Book-Based Holiday Movies ~ Catching Fire, Saving Mr. Banks, and The Desolation of Smaug

Wow, for book-lovers this Christmas has a wealth of great movies! Publishers are capitalizing on the publicity with new editions, so read the books first and then go to the movies!



From Publishers Weekly

Fans – and box-office bean-counters – are gearing up for the November 22 release of The Hunger Games: Catching Fire. The Lionsgate film, based on the second book in Suzanne Collins’s blockbuster young adult series, marks the return of the love triangle comprising Katniss (Jennifer Lawrence), Peeta (Josh Hutcherson), and Gale (Liam Hemsworth). Following their unprecedented triumph in the games, Katniss and Peeta are targeted by the Capitol and forced to compete once more, this time in the 25-year anniversary games known as the Quarter Quell. Additions to the cast include Philip Seymour Hoffman as head gamemaker Plutarch Heavensbee, and Sam Claflin, who plays tribute Finnick Odair, an ally to Katniss and Peeta.
. . . Off screen and on the page, the reach of the Hunger Games series remains formidable. Scholastic is greeting the forthcoming cinematic release with a tie-in edition of the novel featuring cover art from the film, an illustrated movie companion, as well as a boxed set containing paperback editions of the entire series. According to Scholastic, there are more than 65 million copies of the original three books in the Hunger Games trilogy in print and digital formats in the U.S.: more than 28 million copies of The Hunger Games, more than 19 million copies of Catching Fire, and more than 18 million copies of Mockingjay. Scholastic’s Hunger Games Facebook page has upwards of 4.8 million fans.

From Variety

There wasn’t anything as sweet as a spoonful of sugar behind the scenes of “Mary Poppins,” and it’s this little-known backstory that provides the spine for “Saving Mr. Banks,” which bows in limited release Dec. 13.
In the movie, (author P.L.) Travers battles Walt Disney after learning he wants to seize the rights to the book, her most prized creation. Even when she reluctantly agrees to leave London to spend two weeks in creative meetings at the Disney lot in Burbank, she lectures the crew and threatens not to sign the contract every time she doesn’t get her way.
Director John Lee Hancock (“The Blind Side”) says (Emma) Thompson told him early on that Travers was the most difficult character she had ever played. “At every turn, she’s different than you think she’s going to be,” Hancock says. “At one point, she seems old and brittle, and at another point, she seems sensual.”
. . . “Saving Mr. Banks” is garnering Thompson Oscar buzz for the first time in almost 20 years. “I’m praying that she gets nominated, for selfish reasons, because I’d love to play with her in the audience,” says her friend (and Oscar host) Ellen DeGeneres, who in 1997 featured Thompson in an episode of her former sitcom. “She deserves to be nominated, because she’s so brilliant. How often does a role come up to play a 54-year-old woman like that?”
Thompson recalls being around 7 when she first saw “Mary Poppins,” but has no memory of the actual theatrical experience. She just remembers how she felt. “I was profoundly moved by the songs,” the actress says. “ ‘Feed the Birds’ made me infinitely sad and melancholy as a child. ‘Let’s Go Fly a Kite’ made me cry

From LA Times Hero Complex

“The Desolation of Smaug” is Part 2 in Jackson’s new Tolkien trilogy, and the film picks up where last year’s box-office hit “The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” left off, with hobbit Bilbo (Martin Freeman), wizard Gandalf (Ian McKellen) and Thorin’s company continuing on their quest to help the dwarfs reclaim the treasure buried under the Lonely Mountain.
Like its predecessor, “The Desolation of Smaug” was shot in 3-D at 48 frames per second and will be released in 2-D, High Frame Rate 3-D, other 3-D formats and IMAX.

Eat Like a Hobbit with Denny's Second Breakfast

For those of you who have seen "The Hobbit" several times and still crave more essence of Middle Earth, Denny's Restaurant chain has a new menu that allows you to raid Bilbo's pantry like the Dwarves in the movie.

from Huffington Post

For the record, that includes the Hobbit Hole Breakfast, Shire Sausage Skillet, Frodo’s Pot Roast Skillet, The Ring Burger, Gandalf’s Gobble Melt, Dwarves’ Turkey & Dressing Dinner, Lonely Mountain Treasure, Radagast’s Red Velvet Pancake Puppies, Bilbo’s Berry Smoothie and Lone-Lands Campfire Cookie Milk Shake.

