LOTR Quiz

While out for some sheesha with a couple of friends, I dared them to ask me any question from LOTR – the book as well as the movie – and challenged them that for every question that I got wrong, I would pay them Dhs. 10 (with, of course, the understanding that they knew the answers too). Except for one question which had to do with a bit of the movie’s trivia, I got all answers right, even to the extent of correcting the questions themselves. The other two gave up on it and decided to go online in order to stump me. To their dismay, the net showed up nothing close to tough questions – except of for one quiz which had to do with the years in which things happened. So here it is, my own LOTR, Hobbit and Silmarillion quiz – and I’m going to make it as tough as I can! 

Enjoy!

Questions I

1. While camping for the first time after Rivendell, Saruman sends a band of flying crows as spies to the Fellowship’s camp to find out their plans. What are these crows called and where are they from?
2. How does the Orc army at Pelennor Fields better know the Hammer of the Underworld?
3. What is the House of Aragorn called after he is declared King at Minas Tirith?
4. The Mouth of Sauron, who is seen in the last book (an the movie) is sent as an emissary of Sauron to meet the Last Alliance at Morgul Vale. In the book, what does Tolkien say is his ultimate intention?
5. Name the only three of the Istari mentioned in the book.
6. Name the City of Trees where Galadriel and Lord Celeborn reside.
7. When the Fellowship is touring Lothlorien, what do they see for the first time from atop Cerin Amroth?
8. Before it was calle ‘Lothlorien’, what was the city’s original name?
9. Before symbiotically pairing up with Sauron to guard the pass of Cirith Ungol, whom did Shelob serve?
10. Who captains the ship at the Grey Havens, which ferries elves from Middle Earth to Valinor?

Answers I

1. Crebain from Dunland
2. Grond (or, the Wolf’s Head)
3. Telcontar
4. To obtain the keys of Isengard
5. Saruman, Gandalf and Radagast
6. Caras Galadhon
7. Dol Guldur
8. Laurelindorenan
9. Morgoth Bauglir
10. Cirdan

Questions II

1. Name Arwen’s two elder brothers, who are not mentioned in the movie.
2. Who prophesized that the Witch King of Angmar wouldn’t die at the hands of a man?
3. Gwaihir is the Lord of the Eagles. Who is his lieutenant?
4. Feanor crafted the Silmarils, which trapped for eternity the light of which two trees?
5. In the Mines of Moria, Gimli finds the tomb of Balin son of Fundin in which room?
6. Gandalf falls down fighting against a Balrog of Morgoth over the bridge of ______. Fill in the blank.
7. Who slew the first dragon, Glaurung, that was born from the desires of Morgoth Bauglir?
8. Ancalagon the Black was slain by which forefather of Elrond?
9. While Elrond chose immortality, which brother of his became one of the Men of Middle Earth?
10. Name the island where Sauron was imprisoned before he returned to set up fort in Mordor.

Answers II

1. Elladan and Elrohir
2. Glorfindel
3. Landroval
4. Laurelin and Telperion
5. Chamber of Mazarbul (or, the Chamber of Records)
6. Khazad Dum
7. Turin
8. Earendil the Mariner
9. Elros
10. Numenor

Questions III

1. In the first instalment of the movie, when the four hobbits are camping at night with Strider keeping watch, Frodo asks Strider who the woman is whom he is singing of. Who is the woman and who is her lover?
2. Galadriel possesses the Ring of Adamant. What is it called in the Elvish tongue? 
3. Who possesses the Ring of Water?
4. Which is the first month of the Shire calendar?
5. At the Council of Elrond, Gandalf vetoes the idea that the Ring be given to ___ _____. When asked why, he says ___ _____ will never understand the importance of the Ring, and it will lie with him, unable to tempt him, and eventually, when the Nazgul come to his doorstep, he will perhaps hand the Ring over to them. Fill in the blank.
6. Name the only two Ents mentioned by name in the book.
7. Morgoth, in his hatred of the Elves of Valinor, bred which race of cannibalistic warriors as a mockery?
8. Who is described in ‘The Silmarillion’ as the Supreme Being who created the Universe?
9. To which breed of horses does Shadowfax, Gandalf’s prized steed, belong?
10. Amongst the plunder of the trolls, Thorin Oakenshield and Gandalf find two famed swords. Gandalf takes for himself the one named Glamdring; which one does Thorin claim?

