journey
Movie Monday: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey 2012
Ten years ago, today, the movie The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey premiered in Wellington, New Zealand (its very first premiere before wide release). Directed by Peter Jackson, the screenplay was written by Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, Guillermo del Toro & Jackson. J.R.R. Tolkien, of course, is the original writing master. The cast list is extensive (lots of dwarves). Main characters are Young Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman), Old Bilbo Baggins (Ian Holm), Gandalf the Grey (Ian McKellen), Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage), Saruman the White (Christopher Lee), Frodo Baggins (Elijah Wood), Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), Elrond (Hugo Weaving), Radagast the Brown (Sylvester McCoy), Gollum (Andy Serkis) and Smaug the Dragon (Benedict Cumberbatch).
Bilbo Baggins is swept into a quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor from the fearsome dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakenshield. Their journey will take them into the wild, through treacherous lands, swarming with Goblins, Orcs, deadly Wargs, giant spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers. Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain, first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever…Gollum. Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths of guile and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum’s “precious” ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities…a simple gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-Earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.
IMDb Storyline
Trivia Bits:
♦ Asked how many wizards there are, Gandalf says there are five, naming Saruman, Radagast and himself, then saying [that] he can’t remember the names of the other two, merely saying, “the two blues.” Their names, Alatar and Pallando, appear in the book Unfinished Tales, a collection of J.R.R. Tolkien ideas, and half-manuscripts, edited into book form by his son Christopher Tolkien. The filmmakers didn’t have rights to use material from that book, so the two blue wizards remain unnamed in this movie.
♦ The production team returned to the same shooting location for Hobbiton as they used in The Lord of the Rings trilogy. The land is part of a farm, which the owners allowed to be transformed into the Hobbiton set by The Lord of the Rings production crew in the late 1990s. After filming wrapped on the first trilogy, the farm’s owners turned the land into a Tolkien tourism spot, offering guided tours of the Hobbiton set. With the crew from The Hobbit trilogy making improvements and additions to the aging Hobbiton set, the farm owners were happy to temporarily close down their tourism business, so filming could take place there again.
♦ Sir Ian Holm and Sir Christopher Lee filmed their scenes at London’s Pinewood Studios because health concerns left them uncomfortable with flying to New Zealand.
Four years ago, when I started blogging, again, I covered the second movie. ~Vic
Announcement Trailer
Official Trailer Two
Scoop Saturday: Family of Ducks
It’s not unusual for a mother with kids in tow to take a stroll through the library. Many bookworms fondly remember such childhood visits [but], it is unusual when that mother is a duck and she has five ducklings all following in a row as they march through a British university library. Employees at the University of Nottingham’s George Green Library were treated to just that sight recently after open doors let in more than a cool breeze. “It had been very hot that week, so we had left our doors open for some extra air movement,” Emma Halford-Busby said, according to Good News Network. Apparently, the duck walked in with her brood and they took a tour, “…walked around our atrium for a while, mom in front and ducklings in a line behind. Mom was totally calm and unflustered.”
A worker gently herded them toward the door and they marched back out again. “As they walked towards our other entrance, one of our staff gently ushered them through the gates and back outside,” Halford-Busby said. “You often come across ducks in seemingly odd places around campus but, that was definitely the oddest place I’ve seen them,” Stuart Warren, the senior library adviser, told BBC. Halford-Busby added that the cute sighting “did bring some excitement into an otherwise peaceful evening.”
It’s not just ducks across the pond who are part of this phenomenon, either. Gary Allen High School in Ontario, Canada, has a long-standing tradition with a local duck who takes an annual tour through the school buildings to get to a creek. “At least once a year, a mother and her brood of ducklings make their way from her nesting grounds, through a high school, to a nearby creek,” CBC posted on Facebook in 2019. “Staff have helped guide the family on their journey for the last 10 years.”
Additional:
Adorable Baby Ducklings Ushered Outside After Waddling Into Library (Western Journal/Amanda Thomason/09-14-2021)
Family of Ducks Waddles Through University of Nottingham Library (BBC East Midlands/09-01-2021)
Adorable Footage Shows Family of Ducks Being Ushered Out of Library (Good News Network/09-07-2021)
Hans 2021 Movie Draft: Round Twelve-Pick Four-Tron 1982
Hanspostcard has a movie draft challenge. This is my Round Twelve and final pick. Thanks for the invitation, Hans!
