Watching LOTR for the first time in four years

Something I read the other day got me wondering, Gollum repeatedly teases Sam as being a 'fat hobbitses' in the films, but as far as I can remember he wasn't described as particularly overweight in the books?

Looking at the films from a nitcpicky angle, isn't it a little weird for Sam to retain the same weight in the strenuous climate of Mordor (maybe he was stashing some of the waybread), or for Gimli's beard to stay the exact same length throughout the three films?

I watched about two hours of FOTR a few weeks ago and even now I notice things (good and bad) I never picked up on before...

Thats when time can be good to you. When my son stresses out over a video game I tell him to take a good long break, go back later & you'll see it differently. And he always does. I guess the brain dismisses the familiar & notices the odd stuff ? Like, does Aragorn shave ? Do Elves poop in the woods ?

I kinda agree with you on the Sam weight thing, but the whole trilogy (at least, the main portion, including all of Gimli's appearances) takes place over the course of like a few weeks. It was roughly three months in the books, but the films condense and accelerate the timeline in a number of places.

Wont do Eldo. Even if it was a few weeks by film reckoning I still expect Legolas's mascara to smudge at some point ? Aragorn should have blown his nose or at least sniffed once & as for Gimli....isnt he a fartmeister ? is his helmet welded to his head ? Is he secretly bald under that piece of metal ? Are those bondage straps & hes a kinky sod after all ? Does Leggy wait for the others to go to sleep & then swings thru the trees ala Tarzan whilst singing like Julie Andrews ?

if you want nitty gritty folks pooping in the woods you have GOT.

azriel wrote:

malickfan wrote:

Hard to believe the kida who sung this was only 11 or 12 at the time...

There's something so soothing & calming about a child singing choral fashion

This. I can't even imagine a LotR trilogy without the genius Howard Shore guiding us through it all. Seriously, the music when listened to alone just feels like a fucking opera, and puts the Game of Thrones soundtrack, which is amazing, but not nearly as complex, to shame.

inb4 bungo complains about lietmotifs

That was a really good video. I agree that Shore does the traditional, operatic kind of score better than any other movie I've ever seen/heard. Someone (I think it might have been Halfwise?) once posted a link to this site that touches on a lot of the same material, and discusses many of the themes in detail.

http://www.woodzie.org/lotr/

Also, while I haven't read it myself, I'm told by people I know who have that Doug Adams' The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films is excellent and goes into even more detail. Adams was handpicked by Shore to follow the scoring process from the very beginning.

http://www.musicoflotr.com/p/music-of-lord-of-rings-faq.html

Great links, Eldo. I don't think I was the one to quote the first one.

Maybe Malickfan? No idea, it was a while ago. Glad you like 'em though halfy. I'm no musician but I find it fascinating.

Eldorion wrote:Also, while I haven't read it myself, I'm told by people I know who have that Doug Adams' The Music of the Lord of the Rings Films is excellent and goes into even more detail. Adams was handpicked by Shore to follow the scoring process from the very beginning.

http://www.musicoflotr.com/p/music-of-lord-of-rings-faq.html

So I bought this recently while I was on a spate of Tolkien-related book purchases (it's the one movie-related book I got during that time) and while a lot of it is technical and thus over my head, I did find it quite interesting. It comes with a CD, The Rarities Archive, which I listened to for the first time yesterday. It's mainly early and alternate versions of songs, with a few completed ones that just never made it into any of the other releases, plus an interview with Howard Shore at the end. Good stuff.

Kinda want to buy the Complete Recordings now but the first two are out of print and ridiculous expensive. Maybe I'll ask for them for Christmas.

I think Adams posts on TORn occasionally so you could always ask him if he knows whether they are being re-released.

I've heard rumors (possibly on TORn) that they'll be re-released in the not too distant future but I dunno if Adams was the source of them.

I was watching the second half of FotR last night, and I realized something that I had misunderstood ever since I first saw the film: the source of the Uruk-hai's white hand on their faces.

Thanks to this section from the film, I always assumed that the Uruks were ripping skin off eachother's faces to look like a white hand, but that doesn't make any sense, right?

https://youtu.be/vNMSdxzGQzc?t=46

I had always figured they had white paint on their hands but watching that clip just now was the first time I noticed the bucket of paint next to the orc with his hands on the other one's face.

The head squeezing is rather odd. Never noticed it before.

