There's a fine line between comedy and tragedy.

Actually, I agree that, when I first discovered Nimoy and Shatner's 60s albums in the early 90s, I thought they were unintentionally hilarious. Mind you, I was doing a LOT of drugs back then though.




Oh Lordy! I had no idea.

Surely you must have heard his famous cover of Common People?

Has Been was produced by Ben Folds, who also co-wrote some of the tracks, and performed on a couple. So it's very self aware, but for me anyway, there's some good stuff on it.

I actually like it, and in a non-ironic way. There are some pretty good tracks. And it's not all kitsch. One of them is a very serious spoken word poem about the death of his third wife, whom he found drowned in their pool - called What Have You Done.

I think Together is the best track on it - it directly follows What Have You Done, so it's worth listening to the pair of them back to back (What Have You Done first, then Together). It's hard to take Shatner seriously, because he clearly rarely takes his own work seriously, but he seems pretty sincere on these two tracks and the difference shows.

I also like You'll Have Time from this album, which is more of a fun song.

I might have to get that, depending on how much overlap there is with the illustrations in The Art of the Hobbit and The Art of Tolkien.

Tolkien biopic from Fox Searchlight gets a May 10th 2019 release date.



I had heard this picture was in the works, but hadn't seen mention of it for a while, and wasn't sure if it had gotten stuck indevelopment hell or had even gone into let alone finished production, so I am happy to see it is getting released and this year too.

-M

The sequence from The Fellowship of the Ring in which the four Hobbits enter the Old Forest and meet Tom Bombadil is the part of The Lord of the Rings that is most likely to be left out of adaptations of the book. Ralph Bakshi's 1978 animated movie, the excellent BBC radio dramatisation from 1981, and Peter Jackson's movie trilogy all omitted the scene.

Personally, I can well understand why these adaptations would choose to pass over the Old Forest. After all, it lacks drama and adds little to the overall narrative, while also serving to slow down the pace of the story. I mean, let's face it, once the Hobbits leave the Shire – with the Ringwraiths searching for them – we want them to get to the Prancing Pony in Bree to meet up with Strider as quickly as possible. But having said that, I find the scenes in the Old Forest to be some of the most enchanting in The Fellowship of the Ring.

First, just let me say that I'm a sucker for ancient, enchanted forests in literature...it's why the scenes in Mirkwood are probably my favourite part of The Hobbit. But apart from that, I feel as if the scenes in the Old Forest are largely symbolic and were important to J.R.R. Tolkien for precisely that reason.

For one thing, forests were often used in ancient folkloric tales to represent a journey or transition, and Tolkien would've been well aware of that. So, I think its safe to say (and probably quite obvious to a lot of fans) that, in the context of The Fellowship of the Ring, the Old Forest represents the transition from the peaceful, paradise-like world of Hobbiton and the Shire, into the "real world" of danger and adventure of the wider Middle-earth.

Bombadil himself represents, I think, the triumph of knowledge – specifically knowledge of the natural world – over danger. He functions as an embodiment of nature, knowledge and music (don't forget, he beats the Barrow-wight by basically singing at him!). He shows the Hobbits – and, by proxy, we the readers – that dangers, such as the Barrow-white and Old Man Willow, can be easily defeated if you have knowledge. His wife Goldberry even more explicitly represents nature, I think, with Bombadil perhaps representing knowledge of nature? I dunno, I'm just throwing out half-formed ideas here.

One thing's for sure though, Tom's lighthearted nature stems from his ability to delight in things as they are, without feeling the need to dominate or control them. He even explains to Frodo that he could be free of the One Ring's corruptive influence simply by not being interested in its power. Bombadil is, I think, the author's attempt to show us that we can make our own modern lives better, with little more than child-like optimism, whimsy, and music, if we could but harmonise with the natural world, rather than trying to conquer it. This idea of the "child (or child-like adult) as savant" was a favourite notion of the Hippies back in the '60s, and since Tom fits in so well with that concept, perhaps he's an example of why the LOTRs resonated with the '60s counter-culture so much?

As for the Old Forest, it's an enchanted and fairy tale-like realm, with the childlike and whimsical Bombadil being arguably the most fairy tale-like thing in it. The prose too has a noticeably more poetic quality in this section of the book, which Tolkien no doubt deliberately employed to enhance the location's mystical, dream-like qualities.

Additionally, the Old Forest is the first in a series of examples in LOTRs of Tolkien's love and protective empathy towards trees and the natural world. For example, the march of the Ents and their attack or Isengard in The Two Towers can clearly be seen as the author's reminder to the reader that if you f**k with the environment, there will be consequences! The Old Forest is the first example in the LOTRs of Tolkien expressing his love for the ancient English countryside.

But the important thing is that once the Hobbits pass through the Old Forest and beyond the Barrow Downs, they are in the real world for the first time and there are very real dangers to face there. Frodo and Co. aren't in the Edenic Shire or the fairy tale-like Old Forest anymore: this is the real world where people can kill you and simply singing at them won't stop that.

Summing up, I don't consider the Old Forest and the Hobbits' meeting with Tom Bombadil to be essential parts of the book, by any means, but they are definitely entertaining and thought-provoking. Bombadil is an ambiguous creation. Exactly what or who he is is left largely unexplained in the book's text, leaving it to the reader to form their own opinion. Old Tom is a mystery without an answer, and I like that about him.

I think it's interesting that, even though Peter Jackson omitted the Old Forest from his film trilogy, he still kinda gave a nod to it by transplanting the scene where Old Man Willow swallows Merry and Pippin into his trunk to a later point in the story, on the floor of Fangorn forest in The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers. In that instance, the Hobbits are rescued by Treebeard, rather than Tom Bombadil, but since, as you say, the two characters aren't so different, the scene still works in a similar fashion.

I bet that Jackson is a fan of Tom Bombadil and the Old Forest, even though he realised that, from a film making perspective, those scenes had to go.




The Treebeard/Bombadil similarities you suggest are well founded I think and, yeah, the "nobel savage" Ghan is kind of cut from similar cloth, I guess.

Beorn is interesting though because, where as Treebeard and Bombadil are closely associated with the flora of the natural world, Beorn is more orientated towards the fauna. Beorn is a puzzling character, actually. I mean, he's essentially a were-bear isn't he? That's how I've always thought of him. But if we agree that he is a representation of the wild animal kingdom, then Beon represents the unpredictable, "red in tooth and claw" nature of the natural world, whereas Treebeard and Bombadil advocate a kind of peaceful harmony with nature.

I mean, Beorn's clearly on Bilbo and the Dwarves' side, but even so, he's still of some danger to them. Gandalf tells his companions not to go outside after dark, while they are staying at Beorn's house. The implication is that Beorn is somewhat "untamed" and might not always be as friendly towards Bilbo and the Dwarves as he was when in human form.

The other thing worth noting is that despite being a vicious and ruthless enemy (he goes out and kills Goblins and Wargs during the night, while Bilbo and company sleep), Beorn is actually a vegetarian. He rears and keeps horses, cows and sheep on his land, but he doesn't eat them. That's a strange dietary trait for a character who we might think of as a representation of the untamed animal kingdom. Perhaps this was Tolkien's way of showing that Beorn too was in peaceful harmony with his particular branch of the natural world; i.e. the fauna.