The Hobbit

There is no greater fan of the Tolkien oeuvre than Tuttle. Well, at least among those of us who haven't become fluent in Elvish, or tattooed Dwarfish moon runes on our foreheads, or turned the backyard into a scale model of Helm's Deep.

A key reason I convinced my pal Andy to visit New Zealand with me a-way back in 2009 was to visit sites of filming for Peter Jackson's grand and amazing filmic treatment of The Lord of the Rings trilogy. While we were there, at Bag End, so to speak, they were actually prepping for The Hobbit, which was originally proposed as a two-parter. Please visit my blog post about our time in Hobbiton, aka Matamata, NZ, and then return back here.


Above is an ad in the subway for the first of the three "Hobbit' movies, An Unexpected Journey which I saw last night, along with The Stumbler. I couldn't help but lean over to my friend and whisper during the initial Hobbiton moments, "I've been there."

But all that doesn't ultimately matter. Is the film any good? is the question. Emphatically, YES, is my answer. Three hours (well, two hours and 45 minutes) sounded like an eternity, but both of us were surprised when the end came! Events on the screen were fast-paced, interesting and unveiled with clarity. There are some heavy-handed moments and cliche images (like our first view of Galadriel, for example), but you've got to expect some of that in a Peter Jackson epic, I think. Still, the story was engrossing.

I tried to stay away from too much of the movie's publicity, but I think some of the poor reviews I read were written by people who saw a different movie than I did: the dozen dwarves were poorly-differentiated? The relentless action was boring? The plot was muddled and confusing? It strained believability a couple of times? (Okay, that's true.)

Jackson and his crew managed admirably to compress the LOTR story in three movies, but I think the shoe's on the other foot here: how can they stretch the smaller,less grandiose tale of dragon-hunting dwarves into three? The answer is that there's a lot of stuff here that isn't in the book. Part of this involves contextualizing the actions of the dragon Smaug as part of the awaking dark forces that will overrun Middle Earth by the time of Frodo. Another part is simply Jackson's fondness of Tolkien's great invention, the characters, creatures and stories, and his desire to get them all down in film, so to speak.

The next part comes out for Christmas 2013, and the final part the year after that. I don't know if I will be in Korea for part three, but wherever I am, I'll definitely plan to be there.

New Zealand: Choice Eh?

Note: Later posts about New Zealand appear below this post.

Well, I am safely back from the land of Kiwis. Truly a unique place. Its variety of geological phenomena is exceeded only by the number of Kiwi draft beer brands we tried, or maybe the number of syllables in a typical Maori place name:


Within a couple hours of arrival in Auckland, one thing that struck me was how multicultural New Zealand is. I should point out that this is after a year in Korea, the most homogeneous culture on the planet, where 97 or 98% of the population is Korean. The whole of NZ is like Itaewon: plenty of Europeans with English and Aussies, of course, but Germans, Dutch and the like, as well; but also Middle Easterners and Asians, from Turkish to Indian, Chinese, Japanese, and of course Korean. The native Polynesians of New Zealand are the Maori, whose language, we were told, is similar enough to, say, Hawaiian, that they can understand one another. They all speak English, and it is distinctly odd to encounter exotic-looking people who talk as if they are direct from Jolly Olde!


Andy and I criss-crossed the North Island in Mitzi, a two-door subcompact with 1000 cc's under the hood and the steering wheel on the wrong side; everywhere we went, the scenery was simply amazing. Below is some footage I took out of the window while traveling from Matamata, the center of sheep country, to Auckland, whose 1,300,000 people represents one-third of the total population of 4.3 million. The population may be small, but the countryside itself is deceptively large--and mountainous, which makes travel a little more time-consuming. Still, the roads are in good shape, and well-marked, except for certain symbol signs that neither of us were familiar with. This sometimes made it feel like a foreign country ...



Geological riches abounded. We saw the remnants of ancient basaltic lahars and rhyolitic domes; glacial features like eskers, moraines and drumlins ...


... lagoons, arches and stacks formed by pounding ocean waves ...


... moist subtropical rainforests ...


... rolling meadows spotted with sheep ...


... and even a geyser.


