“Professor Olsen is excellent in his examination of the Lord of the Rings. Top-notch. So why am I not rating this higher? Well, it’s the seemingly pointless satisfaction on his part that the examination of the text of the corpus will take the next thirty years. At least. And he’s thrilled that he’ll be dead before he’s done - it doesn’t make him think of being a bit faster. Moreover, if you’re not someone who lives in US eastern time who either doesn’t have a job or isn’t a night owl, you’ll be behind. Anyone who has to or wants to be in bed before 9 is an afterthought to anything Signum does, since Professor Olsen pointedly is a night owl. The podcast version is also an afterthought, uploaded in bulk weeks behind whatever gets uploaded to Youtube - Signum doesn’t seem to respect those of us who don’t want to watch that. The explorations of relevant parts of Lord of the Rings Online at the end of the broadcasts are interesting, but the podcast is very poorly balanced, and Professor Olsen’s compatriots in this part, either Druid’s Fire or “Vellory” (I have no idea how to spell that) are respectively inaudible or muffled and very hard to understand. Considering how long it takes Signum to upload these, it would seem that more editing is in order. So: great on its subject. Needs a lot of structural work on sound balancing, editing (I agree with those who complain about ums and lip smacking and such; that’s what you get with an unscripted live show, but it could be edited better), and recognition that Professor Olsen will be dead long before he reaches the end of the Return of the King.”
wombatua via Apple Podcasts ·
United States of America ·
05/18/24