#Brian Sibley

[dandelion-jester]

Anyone who acts like the modern patron Saint of Tolkien is Peter Jackson is wrong. It's Brian Sibley.

[bdazzlebooklover]

[bornitereads]

The Fall of Númenor - J. R. R. Tolkien; Ed. By Brian Sibley

Read: Jan - Feb 2023

This was a great piece of work for me. It lays out the history that Tolkien had written for the Second Age of Middle-earth. Which had always been a big opaque for me. This was a fun read. I loved learning more about Middle-earth. And of course this really showed how wild the Rings of Power TV show was. Completely off the book. I mean I did know that already but it was fun to have it confirmed with the publication of a whole book. But yeah unless you are into the lore of Middle-earth this is probably not the book for you. But if so, then this is a great book!

Info: HarperCollins, 2022

[picturebookshelf]

Harry Potter: Film Wizardry (2010)

Text: Brian Sibley -- Design: Minalima Design

[labyrinths-library]

Book 43 of 2024

The Maps of Middle Earth by Brian Sibley (Ill. John Howe)

★★★

Find the author here. Find the illustrator here. Find the book here.

Pages: 159

Genre: Nonfiction

Review:

Super gorgeous maps. I love how it weaves the story in with the maps so that you have a quick-glance context for the maps. I also love how much it is inspired visually by New Zealand since Howe was involved in filming the movies.

[ronnydeschepper]

Dertig jaar geleden: première van "Shadowlands"

Shadowlands is een Britse biografische dramafilm uit 1993 over de relatie tussen academicus C.S.Lewis (gespeeld door Anthony Hopkins) en de Joods-Amerikaanse dichteres Joy Davidman (gespeeld door Debra Winger ), haar dood door kanker, en hoe dit zijn christendom uitdaagde. De film werd geregisseerd door Richard Attenborough met een scenario van William Nicholson, gebaseerd op zijn televisiefilm…

[duckbunny]

my only opinion on the controversy is that, as a lifelong listener of Radio 4, it is remarkably obvious nonsense to describe welcome to night vale as an originator of audio drama.

[3months2mordor]

We're preparing for our LotR Pre-US Election read along by getting our books together. If you don't have a copy of your own and want one, we'd absolutely suggest buying from your local independent bookstore, new or used (as a former bookseller myself, indie bookstores rock!- Mod Elanor). There's also your local library!

But if you don't have access to a physical book we've found a few options online for you to use for free.

We're so excited to get reading soon!

Internet Archive 1987 Houghton Mifflin edition (needs free account)

2. Internet Archive 1981 BBC Radio adaptation (starring Ian Holm as Frodo)

3. This Spotify Playlist of audiobooks.

[blogjhm]

All nine of these Winnie the Pooh books from the U.K. The first four by Milne and Shepard and the five byJane Riordan David Benedictus Paul Bright Brian Sibley Jeanne Willis Kate Saunders and Mark Burgess. The ninth one called Winter In The Wood will be released in the U.K. on September 26th.

[a-ramblinrose]

JOMP Book Photo Challenge || December 11 || Books With Maps: The Maps Of Tolkien's Middle-Earth by Brian Sibley & John Howe 

[mikeepoo]

A stitch in time

Emma Stirling-Middleton, curator at the Cartoon Museum: The exhibition has everything that survives relating to The Wrong Trousers (1993). It takes you on a journey through the making of the film, from Nick Park’s sketchbooks, seeing the evolution of the characters, then developing them into an original script, then storyboarding. Then stepping onto the studio floor to see original models and props. And then we look at the film’s legacy – including the Oscar.

Photograph: Aardman/The Cartoon Museum

To the moon and back

ESM: At the Oscars in 1991, Nick Park was up for two of the three films in the best short animation category. He won for Creature Comforts, which beat A Grand Day Out, the first Wallace and Gromit film. At that time, Creature Comforts stole the limelight while A Grand Day Out was more of a slow burn. It was really with The Wrong Trousers that public interest in Wallace and Gromit exploded.

