Aia María
quanta Eruanno
i Héru as elye ·
aistana elye imíca nísi ·
ar aistana i yáve mónalyo Yésus :
Aire María Eruo ontaril
á hyame rámen úcarindor
sí ar lúmesse ya firuvamme :
násie :
The Hail Mary in Quenya (High Elven)
-JRR Tolkien
The fourteenth of the New Year, or if you like, the eighth day of April in the Shire reckoning. But in Gondor the New Year will always now begin on the twenty-fifth of March when Sauron fell, and when you were brought out of the fire to the King.
Gandalph to Frodo and Sam, Return of the King
Happy New Year!
(NB: As Tolkien well knew, 25 March — Lady Day — was also New Year’s Day in medieval England and early modern England, remaining so until the Brits adopted the Gregorian Calendar in 1752.)
Quite right Jay, something I wish all historians would recall.
The Day the Ring was destroyed was a great day in literature.
To those who are far more knowledgeable on Tolkien’s Trilogy, did Peter Jackson’s film trilogy do it justice? I read the Tolkien books in high school, but that was a hundred years ago.
Yesterday our parish started it’s 24 hour for the Lord at 4pm.
Priests from around the diocese man the confessional for 24 hours while Our Lord is adored in our main chapel. Last night I prayed in the new year before Our Great King. Thanking Him for creating an unequaled masterpiece. Our Immaculata.
Yes. The ring is destroyed! Long live the King! Viva Christo Rey.
Sean, one man’s opinion only, but overall I was pleased enough with the film trilogy to have watched it all the way through on successive evenings several times since the DVD set was released. Certainly there were many details one could quibble about, since everyone has his own imagination of those details from reading the books, but Jackson’s vision was true to the author’s work in most of the major respects. He manages to portray the main characters very well, I thought, especially the hobbits and the members of the Fellowship, and both Theoden and Eowyn of Rohan. The charge of the Rohirrim in the battle before the gates of Minas Tirith ranks as one of my favorite battle scenes of all time. The two key parts of the story which he wholly or mostly ignored were the encounter with Tom Bombadil early on, and the Scouring of the Shire at the end, but the rest was good enough that I didn’t really mind their absence too much.
I would suggest that you re-read the Hobbit and the trilogy, and then go watch the LOTR films.
You didn’t ask about Jackson’s production of The Hobbit, but I’ll opine anyway: it was well produced and generally well acted, and fun, but it only generally resembles the book, which is really very short, and it was overkill to stretch it into three long films. It is mostly Peter Jackson’s story, not Tolkien’s.
Sean, my opinion only. To a point they did. But Jackson was at his best when he took Tolkien at his word and applied it to film. When he tried to rewrite Tolkien, however, that’s when he missed more often than hit. Plus, Jackson’s evolving tendency to over direct made the third film far more miss than hit than the previous two. It also showed, more than the others, where Jackson might get some of the basics, but miss the depth.
Plus, Jackson’s evolving tendency to over direct made the third film far more miss than hit than the previous two.
Oh yeah. Who can forget the endless endings of the third film? No one apparently had the nerve to tell him that this was beyond odd.