The Fireside

Today marks the 10th anniversary of James Cameron's Avatar (no, not the incredible Nickelodeon animated series, nor the crappy live action adaptation of it called The Last Airbender - which, I admit a better title to avoid confusion; though it's associated with that terrible film). The story should be the driving force of any film, and the story for Avatar .....well, it's been done before. Quite a few times actually. Cameron did a similar approach with Titanic - "Romeo and Juliet at Sea", essentially. So, looking at this film for the first time in...prolly 8 or 9 years (I saw it in the cinema, in glorious 2D ....) how does it hold up? Truth be told.....not that bad. Avatar was a technical marvel at its time, with the 3D aspect being a 'bonus.' In fact, virtually every major blockbuster from 2010 - 2017 (when 3D started to fizzle out) was made into 3D - usually converted in post-production after the films have finished shooting (in 2D). By today'...

HarperCollins looks set to re-publish the Tolkien illustrated editions. These have been in print ever since 1997, 2002 and 2004 from Houghton Mifflin (the US Tolkien publisher), though HarperCollins has discontinued these for a bit. Note these are the "UK editions" and as such, should be bought off of a UK-based bookseller: (Amazon UK, Blackwell's Waterstones, etc) to garuntee stock actually arriving to those retailers. There is no official cover art yet, but it looks to be very close to the 1997, 2002 and 2004 publications of the illustrated titles. The price seems to be indicative that that's the case. In that sense, they should all 'match.' I know that's important to some of you - myself included - so I'll be following this until it's published to see what the size dimensions are, and relay the info here. Images used are from the illustrated editions of the '00s. All titles are to be released May 14, 2020. Here are the ISBN #s - a direct ...