Photograph: Aardman Studios

A giant leap

David Sproxton, Aardman co-founder and producer of all the Wallace and Gromit films: A Grand Day Out was sort of a student film. To an extent you can pick it apart. Trousers was a whole league higher up the food chain in terms of production values and storytelling.

Photograph: Photo 12/Alamy

A winning partnership

DS: Nick had written most of A Grand Day Out solo, but for this one we teamed him up with Bob Sandy, who’d written a lot of Doctor Who. They got like a house on fire. Bob said: ‘Come on Nick, let’s go through the sketchbooks and see what ideas you’ve got.’

Photograph: Aardman Studios

The plot thickens

DS: Nick had about 24 sketches of a train chase on a model railway because he thought it would be funny to have something in the vein of a major cowboy film or a Bond movie, but on a living room carpet. Bob said: ‘Well, I think what we’ve got here is a heist movie, and that train chase is the denouement. And there’s a picture of a penguin here. I think that’s your villain.’

Photograph: Aardman/The Cartoon Museum

The silent type

DS: It’s visual storytelling. The preliminary sketches are never people with speech bubbles coming out of the mouth; they’re always doing visual gags. Nick always expected Gromit to speak, but when he was making A Grand Day Out and Gromit was meant to speak, he realised he couldn’t actually animate it. So he thought: actually I can just do it with a look. That’s when Gromit went mute. And it’s one reason the entire world loves him – you can understand what he’s thinking without his saying a word.

Photograph: Aardman/The Cartoon Museum

Sitcom side-eye

Brian Sibley, Aardman historian and co-writer on The Wrong Trousers: There’s something so human about Gromit. Just the placing of the eyes – they can be hugely expressive. Although he is a dog, he’s immensely endearing. He’s very much half of a partnership; Wallace and Gromit is a middle-aged kind of concept. It’s sort of Terry and June, a married couple that were the comedy diet in the 60s and 70s.

Photograph: Aardman Studios

Man’s best friend

DS: Wallace and Gromit is an unbreakable marriage. You’ve got this unbelievably dedicated dog living with this master who gets himself into the most terrible holes.

Photograph: Aardman Studios

Sheepdog trials

DS: There are similarities between Gromit and Bitzer, the dog in Shaun the Sheep. Wallace is not two-dimensional, but there’s a carelessness about him which is part of his character. The farmer in Shaun is kind of oblivious. So the dogs have the complex roles: brokering relationships and sorting out the problems set by those that surround them. They have to act as a kind of intermediaries between good and evil. They’ve got a lot of thinking to do. So they are a bit more complex and sophisticated.

Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

A circle of friends

BS: Wallace and Gromit are appealing, reassuring, warm shapes. Not angular. Everything about them is comfortable. We lean towards characters like Mickey Mouse, which is all circles, or Charles Schulz’s characters, which are based mostly on circular shapes. Wallace and Gromit fit that bill, as do the chickens in Chicken Run and Morph [seen here with David Sproxton (left) and his Aardman co-founder, Peter Lord]. And, obviously, the sheep.

Photograph: Adrian Sherrat/Adrian Sherratt

Cartoon cinematography

DS: The Wrong Trousers is a film noir: all the back alley stuff has a really Hitchcockian look. A lot of that is lighting. When we started, stop-frame lighting was pretty bland and flat – think Morph or The Magic Roundabout. I said: “Let’s light these as if they are live-action dramas. Let’s put the atmosphere in as if they are proper thrillers.”

Photograph: Aardman Studios

A DIY enterprise

ESM: Everything was done by hand, even the special effects: they put in pieces of glass to create the gunshots. A lot of their equipment was antique – mismatched odds and ends they brought from home. And they couldn’t watch back any footage: it was physical film that had to be sent from Bristol to London to be developed.

Photograph: Aardman/The Cartoon Museum

43,200 shots

BS: Film is not a real thing. There are no moving pictures. What we are looking at is 24 images every second that cheats the eye. With a live action film you point the camera, the actors move, the camera automatically takes a whole series of still images. With stop frame animation you have to create every single one of those 24 parts of a second.