It is winter right now in the southern hemisphere, but temperatures on the North Island during the week were a pretty reasonable 8-10 C (46-52 F). However, it was windy pretty much all week, and rained on us off and on: the dolphin discovery tour we arranged for Friday morning was cancelled due to the downpours in Paihia, with little promise of improvement for the rescheduled booking on Saturday. Luckily, the clouds parted for a while, the sun came out, and this is what the Bay of Islands looked like during our island walk at about 11:30 on Saturday morning:


Choice, eh?

I took about 380 photos during the week I spent in NZ, and I expect I'll upload one-sixth to one-fifth of them over the next several days, along with my inimitable commentary. My traveling partner Andy will be uploading his photos and comments as well, over at the fine Literaryhero blog; but while he typed up his stuff on a daily basis for a blow-by-blow account, I will be organizing my reminiscences by topic. I will be pre-dating the posts and linking them below, so they will appear underneath this post which serves as an introduction. You can tell when a post is completed because the link will turn blue and be underlined. The topics I plan are something like this:

• Rotorua Geothermal Area
  
• Hobbiton, aka Matamata
  
• Sheep
  
• Bay of Islands
  
• Flora & Fauna
  
• Backpackers & Beer
  
• History & People & Stuff
  

Be that as it may, I'm sure you'd like a few more photos of the lovely land before I sign off, and I'd love to show you a few more. So, here is Andy in the Rotorua Domain, which is what we believe is Kiwi for city park, either interfering with a kinetic sculpture or playing on a new-fangled jungle gym. Either way, New Zealand is a well-developed nation that rates highly in quality of life and education, human development, literacy, and so forth:


Speaking of sculptures, here is one I liked outside the Rotorua Museum (more on that later), called 'Waitukei' by artist Lyonel Grant:


Below, two photos of very different bucolic scenes on the North Island:



After our boat ride, we were headed back to Auckland (for the third night) when the heavens smiled upon us in the form of a rainbow--as we drove along, we could almost see where it ended, just over the hedge:

New Zealand: Rotorua

Like most of the tourist areas of NZ, Rotorua is rather slow in the wintertime; the geothermal springs and hot spots, however, were active as ever. The first thing we noticed on arrival in Rotorua was the pong--someone told us the best thing about the place is that "you can fart and get away with it." The intensity of the sulphur smell varies somewhat, though, according to location--on certain street corners, the stuff flows up from the storm sewer grates.

We visited three main attractions: Whakarewarewa, the living thermal village, which is still occupied by Maoris; Rotorua Domain, the city park, which has steam vents, pools, and gardens about a block from the hostel we stayed at; and the Rotorua Museum, which makes its home in the old therapeutic baths which drew Europeans to the area until the 1940s.

Whakarewarewa:


Our tour began at 9 AM, and the weather was chilly--however, a billow of sulphury steam was never far away:


Our tour guide told us that the Maori had no religion until white people arrived, "just beliefs". Here is the Catholic church of Whaka, which only holds Mass once a month. The white boxes are tombs--you can't bury people six feet under, it would be too much like cremation.


These guys are loading pudding into a steam hole for cooking; we're actually going to be eating this food, a so-called Hangi meal, for lunch later at Ned's Cafe.


But before lunch, we headed to the lookout to see the geyser ...


... then circled the big hot spring lake, where the walkway was studded with little signposts celebrating visitors from various countries. Here is Korea:


Rotorua Domain: The city park, just a block from our hostel, is an active geothermal area with gardens, hot spots and a spa.





This is a geologically active area, and the government surely struggles to keep up with Mother Nature. Here are a couple of new spots, cordoned off in a temporary manner until the the work crews put up proper fencing:




Rotorua Therapeutic Baths:



The Bath House building, which today houses the Rotorua Museum, was built at the height of Edwardian splendor, the turn of the last century. Europeans traveled to the area to "take the waters" beginning in the 1850s, and according to the brochure, the baths represent the NZ government's "first major investment in the tourism industry."





