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The Lord of the Rings

Film

10 Mom-Approved Movie Character Crushes

By Alison Nastasi on

Try as you might, mom won’t ever let you forget that she knows what’s best for you. In the spirit of Mother’s Day, we played matchmaker and set you up with a few film characters that mom would approve of. She only wants you to be happy. We chose ten films, guesstimated who you probably have a crush on, and then selected a character from the same movie that mom would prefer you invite over for dinner sometime. Feel free to leave your own mom-approved film character crushes in the comments section. … Read More

Pop Culture

Awesome Maps of Iconic Pop Culture Locations

By Tom Hawking on

If you hadn’t noticed, we’re pop culture geeks here at Flavorwire, and we’re also really rather partial to cartography. As such, we emitted collective “OMG” when we saw these awesome prints of maps from prominent locations in films, video games, TV shows, and comic books. They’re available as prints from a company called City Prints, which we spotted via Laughing Squid. It’s amazing how iconic and easily recognizable some of these maps are — go on, see how many you recognize without having to refer to the captions! … Read More

Books

10 of the Most Powerful Female Characters in Literature

By Emily Temple on

[Editor's note: In celebration of the holidays, we're spending the next two Tuesdays by counting down the top 12 Flavorwire features of 2012. This post, at #12, was originally published March 3rd.] Since March is Women’s History Month, we’ve been thinking a lot about the women who have had positive and lasting impacts on our lives — and perhaps not surprisingly for a bunch of literary geeks like us, we’ve realized that many of them are fictional. For all the hullabaloo about the dearth of strong female characters in modern culture, thankfully there are some wonderfully powerful, kick-ass maidens that have inspired us with their strength, self-discovery, and incredible brilliance over the years. Click through to see our list of ten of the most powerful female characters in literature, and then be sure to pipe up with your own suggestions — we’ve chosen the ten who resonate most deeply with us here, but since there are many more than ten strong ladies in literature (thank goodness), we want to know which ones blow you away on a daily basis. … Read More

Pop Culture

20 Amazing J.R.R. Tolkien-Inspired Tattoos

By Caroline Stanley on

If tried to sweet talk your way into a sold-out screening of The Hobbit over the weekend, then you might not be surprised to hear that there are a ton of hardcore J.R.R. Tolkien fans out there. What we imagine might surprise you is how many of those fans, secretly tucked away under all of those layers of winter clothing, have inked permanent tributes to the beloved author on their skin. We’ve scoured the Internet for some of the the most impressive Tolkien-inspired tattoos we could find — not counting the scores of designs that are people’s names or favorite sayings written in Elvish — and picked out 20 of our favorite tributes to Middle Earth for you to peruse after the jump. What do you think Gandalf the White would make of all this? … Read More

Film

What You Need to Know Before You See ‘The Hobbit’

By Jason Bailey on

As you probably know — whether out of personal interest, interaction with your favorite geek, or a glance at any delivery device for mass marketing — the first of Peter Jackson’s three-part (!) Lord of the Rings prequel series, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, is out in theaters this Friday. What may be less clear, at least to the casual observer, is what all this chatter is about “frame rate” and “48 fps” and other blather that have been floating around since the films went into production. So here’s a quick breakdown, to help communicate with the LOTR geek in your life (we’re a service-oriented site, after all!): what is all this talk about “frame rate,” and what does it mean to you? … Read More

Books

Literary Fashions for Serious Book Nerds

By Emily Temple on

We don’t cover too much fashion here at Flavorpill, but we do very much enjoy new ways to express our lit-nerdiness, whether it’s people dressed up as literal books or fashion designers inspired by literature. Recently, we saw a dress that might be the nerdiest of them all (but also the greatest) and were inspired to hunt down a few more literary fashions, from dresses based on book covers to entire ball gowns made completely out of children’s books. Click through to see what you’d be wearing if you really liked literature (well, maybe), and let us know which outfit is your favorite in the comments. … Read More

Books

10 More Scathing Early Reviews of Classic Novels

By Emily Temple on

Well, we can never get enough of poking fun at the unduly critical, can we? Last week, we shared fifteen scathing early reviews of classic novels, and some of you pitched in with some of your own favorites. We took a few of your suggestions, both here and at Metafilter, added a few more of our own, and put together a second list of a few more critics who got it wrong, this time hating on Hemingway, Tolkien, Steinbeck and more. Now don’t get us wrong — everyone’s entitled to their own opinion, but that doesn’t make it any less fun to judge the past from the future. Click through to read ten more scathing early reviews of books we now consider to be classics, and chuckle over how you know better (or admit that you secretly agree) in the comments. … Read More

Web

What’s On at Flavorpill: The Links That Made the Rounds in Our Office

By Alison Nastasi on

Today at Flavorpill, we looked at haunting pictures of abandoned asylums. We found out a few reasons why people send bloggers hate mail. We downloaded the latest from Brooklyn electronic duo Silent Drape Runners. We read 13 inspiring stories about celebrities coming out. We discovered a… Read More

Film

10 Films Surprisingly Created Without CGI

By Alison Nastasi on

We live in a movie universe where the Michael Bays and James Camerons of Hollywood are crafting their on-screen worlds with the help of incredible computer-aided technology. These filmmakers create works where anything seems possible, and while it’s often stunning to behold, many moviegoers are already tired of watching disaster porn and motion capture performances that aim to be real, but never truly feel like the tangible celluloid of yore. What many of those audiences don’t realize, however, is that several big-budget films have stuck to their practical effects-loving guns and have dodged the CGI monster at every… Read More

Books

Guessing Game: ‘The Lord of the Rings’ as Written by Other Famous Authors

By Emily Temple on

We’re of the firm belief that J.R.R. Tolkien’s much-beloved fantasy epic couldn’t have been written by anyone else — but, well, what if it had been? This week, Metafilter pointed us towards Alison Brooks’s Alternative Authors’ Versions of Lord of the Rings, wherein Brooks rewrites sections of Tolkien’s classic as it might have come out in the hands of other famous writers. But can you guess which ones? Click through to read five of Brooks’s passages and see if you can detect which writer she is embodying, and then head on over to Changing the Times to see the entire set. … Read More