the_lord_of_the_rings epitome of incomprehensibility David and I had each watched the movies a few times, but never together. So that's what we've been doing for the past three evenings, half a film per evening (extended edition). We're leaving for my parents' house tomorrow, so that means only the Fellowship and the Two Towers will be watched, but that's okay. Impressions: I still love the music! It rocks for many reasons: the attention to detail (e.g. different motifs for different story themes), the ease with which it evokes a mood, the sweeping epic-ness to go along with the visuals... it's safe to say that this is still one of my favourite film scores. Too many slow shots of people's faces. David says there's too much "posing". Also not enough subtlety with the Boromir story arc in the first film. Let viewers figure out things on their own. Gimli should be less of a comic relief character. Merry and Pippin fill that role better, and in a way that's truer to the book, but some of their dialogue strikes me as too modern. But that's a hard thing to keep consistent, I think. They do a good job of making the One Ring itself into a character. And it seems that it corrupts people depending on their relationship to power as well as their moral responsibility: Bilbo and Gollum want it, but they don't lust after power (though Gollum is more violent and selfish), so the ring represents more of a danger to themselves than others...at least until Sauron starts gaining strength... And I still agree with my 13-year-old self on the issue that matters: Elijah Wood was cuter than Orlando Bloom. Fight me. 211226 ... e_o_i My brother listens to new media on this topic: The Prancing Pony Podcast, The Nerd of the Rings. My cringe millennialcore is a) right now, writing "cringe millennialcore" and b) having everything remind me of the phenomenon, mainly because I was a kid when the Peter Jackson movies came out. Okay, so it isn't film-related listening to Captain Beefheart's "The Dust Blows Forward..." and thinking that his voice sounds slightly like recordings of Tolkien, whether due to the folksy quality or the scratchy audio, but last night I was up until 3 AM not marking syntax essays but writing a poem called "The Two Towers" that mixed up LOTR and 9/11. The film that came out in 2001 was The Fellowship of the Ring. I was there, three thousand years ago. I don't know if this is cringe millennialcore anymore or just me copying Tadeusz_Borowski, a good and/or mad influence. (I meant to write "bad," but why not.) At least, trying to copy the stuff in his writing that I like: how he juxtaposes funny and serious, how he presents two extremes and takes something that's not necessarily middle but different. 240403 ... raze is it weird that the only version i've ever seen is ralph bakshi's 1978 animated film, and i didn't even finish it? i blame being half drunk at someone else's house twenty-two years ago. (also, that sounds like a poem i'd like to read.) 240403 ... e_o_i It's not weird! I mean, the movie's weird, or at least it has the weirdest phonetic alternation I've heard. The wizard who betrays Gandalf? Sometimes people call him Saruman, sometimes Aruman. I don't understand this. Maybe one of the voice actors had their thumb covering the S. Anyway, your viewing of it isn't so unusual. I also saw it with my brother before the live-action movie came out (and yeah, it's a little confusing if you don't know the story). Weird upon weird: I also had a bit of a crush on cartoon Frodo before laying eyes on his live-action actor. So maybe I just like that type of hero: brave but vulnerable, kind of under the radar. (New crush unlocked: the wood-and-canvas Polikarpov U-2 biplanes flown by the all-women "Night Witches" Russian regiment in WW2. Not that actual radar was in play, necessarily, but the pilots used the silence and sneakiness of the low-tech little planes to their advantage.) 240404 what's it to you? who go blather from