Bilbo Baggins has Sailed into the West

I was sorry to hear of the death of Sir Ian Holm, aged 88. His death was related to Parkinson's disease.

For me he was the perfect Frodo Baggins, in the BBC radio series of Lord of the Rings, and he was also the perfect Bilbo Baggins in the Peter Jackson films.
But there was far more to his career than that - I think I first became aware of him as an actor in Jesus of Nazareth in the mid 1970s, where he played one of the Sadducees.
He also had a busy and varied film career. He played Ash in the first Alien film, Jonathan Pryce's boss in Brazil, King John in Robin and Marion, and many more. His last film role was as the older Bilbo in The Battle of Five Armies, in 2014.
He did a lot of Shakespeare on stage and on film, including Polonius in Mel Gibson's film of Hamlet and Fluellen in Kenneth Branagh's Henry V.
He was knighted in 1998 for his services to drama.
He was married four times, and had five children.

Actually, Thranduil's Not So Bad After All

I went to see Battle of the Five Armies yesterday afternoon, which was fun, and rounded the trilogy off nicely.
One thing I wasn't expecting was how much I would warm to the character of Thranduil over the course of the film. After all, previously he had locked up the dwarves as they crossed Mirkwood, and had selfishly refused to look any further than his own borders. And he told Tauriel she had no chance of getting together with Legolas because she was lower-class.
Here, though, he brings aid to the people of Laketown - for a selfish reason, but he does help them. He allows Bard to negotiate with Thorin, even though he thinks it's useless.
Then Legolas tells Tauriel that his mother died at Gundobad (hopefully taking a bunch of orcs with her as she fell), and it all becomes clear - when Tauriel asks him to take away the pain of love that she is feeling, and asks why it hurts so much, he almost looks kind, and says "Because it was real." And later, he gives good advice to Legolas, who doesn't want to go back to Mirkwood with him - and tells him something about his mother that he seems never to have shared before.
He's still selfish and arrogant, and I wouldn't say I liked him, but I could see the private man behind the mask, which made him much more interesting as a character.