Lol

Picture Copyright © ABC Studios

I received an email from the prop master for a film currently in production and he had a few questions for me.

 One question I thought I could get some help with is the question of a plastic sword.

The actors in the film have been having trouble with the variety of aluminum, metal, and wooden swords they are using. (He explained a little bit to me about how they use the various swords for different scenes like close ups etc.  It was pretty interesting)

 Anyhoo, he asked if I knew of any quality plastic swords that would look good on film yet still be durable enough for light combat use while not being too bruise inducing.

I don’t have any particular sugggestions for him but I thought some of you might.

 So, just comment if you have any suggestions on swords that look good, are reasonably durable, yet not too bruise inducing! I appreciate the help!

Thanks!