Photograph: Aardman/The Cartoon Museum

Work continues

BS: It was a Lilliputian enterprise: repositioning tiny figures for hours each day. The meticulousness and labour-intensive concentration that goes into animation means it’s a really dedicated craft. It’s not something you just rush off.

Photograph: Aardman/The Cartoon Museum

Peter Sallis reprises the role of Wallace

DS: Peter had a bloody good voice. Bob Baker wrote an awful lot of Wallace’s dialogue and invented his timbre, to an extent. Peter could deliver those lines with aplomb and a lovely slight tongue-in-cheek that was really wonderful and lifted the character. Peter was actually a home counties chap, but the humour in that cod northern accent brought a real magic.

Photograph: PA Images/Alamy

Shooting wraps

DS: With animation you generally don’t shoot more than you need, but the rough cut came out about 38 minutes. In the editing room with every cut it got better and better. It doesn’t feel rushed. There’s an awful lot in it but it moves at a rattling pace.

Photograph: Aardman Studios

The film screens

DS: We premiered at the Venice film festival, right before a big movie by this Iranian director, called Manhattan by Numbers, to which we were very much second fiddle. The Wrong Trousers got a standing ovation. I said: “Blimey, Nick this means it’s pretty special.” Then Manhattan By Numbers played and within about 40 minutes, probably about a third of them had walked out. We were sitting next to the director in the balcony. I thought: “God, we’ve gotta stay and then congratulate this guy on his wonderful work.” I spent most of the time thinking: “What the hell am I gonna say?”

Photograph: Ian West/PA

Art imitates life

BS: There’s universality in the specificity. And people around the world love Wallace and Gromit because there’s something very British about it: people creating miniatures and mad inventions on their kitchen tables and in the garden shed. It’s quite Heath Robinson and zany.

Photograph: Sam Frost

Anti-CGI

BS: One of Nick’s other heroes is Ray Harryhausen, and his work – as well as, say the King Kong films of the 30s – shares with Nick’s a kind of tactileness. And that creates a strange anomaly: because we know it isn’t real, it somehow looks more real. The funny thing about CGI is that it can look very real but also be obviously phony. Claymation’s seeming simplicity gives it a kind of emotional and artistic and even spiritual sincerity, which I find absent in a lot of CGI animation.

Photograph: Aardman/The Cartoon Museum

Primal fulfilment

BS: Most people have played with plasticine – and even early civilisations made models in carbon clay. Pretty much everybody who’s ever had a teddy bear or a doll has positioned it: sat it up, laid it down, walked it around. It’s part of what makes us human – this Promethean desire to bring things to life. The special thing about what Nick does is to create figures you can see are made with the hand. The fingerprints on their work make it incredibly personal. It’s like looking at a sculpture by Henry Moore: you are seeing the craftsmanship right there, before your eyes.

Photograph: Graeme Robertson/The Guardian

Putting this together taxed my addled brain, but I love Aardman stuff, and claymation all together, just wanted to share.

The whole shebang is taken in total from The Guardian

[rockislandadultreads]

Libby Spotlight: Fantasy eBooks

A Shadow in the Ember by Jennifer L. Armentrout

Born shrouded in the veil of the Primals, a Maiden as the Fates promised, Seraphena Mierel's future has never been hers. Chosen before birth to uphold the desperate deal her ancestor struck to save his people, Sera must leave behind her life and offer herself to the Primal of Death as his Consort.

However, Sera's real destiny is the most closely guarded secret in all of Lasania—she's not the well protected Maiden but an assassin with one mission—one target. Make the Primal of Death fall in love, become his weakness, and then...end him. If she fails, she dooms her kingdom to a slow demise at the hands of the Rot.

Sera has always known what she is. Chosen. Consort. Assassin. Weapon. A specter never fully formed yet drenched in blood. A monster. Until him. Until the Primal of Death's unexpected words and deeds chase away the darkness gathering inside her. And his seductive touch ignites a passion she's never allowed herself to feel and cannot feel for him. But Sera has never had a choice. Either way, her life is forfeit—it always has been, as she has been forever touched by Life and Death.