Gandalf and Radagast Enjoy Second Breakfast


The ever-amusing Stephen Colbert of Comedy Central has tried the menu and reviewed this during his "Hobbit Week": "Eat like a Hobbit because at Denny's you can't eat like a human." LOL

The Colbert Report
Get More: Colbert Report Full Episodes,Political Humor & Satire Blog,Video Archive

Happy Hobbit Day! Celebrating 75 Years in the Shire

~ In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. Not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or to eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

Telegraph UK: The Hobbit Turns 75

The American Tolkien Society first proclaimed Hobbit Day in 1978, where celebrations including Hobbit feasts and parties will take place among fans of the children's books.

September 22 is also the birthday of Frodo Baggins, the main character in The Lord of The Rings played by Elijah Wood in the film franchise.

Bilbo and Frodo were both said to be born on the same day of different years, Bilbo in the year 2890 and Frodo in the year of 2968 in the books' 'Third Age'.

~ "Never laugh at live dragons, Bilbo you fool!" he said to himself, and it became a favorite saying of his later, and passed into a proverb.


From ABC News

J.R.R Tolkien, was a British World War I veteran who became a professor at Oxford’s Pembroke College. The book was published in 1937, receiving much praise and selling out in months. It would continue selling until the outbreak of World War II, when paper rationing limited printing until 1949.

However, when Tolkien wrote first wrote the Hobbit, it was never meant it for the public’s eyes. “The Hobbit was a children’s book. It was written in the first instance for his three sons,” Hammond told ABC News. “It was not written originally for publication.”

The book’s popularity, and that of its sequel, “The Lord of Rings,” has not faded over the last 75 years. “The Hobbit” has been translated into over 40 languages, gone through numerous re-printings, and spawned several film adaptations, most recently Peter Jackson’s. The Jackson film, a follow-up to his widely successful “Lord of the Rings” adaptations, is due to be released in three parts, the first of which is slated to come out in November.

~ As all things come to an end, even this story, a day came at last when they were in sight of the country where Bilbo had been born and bred, where the shapes of the land and of the trees were as well known to him as his hands and toes.

From Collider Movie News

A new trailer for director Peter Jackson‘s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey has been released. This trailer shines an interesting light on the conundrum of the The Hobbit. It has to look even bigger than what came before, but what came before what a quest to save the entire world. The new trailer breaks down the plot, which is about the dwarfs reclaiming their homeland. So the stakes are smaller, but the adventure is somehow bigger. Putting that conflict aside, the trailer still makes the movie look like a fun time, and perhaps the best thing about The Hobbit is that we’ll get to return to Middle-Earth.

. . . The film stars Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, James Nesbitt, Stephen Hunter, Mark Hadlow, Graham McTavish, Dean Ogorman, Peter Hambleton, Aidan Turner, Jed Brophy, John Callen, Adam Brown, Ken Stott, William Kircher, Andy Serkis, and Richard Armitage. The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens in 3D on December 14th.

Poetry Passion: September Memories

Autumn Day

Lord, it is time. The summer was too long.
Lay your shadow on the sundials now,
and through the meadow let the winds throng.

Ask the last fruits to ripen on the vine;
give them further two more summer days
to bring about perfection and to raise
the final sweetness in the heavy wine.

Whoever has no house now will establish none,
whoever lives alone now will live on long alone,
will waken, read, and write long letters,
wander up and down the barren paths
the parks expose when the leaves are blown.

~ Ranier Maria Rilke
Translated by William Gass
 

Exuent

Piecemeal the summer dies;
At the field's edge a daisy lives alone;
A last shawl of burning lies
On a gray field-stone.

All cries are thin and terse;
The field has droned the summer's final mass;
A cricket like a dwindled hearse
Crawls from the dry grass.

~ Richard Wilbur


Pickthorn Manor: 43

Daily they met. And gravely walked and talked.
He read her no more verses, and he stayed
Only until their conversation, balked
Of every natural channel, fled dismayed.
Again the next day she would meet him, trying
To give her tone some healthy sprightliness,
But his uneager dignity soon chilled
Her well-prepared address.
Thus Summer waned, and in the mornings, crying
Of wild geese startled Eunice, and their flying
Whirred overhead for days and never stilled.

~ Amy Lowell


Crystal Moment

Once or twice this side of death
Things can make one hold his breath.

From my boyhood I remember
A crystal moment of September.

A wooded island rang with sounds
Of church bells in the throats of hounds.

A buck leaped out and took the tide
With jewels flowing past each side.

