Okay, so we've known that Born of Hope's been in production for a while, but we now have a definitive release date, and a soon one at that!

December 1st, 2009.

So, 10 days from now! Still not satisfied? Try the new trailer:

HERE

And yes, that was in fact a Troll you saw

Cheers, and discuss below!
Fenrir

I'd forgotten about this. O.o Will watch the trailer later (no time now).

Just watched it - looks very good. Really looking forward to it

The trailer looks good.

So is this being released on the 1st of Decemmber on the internet?

Well the trailer says 1st Dec, and as far as I'm aware it'll be an internet release a la The Hunt for Gollum

Aye, an internet release, since they cannot distribute and sell it (being copyrighted works from the Tolkien Estate and all that).

In some ways it's a pity New Line and the Tolkien estate aren't aware of BoH and tHfG - I'd love to see them both on DVD

maybe they will if the Tolkien family are nice but from of the sound of it they would want half of the DVD sales.

Considering everyone who made BoH and tHfG are volunteers, I doubt they'd mind that much

Just saw it. It looks excellent! Eagerly anticipating its release

Dissapointment, 'nuff said.

Posted this review on TLA:

Dînadan wrote:

Just finished watching it and I must say I'm disapointed. The actor who plays Arathorn is really good (in fact if PJ decided to do a film on Aragorn's life, this guy would be great as Arathorn for that too), it's just a shame about everyone else. The only other decent actor plays a fan invented character, a female ranger, and I think it would have been far better if she'd played Gilraen. :/ (and speaking of Gilraen, her hair changes colour a couple of times during the film - didn't know Middle-earth had peroxide ).

The costuming was fairly good, and the rangers looked like the rangers from PJ's films. Some of the orcs had half decent make-up too. It's a pity that they tried to add character to the orcs by giving an orc captain a decent sized part. The acting from him was cheesy and they made a BIG mistake. In one scene said orc captain mentions Sauron by name and specifically mentions he's in Dol Guldur while Arathorn listens in - mistake 1 is that in the books Aragorn specifically states that Sauron doesn't let the orcs use his name, and mistake 2 is that a this time Sauron was going by the Necromancer, and as such, why didn't Arathorn tell the White Council otherwise if he overheard this? :/

Another let down was the overuse of slow-mo in the action scenes. Would have been nice to see some more fighting done in real time. Also, I could have done without the troll fight myself - the CGI troll was just appalling and I think it would have been better if they'd had Arador go off to hunt orcs and then the next scene be rangers returning his body to the Dunedain settlement or Arathorn comming accross his body after the fight.



All in all, I'd recomend LotR fans to watch this, but don't have your hopes high

Just finish watching it now and although I agree with what Dinadan has said I can't say I was disapointed. For an unofficial, fan-made film I thought it was pretty good, I wasn't expecting an Oscar award-winner, but there were a few things I personally thought could have been done better.

Firstly, I'd just like to second Dinadan's praise of the actors. Christopher Dane did a sterling job as Arathorn, I was really impressed with his performance and also of his suprising likeness to Viggo. Kate Maddison as Elgarain (the female ranger, and also the director) was also pretty good, as was Andrew Mcdonald as Dirhael I felt should have played the role of Arador (being of better stature and of a more capable of a more 'lordly' demeanour than the chosen actor). The other actors for the most part weren't of a particularly high standard, but other than the Orc captains, none made me cringe.

IMO, some of the characters needed a little more...erm...character. For the most part they were kept too vanilla, none of their traits were emphasised strongly enough and they were not distinguished from other characters adequately. Obviously this is difficult wuth a film lasting only one hour but throughout I was unablee to associates individual characters strongly with certain attitudes or emotions. With a few exceptions, everything was a little samey and bland in the this department.

The costumes were for the most part good, they were distinguished from more archytypal 'fantasy costume' and there was clear effort made to remain consitent with the films. However, practicaly none of the costumes looked lived in, especially in the case of the villagers' clothes; most simply looked as if they'd come straight from the cutting table. This was perhaps the sole aspect where I can say I was actually disapointed as how hard can it be to make clothing looked lived in? This is particularly important here as these are the remnants of the Dunedain, people who would have made and repaired everything that they wore out of materials they have gathered - every item of clothing should be lived in, patched up and distinctly practical and every actor should look as though they were born to wear them.

