Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema rewind. This is Rob Lamb. Hey, there's a lot of Lord of the Rings in the air once more. We've got that new season of The Rings of Power out now. And for my own part, I just finished rewatching nineteen seventy eight The Lord of the Rings with my son, and we also rewatched the old animated Hobbit and the old animated Return of the King. Those are from the years nineteen seventy seven and nineteen eighty.
But hey, this one is a lot of fun. This is an episode Joe and I did a while back, because we're talking about the Keepers. This is a Russian adaptation, a Russian TV adaptation of The Fellowship of the Ring from nineteen ninety one. You can find places to stream this. I'm not sure offhand of it's had a more official release, but it is out there. You can breathe it in. It is. It is fascinating because, as we'll get into,
like the pacing is rather interesting. A lot of time is devoted to things like Tom Bombadil, which is great, big Tom Bombadill fans here, but at the expense of what else, I don't know. It's got some nice synth music in places, and the ring Raiths look really cool. So without further ado, let's dive right into the keepers.
Welcome to stuff to blow your mind, A production of iHeartRadio.
Hey, welcome to Weird House Cinema. This is Rob.
Lamb and I'm Joe McCormick. And today we're doing Lord of the Rings. We're entering the Tolken verse for Weird House Cinema. Now, I assume you are immediately thinking, Okay, the Peter Jackson epic series, you know, the New Zealand Journey. Of course, that's not what we're doing, because you know, we're not going to go with that mainstream that we did recently do Deep Blue cy But no, no, no, no,
we're not doing that. You know what we're doing, of course, it is the nineteen seventy eight Ralph Bakshi animated version of the Lord of the Rings.
And feeling a little more obscure, right it makes sense.
No, I'm just kidding. No, we're not doing that. Of course, what we're actually doing is the nineteen eighty Return of the King.
Oh yeah, where there's a whip, there's a way of course.
No, actually I'm kidding. We're not doing that. The adaptation of Lord of the Rings we're doing today is the nineteen ninety one Soviet made for TV production Kronatelli, which translates directly as Keepers, which was made for the Leningrad TV station in nineteen ninety one as the Soviet Union was collapsing. And wow, this is one of the most amazing films I've ever seen.
It is so much fun. This what it recently emerged? Right, It seems like you've've certainly been making the rounds recently.
It was thought lost for like thirty years until I think it was just earlier this year, maybe around April of twenty one, that the TV station that Leningrad TV turned into I think it's called Channel five or five TV now. I believe they were responsible for locating the originals and publishing it to the internet. I think they just put it up on YouTube.
Yeah, I think I read that one of their employees wandered down into the basement and won the lost footage in a game of riddles for a subterranean creature, right.
Uh huh. And so and also some beautiful Soul was kind enough to create some English subtitles, which is what we're going to have to be working off of here. The original was of course in Russian, and the best we can do is whatever these user generated subtitles are. But I don't know. I got a good feeling from them. I trust them. I feel like they're mostly accurate.
Yeah, I mean, we know the source material and this film will discuss the changes, but it's mostly accurate to the source material. It's honorable to the source material, with some caveats, and you get some weird characters thrown in, like I had a lot of crucifixes thrown into my my subtitles, but it was still there were decent subtitles. So if I'll go ahead and put this out there that if you want to find these YouTube links that we're discussing here, I'll include them on the blog post
for this episode at samooda music dot com. That's se m U t A m U s C dot com. That's just a blog I have, but it's the only place I can put stuff up like this right now, So go there if you want to see it, or just go look it up on YouTube. Doesn't matter to me as long as you see it and hear it and feel it.
Now, if you are hoping to encounter shelob or see the battle for Minas Tirith, or see the Hobbits go into Mordoor or anything like that. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen in this part of the story because if you're familiar with the arc of Lord of the Rings, you know it was originally published as one gigantic novel, but broken into three volumes. You had Fellowship of the Ring and then The Two Towers and then Return of
the King. This movie adaptation is just the first third, is just the Fellowship of the Ring.
Right, And I have to say, they really, they really let it breathe. You know, they spend they spend two solid hours. They cut out some stuff that you might not expect them to cut out.
Very strange choices about pacing and how to allocate the plot into the two hours they had, Right.
But then they also they show a lot of love for sections of the book that are traditionally cut out of all adaptations, or at least all that I'm familiar with.
Yes, so one of the most notable things about Kronatelly is that it includes Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs, which is so exciting to me.
Yes, Yes. I was excited for this as well because I have recently my son and I have recently started listening to the audio book of the Fellowship of the Rings and we just finished this section with the Barrow Whites and Tom Bombadill, and so he's had a lot of thoughts about it, and like I was telling him about about all this, and I was like, you know, most most film adaptations cut Tom Bombadil out. And he's like, no,
Tom Bombadil is an important character. I mean, not that he would know, yes, right, made it that far into the book. At this point, he seems very important because he's essentially like a nature god who showed up and saved everybody twice.
I think Tom Bombadil will come off as especially essential and uncutable to people who have listened to the audiobook narrated by Rob Nglis, who does the you know, his own wonderful renditions of the songs that Tolkien only wrote the lyrics to. You know, there isn't music in the books, so but Rob Engliss's interpretation of the melodies for the Tom Bombadil songs is actually quite haunting and interesting. Yeah, Hey, dol Mary dol ring a Dingadillo.
Yeah, yeah, like the lyrics are fun.
Like.
One of the things about reading Tolkien is, of course you get a lot of songs, and if you're reading them to yourself, you don't. I find myself kind of reading quickly through the especially the multi page song lyrics.
Yeah.
And then if I'm reading them aloud, say to my son, as we did with the Hobbit, I'm not I'm I'm fairly musically inclined, but not enough to wear. I can just randomly sing these lyrics to a tune. So the audiobook is is a real treasure when it comes to these songs, because he does a Yeah, he does a great job bringing them to life, and and they even you can kind of get earwormed by Tom bombadill find yourself humming this song through the rest of your day.
I listened to part of these audio books on an airplane, and the next day I was wandering around London in a in a fog of jet lag, just singing no, no, no, no, He's a merry felloo. Yeah, but it was bright as jacket is and his boots are yeah hello, Yeah.
A lot of lyrics about just how merry he is and what he is wearing and then.
The rhythm daughter about goldberry, goldberry, Ye, fatty lumpkin, all about the ponies. Yeah, I love a song about a pony.
