Day: 13 December 2002

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.

I Wish…

So my writing spurt stopped abruptly about five minutes after I wrote about it last night. Didn’t get very far either. Damn dirty apes…. errr…. uhm… nevermind.

Anyways, here’s a stupid little list that would be cool if it were true.

The Top 10 Things That Would Be Different If Santa Were A Science Fiction Geek

10.) You asked for a train set, but got George Takei’s makeup towel from “Wrath of Khan” instead.

9.) Changes into a jolly red goo to easily slide down chimneys.

8.) “And I heard him exclaim, ere he drove out of sight, ‘Reconfigure the deflector array, and make the jump to light!'”

7.) Attack of the Clones would still suck. (Some things even Santa can’t change.)

6.) All the little boys (and some girls too) would be getting anatomically correct Xena dolls for Christmas.

5.) No toys, but children all over the world get an e-mail explaining 47 reasons why the trip is scientifically impossible.

4.) Cloned copies in malls across the country. Sleigh travels faster than light. What do you mean “if”?

3.) “Naughty/Nice” list replaced with a “Kirk/Picard” list.

2.) Christmas would have 36 minutes of never before seen footage.

and the Number 1 Thing That Would Be Different If Santa Were a Science Fiction Geek…

1.) For starters, he’d never go out on a mission dressed in red.