The Countdown Continues…
Ya know… having a mother-in-law isn’t that bad after all. *knocks on wood*, Especially when you have one that gets you the extended DVD box set of The Lord Of The Rings: The Fellowship of The Ring with the nifty Pillars of Argonath Bookends for your birthday.
30 Extra minutes of Middle-Earth Goodness plus a whole shwack of appendices and behind the scenes footage. I’m still drooling!
And after only watching it once (and a little bit of the cast commentary version) I’ve got to say that this is the way the movie should have been in the theatres the first go round. Nothing weird or wacky was added (at least no more than what was originally changed *cough*Arwen*cough*), just key scenes here and there were expanded upon, reworked slightly or added to where they were missing.
Yes, that means there are still no Old Man Willow or Tom Bombadil scenes, but we now have a full scene explaining the gifts that Galadriel gave each member of the fellowship instead of just what we saw her give Frodo in the regular version.
The movie is tighter and, I feel, truer to the book with these slight tweaks. Peter Jackson is a man with amazing vision and I think he would have easily overcome Tolkien’s belief that his world could never properly be adapted to the silver screen. And I think he has done so with an amazing clarity of purpose and focus on detail.
I won’t say more because it’s late and I must rest up before tomorrow when I am going to see if I can preorder some Two Towers Tickets for next Wednesday afternoon (perhaps a bit late, but I’m up for the challenge nonetheless).
And speaking of the Two Towers, I finally got around to tweaking the countdown timer. It now works properly.
You can go HERE and wait with baited breath like the rest of us fanboys.
And if anyone knows of a site that has a good parchment-esque version of Tolkien’s original Middle Earth map in jpeg format, please let me know. I’d like to use it as a background for that page.