Yeah. So it's really good stuff. And yeah, and when you're reading Lord of the Rings, it is a weird and counter because he's just this merry, godlike and mysterious character. Like there's still scholarly articles that are that are trying to tear apart exactly what Tom is and what he you know, what he descends from in you know, the actual annals of mythology. And then the barrel Whites are
just super creepy as well. They are these when you get into the Morn of the lore, there are these tortured spirits that have fled the witch kingdom of Angmar and hid in the ancient bodies of human warriors that were buried during the first Age of the Sun. And so they're just like will crushing darkness. And we have that wonderful creepy scene where the Hobbits wake up in the barrow mounds and they're there, they've been laid out and covered in the gold of the dead. Its fabulous stuff.
But if I were doing an adaptation where I was trying to render a barrow white, I would not have thought to dress him as a creepy clown. Yes, And so the barrel white, I think in this movie I could be missed, but I believe is played by a woman, but is voiced by like a like a raspy, deep voiced man, and the person playing the barrow white is dressed in full like mime makeup or like I don't know what you call that classic clown makeup that goes like, you know, the old style.
Yeah, it is. It is not something I would have chosen for the barrow white scenes.
They're very creepy.
It's creepy, but in a way that is perhaps a little off brand. I don't know, But I don't know. There's just one detail in the film. There's other stuff that works a lot better, and I guess, I don't know, maybe given the budget here, this was a good choice. Hard to say, I guess one of the problems. And I'd be interested to hear if you say about this.
Like one thing that I've read about the exclusion of the barrow white scene from other adaptations is that not only is there pacing issue, not only is this a whole encounter that can be easily removed. But potentially if you put the Barrel Whites on screen, they might be confused with the Black Riders, oh yeah, the nine Yeah, and or even if you're not confused with them, they
might take some of the heat away from them. And so if you take them out, the Ring Raths remain the primary supernatural antagonist in this phase of the book.
I can see that. I mean, the other main criticism that I've encountered, and I know we've talked about this before. I think what Peter Jackson said is the reason Tom Bombadil and the Barrow Downs and all that is not in his version of the movie at all, is that it does not advance the plot, like you can cut it out and nothing is really changed.
Yeah. The only criticism I've seen of that is people say, well, this is where the Hobbits get their initial weapons from the trove of the Barrel Whites. You know, Tom Bombadil picks stuff out for them, and without that, you just have Strider randomly handing out Hobbit sized weapons later on in the film. But I don't know, I think that's that's a small, small, small point to harp on.
But This is interesting because it leads to one of the major differences in storytelling structure between this adaptation of Fellowship and say Peter Jackson's. I mean, it's funny in many ways to compare them.
Though.
Another thing that's funny is that they only came out about ten years apart. Yeah, if you can fit that in your brain.
Ten years and however many millions and millions of dollars.
Yeah, yeah, yeah, that's also so. The Peter Jackson movies were a multimillion dollar production, and from what I can tell I was reading. Actually, there's a very good article in Variety about the production of Chronatelli that interviews some of the actors who were originally involved in it. They're still alive, still working. They talked to Georgi Steel, who played Bilbo Baggins in this production, who I think is like eighty nine now or something. He's still acting and
he's a great actor, by the way. I mean. One of the funny things about this is, despite how threadbear the production is a lot of the actors in it are legends of the Leningrad Saint Petersburg theater scene.
Yeah, and it shines through playing Bilbo is great. The actor playing Gandalf is great. Some of the others I have notes on, but those two in particular are wonderful. And yeah, don't dismiss this title on the acting love.
Yeah.
Yeah, some of the acting may come off a little weird, especially if you have certain expectations for some of these characters. But there are a lot of talented people involved in this.
Well, I've got thoughts about that. I'm going to get two in a second, but sorry, I started to introduce this article and then I didn't fully put it out there.
So it's an article in Variety by Rebecca Davis called Inside the Soviet Lord of the Rings cast details their epic TV movie Uncovered after thirty years I was published a few months ago, I think, And this is a really great article, like I said, because it manages to get a number of people who were actually involved in this obscure production on the record to explain what was going on. And so one of the things emphasized by several actors here is that this movie had essentially no
budget at all. It was made I think over the course of an estimated nine hours total of shooting that took place in a few sessions in less than a week. So, you know, one of the actors was explaining that they know they'd sort of come together. They'd rehearse a scene very quickly, and then they just shoot it and they do no second takes, and then they just move on to the next thing. And like all of the stuff was sourced from just what was lying around the Leningrad
TV stations. With the costumes, the sets, the props, almost all of them were just repurposed whatever they could borrow from other previous productions. I think maybe the most complex things we get in terms of filmmaking are the shots of people riding horses out in the snow, and so you get several shots of that that are supposed to be the nine the Ring Raiths who were hunting the Ring, and then you also get some shots of the Hobbits
riding ponies out in the snow. And one of the actors, i think Sergei Shelganov, who played Mary brandy Buck, talks about how he'd never ridden a horse before shooting that scene and never he's never ridden a horse since, and it was the coldest he's ever been.
Yeah, there is one thing we should point out about this film is that there is there is intense, an intense feeling of winter in this and in fact, there's a point in the film where Gandalf tells, I think he's telling Frodo, right, He says, Frodo, winter is coming back.
Yeah. They keep saying winter is coming over and over.
This also long predates the Germ and it's a it's an interesting cultural adaptation of Lord of the Rings because you know, so Lord of the Rings is very much about weather and landscape and and and traveling across the terrain and experiencing nature as you're on a hard journey, but winter and snow don't play that big of a I mean, the snow is a big part of their attempt to get over the Karadhras when they're you know, trying to go over the mountains, and then they fail
doing that and have to go back down into the minds of Moria. But overall, I don't recall snow being a big part of the journey in the books. No, But hey, you know that you got to adapt to the local terrain, so if you need to shoot locally, that's what you're doing. But then the other thing is this this film actually does while it's mostly just shooting actors doing a first take of a scene on a set at this Leningrad TV station or maybe at some
other locations around town. I'm not sure. They They actually do have a couple of scenes that have special effects in them. For example, there is one scene where the four Hobbits are dining at the house of Tom Bombadil and Goldberry, and they recast Bombadill and Goldberry as giants. You know that they're like not just a little bit bigger than the Hobbits, but they're like enormous compared to them.
Yeah, it's which I don't think they're that big in the book there, like he's supposed to be kind of shortish, actually stout but short. But yeah, they're titans in this. But it's an impressive shot. That's pretty good.
Some of the articles have not agreed with you there, but I don't know, I bought it. I was there.
I mean, taking into account the zero budget. Yeah, and also just kind of the charm of the production, like there is there is this made for television like decayed quality h charm to it, and yeah, you know you don't want to see a perfect special effect in that. And then also if I'm going to be more critical there. There are far lousier special effects in this film, like that's not the one to really, that's not the hill to die on, the giant tom bomba Delf scene.