Some of the tracks from the above-mentioned Rarities Collection are on YouTube so I've been re-listening to them and I think "Arwen's Song" is my favorite.

I always wanted to watch all three EEs in one day but didn't want to do so on my computer, and I never had the TV to myself for 12 hours at a pop. The opportunity presented itself this week, however, so I decided to go for it even though I had otherwise been planning to wait a bit longer to rewatch the trilogy again (it's been about nine months since my last time). I started just before noon after a short walk, since I figured going outside for at least a little bit would help assuage any guilt at being a couch potato.

I was having trouble getting into FOTR -- though it's still a great film, especially the ending -- and decided to take a break at the disc change in TTT. I spent about two hours finishing up some Tolkien related reading (mostly Dimitra Fimi's book) and then went back to the marathon. I ate meals during the breaks between the movies proper, though I also got up to use the bathroom and move around a bit during all of the disc changes. Including all my breaks the whole process took just over 14 hours, though it would have been more like 12 without the extended halftime.

I was expecting it to be something of a slog and it definitely was. Early on the knowledge of how much more movie there was kinda put on a damper on things. I almost stopped halfway through but kept going so I could cross an item off my Tolkien fandom bucket list (that's been on my mind lately). I did end up enjoying things more during the second half of the marathon, especially ROTK. Came away feeling much more positive about that than I did last time, although there are still so many dumb moments mixed in with the great ones.

Not sure I'd really recommend this to anyone else but it's certainly an experience and I'm glad that I can say I did it. Was a fairly nostalgic and emotional thing for me since it took me back to when I was 15 or so and first thought about doing such a marathon after talking about it with people online. If I hadn't already been thinking back on that period a bunch lately I don't know if I would have done this, even considering that I was presented with the perfect opportunity for it.

I think that waiting at least a couple years between viewings is going to be my norm going forward, and I don't plan on watching them all in one day again, though doing it over a single weekend has been nice in the past.

So now while the memory of the marathon is fresh, did you find it in any way richer for having watched them in one day rather than 2 or 3? I watched them all in one day 10 years ago or so when RotK EE was new for me. I remember thinking at the time that I was seeing some story lines with more clarity, but also some of the flaws. Don't know how I'd feel about it now.

There were some elements of the characterization and little references that jumped out at me more than they have in the past, definitely. Like, to pick just one example, hearing Galadriel tell Pippin "you will find your courage" and then seeing him find Merry on the Pelennor seven or so hours later (as opposed to a couple days, weeks, or months later as have happened in the past) was definitely a neat feeling. But on the other hand, I think the individual films benefit from having some time to decompress and process the emotional ups and downs. I'm critical of the drawn-out ending of TTT in general, but it's especially tedious in the middle of a single marathon. On the other hand it makes the ending of ROTK seem quite breezy, though I've never thought that was problematic anyway, so take that for what it's worth.

Most of the things that bug me about LOTR I've thought about and discussed so exhaustively over the years that at this point it seems to depend more on my mood than anything else whether they bother me during a given viewing.

Someone pointed this out on Reddit:

I was going through the movies over the last few days and notice something that made me chuckle...
In 'The Hobbit' we see Frodo tell Bilbo that he's going to go wait for Gandalf, they have a whole conversation about it...
Shortly after...
Bilbo is inside when someone starts knocking on the door and he yells for Frodo because he doesn't have a stickleback's clue where he is. He already forgot Frodo said he was leaving...
He did say he felt stretched like butter over too much bread...

So either Bilbo was going completely senile, or Jackson and co hadn't even bothered to check the continuity of their own films...

heard that Warner Bros is being bought out by AT&T does this mean LOTR super doper EE more likely in the pipeline?

It would be nice to see a LOTRs super doper addition but, I dunno, I cant see that happening somehow ?

Mrs Figg wrote:heard that Warner Bros is being bought out by AT&T does this mean LOTR super doper EE more likely in the pipeline?

Maybe? Depends whether the executives at WB and/or the home video department change or can be persuaded otherwise, sales of physical media are falling year by year and even Blu Ray's have noticeably fewer and fewer special features than they used to i.m.o, it's possible I suppose, but perhaps more likely as a streamable series bit by bit rather than an actual boxset...

Assuming that AT&T's purchase of TimeWarner is approved by regulators, I don't think that they will be more inclined to sink money into the increasingly irrelevant home video extras market.