Answers III

1. Luthien, Beren
2. Nenya
3. Galadriel
4. Afteryule
5. Tom Bombadil
6. Treebeard and Quickbeam
7. Orcs
8. Eru Iluvatar
9. Mearas
10. Orcrist

Questions IV

1. Who takes up the Stewardship of Gondor after Denethor?
2. Name Theoden’s father.
3. Aragorn is also known in the Westron tongue as ‘Dunedain’. What does it mean?
4. Connect the following: Amon Amarth and Sammath Naur.
5. Who is the Numenorean king who first set foot upon Valinor, causing Numenor to be drawn into the oceans?
6. Name the mountains where the Army of the Dead reside.
7. Whom do Elladan and Elrohir rescue from a band of Orcs – a feat mentioned specifically in Rivendell by Arwen when asked about her family?
8. What is the Elvish name of Rivendell?
9. Name Legolas’ father.
10. Name Aragorn’s grandfather.

Answers IV

1. Faramir
2. Thengel
3. Man of the West
4. ‘Amon Amarth’ means ‘mountain of fate’, which is a reference to Mount Doom. ‘Sammath Naur’ means ‘cracks of doom’, a chasm located deep beneath Mount Doom.
5. Ar Pharazon
6. Dunharrow
7. Their mother.
8. Imladris
9. Thranduil
10. Arador

* * *

Well, that’s about it. I’ll put up more soon.

Cheers!

Revering LOTR

Whenever I run out of movies to watch, I draw the curtains closed in my room, set up the speakers, recline on the bed, prop my laptop onto my lap, and commence a delicious ‘LOTR’ marathon. That is one movie that never fails to amaze. Although a marathon stretches into 10 hours (director’s cut version), it never feels as though the movie stretches a bit too much at any point of time. As much as people say the relationship between Sam and Frodo looks gay, true ‘LOTR’ fans find that easy to go past because the know the movie is so much more than just the plots. The picturisation, the locales, the photography, the screenplay – fabulous. I’ve not seen any other work of fiction match this work in two aspects:

• The storyline that seems to involve all emotive and active aspects of the living. Tolkien’s saga moves elegantly past Lovecraft’s bizarre brainchildren as well as Poe’s narrative. Although the book is a monstrous 1000-pages thick, reading it never seems a bore (unless you’re a die-hard Harry Potter fanatic).
• The blandiloquence with which the characters and kingdoms in the book have been brought to life. Recently, Dan Brown’s ‘The DaVinci Code’ was painted on the silver screen by Ridley Scott with poor results and unsavoury responses from the watching crowd. ‘LOTR’ screen writers Peter Jackson, Phillipa Boyens and Fran Walsh knew what to cut out of the script an what not to. That said, I’d like to see how ‘Shantaram’ shapes up.

When the movies began to be released on an annual basis some six years back onwards, my father touted them to be a big flop; he called them “childish and probably worth a snore when in the theatre”. I don’t think he has still reconciled to the fact that it is impossible to snore in the theatre while watching ‘LOTR’ and I, for one, have been having a hard time convincing myself that he only refuses to agree because of him being unexpectedly wrong!

(Oh yes, that reminds me, ‘The Hobbit’ is slated for release in September of this year. For those who are not familiar with it, ‘The Hobbit’ is the precursor to ‘LOTR’.)

Watching the movie has me yearning to be in it, to live and breathe and fight in it. It draws out a gallant and chivalrous gentleman’s character from within me. Even though I know the dialogues in the movie line-by-line, when I watch the movie again, I wait with my lips shut and waiting for the goosebumps. They come. Always. That movie has to be revered in filmdom as much as the book is considered to be a cornerstone in redifining the fantasy sub-genre in works of fiction.

