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.

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“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.

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Reportedly, there is a new Lego Harry Potter game in the works as an image promoting it was spotted on the Warner Bros. South Africa Instagram account.

Per Video Games Chronicle, this now-deleted post showed a Lego Minifigure of Harry Potter with the logo for TT Games and a date of August 25. TT Games is the British developer and publisher behind the Lego games and this date overlaps with Gamescom, one of the industry’s largest trade fairs, which will be hosted over August 23 to August 27 in Cologne, Germany.

Rumours that there is a Lego Harry Potter game that would mimic the structure of 2022’s Lego Star Wars: The Skywalker Saga popped up in March of this year. Nintendo Life‘s source said that the game was “sucking up the studio’s resources” and that a Lego Guardians of the Galaxy game was cancelled at the same time.

Link to all pages and more

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Alternatively titled: McGonagall Cat Loaf in box.

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Just wanted to post a beautiful peice of art that I saw some time ago that needed sharing. I love the style, textures and emotion too.

There are about seven more images that you can go and see at the link above.

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.

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

Or: 'Shut up!'

TLDR: It's a fun bit of exploration with some new environments but don't expect wholly new action or interesting gameplay.

If you’re expecting some sort of live battle with dementors and an exploration of the prison that…is not at all what it’s like.