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Thursday, Nov 26, 2009
Our recommended books on all things Tolkienian for the Middle Earthlings on your holiday list.
Dec 19, 2002 | Your quest may not be as harrowing as the one attempted by Frodo Baggins, but that doesn't make it easy: Find a gift for the "Lord of the Rings" fan who's already got the novel and the extended edition DVD of "The Fellowship of the Ring" and heaven knows what else. Please, we beg of you, don't allow yourself to be tempted into the hideous netherworld of collectible figurines. There is still hope, as Liv Tyler's Arwen Evenstar is wont to say. A booming publishing industry has sprung up around J.R.R. Tolkien's epic fantasy novel and now Peter Jackson's film adaptation of the book, and there are enough ancillary volumes to warm the heart of Frodo's bookish uncle, Bilbo.
The first two films in Jackson's trilogy have introduced millions of people to Middle Earth, even if not all of them are ready or eager to delve into Tolkien's books. For those most interested in the cinematic incarnation of "The Lord of the Rings," there are two new photo-laden volumes. The first, "The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers Visual Companion," is more or less a high-end program for the second film. (A "visual companion" to the film of "The Fellowship of the Ring" came out last year.) It's a nice-enough guide to the various characters and events in the movie and, until the "Two Towers" DVD comes out, it'll give fans a chance to take a prolonged look at some of the film's images. (Plus, for those who noticed that a key element of the Battle of Helm's Deep is missing from the film, there's a hint that the extended DVD version may include it after all. Hooray!)
"The Lord of the Rings: The Making of the Movie Trilogy," by Brian Sibley, is the book equivalent of those "making of" documentaries crammed into the DVDs. It describes in even greater detail how various effects were achieved, sets built and costumes created, and it features profiles of behind-the-scenes designers and technicians. This one is decidedly for the "How did they do that?" crowd, so be careful: Those who prefer to preserve the illusion of reality the films so artfully spin may not appreciate a glimpse of the mechanics behind the magic.
Less wonkish is "The Lord of the Rings: The Art of 'The Fellowship of the Ring,'" by Gary Russell -- an album of paintings and drawings, mostly by Alan Lee and John Howe, two illustrators who'd made careers out of visualizing Tolkien's fiction before the films were a glimmer in Peter Jackson's eye. In fact, Howe and Lee had a profound influence on how the "Lord of the Rings" films look, since Jackson often demanded that their old illustrations be replicated as closely as possible on-screen, and both men served as conceptual designers on the project. (This book also shows early sketches of things like the title sequence and Legolas' clothing, versions that were later abandoned.) The work of other artists is included here as well, and the book is feast for those who, like me, are intrigued by the smaller design elements you barely catch on-screen (those Elven insignia would make great tiles, by the way). Daniel Falconer's costume illustrations are particularly elegant, but there are lots of monster drawings too.
However, Middle Earth was born via the written word (literally, since it was created to serve as a home for Tolkien's invented languages), and that's still the best way to visit it. The good professor's first novelistic foray into that realm was "The Hobbit," much more a children's book than "The Lord of the Rings" but still a delight. "The Hobbit" has just been republished in a revised annotated edition with notes by Douglas Anderson. "The Annotated Hobbit" first came out in 1988, but this new version takes advantage of the reams of secondary material made available in the last 14 years. The detailed notes on various revisions Tolkien made to the text are probably more exhaustive than most readers desire, but the annotations make a rich side dish nonetheless, teeming with trivia about the sources of dwarf names and echoes of the ancient and medieval texts that inspired Tolkien (such as roots of the name "The Misty Mountains" in the Old Norse epic "The Elder Edda"). Plus, this book includes dozens of illustrations of Bilbo's adventures created by many artists over the years; I'm partial to Tolkien's own, which, though a bit weak when it comes to figures, show a pleasingly tensile sense of composition when he's depicting landscapes.