Blowing off some hiatus steam!

Bouncing back is dramatic, and also a good candidate for cinematic. Bouncing back is megalomania, bouncing back is refusal to quit, bouncing back is getting back up after you’ve been knocked down by a rabid Tyson – someone you would hardly expect to be standing right outside your room. But bouncing back is not easy, especially when you’re recovering from losing your life’s work in a matter of twenty minutes.

I was left wandering aimlessly in the corridors of the heartbroken’s hell: the only thing missing was a beard but that’s not my fault, it simply refused to grow. One of the very, very few things I’ve ever put all my faith in – and money when I get it – is my writing. And I had embarked on the command of a dream to write a grandiose book, a book of comedies and tragedies. It was the kind of book that had me turn a deaf ear towards anyone who had anything bad to say about it. But my stupid and jealous laptop couldn’t stand it all and decided to crash. You’ve probably read about it before in one of my earlier posts.

But I must say there’s nothing like getting back up on your feet. You just have to learn to take it all in your stride, as though it was a sign. I’m a man of science, but since science had failed me (esp. the science of my laptop’s cooling system), I turned to the paranormal. I delighted in them, I abounded in their eccentricities! I made up a story I forced myself to believe, and now, I’m back. Oh, it feels so good to be back.

But ideas don’t seem to be flowing oh-so-easily-again. I’ve spent the past few days writing three proposals, all of them impeccably formal (yes, that’s a complaint), and now, it’s gotten into my language as well. Formality is to me as the British accent is to my ex-girlfriend: you spend too much time with it, it refuses to wear off later on. I need some glasnost going on, and so, I need to blog. I’d begun to write about political correctness yesterday, but since I wasn’t writing on my beloved Samsung keyboard, I kept stumbling into typo after typo. And believe me when I tell you I don’t like typos. They’re irritating. It’s like my fingers can’t read my thoughts. The first paragraph seems so perfect, and you expect the perfection to perpetuate. But no! Stupid typo! It rapes the perfection, it drains the flow. When I write, I like to be polished. Even if I were to jot down abuse, it would have to be sans any a spelling error. It has to have grammatic parallelism. It has to have commas at the right places. And ellipses irritate me. Those three dots seem to represent some kind of undecidedness on the writer’s art, as though he or she were not in a position to express something they could otherwise easily have. Then don’t write it!

But I know I sound like some terrorist hijacking the English language. Old habits die hard, you know. It’s hard to let go. I’m a man with a vintage taste. Most of my friends would like to head down to the club, dance around, have a couple of beers and talk about football matches their fav. teams lost the week before. Me, I like to sit by the fireplace, enjoy some black tea, watch ‘LoTR’, and listen to ACDC once the movie is done. I like the silence, I like the calm, I like the laid back.

The hard part is not be ashamed of it. I’m 20, and I’ve pretty much decided what to do with my life – these decisions I’m very proud of just because I made them. But I’ve never made my peace with the decision of  liking the laid-back. There is a feeble yearning that desperately begs me to surface, but I refuse because I find the roaring fireplace more appealing. I guess it runs in my blood – from dad.

In fact, let me tell you, I read a lot of Archer. Reading about his descriptions of large common-rooms in the Oxfords and Cambridges of the world, I had a secret wish to have such and such a room built – one fine day, of course – and host a literary meeting. Just some men gathered to discuss Leftism, Castro, the economic recession, smoke a bit of pipe, grab some black tea, lay back, and enjoy the weather. Yes, the weather.

Ah, well, all that seems verily distant to me. A long time to go for that, but I for one know those dreams won’t die out. See, I think there are two kinds of dreams in this world. One will always have to do with minting money like a machine, but the other will have to be about seemingly trivial things, but the things you find the greatest hapiness with. I have a friend who dreams of making it big with the money, just like everyone does, with one dream. With the other, he plans to become a philanthropist along the lines of Bono and Geldof.