With his head high like a tree
He swam within a yard of me.

I saw the golden drop of light
In his eyes turned dark with fright.

I saw the forest's holiness
On him like a fierce caress.

Fear made him lovely past belief,
My heart was trembling like a leaf.

He leans towards the land and life
With need above him like a knife.

In his wake the hot hounds churned
They stretched their muzzles out and yearned.

They bayed no more, but swam and throbbed
Hunger drove them till they sobbed.

Pursued, pursuers reached the shore
And vanished. I saw nothing more.

So they passed, a pageant such
As only gods could witness much,

Life and death upon one tether
And running beautiful together.

~ Robert Peter Tristram Coffin


Roads Go Ever On 

Roads go ever ever on,
Over rock and under tree,
By caves where never sun has shone,
By streams that never find the sea;
Over snow by winter sown,
And through the merry flowers of June,
Over grass and over stone,
And under mountains in the moon.

Roads go ever ever on,
Under cloud and under star.
Yet feet that wandering have gone
Turn at last to home afar.
Eyes that fire and sword have seen,
And horror in the halls of stone
Look at last on meadows green,
And trees and hills they long have known.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with eager feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.

The Road goes ever on and on
Down from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone,
And I must follow, if I can,
Pursuing it with weary feet,
Until it joins some larger way,
Where many paths and errands meet.
And whither then? I cannot say.

The Road goes ever on and on
Out from the door where it began.
Now far ahead the Road has gone.
Let others follow, if they can!
Let them a journety new begin.
But I at last with weary feet
Will turn towards the lighted inn,
My evening-rest and sleep to meet.

Still 'round the corner there may wait
A new road or secret gate;
And though I oft have passed them by,
A day will come at last when I
Shall take the hidden paths that run
West of the Moon, East of the Sun.


~ J. R. R. Tolkien

The Hobbit Trilogy According to Peter Jackson

Director Peter Jackson announced yesterday that his film version of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit will be made into three movies instead of two. He seems to imply that the screenwriters will stretch-out the backstories of the main characters using material from The Simarillion. Needless to say, the idea of three movies squeezed from one book is rather controversial among fans, who see it as exploitation of Middle Earth's popularity, and at worst, price-gouging.

MTV ~ Are Three Movies Necessary?
Salon: Terrible Idea or Geek Opium?
Washington Post: The Internet Rejoices

From Peter Jackson Via E!Online

"It is only at the end of a shoot that you finally get the chance to sit down and have a look at the film you have made," the Oscar-winning filmmaker wrote on his Facebook page this morning. "Recently [collaborators] Fran [Walsh], Phil [co-screenwriter Philippa Boyens] and I did just this when we watched for the first time an early cut of the first movie—and a large chunk of the second."

Jackson continued: "We were really pleased with the way the story was coming together, in particular, the strength of the characters and the cast who have brought them to life. All of which gave rise to a simple question: Do we take this chance to tell more of the tale? And the answer from our perspective as the filmmakers, and as fans, was an unreserved ‘yes.'"

. . ."We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance. The richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth."

Get More: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellen, Evangeline Lilly, Orlando Bloom, Cate Blanchett, Elijah Wood, Movie Trailers, Movies Blog

Bookish Pics ~ Books in Movies

Some of my favorite book scenes in movies! Above is Severus Snape's (Alan Rickman) Beautiful Library at Spinner's End. From the movie Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince


Meg Ryan as Children's Bookstore Proprietress Kathleen Kelly
in You've Got Mail (with Parker Posey)




The hidden tower library in Name of the Rose


Chatsworth House Library Used as Set
For Mr. Darcy's Pemberly in Pride and Prejudice (1995)
(from sammel on Flickr)

Marian the Librarian (Shirley Jones)
Dancing in the River City Library
In The Music Man


Gandalf Researching the Ring of Power
at the Minas Tirith Library
In The Fellowship of the Ring

Tolkien and Dickens ~ Fantasy Meets Reality?

The BBC reports:

Poet Michael Tolkien, the eldest grandson of the The Hobbit author, will write two novels based on stories his grandfather read to him as a child.

Gerald Dickens, the great-great grandson of Charles, will narrate the audiobook versions. Both works are due to be released later this year.

Publisher Thames River Press said the first book, Wish, was inspired by Florence Bone's 1923 story, The Rose-Coloured Wish....The second book, Rainbow, is based on Bone's 1910 novel, The Other Side of the Rainbow.