So, having dispensed my ultimate wisdom (LOL) on the cast and characterisations, I'm going to turn my attention to a scene-by-scene discussion.

( FOTR Scene 1: Prologue )

Here's the second part of my thoughts on the cast of LotR.
( Supporting Cast )

I've been obsessively watching and re-watching the Lord of the Rings trilogy these past few weeks, originally inspired by catching a sequence by sequence discussion of each film over at Barrowdowns.com.

I think the only way I'm going to exorcise my obession is to talk about the films fairly excessively for a while - and then perhaps I can actually get something else in the DVD player...

First, a little bit of background.

I've read the trilogy only once, and that many years ago. Although I had adored The Hobbit (my cherished copy is now very battered from countless re-readings) I found the Rings books very hard-going. Perhaps it was because I was at a very low ebb in my life when I read them, but I never lost myself in Middle Earth the way other people seem to do. Never read Silmarillion or the Unfinished Tales or any of the other bits.

So in many ways I came to the films as the perfect audience: having a good appreciation and understanding of Middle Earth, but without the encyclopaedic knowledge which would make me scream "Heresy!" at story changes.

I didn't see the films at the cinema (though god! I wish now that I had) because in those days I was a smoker, and I found it hard to sit through a kids' film, let alone a 3-hour epic,  without a cig. Also, I've always been one for ignoring films that are getting hyped to death; I'm a bit of a snob in that regard.

So let me state now and for the record that I believe these films to be the finest ever made in the history of cinema to date. They transport me to Middle Earth in a way that the books never achieved.

But that's not to say that they don't have faults. Some of the acting can be a little wooden, and the dialogue clunks at times. Some of the action is ill-conceived and unneccesary. But the films transcend all this to become something that's somehow greater than the sum of their parts.

I'm going to start by discussing the cast and characters. And then I'm going to go through the films more-or-less scene by scene. And by the time I'm finished, maybe I'll have moved on!

( Cast and Crew: The Fellowship )

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!

My left middle nail extension started coming loose last week, so I thought, fuck it, I'll have them taken off - I can't really afford another £30 to have them repaired again.

I've never had nail extensions before getting this lot in February (which have been repaired once). They're acrylics.

No fucker told me it takes around 3 hours to soak acrylic nails off.

So I spent all Saturday evening with my hands in a plastic tub of eye-watering chemicals (some form of white spirit is my guess) which slowly turned from liquid into what I can only describe as goop, as the acrylic basically melted and dissolved into it. Leaving my poor hands and nails looking rather the worse for wear, I'm afraid. Countless applications of hand cream later, the skin looks alright, but the nails are fucked. I've had to trim them right down and paint silver over the top to hide the white spots. Going to start taking calcium supplements.

Next time I'll have silk tips done, they're a lot easier to get off apparently.

So, what with Casualty being deposed by the shite that is Eurovision, and me with my hands in a dish of goop for the evening, we settled down to watch the first episode of LotR, which I picked up from the bargain video bin at Morrisons a couple of weeks ago. It's sad to admit that we're probably the last people on the planet to have watched this.

I must say that having DVDs has definitely spoiled me - I got quite tetchy at the sound quality at the beginning, but this was probably just our VCR needing a clean to be honest.

I was afraid that all the hype would prove unfounded and I'd be left cold again, in much the same way that I couldn't give a fuck about 4 Weddings and a Funeral, Notting Hill, The Full Monty, et al. However my fears were groundless and I have to say it's one of the most stunning pieces of cinematography I've watched in years. The direction is tops - Jackson clearly deserved all those oscars. Nice to see a good strong English cast as well, including our very own Sheffield lad, Sean Bean. Shame about Cate Blanchett as Galadriel though, as I personally find her insipid.

Certainly several moments had me on the edge of my seat, and the "Whoops, there goes my tub of goop" moment was the bit in Rivendell when Bilbo meets Frodo again and makes a grab for the Ring.

Considering that I can't normally sit still for films - I find it hard to watch a TV programme which goes on for more than an hour - it's a stunning Kaz accolade that when this finished, I couldn't believe it was over, and wanted another 3 hours straight away. In fact it's probably a good thing that I don't own the second and third films yet, otherwise I can see I would have been up til dawn watching them!

Pat, bless his heart, is not really into fantasy stuff and all the media attention and hype have pretty much passed him by. He's never read the books - in fact I don't think he'd even really heard of them until the films were made. So at the end of this film, he said, "That can't be the end, he hasn't chucked the fucking ring in!" I just cracked up - it was like total outrage, as if the films should have a subtitle: "LotR 1 - The Fellowship of the Ring - Frodo doesn't chuck the fucking ring in yet" followed of course by "LotR 2 - The Two Towers - Nope, still got it." and "LotR 3 - The Return of the King - Finally! Frodo chucks the fucking ring away."

Of course that reminded me of "Am still not King yet" so I had to go and find and re-read the VSDs this morning, which gave me an hour or so of chuckles.

So, of course now I need to get the next two films, the dilemma being should I get the next two on video (cheap) or buy the boxed DVD set (expensive, but with extra footage and all that malarkey, plus a nice box)? Buying a boxed set might put me in the camp of "People who obsess over LotR to the extent of learning Elvish" or it might say "Serious about good films"... Will have to see if I can get a good deal on a box set somewhere.

I've also been toying with buying the box set of X-Men and X2 - even though I already have X2 on DVD. But that is mainly because I have a silly schoogirl crush on Hugh Jackman... *blush*

Well better get off to bed because it's back to work tomorrow. Hope they haven't made too many people redundant while I've been off... :-S