Word: moria
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...eerie strobe light, a black rider rears its steed (a man and puppet on stilts), sending fearful hobbits scurrying. Dead men rise from the Marshes (a roiling silver sheet) to make war against Sauron's legions. In the Mountains of Moria, Gandalf battles the enormous Balrog (an Erector-set confection with steaming orange eyes) as the sound effects roar and a strong wind gusts from the stage, spraying the audience with a blizzard of black confetti. As for Frodo, he not only lives, he also sings in the new version of The Lord of the Rings, opening this week...
Like a sleepy Balrog in the depths of Moria, fantasy fever is stirring again. In 1997, voters in a bbc poll named The Lord of the Rings the greatest book of the 20th century. In 1999, Amazon.com customers chose it as the greatest book of the millennium. The Tolkien revival began when the Internet bubble was bursting, the market for consumer electronics was nosediving like Harry Potter chasing the Golden Snitch, and America's long summer romance with technology was fizzling. "Change and technology are so pervasive a part of daily life that for the most part there...
...question is, Are we running away from reality when we indulge in fantasy? Or are we escaping reality just to find it again and wrestle with it in disguise? Not everything is as simple as it looks, as Gandalf found out when he tried to open the door to Moria. Let's not forget that the characters in The Lord of the Rings are themselves nostalgic for an even earlier age. The novels are set in the waning hours of the age of magic, with all those rather attractive Elves departing the scene, leaving men to their mundane, Mugglish devices...
...Moria Shlomot, 31, is director of Peace Now, the biggest Israeli peace group. She lives in Tel Aviv with her daughter Tamar, two and a half, and her partner, actor Chen Alon...