Middle Earth Interactive on Google Chrome

Previous Related Post:
Book-Based Holiday Movies: Catching Fire, Saving Mr. Banks, and Desolation of Smaug

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

This looks like so much fun for Fans of the Hobbit - a journey through Middle Earth.



From Mashable

Fans have read about Middle Earth in J.R.R. Tolkien's novels and they've seen it in in the subsequent films directed by Peter Jackson, but now they can fly above the elf city of Rivendell or sneak through the dark Trollshaws, all with the tap of the keyboard's direction keys or the swipe of a finger across a smartphone.
Users have a choice of a few areas of exploration, all of which appear in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which came out last year, and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, which will hit theaters on Dec. 13. You can use your laptop, tablet, phone and anything else that supports chrome to fly over the whole fictional land, but you can currently only walk around the Trollshaws, Rivendell and the haunted fortress of Dol Guldur. Players must watch their step, as the eerie music that accompanies the video-game like experience foreshadows demons that can attack from nowhere to drag you away.

From The Hobbit Blog

The online experience takes fans through an adventure that unfolds across an interactive map of Middle-earth. Users can zoom in to explore Trollshaw Forest, Rivendell and Dol Guldur, with new locations set to be added in the weeks ahead. Each destination on the map gives the visitor access to its history and the characters who inhabit it, or presents unique survival challenges in which fans can test their wits.
“Journey Through Middle-earth” is the first Chrome Experiment designed to bring a full 3D experience to mobile, with technology support for WebGL in Chrome for Android on devices with high-end graphics cards. Although WebGL isn’t supported on iOS, Chrome users can still experience most of “Journey Through Middle-earth” on their iPhones and iPads.

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.

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.

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