Current mood:	content
Entry tags:	films, lotr

The weekly round up, and musings on LotR
Haven't updated since Friday, so I'll do it now while waiting for a Poser render... which is a render to promote a product which I promised someone days ago, but my PC hasn't been co-operating.

Having installed my new hard drive last week, I was hoping that my problems would be over, but no... same old shit, freezing unexpectedly (usually in Poser but once or twice during games of Geneforge) and sudden resets without user intervention or warning. Then on Saturday I started hearing a funny noise from the case, kind of whirring in cycles. Difficult to describe, but anyway, it sounded like the fan was really labouring. So on Monday Pat went out and got me a new fan and put it in, and all is going good so far, no crashes yet, so fingers crossed that was it.

The weekend was very quiet, as Pat is doing a cash-in-hand electrical job for Jenny, the lady who runs our local Chinese restaurant. She and her husband have just opened another takeaway and they needed the lights rewiring. Of course, what was supposed to be a quick afternoon's work has blossomed into a week's, as Pat discovered that the wiring probably dates from the 1940s and hasn't been touched since, and is thus falling to bits, but hey, it's a cash job and it alleviates the boredom for him.

However this did mean I had Simon on my own all weekend, which wasn't too bad on Saturday as the weather was okay and we had the car, so he was happy with a shopping trip and playing out. On Sunday though, Pat took the car, and it pissed down all bloody day, so Simon was very bored and grouchy. I sat down to watch LotR again - taking advantage of Pat being out as he is not into it at all - but Simon nearly drove me insane with incessant questions. What's that? Who's he? What's he doing now? Are they any orcs in England? Well how do you know there aren't, are they in Scotland? Did there used to be, maybe when cavemen were around? Why's that man all slimy? Why's he talk like that?... on and on and fucking on...

So I sent him off to watch Cartoon Network upstairs while I watched episode 3 in peace.

I really have enjoyed the series incredibly, a lot more than I expected. I was pleasantly surprised with The Two Towers, because I always felt the book was the most boring of the trilogy, and had to force myself to keep at it in some parts. Part of it was the overblown dialogue that Tolkein used, full of manly bonding and all that, and probably part of it was my complete lack of knowledge of, and disinterest in, warfare and tactics. Now I'm a bit more knowledgable about and appreciative of these things, I can understand much more of the story and be interested in the politics and motives behind, for e.g., Theoden's decision to retreat to Helm's Deep. Whereas, when I read the book, I was just like, "Yeah yeah, get on with it, I want to know where Frodo and Sam have got to!"

Interestingly, when reading the book's I always felt guilty that I didn't take Frodo to heart as much as I "should" have done, he was after all the main character and surely I should have been most invested in his survival. But I never really felt I understood his motivations or knew him as a person. And this hasn't actually changed on viewing the films, I still felt we never really got inside Frodo, except for a very few scenes - just before entering the volcano, when he tells Sam that he's "naked in the dark" - but by that time, my emotions are more caught up with Aragorn and Arwen, and Sam - and haven't much left over to care about Frodo. If he'd actually ended up falling in the volcano and detsroying the Ring that way (shades of Terminator 2 there), I would have said "Oh well, at least he got the job done, never mind eh."

Now when reading the books, I never gave two tin shits about any character really, only Sam, who I identified with - I felt he was a bit of a Bilbo character - and having read The Hobbit aged 10 and totally imprinted on Bilbo, I suppose in some ways the idea of Frodo was "Usurper! Bilbo is the true archetypal hobbit, so bugger off with your mooning about and whining!" It's hard to tell if Tolkein intended this or not - maybe he deliberately made Frodo a sort of ambiguous character so that he could build up the suspense of "will Frodo be corrupted by the Ring". Of course, if I had the books I could reread them and then make a judgement, but sadly they got left with Paul when we split up. And I don't want to go and re-buy them now, because I'll end up looking like some uncultured pleb who's only bought them because they saw the films. And I'm a terrible snob like that :-D

Anyway, in the course of the films, I did come to care immensely what became of all the characters, although it pissed me off that Gimli was providing constant comic relief. Aragorn, though, became a much more sympathetic character than I had ever seen him as before, although this was somewhat offset by Legolas being reduced in stature by virtue of too much prancing.

All things considered, a fucking bonanza of cinematographic excellence. What I'd really like to do is get totally stoned and then watch all three, one after another, but my chances of that are approximately zero considering Pat's lacklustre reaction...

Oh and here are some good pics on R'osity:
Legolas (most amusing)
Aragorn by Scott King

Anyway, my render now finished - actually my fourth redone render - so I'd better go to bed.

Oh, and go England!