On the fight scenes, I was by and large quite pleased but I agree with Dinadan on the matter of the troll - was it really necessary - especially seeing as it was done as a flash back anyway? They must have known that their CGI would not look great and it would have been so easy to find a way around it...

For the most part good - but improvements could have been made in a number of places

On the note of character devlopment, they did try to do it with Elgarain and the ranger who was always flirting with her, but it just wasn't wenough and unfortunately it wasn't their tale. If they made a generic LotR fan film, it would have been nice if they'd concentrated on them and done a full story on them. As it stands, for BoH, they'd have been better of sticking with Arathorn and Gilraen (and as said above, with a better actress for Gilrean who was the only non-orc who made me cringe).


While we can't expect Oscar-wining performances from a fan film made by volenteers, considering the production on this thing, they could have done better. :/

I agree on the Elgarain and Dirhaborn - it was too little, too late, in the wrong, place at the wrong time. With such a small amount of time to work with, and a bunch of characters who are all very much the same I would have liked to see each actors performance focused in on a single identifiable theme for their own character. For example, had he played the emotion strongly the whole way through we could have identified Dirhaborn as 'devoted' - and related to him thus, or similarly Elgarain as 'unrequited', Dirhael as 'grim' and so on.

Instead what we have are a bunch of characters, all of whom feel pretty much the same, have pretty much the same opinions, get worked up pretty much in the same way and it just ends up being a bit dull. The actors have to show there characters imore thahn they have to be their characters - something most of the actors did in reverse resulting in a bland, vanilla acting accross the board.

Maybe we should all get together and make our own LotR fan film

Just finished watching it.
I'm surprised at the negativity. Personally I really enjoyed it and thought it was great! Sure there were a couple of small things like the troll scene which left me a little confused in the aftermath (and I didn't think Orcs used fire to see at night), but generally I thought it was well put together. Sure, it's not going to match the Trilogy or other films at the cinemas, but it's still a good story. I enjoyed the storyline and felt immersed in the world which is always a good sign. Watch the story, not the slight details and you'll thoroughly enjoy it.

I highly recommend it for anyone considering viewing it.

The problem is Cal, that while the story works on paper, it requires the actors to make it live. Apart from Arathorn and Elgarain, none of the main characters had actors who were that good. While we expect cheesy acting from a regular fan-film, this was far from a regular fan film - in fact, if you look at their cast page on the BoH website, most of those actors actually are actors who have been professionally trained. With a film, you need the actors to be believable as the character they're playing. While, say, Samuel L Jackson is a good actor, no matter how well Frodo was written, he couldn't pull off that roll and would detract from the whole film and the same goes here for all the 'bad' actors. The only other actor who showed promise was the one playing the ranger trying to woo Elgarain (forgottenthe character's name), but he didn't have enough screen time to develop and even if he had it would have been a negative as this is the story of Aragorn's parent's and not that of two unknown rangers who fall in love (although that would have made a great LotR fanfilm in and of itself).


I think that most of the negativity has come from the hype. This was eagerly expected and it just didn't live up to expectations. Unless I'm mistaken, they even had the blessing of PJ - I recall reading ages ago that a couple of the actors were invited to a WETA convention or some such.





Another thought on the miscasting of Gilraen - anyone else think that with the actress they had, she seamed more like the supossedly ravenous beauty that the hero tries to woo throughout the film before realising his female companion throughout the film (i.e. Elgarain) is actually his true love all along at the end of the film? :/

I certainly thought Elgarain was the better looking of the two...

I get what you're saying though, throughout the film I think I wanted Elgarain to be the one he chose and, had I not known the story, I think I would have expected him to.

Personally, I thought that Arathorn and Gilrean fell for each other too easily. Ok, so they saved each others lives in the first fight scene but after that they both simply fell in love...for no apparent reason... Was it the second or thrid time they spoke that Arathorn declared that his love for her?

It would have been more interesting if they had fallen in love more gradually or at least had some variation - Arathorn could have felt torn between love and duty, Gilrean could have been afraid of her father's disaproval etc. The story is about them so they could have made a little more of it, or so it seems to me.

That's a good point AW, and I totally agree.