Yeah, I would say on the on the worst side of the visual effects present. There's one thing where it seems like sometimes that we're trying to evoke a sense of mystery or kind of I don't know, the the general visual obscurity of fantasy and the deep past by doing what looks like smearing the camera lens with the translucent gel of some sort. Yeah.
Yeah, that's something we've seen. I've seen this in other productions as well, but they're they're definitely doing it here.
Oh but sorry, I wanted to come back to something we brought up a minute ago, which is that, you know, I want to be generous to this, but but I think it is clear that a lot of the performances,
the acting performances in this are way off base. They're just bizarre renditions of these now well known and now beloved characters, despite the fact that a lot of the actors in this production are actually great actors of the stage at least, you know, people who have done a lot of work before and since in the Leningrad Saint Petersburg theater scene, and they're highly trained, well respected actors,
So what's going on here? I think actually a lot of the bizarre performances are a result of confusion about the characterizations themselves, Like something is getting lost in translation of how to understand what these characters' personalities are and how we should feel about them. So I would say one of the big examples is, again I don't want to single him out because I think he's I think
he's actually a good actor. But the actor who plays fro Do makes some really strang like in this movie, especially towards the beginning, is this insufferable alfredy Newman brat, Like he looks like he should be wearing a sailor suit and have a lollipop in his mouth.
Yeah. Absolutely, they are shades of got a hint of Alan Cumming, a hint of mister Bean, Yeah, hint of pee Wee Herman.
Yeah, mister Bean and Pee Wee Herman. Absolutely, but with like a red wig on and a wet mouth.
Yeah he's so. I mean Frodo and Bilbo too. You know, there are certainly times where they're written and they come off as kind of, you know, wimpy and not up for the journey, and they have to overcome that. But man, this fro Do, like he has this one line where at least it was translated as he's talking to Gandolf and he says, you've spoken for so long it makes me hungry. And I was like, oh my god, you're not going to get out of the shire alive. Frodo.
Yeah, I know, the worst, but yeah, yeah, what are his epithets? Frodo worst heart, Frodo, Frodo underwhelm, Frodo underwhelm, Frodo cries a lot, Frodo lollymouth.
But even this actor is still around, right, Yeah.
I think so. At least one of the articles I was reading about it mentioned something about him, though I don't think he was interviewed. But yeah, again, I don't want to chalk that up to like the actor being a bad actor. I would say instead, we now, I think, especially since the Peter Jackson movies, we have a more cemented idea of how each of these characters should be received. What's sort of the canon appearance and tone for their representation on screen and at the time and place this
was being made. I think something was just getting lost because even though there has for a long time been great love for Tolkien's works in Russia and even in the Soviet Union, there's obviously some difficulty in the adaptation. You know, there's a translation process going on, and it's not even always a totally like a free and organic translation process.
Yeah. So, on that note, let's just start with the obvious. The title Kronatelly. What does this mean? Well, I believe it translates from Russian as the keepers and as in like the keepers or the guardians of the Ring. Incidentally, this is also the translated title for the Russian release of the two thousand and nine Zack Snyder adaptation of Watchmen.
Oh, Chronatellio, Okay, I see yeah yah.
So if you do start doing a search for Chronatelly or for the actual cyrillic of that, you'll suddenly get all these pictures of Watchmen, and you may find yourself confused. You think I'm looking for Lord of the Rings and instead here is a you know Borshakh.
Wait a minute, though, so how do so? Obviously the Peter Jackson movies, once those were made, were actually released in Russia, what do they call the Fellowship there.
I believe the title in Russian is Brastavo Kortsa, which means Brotherhood of the Ring.
Oh okay, that seems like a fairly faithful rendition.
Yeah yeah. Now, as for Russian translations of the book itself, this is all very interesting and I think is also something to keep in mind when we're talking about like, how are these characters framed, et cetera. Fellowship of the
Ring has an interesting history in Russia. It was originally published in the West, of course, in nineteen fifty four, and so you know, naturally English reading Russians could have conceivably read it as early as that, but the first Russian translation didn't occur till nineteen sixty six, a short retelling that didn't see the light of publication until nineteen ninety.
And the translation we see in the film here is it's apparently based on a nineteen eighty two translation that was a bridge to comply with Soviet censorship.
Okay, so what we're getting is a Leningrad TV teleplay adaptation of a censored and abridged translation of the original novel.
Right right, And for a while this was there have been subsequent translations in Russian of The Lord of the Rings, but for the longest this was the only official version you could get in the r Now, according to Mark Hooker, the author of Tolkien Through Russian Eyes, cited in Alan Juhas's excellent New York Times article on this film, the
major stalling points stalling, not Stalin points. The stalling points that the hang ups surrounding the original text for the Soviet censors were perceived quote religious themes or the depiction of desperate Western allies uniting against a sinister power from the east.
Yeah, you can see how the Soviet censors might not have been keen on a book that's about allies coming together to fight an empire in the East.
Yeah. So, I mean, so to say the least, Russia has a different history with Lord of the Rings compared to other parts of the world, certainly compared to England and America. The work itself, of course, has an appeal that defies borders and nationalities, though based in the mythology and literatures that Tolkien himself was most familiar with, and these these include mostly non Russian and Slavic influences. Apparent I was reading Tolkien had tried to learn Russian at
one point and it didn't take. Here's what he had to say in one of his letters, quote, I love music, but have no aptitude for it. Slavonic languages are for me almost in the same category. I've had to go at many tongues in my time, but I am in no ordinary sense of linguist, and the time I once spent on trying to learn Serbian and Russian have left me with no practical results, only a strong impression of the structure and word aesthetic.
Yeah, that seems correct. I mean, based on my experience with Tolkien, it seems like most of the language and mythology that he tends to draw from is what you would say. I think mainly like Northern Europeans, sort of like Scandinavian, Germanic and Celtic.
Mm hmm. Yeah, that's my understanding as well. So we have that going on, and then we have this added layer of censorship state suspicion of the work, and it's been sieminglarly longer lasting mixes of both the rich enthusiasm for Tolkien. I was reading that Moscow has or had a Tolkien museum of sorts. The photos were not I mean they looked fun. It looked fun, but it also looked kind of small but still dedicated Tolkien Museum in Moscow.
Yeah. Now, one thing that I'm sure of, though I don't know if this particular question was ever asked to him, I think other similar questions were put to him. I know that Tolkien strenuously objected to any attempt to read Lord of the Rings or any of his works as
allegory for real world or historical events. In fact, he made clear that he hated allegory, and he thought that it was stupid and insulting to the audience to like write a fantasy tale that was supposed to be an allegory for I don't know, world War two, I think would be the more often thing. People would be, Oh,
is Mordor supposed to be the Nazis or whatever. I think his attitude was more, No, I'm writing an original story, and you may see elements of it that make you think about things that have happened in the real world, but that's your prerogative. This is not meant to be taken as an allegory for any events past, present, or future.