This is the first volume in the "Flesh and Fire" series.

Queen of Myth and Monsters by Scarlett St. Clair

Isolde, newly coronated queen, has finally found a king worthy of her in the vampire Adrian. But their love for each other has cost Isolde her father and her homeland. With two opposing goddesses playing mortals and vampires like chess pieces against one another, Isolde is uncertain who her allies are in the vampire stronghold of Revekka.

Now, as politics in the Red Palace grow more underhanded and a deadly blood mist threatens all of Cordova, Isolde must trust in the bond she's formed with Adrian, even as she learns troubling information about his complicated past.

This is the second volume of the "Adrian X Isolde" series.

The Cornish Princess by Tanya Anne Crosby

Said to be a changeling child awarded to the King and Queen of Cornwall, Gwyndolyn is “blessed” at her christening with three fae gifts: a prophecy for her future, a gift of “Reflection,” and a golden mane—literally. Every lock of her clipped hair will turn to filaments of gold, provided it is cut by her one true love.

Alas, no one understands more than Gwyn that her blessings are in reality curses. Any man who gazes upon her will see his own heart reflected in her countenance, and depending on his virtue, she is either the loveliest woman in all the land... or the most hideous. It's a cruel jest of the capricious Fae, for unless a man's heart be true, she is destined to be coveted for her wealth, and despised for her face.

To make matters worse, Gwyn's aging and ailing father is desperate for an alliance with King Brutus of Loegria. The Romans are coming, and according to the Goldenchild Prophecy, only by uniting their Draig banners can they stem the Red Tide. He offers her to the ambitious and cruel Loch, who fought his way through the ranks and is reputed to have murdered his elder brothers. But so far as Loch is concerned, his betrothed is only an eyesore to be tolerated. He would never have married the girl if it weren’t for the fact that her shining golden tresses were supposed to fill his coffers—a lie, because her hair is no more than a tangled nest of golden curls.

But Gwyndolyn was not destined to be a spurned wife. To achieve her destiny as the Pen Draig, she must survive the treachery of Loegria's court, and the torments of her betrothed...

This is the first volume of the "Goldenchild Prophecy" series.

The Fall of Númenor edited by Brian Sibley

J.R.R. Tolkien famously described the Second Age of Middle-earth as a ‘dark age, and not very much of its history is (or need be) told’. And for many years readers would need to be content with the tantalizing glimpses of it found within the pages of The Lord of the Rings and its appendices, including the forging of the Rings of Power, the building of the Barad-dûr and the rise of Sauron.

It was not until Christopher Tolkien published The Silmarillion after his father’s death that a fuller story could be told. Although much of the book’s content concerned the First Age of Middle-earth, there were at its close two key works that revealed the tumultuous events concerning the rise and fall of the island of Númenor. Raised out of the Great Sea and gifted to the Men of Middle-earth as a reward for aiding the angelic Valar and the Elves in the defeat and capture of the Dark Lord Morgoth, the kingdom became a seat of influence and wealth; but as the Númenóreans’ power increased, the seed of their downfall would inevitably be sown, culminating in the Last Alliance of Elves and Men.

Now, adhering to the timeline of ‘The Tale of Years’ in the appendices to The Lord of the Rings, editor Brian Sibley has assembled into one comprehensive volume a new chronicle of the Second Age of Middle-earth, told substantially in the words of J.R.R. Tolkien from the various published texts, with new pencil illustrations by the doyen of Tolkien art, Alan Lee.

[nenyabusiness]

The Fall of Númenor (J.R.R. Tolkien, edited by Brian Sibley), page 64.

[moviefan55]

I’m delighted to say that I had the great honour of meeting the late great Walt Disney Studios legend Joe Grant when I visited the studios with my friend Brian Sibley who was delivering a screenplay to Disney back in July in 1988!

Concept art of The Evil Queen by Joe Grant

[iminaworldofpureimagination]

this woman is a delight