Sir Peter Jackson
Great news, from New Year’s Eve. Peter Jackson, who was responsible for the Lord of the Rings movies, has been knighted by the New Zealand government.
The news is on the BBC website: Lord of the Rings’ Peter Jackson is made Knight. The thing is that knighthood itself was abolished in 2000 by then Prime Minister Helen Clark. But now it’s been re-instituted, and Jackson — Sir Peter! — has been knighted.
And there’s no higher honour in the entire country. The title of Knight can only be granted to twenty living New Zealanders at any one time. So Sir Peter Jackson is in very high company indeed.
I like that he says this honour is greater than the Academy Awards in 2004. There really are things that matter more than that sort of thing. And isn’t it appropriate that he’d be given a title that fits more into the type of world and outlook of Middle-Earth than it actually does into this world?
I loved the LOR series, the more so because all my kids sat down and read the entire series afterward, plus everything else they could find by Tolkien.
He has lost a lot of weight, hasn’t he? Good for him.
That was one of the first things I noticed too, when I saw a bunch of pictures of him.
And that’s really cool, about your kids! That actually ties in really nicely with a comment someone made on a previous post, discussing the definition of the YA genre. Someone said that boys tend to read books after seeing the movie, while for girls, it’s the other way around.
Cheers to Sir Peter! He certainly deserves after the wonderful job on the LOR films.