Category: Sci-Fi/Fantasy
Film: Tron
This has been my worst category as I love science fiction anything. I have struggled over these past six months trying to pick just one. My choice would change, daily. I finally settled on one that is part of my teen years and became a cultural cult classic. I still have the sticker that I got when I went to see this at the theater in 1982. Like The Breakfast Club, this movie means something to me. Released the summer before my junior year, this movie got me interested in computers and graphics. There is also the memory of a scene I saw in the original release at the theater, that disappeared in subsequent showings on HBO, TV and the VHS tapes, and made me crazy:
The 20th Anniversary DVD edition includes a deleted love scene: Tron and Yori go to her apartment, where she pushes a button on the wall. [T]he walls [disappear] and her uniform changes into a different costume. Also included are a partially completed “morning after” scene…(all dialog tracks for this short scene are lost).
All the data on the Internet states that the scene was removed from the final cut. I beg to differ. I distinctly remember seeing them go to her “apartment.” That being said, what I remember from the scene is a little different from the “official deleted scene” (she glowed, her hair was blowing around and her helmet floated off her head). I think a shortened version of that scene was released to theaters and when the movie was released to HBO & VHS tapes, they wiped all of it out. This is a very clear memory. The prologue to the movie, when released to theaters, was also removed. The “original” opening monologue (that I’ve never heard) was restored in the 20th Anniversary DVD. ~Vic
Directed by Steve Lisberger, the screenplay was written by Charles S. Haas & Lisberger, adapted from the original story by Bonnie MacBird (whom is married to DARPA-connected computer scientist Alan Kay). Produced by Donald Kushner, it starred Jeff Bridges, Bruce Boxleitner, David Warner, Cindy Morgan, Barnard Hughes, Dan Shor and Peter Jurasik and, was released July 9.
Kevin Flynn is a software engineer and an ex-employee at ENCOM. He runs a video arcade and tries to hack into ENCOM’s mainframe, looking for proof that his video games were plagiarized. The Master Control Program stops him. Programmer Alan Bradley and engineer Dr. Lora Baines, his girlfriend, discover that they have lost access to their projects. When Alan questions Senior Exec. VP Ed Dillinger about the restriction, Dillinger states that extra security is needed to stop outside hacking. When Alan leaves, Dillinger asks the MCP about the issues and realizes that the MCP has become a power-hungry virtual intelligence. Dillinger is blackmailed into complying with the MCP’s wishes due to his theft of Flynn’s material. Alan, Lora & Flynn break into ENCOM and Flynn winds up digitized inside the mainframe when the MCP uses an experimental laser to dissect him. Flynn must navigate his way around a strange digital landscape where all the programs resemble the users that created them and find his way back out.
(high school classmate).
Trivia Bits:
♦ [T]he Motion Picture Academy refused to nominate Tron for a special-effects award because, as director Steven Lisberger put it, “The Academy thought we cheated by using computers”.
♦ Originally MacBird envisioned Flynn more comedically, suggesting the then-30-year-old Robin Williams for the role.
♦ Bruce Boxleitner and Peter Jurasik would later work together on Babylon 5.
♦ Nine script revisions caused bitter credit disputes.
♦ Though it made $50 million from a $17 million budget and had $70 million in merchandise sales, it was considered a financial failure.
♦ The ENCOM laser bay was real. It was actually the target bay for the twenty-beam SHIVA solid-state laser facility at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory
♦ The soundtrack was primarily composed by Wendy Carlos with two additional tracks provided by Journey after Supertramp had to leave the project.
Additional Reading:
Bruce & Cindy Discuss Deleted Scenes (Beyond The Marquee/12-24-2013)
Tron Then and Now (Digital Content Producer/Archive/07-07-2012)
Deleted Love Scene (Fandom Wiki)
Tron 30th Anniversary Screening Review (Nuke The Fridge/10-30-2012)
Tron’s 20th Anniversary (SFGate/01-09-2002)
End of line…
Opening Scene (Missing Prologue)
Officially Deleted Scene
Bruce Boxleitner & Cindy Morgan @ California Convention
(helmets coming off mentioned) 11-16-2013
Song Sunday: Keep On Runnin’ (Journey)
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“Oh, it’s Friday night. Let’s run tonight, ’til the morning light…”
Returning to my Samsung playlist, this Sunday’s submission is Keep On Runnin’ by American rock band Journey, formed in San Francisco in 1973 out of former members of Santana and Frumious Bandersnatch. The fourth track from the album Escape (released in July 1981), it was co-written by Jonathan Cain, Steve Perry and Neal Schon and, was never released as a single, though the album, itself, reached #1 on the Billboard 200 on September 12, 1981. The song does show up in the Journey video game from Bally Midway, that came out in March of 1983, with this tagline (one of three):
“The hottest band in the country is about to take over the planet!”
