Tag: bilbo

  • Regendering bedtime stories

    Regendering bedtime stories

    When Michelle Nijhuis reads The Hobbit aloud to her five-year-old daughter, she doesn’t quite recite Tolkien’s original prose. There’s one major change: Bilbo is a girl-hobbit. As she explains at Slate: You know what? The switch was easy. Bilbo, it turns out, makes a terrific heroine. She’s tough, resourceful, humble, funny, and uses her wits…

  • Bilbo > Frodo.

    Bilbo > Frodo.

    I’ve always preferred The Hobbit to The Lord of the Rings. The first book may be silly, but it’s fun. It doesn’t demand a fortnight to read. It doesn’t get bogged down in faux-history. Most importantly, The Hobbit boasts a more interesting main character. Yes, Bilbo is ridiculous and stuck-up and pretentious. But he’s also…

  • Extra Elrond

    Extra Elrond

    As he did with his Lord of the Rings films, Peter Jackson will soon release an extended edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. The box set will include “making of” extras, along with a longer cut of the film itself. This past summer, a single scene from the extended version was released to the…

  • Not quite convinced

    Not quite convinced

    For decades, J.R.R. Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings trilogy was considered “unfilmable.” The Professor himself doubted that any director could successfully adapt the work. Chief among the challenges? Middle-Earth’s major races come in all shapes and sizes. Men and elves wouldn’t pose a problem, but how could an actor play a four-foot-tall hobbit? Or a…

  • Ian Holm as Bilbo through the years

    I was thrilled when I learned that Ian Holm would reprise his role as Bilbo for the upcoming adaptation of The Hobbit. Holm’s quirky, temperamental portrayal in Lord of the Rings was uncannily spot-on.