The baths were used by the elite who could afford the trip from Europe, but were also put into service for convalescent veterans of the Great War. However, the difficulties of transporting the corrosive, scalding water from the pools a half-mile away and controlling their temperature proved to beyond the technology of the time. The Baths were nearly dismantled, but received a second chance as a nightclub called Tudor Towers in the sixties and seventies. The coolest part of the museum is the subterranean (well, ground level) tour of the workings:



Rotorua seems to be a bustling tourist town, at least juding by the storefronts and restaurants--during the summer. It was slow during our visit, except at the gaming rooms located inside every bar in town. The bars were never busy, which suited us just fine, but the gambling rooms--video poker, blackjack, etc--hummed with activity morning, noon and night; we soon understood why many people call the town Roto-Vegas.

New Zealand: Hobbiton, aka Matamata

To be blunt, there is more to say about the Hobbiton tour than there is to see. That aside, it was exactly as promised, and our guide was knowledgeable and friendly. As a bonus, preparations were underway at the site for filming of The Hobbit movie--someday soon, people will travel across the seas to get here only to be turned away because the set is closed.

Several scenes from the beginning and end of LOTR were shot here after Peter Jackson picked this site from a helicopter, mainly for the giant tree located between a pond and a gentle slope that could be transformed into Bagshot Row ...



... and Bag End:



I first read the Lord of the Rings trilogy, and The Hobbit, circa age thirteen, and could hardly wait until the day when the films would be made--it seemed to me pretty cinematic stuff. Rankin/Bass did a fair animated version of The Hobbit in the 1970s, but the LOTR that followed it, directed by Ralph Bakshi, was totally unsatisfactory--it was fine as far as it went, but compressed two of the three books into about two minutes. Horrible!

I knew that eventually movie magic would allow a solid film version to be made, but I was blown away by the quality and care of Jackson's effort. Each character, each scene equalled or exceeded my vision as a youngster (and as an older person who read the books more than one or two times). That New Zealand provided the backdrop for the films only increased my desire to come here someday.

The first chapter of The Hobbit is titled 'An Unexpected Party' wherein Gandalf and a bunch of dwarfs turn the staid life of a middle-aged hobbit topsy-turvy. The opening of LOTR is 'A Long-Expected Party' which uses Bilbo's eleventy-first birthday celebration to launch the adventure that follows. I have always found that quite delectable--I love to take great care, and see great care taken, in the choosing of titles.

At the end of Bilbo's long-expected party, he stands before what is known as the Party Tree, makes a speech, and slips the One Ring onto his finger. It is a dramatic exit, since the ring renders its wearer invisible. Who would have thought that thirty-odd years later, I could do the same thing?



I mentioned earlier that pre-filming work for The Hobbit is underway. Here are a few photos of that work, now that the secret is out of the bag (or Bag End):





Finally, a view looking down from Bag End at the Party Tree and across the pond:


Hobbiton is indeed a magical place:

New Zealand: Sheep

This image is one of the wall-hangings at The Mousetrap, the backpackers' hostel we stayed at in Paihia, Bay of Islands. We didn't see any sheep thereabouts, but we understood the impetus: there are ten or so sheep for every human in NZ. Actually, for many miles south of Auckland on our first drive, I was disappointed to see cattle, and more cattle. Eventually, we reached the realm of sheep, off-white blobs scattered on green hillsides, mile after mile.


Here is how we knew to keep our eyes peeled:


Te Kuiti is the Shearing Capital of the World, or certainly of New Zealand, via a metric that need not be considered here. After all, doubters need only drive further along the main drag to see what is probably the largest sheep shearing sculpture in the world--it would be redundant if it weren't a quarter-mile down the road.


We didn't encounter sheep in a first-hand fashion until we went on the Hobbiton tour in Matamata, one segment of which involves a visit to the shearing barn of the working Alexander Farm, where an experienced hand with clippers separated a yearling sheep from his outer coat. Afterwards, we were able to feed and hold the lambs. This is a great tourist activity but a pretty ordinary experience for someone that lives on a sheep farm ...



One detail I noticed was the footwear of the shearer, who explained to us that one of the essentials for getting the job done is holding and controlling the lamb--balance and grip are keys:



The shearer was in no hurry, but the sheep seemed anxious to be somewhere else. In just a few minutes, the process was completed; here are the end results:



They also gave us a couple of hands on opportunities--not with the clippers, that would be bloody lunacy!