Yeah. Yeah, and yet once you certainly have say, state suspicion concerning the work. I guess that's kind of hard to completely eradicate, and I feel like this is probably best encapsulated in a book by Russian author kiro Eskov came out in nineteen ninety nine, at least in parts of the world in Russia, titled The Last Ring Bear, which spins the story of the Lord of the Rings by taking the view of Mordor as a state misunderstood by the victors who wrote the history.
Right, So it's kind of a sequel to Lord of the Rings, but it says, Okay, you've read Lord of the Rings, but now consider this. Lord of the Rings is the version of the story you're getting from the elves, basically.
Right, the idea that the elves have a grudge in all of this, and of course they're going to depict more Door as this awful, stinking, you know, death realm, as opposed to what The Last Ring Bear frames it as as the cultural and the technological center of Middle Earth.
Yeah. I think the way this novel reframes it is that Mordor is a place that kind of eschewes magic and is trying to create a scientific and technological civilization and it almost casts Again, I don't know how much the author would agree with this, but just having read summaries of the plot and some of the themes in it, it seems to me almost like the Elves and Gandalf might be somewhat equivalent to the Axis powers in World War Two, and that they're, you know, trying to promote
this kind of fantasy, romantic mysticism view of the world and trying to destroy the society and culture and people of Mordor before they can grow too powerful through scientific and technological means.
Yeah, as a thought experience, it sounds fun taking, like essentially doing what some would accuse Tolkien of having done. But that being said, yeah, I don't think Tolkien would have approved of this, and I know the Tolkien estate would not approve of this, and that's one of the reasons you'll find no official translation of this in the US now.
As for other film or TV adaptations of Tolkien's works, in the Soviet Union, I was reading, I think there was an adaptation at some point of The Hobbit that has some major plot changes but does involve Ballet. And I've never seen this, but I would like to. But I was also reading an article in The Guardian by Andrew Roth, who I think is one of their Moscow correspondents, that was about this release of chron and Telly, this
adaptation of Fellowship from nineteen ninety one. And Roth notes a couple of other interesting things about the history of film adaptations of Lord of the Rings in Russia. So one of them is that he mentions there was a nineteen ninety one animated version of The Hobbit that was going to be called something like The Treasure under the Mountain that was partially animated, but it was never finished.
But he links to this clip that somebody has put on the Internet of allegedly what is like six minutes of what was going to become this movie, and I checked it out, and this is gorgeous. I wish they had made this whole adaptation. I mean, it looks phenomenally beautiful to me.
Yeah, it is. It does have a lot of charm to it, and in a way it makes one wonder what it will be like when, when and if? Who knows how Copyright laws could potentially change in the future, But at what point Tolkien's work becomes the you know, the property of the people at large, you know, and when you reach the point where just about anybody can can do some sort of retelling or spin on Tolkien, you know, what would it be like if you had What would a Japanese Lord of the Rings be like?
What would a Mexican Lord of the Rings be like?
Oh, I'd love to see that. Yeah?
What would say a Minds of Maria horror film be like? I mean, there's so many different directions you could go in in Middle Earth where you know right now, certainly if you're putting out any kind of like major production, it needs to be very much in line with what the estate will approve off. I understand.
There's another really funny thing noted in that article by Andrew Roth about this concern is something we were talking about earlier tone getting lost in the translation to the Russian version, which is that when the Peter Jackson Lord of the Rings movies were released in Russia, there was one version of them, one dubbed version that was popular, that was dubbed by somebody who was a translator named Dmitri Puchkov, operating under the pseudonym Goblin, and allegedly, according
to Roth, I've never heard this myself. His dubbed version of Lord of the Rings was noted for being filled with profanity that was not there in the original text, and other funny things like, for example, Frodo in it is called Fiodor, and Legolas has a Baltic accent, and like aer Igorn is like yelling, like is like cussing at his troops.
All right, well, I don't know if I approve of cussing in the Lord of the Rings, but that's interesting.
Nonetheless, that really would change the tone for me. Yeah.
Well, we don't have a trailer per se, but I think it's high time we give everyone just a little taste of the sonic wonder is to be found in this film.
Oh you know what we should play is the is the opening music. We haven't even talked about the music yet, which is like the how do we go this far without the music? The music is like one of the greatest selling points of this right.
The music in this film is not what you might expect from a Lord of the Rings adaptation. It is in no way traditional. It is all over the board there so I kuint of it. Something like five different genres of music used to tell the story, and I have to say, I love it. It's very liberating. You don't know what you're gonna get.
Okay, let's get that opening song. That is I think that the words in this song are a Russian translation of the inscription on the ring that's in the book. So you know, seven to the dwarf floors in their halls of stone, nine immortal men doomed to die. That kind of thing.
Here you go, easier.
Do I love it? Russian folk rock?
This movie is full of Russian folk rock also, though, I love the way that, like you said, it just pulls in every possible genre. One of my favorite musical touches is that Gandalf's wizard word powers include the ability to cast spells of folk music.
Yes, yeah, that is one of the great sequences that if you don't watch the whole thing. I'll also include the highlight reel that somebody put together. I'll include that on the some moody music dot com yeah blog post for this this episode, because in that you'll see a lot of the points we're talking about here, including the funky magic of of Gandolf the Gray.
Now, we would normally do a section here where we go in depth about a lot of the people involved in the production of this, especially the cast. That's going to be harder to do in this case because a lot of these people didn't do a lot of films and are more kind of in the say, Leningrad or Saint Petersburg commune theater community. And to the extent that they did do films, they're not really films that we would be that we're familiar with. There are a lot of, you know, Russian movies.
Yeah, so certainly, I know we have some listeners out there who are who are who are Russian or have have a greater understanding of Russian cinema. So if if if you have any notes on people that we're mentioning here or not mentioning at all in any detail, certainly ride in and let us know. But we'll try and we'll cover some of the high points and at least a couple of the people that are connected to Western films of note or Russian films that are of note internationally.
So the director was somebody named Natalia Cerebryakova, who I think she went by Natasha. Actually is Natasha like a normal and a nickname for Natalia. I'm not sure I would assume that, but she One of the main things I was reading about her was that several of these articles mentioned that she was really insistent about getting the shots of the horses riding outside to really like heighten
the heighten the sense of place in the movie. And because and it's good that you did, because otherwise almost the entire thing would be shot indoors in these closed sets.
Yes, yeah, I think this was a great choice on her part, because, yeah, those were some great scenes arrative.
Like, well, the greatest thing about them actually is that so when you saw the nine, you know, there weren't nine of them in the production. Sometimes there'd be like
two ring raids. You'd see them riding through the snow and they've got these black hoods on, and it is playing synthesizer sequencers like I think, I don't know if they're Mogus or like Moge sequencers, Like you know that that kind of like thrumbing, pulsating synthesizer music that actually, I mean, you wouldn't think normally, Yeah, yeah, put electronic synth music in Lord of the Rings. But hey, it works, it's good. I like it.
I Yeah, I absolutely loved these these moments where they dropped in this ring rais synth because it has this again, this kind of like ninety early nineties TV synth vibe to it. It really gave me the warm feels and it actually reminds me of some of the sounds that Boards of Canada were using in some of their early works, some of their their their early tracks have this exact same sort of vibe. So it really got me. In fact, let's not just talk about it, let's have a quick
sample of these vibes. You so good, so good.
I love that. Watching a production like this, actually it makes you question things that you had not even realized were assumptions you had made, like the assumption that the proper musical aesthetic for a fantasy film is like classic is orchestral classical music basically, or you know, liv Tyler singing somber a cappella dirges for for elf kind. But it makes you actually ask the question, wait a minute,
why shouldn't Lord of the Rings have electronic music? Why why shouldn't it have mode sequencers and funk bass and weird saxophone and stuff. And it makes you you say, Okay, is there a reason or is this just the received aesthetic that I never even bothered to think about. I respect the boldness of these musical choices, and I'm not even sure if the people who made this realize they
were bold. Maybe they were just working without some kind of mental shackles that we've put on ourselves about fantasy here.
Yeah, I mean, they were making this film without these other expectations. And I mean I'm one certainly to say, yes, any film is better off with an electronic score, even if it's not very good, it's better. But then again, like we recently talked about regarding Cannibal Apocalypse, you know, there are also certain standards within a given film culture. There are certain expectations about the music and what you can do with music. So you know, maybe that's the answer here.
Oh yeah, Well, like we talked about in Cannibal Apocalypse, if you watch Italian horror thriller movies from the seventies and eighties, one thing you'll notice is that for some reason, the Italian directors seem to think that funk is scary or the disco music heightens tension, and American audiences don't seem to agree with this, like it feels incongruous, it doesn't fit, but it just kind of proves to you that the moods evoked by certain genres or sounds of
music or not universal, they can be highly culturally contingent. For some reason. To the Italians, it makes sense for the funk music to kick in while somebody's creeping up with the knife. But to American audiences that sounds funny.
Yeah, And perhaps for Russian audiences, or at least for the filmmakers involved here, an accordion is the appropriate instrument to play when Frodo is stabbed by a ring wraith.
Oh my god? Yes, yeah that was true, wasn't it. Yeah, Well, maybe this brings us to somebody else we should definitely mention as being involved with Cronatelli. And this is Andre Romanov. I think he may have gone by Diusha, but Romanov had several roles with this film. He was a composer, so I think he did all or most of the music for the movie. I'm almost positive he did the version,
the musical version that you heard earlier. That's the adaptation of the inscription on the ring that somber haunting, almost kind of like old church chant folk rock. But in this he's also the narrator of the film. This is another choice that it makes that I really like this. Lord of the Rings has a fully embodied narrator, like you know Masterpiece Theater. He just sits there and he smokes a pipe and talks into the camera telling you the story.
And sometimes he does just sit there. There are times, yeah, he doesn't seem to be in a particular hurry to tell you the story of the Fellowship of the Ring.
Yeah, yeah, yeah. You see Gandalf chase down Gollum and he's like, hey, stop lying to me, pal and galums squirming, and then it might cut to him and he's just sitting there packing a pipe for a couple minutes, and then he'll start telling you what happens next.
Oh.
But the other thing I didn't mention is that Romanov was a member of the famous Russian rock band Aquarium or Okvarium, which I think was based out of Leningrad. Was first formed in the early seventies, when I think it was tough being a rock band in the Soviet Union in the early seventies, but I think as Glasnos came on in the eighties, they had more musical freedom, and now this is one of the most famous Russian
rock bands. I know they you know, they played Leningrad clubs all the time, and they've got a ton of albums. I was listening to some Akvarium while I was making my coffee this morning, and it definitely made me want to like Hugh Wood with Grandfather Mushroom. I think they've done a bunch of different genres, a kind of eclectic musical group, but a lot of it sounded basically to me like electric acoustic folk rock.
It reminded me a lot, and I don't know if this is a fair comparison. Reminded me of the music of Al Stewart to a certain extent.
I don't think I really know Al Stewart, so.
Oh, you know, he did well, I guess ironically. He did a song called Roads to Moscow that's rather good. But he else did You're the Cat Old Admirals. Yeah. But he did a lot of tracks that had hit a track titled Nostrodamus, so he had a try a lot of number of tracks that were kind of lengthy and had historical settings to them. Good stuff. I like Al Stewart. I fire him up every now and then.
Okay, well, I'll say I not only love Romanov's music in this movie, but I love him as the narrator. I really enjoy the way he makes us sit and wait for him to tell us something else.
While we're talking about the music. I also want to go ahead and drop one more audio sample, and that is some of the excellent Galam music. Because the Galum music is also seemingly in a slightly different genre. It's our kind of creepy vocal reverb kind of soundscape. I don't know how you would describe this, Joe.
Yeah, I don't know. It's very echoey. Gollum growls in this movie. He growls like a dog, and then Gandalf growls back at him.
And it should we have to stray us. Gollum kind of dances kind of has extended dance sequences that that that should you have to see them to believe them. They're pretty wonderful. Let's have just a sample of that. Isn't it dreamy? That's one. I mean, that's almost like I'm the reminded of stuff like Nurse with wound or robbing gristle there.
This movie has a number of so I watched it with Rachel and she she said that the movie was hypnotating her it does.
I fell asleep once during it in a very pleasant way.
The Gollumn sequence was one of the most hypnotody of the entire movie for.
Me, absolutely all right. So I'm I'm not gonna really spend a lot of time on any of the other cast members, but I do want to mention two actors that are in it because they have some interesting connections. First of all, there's Sergei Parshon, who plays Tom Bombadill. He was born nineteen fifty two. I believe he's still around.
I'm not sure if he's acting or not. He's known for such films, at least in Russia as The Plane Flies to Russia from ninety four the Fall of the Empire in two thousand and five, but he's been in some titles with a bunch of Western names in them as well, and these include Bernard Rose's nineteen ninety seven adaptation of Anna Karenina that stars Sophie Marceau, Sean Bean,
Alfred Molina, Fiona Shaw, and Danny Houston. So this actor is our bridge, the bridge we need to connect this film to Peter Jackson's two thousand and one adaptation.
That's amazing, and this reminds me so Sean Being, of course, plays Borimir, the hero of Gondor in the in the Peter Jackson adaptation, and Sean Bean absolutely wonderful in that role. You know, the best Boromir you could hope for. But there was something I think it was in that Variety article.
If not, it was in one of the other ones I was reading that had an interview with the actory of Guiney Solyakov, who plays Borimir in the in Kronatelli and so Yakov apparently is a big fan of the Peter Jackson adaptations, and I think they caused him to wish that he had portrayed Borimir differently than he did. So there's I just want to read. From that article
and Variety by Rebecca Davis. Here, quoting Soyakov, she writes, watching the film for the first time last month, he felt he perhaps hadn't been quite ready to take on the complexities of the flawed hero. Quote. I don't think I played the role to the fullest. I wish I hadn't been so emotional when I was trying to explain why I wanted the ring. I should have remained very
composed and I think that's interesting. So seeing like actors who were in this having watched later movie at as and saying like, oh, okay, I didn't really understand the character I was supposed to be playing. But like, now that I saw the Peter Jackson adaptation, like saw Sean Bean, like, Borimir makes more sense to me, And here's how I should have done it. You know, you should have. Like one thing that's great about Borimir is you know, Borimir has a point. Borimir in a way like his heart
is in the right place. He's saying, give me the weapon of the enemy, so that I may defend the world against it.
M hmm.
But of course in this movie, it's quite funny actually, because they're having the counsel of el Ron where everybody's you know, they're talking about what to do with the ring, and Borimir just starts going like, give me the ring, give it, give it to me.
Yeah. Yeah, that doesn't doesn't work quite as well, does it.
Yeah. It kind of makes you think, like, well, why'd they bring him along if in the initial meeting he's like, it must be mine.
Now, I know what a lot of you are wondering. You're you're thinking to yourself. All right, you guys have been able to find an actor in this film that connects it to the cinematic universe of the Peter Jackson Order of the Rings movies. But can you connect it to the cinematic universe of Eli Roth? And yes we can. Okay, that's because we have an actor by the name of Lillian Malkina who plays I believe the matriarch of the Saxville Baggins is.
The Sackville Torbens is.
Oh, it's the Sackville Tourbinson's.
Well, no, no, no, it's the same thing, because in this it's Bilbo Torbins and Frodo Torbins. I don't know what that change means, but they didn't go with Baggins.
Well, at any rate, she's the matriarch. She has several notable scenes here standing around with Bilbo. She was in Eli Roth's hostel too, and she was in his Thanksgiving short, the fake trailer for Thanksgiving Like a Thanksgiving nineteen seventy slasher film, in which she plays the grandmother.
Oh, so I think she gets murdered and then like dressed up like a turkey.
I think so. Yes. Yeah, Now, another actor in this that went on to appear in some some Western productions. Galadriol is played by Elena Solive, who appeared in the Lost City of Z and also in The Sopranos. And on top of this, she won an award for Best Supporting Actress in the film Factas at the nineteen eighty one Cans Film Festival. So that's pretty cool.
In The Sopranos, I believe she plays Junior's nurse, taking care of him when he's under house arrest. It's not a major role. I think she plays the cousin of one of Tony's girlfriends.
But she's perhaps the only actor from the Sopranos to appear in an adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.
Right, as far as I know, what if.
You had to had to recast The Lord of the Rings using only actors who appeared in The Sopranos, Now there's a challenge.
Okay, Robert Loja as Saar Ruman, I'm gonna go with I'm gonna go with James Gandolphini rest in peace. But assuming they're all still James Gandolfinis, Borimir perfect Bormar.
You're not tempted by the Gandolphini Gandolf connection.
There No, and he's not Gandalf like, but he is like Bormere. He's got that kind of that kind of reckless complexity. Hm hm oh oh oh oh. Seth just chimed in with the best possible suggestion, which of course is Steve Bushmi as Gollum. There you go. Oh man, my name's Meatl.
Hello, Fellow Ring Bears. So many awesome directions you could go in. You sho't's wonderful. He would have he would have been able to nail it for sure.
So good. Okay, the guy who plays Furyo, that's that's our lego less I believe. Anyway, Okay, we got to move on. I figure at this point we should just mention a few things that we took notes on while we were watching this. I mean, obviously we're not going to recap the story because you know, either you you basically know the story of Fellowship the Ring, or if you don't, you've probably stopped listening at this point already.
Yeah, let's see, So we'll just touch on some things that that struck us. I will say, the Hobbit scenes, the Hobbits partying at Bilbo's birthday party, pretty great. I feel like they helped to convey the sort of universal fulkiness that is found in the Shire. You know, just about any culture can relate to that on some level, though I don't know. The Hobbits felt perhaps drunker than usual, Like there was kind of a dwarven level of drunkenness
to the Hobbits. And I didn't think we had dwarves at all in this adaptation, did we?
So?
Dwarf and I had Gimley, we had Gimbley.
Was Gimmy there?
I just thought Gimley was absent? No, Gimley was Gimley Gimley.
He was the guy in the Red Cape and Hood after the Fellowship formed. He has a Gimley And legalists are almost non existent in this adaptation the Fellowship. So
we mentioned the strange plot structure. It crams about half of the Fellowship of the Ring into the last fifteen minutes, so the Fellowship is not formed until there are like, yeah, like fifteen minutes left to go out of this two hour production, and instead it decides to spend almost all of its time with things going on with the Hobbits at the beginning, and then Tom Bombadill and the barrel whites and explaining the story with Gandalf, and then the
scenes at the ends at like Brie and with Farmer Maggot.
Yeah, like they really started acting like they needed to land this thing in a hurry, which, as we know from Peter Jackson's treatment of the films, that's just not how you do Lord of the Rings, right, start acting like you're in a hurry, you're just not going to be able to tell it. So, yeah, the pace of the pacing is weird here.
Well, the other thing. I was going to mention this earlier, but I guess we got sidetracked. One of the things about this is clearly that they made a choice to emphasize scenes that could be shot with people like standing around or sitting around not moving and discussing things, and any sequences that would have involved major action or movement
or outdoor sets. Those things they try to skip over as lightly as they can, and so most of the stuff that gets cut is the more adventury stuff, you know, where you know, you don't get really much of anything about crossing the mountains, going through the mines, fighting the orcs. I mean, there's a little bit of fighting the orcs, but Mostly it's just they reuse some footage they shot,
or maybe not even footage. I think it's just a series of still images of people in these costumes with horns on their helmets, and these are the Orcs, and you see them going ah at the camera, and then you see the actor playing Aragorn swinging a sword for a minute, and then the battle's over.
