The Lord of the Rings

Friday

Cockburn

George Santos thinks the Hobbit movies were better than Lord of the Rings

Hammer time Cockburn hears that Jamie Kirchick, the New York Times bestselling author and sometime Speccie writer, has scored an exclusive interview with Armie Hammer, the disgraced Call Me By Your Name star that just might be a cannibal, out this weekend in Graydon Carter's Air Mail. Cockburn wonders whether the meet was over dinner — and if so, who was on the menu… Will CPAC be wack? We are just a month away from CPAC, the Conservative Political Action Conference, which in the Trump era was one of the highlights of Cockburn's year (as you can see from his previous coverage). But buzz ahead of the flagship conservative conference this year has been muted — and right now the line-up lacks the dazzle of previous years, though it does, of course, include President Trump.

george santos hobbit

Saturday

James Walton

Amazon’s Lord of the Rings series is brimming with ponderous aphorisms

Amazon’s much-heralded Tolkien prequel The Lord of the Rings: The Rings of Power began by answering a question that has puzzled humankind — and possibly elves — these many millennia. Why is it that a ship floats and a stone doesn’t? The reason apparently is because "a stone sees only downward," whereas a ship has "her gaze fixed upon the light that guides her." And this, I’m afraid, set the tone for much of the dialogue that followed in the two episodes released so far — as, to their credit, the characters managed to exchange an endless series of ponderous aphorisms without giggling.

lord of the rings

Tuesday

Grayson Quay

Game of Thrones was the last water cooler show

I realize this is an unpopular opinion, but I actually didn’t hate the ending of Game of Thrones. Sure, the showrunners fumbled some of the character arcs and made some odd decisions (King Bran? Really?). But the broad thematic arc of the series was perfect. Daenerys’s dark turn into madness and mass murder and the subsequent destruction of the Iron Throne served as a hopeful proclamation that, even in our bloody, jaded, pornified world, the true faith lives on. The show understood, on some level, that neither the ideal redistribution of power nor its unfettered aggrandizement could ever be our salvation. Martin made his name as the anti-Tolkien, but it was all a ruse. If his intentions were truly insidious, his story would “look fairer and feel fouler.