The Lord of the Rings...

When I was 8 or 9 years old in 3rd grade, my teacher used to read to us after recess. One of the books she read us was The Hobbit, which I loved so much I got my parents to buy it for me so I could read it again myself. It actually came as a part of a boxset with the Lord of the Rings, which I had never heard of, but they were more books about hobbits, so that was good with me!

But those books turned out to be very different from The Hobbit, a much larger scale, more grown up themes, and lots more strange language and poetry. I loved them so much that I probably re-read them once a year until I was in high school.

When the Peter Jackson films came out I was rather unimpressed with them, probably since I was so attached to the books. I have warmed up to them a little since then, though. Some things I thought were good - the sets and locations looked almost exactly as I had imagined them. And some of the music was good. Some of the music was...meh. Some of the casting was very good, some wasn't. I did not care for Ian McKellen as Gandalf, and Viggo Mortensen I thought was a strange choice for Aragorn, but that worked out OK in the end. Obviously some things need to change when adapting a book to a movie, but I did not care for the unnecessary changes, such as the altered role of Arwen (especially since she displaced one of my favorites, Glorfindel, in the movie). There were other changes that shouldn't have happened, but overall, it was more faithful to the books than I expected it would be.

Have you ever seen the animated Tolkien movies? Ralph Bakshi made an animated version of Lord of the Rings that was rather...insane. It seemed kind of half finished and only really made it through The Two Towers. Then Rankin and Bass made some wonderful animated versions of The Hobbit and Return of the King.

Any fans of LOTR out there?

I have never read the books, although I do have them. I always end up picking up some philosophical or Beethoven book instead. I have seen the movies and love them. I thought that they were excellently done, for cinema today. I also thought that Howard Shore did an excellent job with the music. I love the scene in The Two Towers where Eowyn runs out of the palace to see Gandalf, Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli (think that is how you spell their names) riding up on the horses, and the flag of the hall blows off into the wind, the music is really good in that scene, I think. Probably need to read the books before I can really comment though,

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Here is the music from the scene I was talking about, it is certainly not that challenging, but it is pleasant, http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wNaMivvuYYM .

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