Post #22,260
12/21/01 11:39:11 PM
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One movie to rule them all
Just saw "Lord of the rings", over three hours worth of action, adventure, etc.
Wow, the special effects are great, made the actors as small as Hobbits, ugly orcs, etc. The guy who plays Eldon (spelling?) looked like I saw him in another movie. Like Agent Smith from "The Matrix" or someone who looks like him?
I won't give away the ending, but I will say that it makes you wanting more.
"Before Christmas it is 'Ho ho ho', after Christmas it is 'Owe owe owe'" - Santa Norm
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Post #22,265
12/22/01 1:06:32 AM
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It is the Agent from Matrix.
Glad to see he got another role :)
Amazing. Packed house and VERY few people got up to hit the head during those three hours. Gripping start to finish.
But you could definitely tell who in the audience had read the books and who hadn't ("is that all there is?"). Knowing smirk.
I eagerly await the next two (actually, I EAGERLY await the cool DVD set that's going to cost me a fortune I won't mind paying one bit ;).
---------------------------------
A stupid despot may constrain his slaves with iron chains; but a true politician binds them even more strongly by the chain of their own ideas;...despair and time eat away the bonds of iron and steel, but they are powerless against the habitual union of ideas, they can only tighten it still more; and on the soft fibres of the brain is founded the unshakable base of the soundest of Empires."
Jacques Servan, 1767
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Post #22,269
12/22/01 2:08:08 AM
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"Is that it?"
Was the wifes response at the end. She and I enjoyed the movie start to finish and she was >very< upset when I grabbed my coat 45 seconds before the credits started rolling.
Needless to say...I know she'll be going to the next one...and the one after that.
I can't believe he pulled it off...btw...making a movie that a non-reader could follow that would keep a devoted reader like me happy as well.
You were born...and so you're free...so Happy Birthday! Laurie Anderson
[link|mailto:bepatient@aol.com|BePatient]
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Post #22,419
12/25/01 9:20:17 PM
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Just saw it tonight
With my son and 2 of his friends.
Since he read all the books, and they didn't,
and they had a thousand questions during the
movie, THEY NEVER SHUT UP.
I has to hiss and berate them a few times. I
will NEVER bring them all to a movie again.
And the guy 2 seats to my right was probably
speeding his ass off. tap tap tap tap, tappitty tap.
And you NEVER tell a speed freak to quiet down,
not if you plan on living the next 10 minutes.
I'll be going back with a friend when it's not as
crowded.
Good movie. The size differentials were really good.
I didn't read them all, just Hobbit, and got bored with
the next one, so I didn't know what to expect.
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Post #22,284
12/22/01 9:57:52 AM
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Just saw it myself
Absolutely stunning. Every bit of it matched the picture in my head from when I read the book.
Excellent casting -- Ian McKellen was born to play Gandalf.
Special Effects -- How they got John Rhys-Davies (a large, six-footish man, I seem to recall) to look like a dwarf...I have no idea.
Scenery - Stunning. I guess now I have to go to New Zealand if it's even half as beautiful as it was in the film.
The Good Bits(tm)
-- I've only read the first book, so I really have no idea what's coming up in the next two films and look mightily forward to the surprises.
-- If I can manage to hold out until after all three come out, I look forward to the multi-disc Special Edition DVD set. (I'm not buying it twice, like I did with Star Wars...)
Tom Sinclair
Speaker-to-Suits
While working his way along a wall he came to a huge door, which
artistically portrayed a group of prisoners apparently being given a
complete medical check-up [footnote: From a distance it did, anyway.
Close to, no].
-- Rincewind visits the Tezumen tribe
(Terry Pratchett, Eric)
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Post #22,313
12/22/01 11:07:56 PM
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Its morphing time!
Obviously they used computer effects to make the characters look smaller and shaped like Hobbits, Elves, Dwarves, and other creatures.
Even the backgrounds where computer generated.
Much better than the cartoon version, anyway. :)
"Before Christmas it is 'Ho ho ho', after Christmas it is 'Owe owe owe'" - Santa Norm
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Post #22,503
12/27/01 12:20:50 PM
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Forced perspective.
Actually, very little CGI went into resizing the actors - they used camera and actor placement to make people appear larger or smaller...
"He who fights with monsters might take care lest he thereby become a monster. And if you gaze for long into an abyss, the abyss gazes also into you." - Friedrich Nietzsche
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Post #22,457
12/26/01 9:52:45 PM
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An amazing 3-hour adaptation
Naturally they had to lose a lot of stuff; Bombadill is one, and the scenario of Frodo leaving the Shire was a bit different. But the essence was there. The wonder is that they managed to get what they did - not only a coherent story very faithful to the book, but a very good coherent story faithful to the book - in only three hours.
Interesting Ring effects. I'm 50-50 on them; if they were so pronounced, one would think many of the events involving the use of the Ring would have been quite different.
The Bilbo "May I touch the ring" and the Galadriel sequences involving the ring were wonderfully vivid visualizations of what the book described.
And the "extra" scenes (e.g., what comes immediately to mind is some of the Saruman stuff) really did add to the story, rather than being "extra" in the sense of gratuitous sex, violence, or what have you that seem to get grafted onto many film adaptations of novels.
I liked the movie. My mother didn't really appreciate it that much, though; she didn't see the point of bringing the Ring to Rivendell only to change their minds and deciding it wasn't safe there after all. Oh, well.
"Beware of bugs in the above code; I have only proved it correct, not tried it."
-- Donald Knuth
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