The album got its own Atari 2600 video game in 1982. This album, and Frontiers after it, is a musical tapestry to my high school years.
July 2006
Co-Headliner Def Leppard
I got to see the band in concert, twice, in Texas and was lucky enough to get to meet them. This is the tour where Journey dropped Steve Augeri and picked up Jeff Scott Soto for a year. Neither could match Perry but, Augeri was close.
I’m on the far left next to Jonathan Cain. My buddy Monica is in between Cain & Neal Schon. My buddy Amy is in between Deen Castronovo & Ross Valory.
It’s a shame the members are embroiled in a lawsuit. ~Vic
Scoop Saturday: Homeward Bound Movie Becomes Reality
Photo Credit: KMBC-TV & AP News
A dog from Olathe, that went missing, showed up at her old home about 60 miles away […].
“Where did the dog come from?” said [Colton Michael’s wife].
The 4-year-old Labrador, named Cleo, feels right at home on the front porch. The only thing is, it’s not her front porch, anymore and hasn’t been for nearly two years. As it turns out, Cleo’s owners had posted on Facebook a week earlier about the missing dog. They couldn’t believe it when Michael called and said Cleo had walked home. “It’s the most bizarre story. Really, she’s everything to us and to my mother,” said Drew, Cleo’s owner. It is 57 miles door-to-door from Olathe to Lawson and neither family knows exactly how Cleo made the trip. “That’s a hike for anybody,” Michael said. “Now that we know who she belongs to, if she pops up again, we know who to call.”
Both said they may never know anything about her journey.
Alan Shope
KMBC-TV
July 16, 2020
A dog named Cleo, who disappeared from her home in Kansas earlier this month, turned up a few days later at her old home in Missouri […]. Colton Michael told television station KMBC that the 4-year-old Labrador [R]etriever-[Border Collie] mix showed up on the front porch of his family’s home in Lawson […]. “At first, she wouldn’t let anyone get near her,” said Michael, who has lived in the home for nearly two years. “She finds her way home and there’s some strangers living in it. That would be scary for anybody,” he said. Eventually, he was able to gain Cleo’s trust and to get her checked for a microchip, which showed that she belonged to the former owners of his house.
AP News
July 18, 2020
It’s a tale as old as time for any early ’90s child. An adventurous golden retriever worries that they will never see their home again, embarking on a treacherous wilderness journey to find their way back. Believe It or Not!, the plot of Homeward Bound: The Incredible Journey just turned from fiction to fact. [Both] parties are at a loss trying to explain Cleo’s long journey. [She] would have had to cross a river to make it back…just like in the movie!
National Postal Worker Day & U.S. Postage Stamp Day
The 1st of July is a very busy day of celebration for the nation, leading up to Independence Day. It’s National Postal Worker Day, established in 1997 by a Seattle area carrier. I have two high school classmates that are postmen. They both really enjoy it. It can be a tough job, though.
If you are thinking “Neither rain nor sleet nor snow…” or something along those lines, the U.S. Post Office doesn’t have an “official” motto, really. There seems to be a bit of confusion from a modified translation of Herodotus’ quote regarding the courier service of the Persian Empire:
There is nothing in the world which travels faster than the Persian couriers. The whole idea is a Persian invention, and works like this: riders are stationed along the road, equal in number to the number of days the journey takes – a man and a horse for each day. Nothing stops these couriers from covering their allotted stage in the quickest possible time – neither snow, rain, heat, nor darkness. The first, at the end of his stage, passes the dispatch to the second, the second to the third, and so on along the line, as in the Greek torch-race which is held in honour of Hephaestus.
It’s also U.S. Postage Stamp Day…naturally. The very first postage stamp was issued on July 1, 1847 but, no one seems to know who created the National Day for it. Lost to history, I suppose.
Also celebrated today:
National Creative Ice Cream Flavors Day
National Gingersnap Day
Cheers and enjoy!