I think I’ve written enough. The writer’s block is down, and I’ll get cracking from tomorrow (I like the feeling of how some bizarre and innovative strike you only if you take a break from all that you’ve been writing!). Oh yeah, also check out this link: HARO. It’s an entrepreneurial venture by media man and adventurist Peter Shankman. It’s something I do when I’m bored, and the idea behind it is pretty good as well.

Cheers!

(And “GO WORDPRESS!” for their new theme ‘Vigilance’ – it’s awesome!)

LOTR: Watch It Or Else!

LOTR: WATCH IT OR ELSE! Let me give you one good reason why you must watch ‘Lord of the Rings’ while you may want to continue living. Even if you’re on top of Violet Hill or Silent Hill or whatsoever it may be, just waiting to jump and end life as you know it, watch it. It will change your life, it will deliver a newer perspective of living, and it will keep you going even if you are inside Pandora’s box. The following story is about Devank, a boy who refused to watch it and met with Armageddon Itself. Let me tell you my friends: while you wait around for Antichrist and a Friday that boasts of a ’13’ as its date, the people who do NOT watch LOTR will bring upon themselves God’s wrath. For if you are inhabiting a world that believes in an Almighty Who will protect us all, the only act that has a greater chance of invoking divine retribution is not watching ‘Lord of the Rings’. If you sit down for a moment and relax, and develop the ability to think objectively and with sufficient reasoning, I am just asking you to spend 10 hours of your life watching a world brought magically to life with an immeasurably large amount of talent and money. And don’t you think it has shown? 18 Academy Awards, including ‘Best Picture’. Can you tell me of one other trilogy that has spun tales beginning with peace, leading you onto greater and greater tragedy, intertwined with bravery and cowardice, loyalty and betrayal, birth and rebirth, and most of all, love lost and found? You can’t! The one reason above all that I am willing to state unto any non-fan of the movie is that, “You must watch the movie because it is there for you to! You must watch it because it exists!”. I will not say this of anything else (read: ANYTHING ELSE!).

Now, coming back to Devank. Yes, he IS alive. But barely so. He has been damaged and dented, emotionally, anatomically, visibly astronomically so. Me, Nair, Bala and Devank (a.k.a. G**W***) were in Nair’s room yesterday night, talking of nothing more than room fresheners and, of course, this ‘Lord of the Rings Symphony’ that was going to be performed in early 2009 at the Abu Dhabi National Theatre. For most of us here, that is something of a religious ritual in the giving. However, Devank begged to differ. Apart from denying that he had ever watched the movie, he also refused to promise that he might give thought to watching it in the future. While I began doing what I did best (blog it!), Bala and Nair were upon him. In a flash, astoundingly, Bala was pinned. But more was to come. While Nair left to take a leak, Bala had punched Devank on his nose more than once, banged his fingers on the bed, given him an almost-clot on his upper left palm, plucked off a knot of hair from his shins, made him cry like a baby, thrash like a snake, cascade bonelessly off the bed, and much, much more. Not only that, but this cycle went on for five glorious rounds, all five of which had Devank in some awkward position or the other. We even had him pleading for a disease he had never had! After this, I can only tell you a little more. He repeatedly boasted a face of defiance, after which now he is in a mental asylum.

Refusing to watch a movie, which is nothing more (or less, for that matter) a tool to pass time faster. Why would you not watch one? I will need a reason. If you won’t watch ‘Not Another Teen Movie’, I will understand perfectly for the gooey kissing scene right in the middle of the movie. If you don’t want to watch the ‘Harry Potter’ series, I will understand for the inherent kiddishness of it all. But ‘LOTR’?! You should either be Devank, retarded or dead to not watch it. So I’m telling you again. Watch it. I’m only making an offer you can’t refuse. Oh, and Devank, Happy Transgender Remembrance Day!