Geek Week continues. It worked out nicely. JFathers wanted to see The Two Towers at the midnight showing, Tuesday night, and I offered to work his morning shift so he’d be able to sleep in. This in turn allowed me to get out earlier than normal so I could see the 4 PM showing Wednesday. Here are some quick review notes:Contributor Frolixo adds: “I think this was the hardest of the books to be made into the film. In the first one, you have a direct story line following the fellowship on their adventure. In the Two Towers, everybody is scattered. This movie really needed to be 4 hours to do it justice (omg Directors cut will kick ass).
JFathers complained the movie was even longer since they started showing all the previews right at midnight. I was bragging how the Star Taylor starts the movies on time but shows the previews in between. But then, dang it, I go there today, sit for 45-minutes listening to Star’s stupid in-house radio station, and then, at four, they started showing twenty minutes of previews. Is this some new fashion trend? It stinks!
My review. I’ve heard all about how the second one is better than the first, so I’ll probably be contrary in saying I like the first one. There was more “adventure” in the first one. Anyway, the movie starts with a bang, skids to a halt for a while, and then starts building momentum to a tremendous finish.
Just as I expected, the deviations from the book really bother me. Frodo is such a puss in the movie; Treebeard does little but wander aimlessly; Faramir is a much stronger and nobler character in the book; the invention of Aragorn’s watery scenic-route “detour” to Helm’s Deep does little more than waste time; and Gollum sounds too much like Donald Duck. Plus, I thought it almost funny how many scenes there are where characters need to be reminded of their names and past lives. (And I can’t resist getting really nitpicky: Tolkien went to such pains to make sure all the actions and maneuvers fit to a realistic calendar. So, why is it always full moon?)
In short much like in the first movie, Peter Jackson’s inventions do nothing to improve the movie and the storytelling would’ve been better if they’d stuck to the book. (At three hours apiece it’s not like they need to condense anything.) And with less invented scenes they wouldn’t need to put all the book’s cool scenes into the third movie (which, hint-hint, would also allow them to retain The Scouring of the Shire!).
That said, the look of the movie is just as good as the first one (of course). The costumes, the sets, the landscapes are all wonderful. The final battle is just as cool as you’ve read. The siege of Isengard is even cooler. But more amazing yet will be the Battle of Pelennor Fields in next year’s movie. And Éowyn is a babe.
Another new trend is the bum’s rush after the show. Following two different showings at the Star, as soon as the credits started to roll the house lights came on and the projector was shut off. It stinks too!
The proposed changes are done, for the most part. I kind of compromised on archiving entries. I only worked on the pre-pMachine ones (prior to July 2002). With those, I removed them from PHP and converted them to plain HTML pages. I’d hoped that pruning away PHP entries might make the homepage load faster, but to be honest there are too many entries for that. But at least those HTML pages will load faster. No, not me! (That probably won’t be till January…and then only for a day or two). What I mean is that these monthly outages and the fact this page is loading so slowly have me thinking it’s about time to start cutting back on my archives and entries again. So, over the weekend I’m going to be doing some pruning, which hopefully will not (but probably will) be noticeable. Even though one or two entries might show up missing in the interim, all should be present and accounted for by the time I’m done.
In what is evidently a monthly ritual, the SFG site went down again last night. Instead of getting the usual errors about a crashed site, visitor(s) were greeted with:
Sounding much like the embarrassment that plagued me two months ago, the Chicago Sun-Times reports that “Americans have gotten so fat that many doctors have difficulty using stethoscopes to listen to patients’ hearts.”
“As I sat pondering the President’s motives one day, it suddenly dawned on me that it is entirely likely our Commander in Chief has never played a single video game in his life. ‘Of course!’ I exclaimed, startling my girlfriend, who was driving at the time. ‘Without the catharsis that video games provide, Bush has no way of fulfilling his militaristic fantasies other than actually fighting wars.’
Ever since reading an article in a magazine I’ve been recalling a strange event which happened to me a while ago. I might as well share it with you. Please stop spelling “Santa Claus” with an E. The Disney movie title The Santa Clause has an “E” because it’s a pun on a “clause” in a contract. Ladies and gentlemen, the end of democracy:
