Ahira's Hangar

Fellowship was by far the best of the trilogy IMO.

--A

Over the last week or so we have been having an Indiana Jones marathon, followed by a Mummy marathon (though those are on VHS). Last night we started a Christmas marathon, with all sorts of holiday classics such as The Grinch, Charlie Brown, Rudolph, It's Wonderful Life, etc. etc.

Just watched the 2 Kill Bill movies again. Good movies.

--A

We watched The Dark Knight this evening after the big hockey game. It was very good, and the loss of Heath Ledger at such a young age was a true tragedy for films.

Glad you liked The Dark Knight!

It's very sad about Ledger. But at least he leaves us with a performance for the ages. His Joker is absolutely riveting, imo.

I should add "The Dark Knight" to my Netflix queue. Yes, I am once again blessed/cursed with a TV, so I signed up for Netflix. Two movies a month, one out at a time -- that's just the right level of viewing for me, I think. I had Blockbuster's mail order service on a free trial awhile back, and the three-movies-out-at-once put too much pressure on me to watch movies all the time. (Why yes, I *am* weird, thanks! )

So far I've seen "Burn After Reading", which was pretty darn funny. I now have the latest Indiana Jones movie waiting for me. I'll probably watch it this weekend. Can't get another movie 'til February anyhow, so there's no rush.

I should see about adding "Battlestar Galactica" to my queue too. I've watched the first two seasons on DVD, but that's as far as I've gotten.

Yes, you should add The Dark Knight to your viewing list.

Burn After Reading was one I thought about seeing but never got around to it.

Indy 4 divides opinion, to say the least. I await your comments with interest.

After years of having owned only the Fellowship DVDs, I finally purchased The Two Towers and Return of the King - the extended editions. It helped that they were dirt cheap, but I still debated with myself for a long time in the store before getting them. I have never bought a movie that I disliked seeing the first time...until now, in the case of The Two Towers. But I wanted to revisit the films from the perspective of having now read the books.

So I watched TTT...and overall I did like it better than before. The extra scenes may have helped (though I wasn't sure which were extra, since I saw the original theatrical release only once). Still, as soon as Faramir showed up...aaargh! I never liked his character in the movie the first time around, but now he seemed even worse, now that I knew what he was like in the book. It's inexplicable to me why Faramir and the subplot around him was altered so much for the movie. Hard to forgive Peter Jackson here. What good did these changes serve?

The stunning opening with Gandalf fighting the Balrog remains my favorite sequence of the film. The remaining 3 hours had a hard time living up to those first few minutes, and mostly failed to.

The battle at Helm's Deep was still as exciting as I remembered it. Jackson depicted all the battles very well, and in that respect, improved on the books. Tolkien's descriptions of battles in the books did not fire my imagination or engage my emotions as well as they should have. (In that, I also think Donaldson is the better writer - but that's for another thread.) The scene of the urukai (sp?) sprinting into the tunnel to set off the bombs still killed me - I loved it! It's like a parody of an Olympic torch relay. The other thing I liked about the battle at Helm's Deep was the presence of the Elves fighting alongside Men. That was a welcome deviation from the book, though it didn't quite make up for turning Faramir into a nitwit.

Last but not least, I felt that Frodo's struggle of will with the Ring was more poignantly portrayed onscreen than in the books. All kudos to Elijah Wood. He really gave the sense that the Ring was messing with Frodo's mind and heart. Whereas reading the books, I never felt that Frodo was really in danger of losing his sense of himself.

I agree with you about Elijah Wood's portrayal of Frodo. He did the angst *much* better than Tolkien wrote it in the books.

Ah, I never reported back on Indy 4! Must rectify that: Overall, I liked it very much. Cate Blanchett's accent didn't bother me too much. I like the new kid, and I liked watching Harrison Ford be an old guy who can still do all the physical stuff. (Oh heck, let's be honest: I just like watching Harrison Ford. )

I was knitting while I watched it, so I probably missed stuff. Check that: I *know* I missed stuff. I watched the "making of" bonus doc after the movie was over, and they were talking about a swordfight, and I kind of went, "Wait, when was the swordfight?"

Now I've moved on to season 3 of Battlestar Galactica -- just watched the second disc over the weekend and sent it back this morning, so disc 3 should be on deck shortly. This puts me, what, just two seasons behind the rest of the world? Or is it three?

One more note on "Burn After Reading": I saw "The Curious Case of Benjamin Button" at the movies last week and thought it was pretty good -- not at all "Forrest Gump"-like (at least one reviewer complained about that, but I didn't see it). Never really thought about what a range Brad Pitt has until now. He's quite a good actor.

I used to go to the movies a lot more than I do now. It's hard to stomach $10-plus for a ticket, especially since it seems (to me, anyhow ) that it wasn't all that long ago that you paid just $1.75 for a matinee. And, yeah, I'm lazy.

I'd like to see "Slumdog Millionaire" before it scoots away to DVD-land, just because of the whole Mumbai thing (looks like I'm not going to get to go after all -- ah well, it was never on my short list of places to see anyhow). Actually, I'd like to see all of the Best Picture contenders eventually, but it might have to be a Netflix extravaganza....

Not a big movie-goer myself...can't remember what the last thing I saw in the cinema was.

--A