* The first issue of my Tolkien Gleanings PDF omnibus edition can now also be had as a download on Gumroad. A few silly typos have been corrected.
* “Tolkien’s Animals” will be the theme of a future special-issue of the Journal of Tolkien Research. There’s still time to send something in. The deadline is 23rd January 2023 via kris.swank@signumu.org — for draft papers on Tolkien and your choice of…
a wide range of animals, and not necessarily connected with medieval conceptions. PLEASE use “Tolkien’s Animals” as your email’s subject-line.
* New to me, a Norman Stone movie featuring a relatively brief portrayal of Tolkien. Who knew? The Most Reluctant Convert slipped out in November 2021 to a piffling box-office take, before landing on the main streaming services in June 2022. Though it is now hitting some “Best of 2022” lists, and also some of the Christian streaming services. It’s from the maker of the fine Shadowlands (1985) movie about C.S. Lewis. The new film portrays Lewis’s journey…
from vigorous debunker of Christianity to become, as he said, ‘the most reluctant convert in all England’.
I found it very well filmed and polished, but for a non-Christian Lewis might as well be speaking in Swahili for half the movie. This is the problem I’ve always had with Lewis, half the time I just can’t fathom what the heck he’s talking about or why he’s finding it all so important. For someone supposedly trained to think clearly, he has a most convoluted way of putting things. Still… for those who can instantly grasp each religious turmoil as he goes through it, and parse the specialist language and doubts that each turmoil seems to entail, I daresay Reluctant Convert will be found to be a fine and intelligent movie. Many Christian reviewers like it a lot. Non-Christians may come away feeling rather baffled.
* The French magazine Livr’ Arbitres has what might be a Tolkien special-issue(?) for December 2022.
* Also in France (Google Translate not permitted on the source Web link, ‘French only’), news of two 2023 exhibitions dedicated to Tolkien. One exhibition title translates as “In the Footsteps of Tolkien and the Medieval Imagination” and is described as “major”. While another will “focus on other modern or digital artistic evocations of Tolkien’s work. Like digital art, comics, animation, videogames.” Doubtless more will be heard about these in due course.