Now. One thing I applaud it for is that they they made the choice to genderflip Legoless's character. Oh so Legoless is a female elf for a how do they refer to the female elves in the Hobbit prequel movies from Peter Jackson women? Else elf women something like that. At any rate, we have a female Legoleiss in this, and I feel like it was actually a pretty good choice, because otherwise you have a very male oriented tail here.
Yes, a long observed about Lord of the Rings. I mean, this is a very duty story. But yeah, so I like the idea of making Legalists a woman, but Legalists and Gimley have basically I don't think either of them has any lines in this adaptation. I mean, again, they don't show up until there's like something like twenty or fifteen minutes left and then they say nothing. They just you see them standing there. Though.
Yeah, I want to point something out that it took me a while to realize what I was comparing it to. But Gandolf in this looks so much like Vincent Price in The Witchfinder general. Yeah, it's like a very similar hair and facial features, and I mean also his facial feet, Like he has a very Vincent Price esque knows this.
Actor very good observation. I would not have caught that myself, but you're so correct.
And we've already talked about Frodo and what he looks like.
Yeah, you know what, I bet that actor who plays frod is great. I'm convinced now that it was just like he had the wrong type of character in mind, and that's the problem here.
I feel like casting Hobbits is probably a very difficult task. I mean they I think Peter Jackson's productions were able to pull it off, but there's so many ways it could have gone wrong, you know, if you weren't going with actors like like I mean, Ian Holm of course was terrific, but also the younger Bilbo whose name is eluding me at the moment, and also the kid playing fro Do in the actual Lord of the Rings films
by Peter Jackson. They're altered, terrific, and they're able to pull off this character that I think could be mismanaged in so many ways.
You mean Elijah Wood, the kid playing fro Do.
Yeah, Elijah would. Oh yeah, he's great to say.
Is he a kid? I think he's older than me.
Well, at the time, he was younger and had a very youthful uh comparence, and technically and technically he was a hobbit though he was what thirty three at the time.
Oh yeah, that's like, I don't know what for hobbits. That's like being sixteen, isn't it.
Yeah, I'm maybe screwing up my hobbit math here, But at any rate, he's terrific, and of course he's gone on to produce a lot of really cool stuff as well.
Well. Another thing is that it's not just fro Doo. I mean generally, other than Bilbo, the Hobbits in this movie are grotesque the whole party. This movie really deemphasizes Samwise Gamgee. He has maybe like three lines in it, but they did make the choice to give him purple hair. He has a purple ponytail, and he has additional eyebrows, so he's got his eyebrows, but then he's got big eyebrows drawn on on top of his real eyebrows.
Is he which one is the one with the giant sideburns?
I think, well, I think there are multiple ones with giant side But this movie is a very mutton choppy movie. Like Bilbo has mutton chops that are clearly not human hair. They're like some kind of animal fur. They look like a mink stole, but they're glued to the sides of his face. And several of the Hobbits in the Fellowship have mutton chops. Maybe they all do, except Frodo or I don't know. At least I think Took does, or as they call him in this movie.
Pin have we talked about sarmon the White yet we have not.
So one of the things we get in this movie is, of course, the sequence where you know it's famously in The Lord of the Rings, Gandalf disappears for a while, what's going on, and then he meets the He meets the characters back when they get to Rivendell, the Land of the Elves, and you find out what happened to Gandalf.
It's that he went to talk to Sarimon the White, the great wise Wizard, the chief of his order, and Sarruman reveals a great betrayal that Sarmon has concluded that it is impossible to stand against the armies of Mordor, so you have to join them or else die. And Gandalf is like, no, I'm not going to join them with you. So Saramon's like, well, I don't like that, you know, So it's it's paying time for you, and I guess.
You're going on the roof.
Yeah, You're going on the roof until you change your mind. So Sarimon the White, the greatest of the Wizards, is supposed he's supposed to be like the guy you can really count on, but he is a betrayer and he join the enemy. And it's one of the great parts of the book. It's great in the it's great in the the Peter Jackson movies, of course, with Christopher Lee playing Soomon.
Christopher Lee was always the Even before these films were in any way put together, I was like, Christopher Lee should play Saramon, Like this is the only person to play this role. Yeah, and he's terrific and he in him those films. He looks like so many of these classic illustrations of the character. I'm thinking about the Hildebrandt Brothers. They did a wonderful version of Soromon that I've absolutely loved for ages.
In this movie, Saruman looks like he would have been Hans Gruber's Hinchman and die Hard.
Yeah, he's like thirty five and is clean shaven and has kind of a kind of a manic energy to him, like a cocaine Yeah, like he should be this character should be a drug dealer in a nineties action film, Like he should be about to get his next snapped by Jean Kles That damn bizarre choice.
Yeah, he's like sweaty, so he's kind of damp and he's he's freaking out. He doesn't have that Saruman composure where he's like, you know, you will join or die. Instead, he's like, oh, give me the ring.
He's kind of like bora mirror is yeah, yep.
Now there's another choice that I really took issue with, which we've talked many times about how much we love the weird music in this but one musical choice that was very strange to me is that Tom Bombadil does not sing. Instead, Oh yeah, he has theme music that plays every time he appears, but he doesn't sing it. It sounds like some kind of I was trying to think what band it sounded like. It's almost kind of like a nineties sound is like very Reverby on the vocals.
It's got that kind of like rushing sound effect on them. It's almost a little bit like nineties U two vocals.
Yeah, yeah, it's it's it's weird because Tom Bombadil finally shows up in an adaptation, you expect him to sing, because he sings a lot in the book. It's it's like this amount. Yeah, that's like that's what he does, So it is it's an interesting choice that he does not actually sing. It makes me wonder what the reasoning for that was. Was this actor not a singer? Did did it get cut for time? I don't know. I
mean music is also key to his power. Tom Bombadil's like, hey, if you get into any trouble, you need to sing this song and I'll show up and I'll sing my heart out and defeat whatever is bothering you.
Essentially does Frodo actually sing the song, though, I think he's just in the barrow down. He's like under the barrow and he just goes like Tom Bombadil Bombadil, and then he shows up and he's like hello.
Yeah. I mean it's still great that Tom Bombadil shows up at all, yes, but but yeah, it is weird that he doesn't sing.
Man, there's so much that I'm not even remembering at this point. But one of the things that I think is a very strange choice. Like I said, they really they really shorten the adventure part of the story, like once the fellows it gets together, that part's just on like fast forward to the max, jumping over everything, and they completely cut out the death of Gandalf. There's no
there's no bell Rog. I think they're just they go into the minds of Maria for a minute, and we're to understand that they're fighting orcs because they show those orcs going with their horn helmets and Aragorn's swinging his sword, and then they're like leaving the minds and they say like, hey, what happened to Gandalf? He must have gotten lost somewhere
back there. That's it. No Bellrog, no bridge of Kaza Doom or wait, no, there is a bridge because you see er Gordon like trying to balance on it.
