Tag: Puttin’ the Blog in Balrog
-
Like many fantasy fans out there, I was eager to see Peter Jackson’s adaptation of The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkien. I had some misgivings, though, since he had had to condense the weighty Lord of the Rings in many ways to make it fit into three still-epic movies (which I enjoyed), and seemed to be…
-
J.R.R. Tolkien may have created a vast fantasy world in which the footsteps of gods and monsters made its history tremble, but when it came down to the works he is best known for, The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, the choices that carried the most weight were ultimately made by some of…
-
Composer Howard Shore draws from the themes he created for previous films in Peter Jackson’s adaptations of The Lord of the Rings for The Return of the King, and this score caps the trilogy off superbly.
-
The score for The Two Towers, part two of Peter Jackson’s film adaptation of Tolkien’s The Lord of the Rings, accomplishes a difficult task: augmenting the action of the “middle.” There are some lovely swirls as Shore conjures forth themes for the stern but beautiful people of Rohan with help from a Norwegian hardanger.
-
Beginning with a stirring choral piece sung in one of Tolkien’s Elvish languages, Howard Shore immerses the listener in Middle-earth. Rather than composing themes for each of the characters, as per John Williams leitmotifs, Shore adds atmosphere to a story already rich in history. It’s just as well he eschews character-specific creations; at nine members…