A formidable cast journey through folk via Bollywood to pop – not to mention mountain treks and orc attacks – in a compressed revival of the 2007 musical

First seen in the UK in 2007 at London’s Theatre Royal Drury Lane – a 1996-seat theatre – the show is revived at the 220-capacity Watermill. This means that Simon Kenny’s design and Anjali Mehra’s choreography are a theatrical equivalent of stunts designed to find how many people can fit in a Mini.

...During the long sections inside the tiny theatre, they cram in battles, orc attacks, treks across land, over mountains or through caves and lavish production numbers involving 20 actors or musicians (several performers also play instruments).

...speech and score sometimes feel more competitive than complementary.

The songs, though, move with enjoyable eclecticism through folk via Bollywood to pop, echoing the musical backgrounds of the Indian/Finnish/Anglo-American compositional team of AR Rahman, Värttinä, and Christopher Nightingale.

But the cast is a blast.

The original London run is more known for losing money than winning friends. On a stage about 30 times smaller – with budget presumably reduced proportionately – this spectacle of compression, by aiming small, brings big rewards.

extract

“The Battle of Maldon, together with The Homecoming of Beorhtnoth,” edited by Peter Grybauskas. “The Battle” is a fragment of poetry from the end of the first millennium that Tolkien translated from Old English.

...the history of Middle-Earth that Tolkien was working on at the same time, “The History of the Hobbit” includes five different “phases” of the book’s creation, many, many plot notes, and a scheme that shows original word choices along with Tolkien’s final text—which was sometimes penned in on top of rubbed-out pencil.

“Tolkien in the Twenty-First Century: The Meaning of Middle-Earth Today” by Nick Groom. This fascinating book explores “The Hobbit” and “The Lord of the Rings” from their genesis through all the different major adaptations of the Tolkien “legendarium.”

The reader will learn a great deal about the licensing of Middle-Earth, a realm I thought I already knew fairly well. There were plans for a “Lord of the Rings” film starring the Beatles, for instance, directed by Stanley Kubrick. Another fever dream of a movie would have had Galadriel seduce Frodo, and a 12-minute animated monstrosity released in 1966 has a princess named Mika and a dragon named Slag.

Each of these very different books offers a brilliant peek or deep dive into very different aspects of the man who changed speculative fiction forever. Choose your own adventure into the world of J.R.R. Tolkien.

His writing is layered, exciting and detailed. I remember reading his story Shadow of Angmar back in 2015 on a Blackberry with a keyboard of all devices (though I know an author who's written chapters on there 👀). The time periods, various characters and settings had a real and obviously intentional, 'Fellowship of the Ring' feel to them.

It sits at more than two hundred thousand words, and I await an update. His crack-fic HP and the Elves Most Fabulous was pretty funny when I read it years ago now.

So, what happens if you're modding a few communities and you want to change instances?

Do you add mod roles to the new account on that instance? Would people keep the old account, and would they keep the mod status on the old account too?

Just wondering, since I'm considering moving to keep Lemmy sustainable as well as because of preemptive concerns at my own instance's implementation of implicit, untransparent policies.

Link

Hardly anyone can understand what J.R.R Tolkien is saying in resurfaced interview | Ladbible

Or: 'Shut up!'

Title text: No, we actually do have a woman who's basically part of our fellowship. She lives in Rivendell, you wouldn't know her.

I saw this other guy asking how you'd download protected drive only view documents. So that reminded me of that other annoying characteristic of PDFs. They're 'protected'.

How do you deal with PDFs that are inherently uncustomisable and have fixed formatting? I appreciate the KO Reader and other readers can do reflowable text, but I'd prefer not to and epubs/txt/any customisable format would be better.

Any good methods of PDF to text/epub out there?

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/2083957

The wizarding family of Potters descends from the twelfth-century wizard Linfred of Stinchcombe, ...whose nickname, ‘the Potterer’, became corrupted in time to ‘Potter’... His reputation as a well-meaning eccentric served Linfred well, for behind closed doors he was able to continue the series of experiments that laid the foundation of the Potter family’s fortune ...as the originator of a number of remedies ...including Skele-gro and Pepperup Potion. His sales of such cures to fellow witches and wizards enabled him to leave a significant pile of gold to each of his seven children upon his death.

So that's how the Potter family initially get their wealth. Fanfiction writers often attribute it to 'Sleekeazy’s Hair Potion' which is also fact but more recent.

Linfred’s eldest son, Hardwin, married a beautiful young witch by the name of Iolanthe Peverell, who came from the village of Godric’s Hollow. She was the granddaughter of Ignotus Peverell.

Incidentally or otherwise knowing Rowling, Stinchcombe happens to lie 'west of Dursley'.

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1920660

Jim Kay's illustration is a cornucopia of Diagon Alley places in a row. The details are abundant and it now features as our community's banner.

The site I extracted it from allows you to look at the details closely - and has a related challenge:

Unlock activities by finding these items. When you have found them all, you will receive a magical certificate.