Yeah.
Oh and Aragorn is like fourteen by the way.
Oh yeah, he has a big scar on his face. Yeah. But but yeah, there's no that Gandalf doesn't doesn't die like that is That's that's an interesting choice as well, because this is one of the most emotional moments in the entire saga. Yeah, really one of the most emotional moments in I would say like like Western fantasy, like modern fantasy literature in its entirety.
Yeah, it's like it's a great storytelling choice because up until then everything has been about Gandalf is the person who knows what to do. Everybody else is confused and they're scared, and Gandalf is always the person who can figure out what to do next, and so you always look to him. And then he suddenly he's dead, He's gone, and what are you supposed to do? Then it's like it's so great. It really heightens the tension of the story.
And I guess he does disappear from this story, but there's only like ten minutes left when that happens, and they don't even say what happened to him. They're just like, oh, I don't know. I guess he got lost back there or something.
He had to take a leak or something. That he's back. That's okay, We're good to go.
And then immediately they're just in Loath. Laurian and the elves are dancing around. There's just people in like wearing garlands of flowers and wearing white robes and they're doing ballet.
This is when I almost fell asleep for the second time. This is a very hypnotic sequence as well.
Yeah, and then of course we do get the sequence with Galadriel being tempted by the ring and passing the test, and she does pass the test. She's a very good Elf queen. And then basically it's pretty much over. I think we very quickly get bora Mer saying again like, hey, give me the ring, and Frodo's like no, and then he will.
Then we also have sorrow and uh, I mean sorry saarn himself. Oh at least the eye of sorrow on. Yes, yeah, that part shows up very funny and has exactly the same energy as all of these uh, these these these ring junkies. Because Saarron's just like you're gonna give me that ring. That's basically what he does, like this oozing eye with like purple ooze behind it. Yeah and yeah, exact same tone as everyone else who wants to ring.
But it ends extremely abruptly because Borr is like, give me the ring and Frodo's like nah, and then uh and then he starts to walk off, and then Sam Wise Gamsey shows up with his purple wig and says like, hey, I gotta go with you, and Frodo's like nah. And then he says he says, well, who's gonna cook your food and light your fires for you? And Frodo's like okay, and then they're just on horses and then it's over.
Yeah, this is kind of the riding off into the disc and it's kind of like the end of an incredible Hulk TV episode from the old days. Yeah, and then I think we hear the theme song again, so.
I don't know in the end. Obviously, this is a you know, beyond micro budget production. I mean it's essentially a no budget production that was made you know, made on the fly, shot in less than nine hours, according to one of the actors, and given what they had and also working on source material that was through several several different filters of derangement. I got to say, obviously, like it's funny what we're looking at on the screen, but I respect their work.
Yeah, yeah, and it's again just knowing they were working with no budget. I feel like they did a pretty good job. And it makes more wonder like what would have happened had had the same energy gone into this
film as had gone into previous Soviet fantasy epics. Because we should of course drive home that that there are some tremendous Soviet and Russian fantasy epics that have come out in the years since, but certainly in the years before this, including the Jack Frost movie Rozoko from nineteen sixty five, but also films like Sampo or The Day of the Earth Froze, the nineteen fifty nine Soviet Finnish
film that is based on the Kalevaga. Both of those films, even though you many of you might be used to sort of a decayed copy of the film that given the Mystery Science Theater three thousand treatment, if you find restored footage of these motion pictures, it's incredible. These are beautiful,
high budget just beautifully rendered films. So I can't help but imagine, like, what would it have been like had the energy that went into into Frosty or into the Sampo film, what if they had gone into this into the creation of the Fellowship of the Rings.
Yeah, that would have been so magical. And apparently in Russia the interest was there. Like I was reading an article for the BBC that included an interview with somebody named Irena Nazarova, who they identified as a Russian artist who saw Chronatelli on TV when it originally aired in ninety one, and they say like, well, wait a minute, Like is Tolkien a big thing in Russia anyway? Like what you know, would people have been into this? And I want to read her response, He's massive. After Jackson
made his great trilogy Interests soared Back. Russia is full of fans, cosplay and everything. A friend of mine was out looking for mushrooms in the countryside near Moscow and she ran into a band of elves with bows and arrows. I know a blacksmith who makes a fairly decent living from hammering out swords and helmets, and he told me about a gangster who'd ordered gates for his mansion. Quote
like in Mordor. Oh my god, so some like Russian oligarch crime lord is also a lord of the rings and has outfitted his datcha to be I don't know, the barador or something.
Oh m hmm, okay.
Okay, maybe we need to wrap it up there. But Rob, I have so enjoyed going on this, uh this, this, this hero's journey with you.
Yeah, this has been a lot of fun and uh, you know, a chance just to discuss token adaptations in general, but also this, this particular attempt. It's it's pretty it's pretty interesting. So again I advise folks out there who are interested, even if you don't have it in you to watch the entire two hours, you should at least check out that highlight reel. Though that highlight reel is not going to give you everything.
No, no, no, no, especially some of.
The musical qualities we've been talking about.
If you don't have it in you to watch the whole two hours, you just you're weak. You know, you don't you don't have you don't have intellectual will power, you don't have the courage the heart. Come on, if Sam and Frodo can journey across all of Middle Earth. You can watch this two hour Weirdo stage production.
Absolutely so uh yeah again, I'll put I'll put embedded versions of these videos up at Samouda music dot com, along with some of the music we were talking about the aquarium music for example, so you can check that out as well. All right, well, yeah, we're gonna go and close it out then, But if you want to listen to other episodes of Weird House Cinema, it publishes every Friday in the Stuff to Blow Your Mind podcast feed. We're primarily a science and culture podcast. Our core episodes
come out on Tuesdays and Thursdays. You'll also find an artifact episode on Wednesdays, as well as a listener mail
episode on Monday. So certainly right in if you have thoughts about this particular film, if you have, especially if you say watched it on Russian television back in the day, or you have you have, I know, we heard after we watched Teens in the Universe or Children in the Universe, we heard from at least a couple of listeners who who had Russian backgrounds, and we got to learn so much about about the viewing of that film and interpretations
of that film. I would love to hear what you have to say about this one as well.
Huge thanks as always to our excellent audio producer, Seth Nicholas Johnson. If you would like to get in touch with us with feedback on this episode or any other, to suggest topic for the future, or just to say hello, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com.
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