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perlmongerOn Saturday morning,
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On Saturday morning, <lj-cut text="shopping"><user="ramtops"> and I took advantage of an unprecedented quietness on Bristol's roads (caused, I gather, by some sort of ritual enactment of a conflict with former Colonials) to make our periodic catfud-and-litter-bogroll-and-kitchenroll run to Makro. Oh, and picked up a bottle of Knob <span style="text-decoration: line-through">Cheese</span>Creek which, for reasons unknown, can be bought in a Bristol cash+carry, but not in any Bristol off licence I know of.
We stopped on Whiteladies Road on the way home to pick up a replacement Bodum glass teapot from the kitchen shop (for future reference, these things are <b>not</b> dishwasher safe ;), dead cow, smoked back and lamb and rosemary ossidge rom the organic butcher, and a couple of tuna steaks from what used to be an exellent fishmonger with attached restaurant but has now sadly transmogrified into a restaurant with a token fish counter. Sign of the bloody times in Brissle; people don't cook, but like to maintain the illusion that they might.</lj-cut>
<lj-cut text="Saturday night fud and Two Towers with possible minor spoilers">Dead cow was shown a ribbed pan and eaten on Saturday night, as is traditional, and we slumped down to watch the extended Two Towers.
IMO it works a lot better than the cinema version; the extra background for Rohan in particular, and the Elrond/Arwen/Aragorn backstory and a much extended Entmoot. The changes made to the story still grate though: the focus on Helms Deep I can understand from a cinematographic perspctive (though the battle scenes are overlong and Legolas on a skateboard still causes bogglement); Gimli as comic foil just irritates and the less said about tossing dwarves the better; after all, Aragorn is of Numenorean blood, not a valet...
The worst is still the Ithilien changes. I can't see any need for dragging Frodo &c. to Osgiliath or for Faramir being as equivocable about letting them go as he was (though I guess that the latter is perhaps more plausible than Tolkien's portrayal of his purity of purpose). Whatever. It's still worth watching :).
Other than that... The Ents are still wrong - too small and spindly - but an interesting inclusion of some text and events from the Old Forest part of the books into Merry and Pippin in Fangorn. The fall and battle of Gandalf and the balrog was even more stunning on second viewing; lovely CGI. Saruman's "possession" of Theoden actually worked better for me on second viewing - it was something I didn't like at all first time round but (perhaps because the entire Rohan section was filled out into a more coherent whole) seemed to fit this time.</lj-cut>
We stopped on Whiteladies Road on the way home to pick up a replacement Bodum glass teapot from the kitchen shop (for future reference, these things are <b>not</b> dishwasher safe ;), dead cow, smoked back and lamb and rosemary ossidge rom the organic butcher, and a couple of tuna steaks from what used to be an exellent fishmonger with attached restaurant but has now sadly transmogrified into a restaurant with a token fish counter. Sign of the bloody times in Brissle; people don't cook, but like to maintain the illusion that they might.</lj-cut>
<lj-cut text="Saturday night fud and Two Towers with possible minor spoilers">Dead cow was shown a ribbed pan and eaten on Saturday night, as is traditional, and we slumped down to watch the extended Two Towers.
IMO it works a lot better than the cinema version; the extra background for Rohan in particular, and the Elrond/Arwen/Aragorn backstory and a much extended Entmoot. The changes made to the story still grate though: the focus on Helms Deep I can understand from a cinematographic perspctive (though the battle scenes are overlong and Legolas on a skateboard still causes bogglement); Gimli as comic foil just irritates and the less said about tossing dwarves the better; after all, Aragorn is of Numenorean blood, not a valet...
The worst is still the Ithilien changes. I can't see any need for dragging Frodo &c. to Osgiliath or for Faramir being as equivocable about letting them go as he was (though I guess that the latter is perhaps more plausible than Tolkien's portrayal of his purity of purpose). Whatever. It's still worth watching :).
Other than that... The Ents are still wrong - too small and spindly - but an interesting inclusion of some text and events from the Old Forest part of the books into Merry and Pippin in Fangorn. The fall and battle of Gandalf and the balrog was even more stunning on second viewing; lovely CGI. Saruman's "possession" of Theoden actually worked better for me on second viewing - it was something I didn't like at all first time round but (perhaps because the entire Rohan section was filled out into a more coherent whole) seemed to fit this time.</lj-cut>
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Date: 2003-11-24 02:46 am (UTC)