MELO Round 1 - Into the West

The next song for round 1 of the 2014-2015 MELO was Into the West, the closing credit song from Return of the King. Can I go off on a little bit of a rant here? There is no way that this song, or any closing credit song - or, a more proper name would be "music to leave the theater by" - should ever be considered for best song Oscar. It's simply lazy for the director to get some great songwriter/performer to come up with some great song and then do the easy layup and get an oscar. IMO for a movie to be "best song" it should actually be part of the movie proper (i.e. the movie before it fades to dark and credits start rolling). Another nominee that year, A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow, from A Mighty Wind. If you've seen that movie (and if not, you should), you'll know that that song was an integral part of the story of that movie, and perfectly fit its role. Also that year, the Triplets of Belville was driven by the music rather than dialogue, and the key song from that was another one better worthy of "best original song". Okay, rant over, Into the West is certainly a beautiful song and the lyrics point to the final journey of Frodo. Three different builders gave us Grey Havens scenes. Sadly, no one was gutsy enough to build a scene from the TNT miniseries Into the West set on the American frontier during the late 1800's.

Joseph Olsen built this excellent Grey Havens scene and sailed into round 2.


Jacob Syrups built the same scene, but did not score quite as well and so his ship has sailed away.


Tomsche Murrath took a micro approach to the Last Ship's sailing, but also did not advance.

MELO round 1 - selected favorites

Sixty-three people entered the Middle Earth LEGO Olympics. I've already featured all of the head-to-head pairings from the second round onwards, but only a couple from the qualifying round. There's no way I'm going to feature all sixty-three, so I'll just post a few personal favorites. This round was wide open, and builders were invited to build anything from the Hobbit or the Lord of the Rings. Here are some based on random locations.

Flax Kikare gave this interpretation of the dwarven halls in the Ered Luin.


Justin M gave us a typical home in Hobbiton.


Derrick Rose's Unexpectexd Guest shows a nice little detail from Rivendell.


Kyle Ransom made his version of Radagast's home at Rhosgobel.

Labels for posts (1 of 3)

Just a quick post to help organize the labels I'll be using for posts. I'll actually have to break this up into pieces, since I can only have so many labels per post. Creations featured here will be organized in a few ways: By place: Shire, Eriador, Rivendell, Misty Mountains, Wilderland, Mirkwood, Lonely Mountain, Moria, Lothlorien, Fangorn, Rohan, Gondor, Mordor, Lindon, Beleriand, Valinor. Yes, some of these are subsets of others (e.g. the Shire is in Eriador, Moria is in the Misty Mountains, a whole host of places are within Wilderland, etc.), but in those cases I will only use the smaller subset to designate a place. For instance, a Hobbiton scene would get the tag Shire, but not Eriador, while a Bree scene would be labeled Eriador. By subject type: Location (for those MOCs primarily focused on a building or an exterior location), scene (for those MOCs depicting some action, even when it is at some location), characters and creatures (when people just make custom figs or build a Balrog or whatever). There will obviously be some overlap here - for instance, Shelob fighting Sam with the Tower of Cirith Ungol in the background - but I'll try to pick just one of these (scene in this example). By creation type: I won't put minifig scale, since most creations will be at that scale, but microscale, miniland, sculpture, mosaic By book: Hobbit, Fellowship of the Ring, Two Towers, Return of the King, Silmarillion. Scene MOCs are obviously tied to specific books. Location MOCs will be attributed to the first book (in publication order) where they were fully described. So Bag End would be linked to the Hobbit, even though it shows up in Fellowship of the Ring and Return of the King as well. Orthanc is mentioned in Fellowship, but is fully described in the Two Towers, so would be linked there. I'll do the same with characters, but characters in groups will be linked to where that group came up. So Gandalf by himself would go to the Hobbit, since he is first linked there, but Gandalf as part of the group of nine walkers goes to Fellowship. Allusions to characters in verse is the exception here. Beren and Luthien, Earendil and some others come up in songs in Lord of the Rings, but are fully described in the Silmarillion, and so would go there. Some characters are never really fully described, and so would go where they are first mentioned - for instance, I'd link Gil-Galad with Fellowship, since the Last Alliance is described as a matter of lore (or living memory, if you're Elrond) in Fellowship, but he's never a fully realized character anywhere else (hmm, is there anything in the HOME books? I can't think of any, but maybe in UT). Some others: metadiscussion, non-LEGO, contest, official theme news