A red dragon with a book and quill

A sea-faring unicorn

A witch and a Golden Snitch

A potted sunflower

An elephant and castle

A white cat on a roof

cross-posted from: https://lemmy.world/post/1883631

I found a rare cool resource in the form of a comment from the old place about the various accents of the characters of Harry Potter, in the films. This is not my post or comment. Credit to Travy911

Harry (Daniel Radcliffe): Contemporary RP accent

Ron (Rupert Grint): Speaks with more of a Cockney accent in the earlier movies but transitions into a less posh sounding contemporary RP accent than Radcliffe and Watson. Grint has commented himself on how surprised he is by how Cockney he sounds in the earlier films.

Hermione (Emma Watson): Contemporary to classic RP. Watson sounds the most posh out of the trio.

Most of the cast speak with contemporary or classic RP. Many of the older actors especially would use classic RP as that would have been the go-to accent in the earlier days of British film industry. The following exceptions are below however.

From the remaining Weasleys, Ginny (Bonnie Wright) has a contemporary RP accent. Percy (Chris Rankin) has what approaches classic RP which would reflect the character's social climbing ambitions. Mark Williams, Julie Walters, James Phelps, Oliver Phelps (Arthur, Molly, Fred and George) are all from the West Midlands which has its own distinct accent(s). This can be heard very faintly in their accents with Williams probably having the strongest accent. But Brummie (Birmingham accent, Birmingham the biggest city in the West Midlands) and Black Country accents (the surrounding area) can be much stronger. Domhnall Gleeson (Bill) is Irish but adopts a sort of Cockney-ish accent in the few lines he has as Bill.

Seamus (Devon Murray) and Luna (Evanna Lynch) have Irish accents. Murray and Lynch both grew up close to Dublin but Murray's accent is closer to a working class Dublin accent. Lynch's accent is more faint, neutral sounding and difficult to place in an exact region, heard in a lot of young Irish people. Rhys Ifans (Xenophilius) is Welsh but adopts a similarly neutral Irish accent. Xenophilius and Luna's nationality is never confirmed in the books.

Brendan Gleeson (Moody) is Irish and uses his natural Dublin accent in the role. Moody's nationality is never given in the books so not sure where you got Scottish from.

Richard Harris (Dumbledore in the first two movies) uses his natural Irish accent. Harris was a classically trained actor and spent much of his adulthood in Britain so it is mostly a soft Irish accent with the tiniest English lilt. Michael Gambon (Dumbledore in the later films) has a more pronounced English accent but has an Irish lilt to certain words to honour Harris' portrayal. Gambon was born in Ireland but primarily raised in England.

Katie Leung (Cho) and Sean Biggerstaff (Oliver Wood) are both from Glasgow and have typical Glaswegian accents. Katie Leung's accent is less strong and she acknowleded her Glasgow accent is stronger when around family on James and Oliver Phelps' podcast. Cho and Oliver's nationalities are never confirmed in the books.

Maggie Smith (McGonagall) is English but adopts a Scottish accent for the role, more like an Edinburgh accent. McGonagall was always implied to be Scottish in the books and Rowling confirmed she was from Caithness which is in rural northern Scotland. The Edinburgh accent is considered the "posh" accent in Scotland so makes sense that McGonagall might speak with this accent so she's more understood by students.

Robbie Coltrane (Hagrid) is Scottish but adopts a West Country accent for role of Hagrid, which makes sense as Rowling writes his dialogue in a West Country accent.

Matthew Lewis (Neville) maintains his strong Northern Yorkshire accent in the role.

Shefali Chowdhury (Parvati) is from Birmingham and has the accent. Afshan Azad (Padma) who is from Manchester and has a Manchester accent confirmed in a YouTube video that she was asked to adopt Chowdhury's Birmingham accent for Padma as she states she's quite good at accents.

David Tennant is Scottish but like many of his famous roles has adopted a contemporary RP English accent as Barty Crouch Jr. Fiona Shaw (Petunia) is Irish but mostly has a classic RP accent as Petunia. Her Irish accent is more pronounced in the deleted Deathly Hallows scene where she acknowledges death of her sister. Shirley Henderson (Myrtle) and Kelly Macdonald (Helena Ravenclaw) are also Scottish but adopt RP English accents for their roles. Ian Hart (Quirrel) has a Liverpool accent but sounds more RP in the movie.

The international cast featured in Goblet of Fire are all cast appropriately based on their nationalities in the book and have the natural accents that go with it. Clémence de Poesy (Fleur) is French and Stanislav Ivaneski (Viktor Krum) is Bulgarian like their characters. Frances de la Tour (Madame Maxime) is English but with French ancestry and seems to adopt a decent French accent. Predrag Bjelac (Karkarofff) is Czech-Serbian. Karkaroff's nationality is never confirmed in the books but his name is Slavic in origin, which is the language group both Czech and Serbian belong too (although Slavic is large language family so someone with more knowledge could probably talk more about this).

Lee Ingleby (Stan Shunpike) has a strong Cockney accent in role, as Rowling wrote Stan's dialogue in this accent. Nick Moran (Scabior) also has a Cockney accent as Scabior.

Hopefully that covers all the accents! 😁

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