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Just not enough of a book to make three films out of. Strange to think that I grew up close to Edgbaston Reservoir which much of Middle Earth was based on. If only I’d known at the time.
Went to see it last night Moe. I thought it was an improvement on the first film, if only for the excellent scenes with Bilbo and Smaug.
What annoys me is the amount of stuff Peter Jackson decided to add in that Tolkien never mentioned, and the things he changed. Even in the first film, the Eagles are treated like animals Gandalf can call on at will, while the wargs are made out to be dogs of the orcs. In this books this couldn’t be further from the case.
According to Tolkien, the wargs could speak and were highly intelligent. They had an alliance with the orcs but were by no means their ‘pets’. The eagles saved Gandalf and co. by chance, having decided they wanted to stop whatever mischief the orcs were up to. They could also talk.
In Tolkien’s work, Azog had died many years before at the hands of Dain. The things about this is that if Jackson wanted a villain to hunt the party he could just have used Bolg, Azog’s son, who actually appears in The Hobbit book anyway.
There’s stuff in the new film that was just plain wrong but I won’t say in case you haven’t seen it yet
Geek rant over…
He had to fill it out with something. Must say that, although it’s been panned by the critics everyone I spoken to thus far has actually enjoyed it. It was so long ago that I read the book I wouldn’t know what had been added. Saw Nebraska last night. Sad creatures that we are, we always score our films when we’ve seen them. I gave it 10/10. The perfect film.
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Off to see Anchorman 2 tonight, will post whether it’s any good or not. Then again, with the help of Mr green herb I’m sure I won’t have a problem laughing my ass off.
Not sure about Anchorman 2 which has had bad reviews but I caught Anchorman 1 tonight on the telly and really enjoyed it.
Moe,
I know you enjoy scaring yourself with M R James ghost stories on dark winter nights so did you watch The Tractate Middoth last night?
Good I thought, and managed to convey the same atmosphere as the famous ’70s productions
Given the ambiguous leave-to-the-imagination suspense that’s a hallmark of James’s tales, displaying the full-frontal face of the ghost wasn’t needed; the view of its back and cobwebby hair was quite scary enough
A minor quibble and after watching it I re-read the story: the film was actually a very faithful rendition of it with, happily, very few unnecessary embellishments
- Total Posts 764
Not sure about Anchorman 2 which has had bad reviews but I caught Anchorman 1 tonight on the telly and really enjoyed it.
I enjoyed the first 45mins of Anchorman 2 but after that it got a bit tedious and long-winded, also the humour sort of wore off after that long.
In my opinion it’s worth seeing but probably best to watch it for free online or when it’s on TV. If I gave the first one a 9/10 I’d give this one a 7/10. It wasn’t great but not as bad as people have made it out to be.
I loved the bit with the dog and the bears. I KNEW when he went into the river that it wasn’t the sort of film to have such a sad thing happen. My son’s got it on dvd; he said it’s worth a second watch, and also recommends Zoolander which is similar. Drone; I thought I’d be brave and watch the Tractate Middoth but didn’t find it very scary. I reckon things are much more frightening in black and white. Annoyingly I wanted to watch the programme after it [did you see the bit about Lost Hearts, albeit the later, colour version] but the family started talking and I didn’t get to watch it properly. I still want to know which story it was where the young girl ends up in a crypt as the bride of an undead person. Think I’ll have a look on the Lost Episodes website to see if anyone is any nearer to finding the original Lost Hearts.
I Saw the Devil. It is a Korean horror film, and perhaps one of the best ever of its type. It’s a brutal film about the worst aspects of the human condition, yet it is entirely beautiful to watch. I highly recommend it!
Memento is another favorite of mine. Christopher Nolan is a genius filmmaker, and this is one of his best IMO.
Secretariat
Seabiscuit
Champions
Phar Lap
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=nJG3ho_z2zM
The full movie here if you’ve never seen it.Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...I’ve got it on video! Brilliant film
. I’ve also got [somewhere
]again on video, Kings of the Wind; I’d like to see that again. Re Champions; Josh Gifford said they wanted to make the film darker and grittier but lightened it a bit for the American market. [on the subject of films, I’ve just found out that a boyfriend going back to when I was in my late teens is now a very successful location manager for films and tv series; they say that behind every successful man there’s a woman but in his case he obviously did better without me
]I know what you mean about not watching sad films Moe, two that I can’t bring myself to watch (and I really want too)
War Horse and Marley and Me
When Black Beauty first came out I took my daughter and her friend to see it..we blubbed our way through a whole box of Kleenex when Ginger died.Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...I was very disappointed with the film of War Horse, but we’re going to see the ‘play’ at the cinema next month. Have seen it twice on stage but want to see the stage play in more detail ‘up close’ at the cinema. I cried all the way through the stage play both times [as did my daughter when I took her to see it last year]. When I read Black Beauty to my daughter
I couldn’t read the Ginger chapter for crying. I can remember her grabbing the book from me saying ‘honestly mum; I’ll read it myself!
. Just occurred to me that it would be lovely to see a production of Black Beauty done with puppets a la War Horse, although it wouldn’t have the widespread appeal of the latter.
What a wonderful sequel to War Horse Black Beauty would be and a great use of the puppets again, but yet another production that I would have to avoid.
I did manage to get through the Lion King with just a few tears when evil Scar killed Simbas dad.
I suppose it’s a good thing that we have daughter’s to go with, I can’t persuade my husband for love nor money to go to the Theatre.Talking about reading books to our children, my daughter never let’s me forget how I changed the ending of the Golden Goose because when it stopped laying Golden Eggs the evil Farmer and his wife killed it and cut it up to find the eggs inside. I thought it was much to violent for a 4 year old and told her that the Goose escaped and found a family that would take care of her. When she was older we were sorting out books for the Charity Shop and she came upon this book and read the true ending…she has never forgiven me for changing the story to this day.
Things turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...I always told my daughter I would never lie to her. So, when her peer group started to question certain things that happen at Chistmas time she said it couldn’t possibly not be true because her mum would have told her if it wasn’t
It was only when our next door neighbour said in front of her, ‘of course she’s far too old now to believe in that’ that she realised her friends were right [she’s never forgiven me and I’ve never forgiven the neighbour]. I must point out that she never asked me straight out at the time because I would then have told her the truth [whatever ‘the truth’ is because I still believe in magical things. I mean, if magic wasn’t real we would never have had Desert Orchid, would we?Too right Moe he was the most magical horse ever, I often think back to those days at Ab Kettleby, David Elsworths and at the very last The National Stud just 6 weeks before we lost him. No other horse has ever captured the publics hearts like our Dessie although many have come close.
I don’t think it’s a bad thing for our Children to hang on to a little magic while they’re growing up that’s what mum’s are for.
If you get a chance, and you haven’t seen it already, get hold of a copy of the film about Secretariat, I didn’t know an awful lot about the story of the connections and this brings it all together.
Penny Tweedy, his owner, was an amazing woman and Secretariat proved, against the odds, that he was the horse of a lifetime.Here’s the trailer
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=UKmuvjL2cVwThings turn out best for those who make the best of how things turn out...
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