Longtime Texas singer-songwriter Steven Fromholz has died of an accidental gunshot wound he suffered while hunting on a ranch near El Dorado, Texas, on January 19. He was 68.
According to the Associated Press, the gun was accidentally discharged when being transferred between two cars. Fromholz was shot and later died in an area hospital.
Fromholz was born in Temple, Texas, and attended North Texas State University. While a student, he belonged to the Folk Music Club along with singer-songwriter Michael Martin Murphey and Eddie Wilson; the latter would go on to found the Armadillo World Headquarters in Austin.
After a stint in the Navy, Fromholz returned to folk music, writing, recording and playing live. He eventually moved to Austin, where he had an integral role in what became known as the Texas Outlaw music movement. He was also a community activist.
For more than 40 years, he saw great international success as a songwriter, recording artist and performer. He also became a river-rafting and riding-trail guide in West Texas, where he owned the ranch that he lived on for the remainder of his life.
Fromholz was inducted into the Texas Music Hall of Fame in 2003 and was named Texas Poet Laureate in 2007.
Hèra (Gaia Wise) in The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim.
The Peter Jackson-led Lord of the Rings movie trilogy in the early 21st century was such a smashing success that people have been trying to recreate that magic for a long time. First came the ill-conceived The Hobbittrilogy, which made lots of money despite mostly poor reviews. The recent Amazon TV series, The Rings of Power, has gotten generally good reviews, but doesn’t seem to hold a place in the wider pop culture consciousness.
And now comes The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim, an anime-style film that seems like an attempt at both reclaiming the world in animated form from the weird 1978 film, and a nostalgia play for fans of the original series. Set 200 years before the events in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, it nonetheless takes place in two very familiar locations that are recreated to appear exactly like they looked in Jackson’s films.
The story centers around Hèra (voiced by Gaia Wise), the only daughter of King Helm (Brian Cox) of Rohan. An early conflict with Lord Freca (Shaun Dooley) leads Freca’s son, Wulf (Luca Pasqualino), to develop a deep grudge against Helm and his family. Wulf pursues that ill will for years, eventually driving his foes into a fortress in a valley to make a final stand against his aggression.
Based on information found in the appendices of Tolkien’s novels, this is the rare instance when choosing to use animation holds back the creativity of a film. Typically, animation allows filmmakers to do things that wouldn’t be possible in the real world, but director Kenji Kamiyama and his team seem beholden to the look of Jackson’s films. While the animation itself is great, it doesn’t offer the fluidity of live action, and so the action scenes are often stilted and flat.
The story itself is not very compelling, as a quartet of screenwriters have concocted a plot that relies on revenge and heroism tropes that allow the audience to predict almost everything that happens. There are a few surprises to be had, but as the conflict revolves around a strong-willed female and her unwillingness to be told whom to marry, it’s generally clear how the story will be resolved, with only the specific details left to be discovered.
It also would have been great if the film weren’t so dependent on nostalgia for the original films. The two main locations are ones that played a big part in set pieces from those films, and their usage here doesn’t measure up favorably. Eowyn (Miranda Otto) serves as narrator, and other characters/actors from the original trilogy also make appearances, leaving little room for this film to establish itself on its own terms.
The majesty of the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, with its New Zealand vistas and incomparable visuals created by Wētā Workshop, set a high bar that none of the subsequent projects have been able to meet. The War of the Rohirrim is a competently-made film, but it doesn’t hold up to scrutiny with the Oscar-quality work of 20+ years prior.
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The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim opens in theaters on December 13.
