distrans, I disagree. The scenes and sequences you mention work well as a book (especially the scouring of the shire) but not in a movie adaption. All that would have seemed anti-climatic and not really all that engrossing to non-readers as there isnt enough running time to include all that and make it flow nicely.

H-hour, again I disagree. The long version of FOTR was perfect IMHO, it flowed a lot better than the theatrical and the so called dead time was actually stuff that people complained about being left out of the theatrical cut. As for ROTK, they do return to the shire and enough (or pehaps too much) is shown of the aftermath.

In the end, a lot has to be left out and or adapted to make it work as a movie, and different people are going to value the different components left out differently. Some may not care for the scouring of the shire but would have wanted more background on the eagles or the army of the dead.

Personally I loved FOTR, though TTT was pretty good but too dragged out and place ROTK in the middle. There's too much chees to much FOTR but more spectacle to beat TTT. Also, being prepared for the cheesy last half hour, I didnt mind it that much. BUT

*spoiler*

Eowyn killing the witch king and the manner it was done in was absolutely the weakest point of the trilogy IMHO.

Lastly, I thought the more emotional scenes seemed cheesy and excruciating simply because elijah wood and sean astin arent all that comfortable in doing those scenes. ELijah never really fully convinced me as Frodo anyway, but he was bearable enough. 

12 angry men - quality stuff, good script and performances although some of the reasoning wasnt all that convincing.

bad eggs - pretty funny and remarkably well scripted for an aussie film. Well worth a watch, just ignore the incredibly dull trailer.

barton fink - very stylish and thoughtful, albeit quite obscure. John Goodman is great and it looks fantastic.

das boot - There is nother submarine film. Period.

Casablanca - Never seen it before, very glad to have seen it now. Great script and performances, thoroughly enjoyable.

Chasing Amy - finally a proper film by Kevin Smith and an absolute hoot as well. Great stuff!

City of God - Incredibly stylish, virtuoso visuals and raw realism, but nothing much beneath the surface.

A Clockwork Orange - still very disurbing the second time around, still a very impressive film.

Midnight Run - Deniro hols up an otherwise banal film.

Raising Arizona - tone and characters just too obscure and chaotic for me to appreciate the comedy.

big lebowski - john goodman is great again but there's not enough of him to save this otherwise awful film with completely dead laughs.

deer hunter - excellent film all round, didnt notice the length at all. Russian roulette scene is indeed a belter.

donnie brasco - pretty good, nothign new but everything's fairly solid.

finding nemo - enjoyable enough but not Pixar's best (Toy Stories)

Gattaca - quite impressive but the groundwork was there for this to be an evenr great film.

hudsucker proxy - pretty good except for the cheesy ending. Some very memorable scenes though, especially the hula hoop sales.

raiders of the lost ark - great stuff, how an action movie should be done.

indian jones and the temple of doom - terrible movie save the mine cart sequence.

indiana jones and the last crusade - pretty good though very reminiscent of Raiders. 

italian job (2003) - pretty good, nothing like the original save the inclsuion of mini coopers which is good because they could have never captured the tone and mood of the original with the cast they had.

once upon a time in the west - didnt like the end (much too anticlimctic) but a fantastic start, great music and killer visuals.

pirates of the caribbean - didnt like Johnny Depp as much as everyone else, probably because I've seen him do similar stuff before (just not in a rockstar costume). Still, pretty good just not as good as it was made out to be.

to catch a thief - not as absorbing as hitchcock's other thrillers but pretty funny and well made.

deliverance - finally saw it, and didnt like it too much (Sorry Biff). The start was great (dueling banjos was pretty cool) and the movie worked well till the immediate aftermath of the rape (when they bury the first mountain man) but it just petered out after that. Voight was good but this is a one scene film if I've ever seen one. 

I forgot to mention that it's well worth getting the 4 disc sets for the films as some of the behind the scenes stuff is excellent. After you hear some of the reasonging of Jackson, the writers etc, it's easier to understand their point of view on additions/modifcations/deletions. Plus there's great audition footage of Andy Serkis as Gollum. 

Oh, and I heard they never go back to the Shire in ROTK. That part seemed essential to the allegorical nature of the story. Particularly the permanent effect the ring has on Frodo.


*** SPOILER ***


You heard wrong, they do, and the effect of the ring is about the only one of the 48 consecutive endings that is tolerable.

P.S. I have forgotten the books and wasn't particularly thrilled by them in the first place so I luckily can enjoy the films in their own right.

P.P.S. Whooops nitin already correct you, ah well. 

Good points nitin and shambler. Like I said, I still haven't seen ROTK and I've only seen the long version of FOTR so I'm just working with what I've seen.

I realize a lot had to be left out. I guess it just seemed odd what was left in and what was left out.

Like I said, the movies are still good. Just tainted for me. I guess I was hoping for a little more on the story/acting side of things. I agree Frodo/Sam did a terrible job of acting on the cheesy scenes. Cheese can drag a movie down real quick for me, and that's probably a big part of it.

Good to hear they kept Frodo's ending in. 

It would've all been so much less painful to watch.

It was still good though :-) 

Good List.
Midnight Run impressed me much less the second time I watched it. I liked ClockWork Orange but it came up against my better book rule. Raising Arizona is wonderful stuff.

The first Raiders movie was entertaining as hell but you have to put aside that most Speilberg films are highly manipulative Statist propaganda ('This belongs in a museum!' Argh!!)that can infest your soul with a thousand viralent memes. But then again, I'm paranoid.
Gattaca is another great underrated film. 

yeah, just trying to get through this stack of unwatched dvds that I have piled up. I was a bit worried at the start about getting so many movies blind and then not liking them but so far the unliked ones have been few and far between.

And no you dont take spielberg seriously (schindler's list excluded) :)

BTW, do you have any suggestions for stuff I should consider taking a look at? I already have these : http://www.dvdaficionado.com/dvds.html?cat=1&id=nitin

Still to watch about 10-15 of those, but fire away with any suggestions. 

Oooops just cleaning keyboard =).

Die Another Day

(in my usual attempt to see at most 1 in 10 "big" films, and at least many months after they were out :P).

WTF?? This is all a big spoof right?? Like all the most outrageous bits of old skool bond films, compressed into one, given an unhealthy dose of speed, and directed MTV stylee by some pop video director?? Bletch. Where can they go from here? Nowhere, hopefully. 

blows goat's balls. Hoverboat flamethrowers scene was ok but the rest was absolute trash like the last 2 bond films. Goldeneye was the only decent brosnan one IMHO. 

No way near as good as Goldeneye but miles above the steaming pile of crap that was Die Another Day. Without a doubt THE worst bond movie ever made... looked like they were trying to compete with the Matrix, and failing. Will be interested to see where the next one goes, since to go more OTT than the last would be, well... near impossible. 

I dunno, there were a few bits I liked - the Cuban island scene was pretty nice old skool style Bond, Jinx was cool, and Q was quite entertaining. But just as I was thinking "Oh this is okay", some utter bollox would crop up and my eyes would start rolling in despair. 

I think Brosnan makes an excellant Bond... I just wish they'd get some better writers, directors, and quit the female equality crap and just leave the girls to be the eyecandy they should be. Bond is a sexist macho pig who happens to be a smooth talker, he shouldn't be dominated by strong female coherts who seemingly get as much screentime as the main character. 

I agree completely with everything you have ever said. Especially your thoughts on Brosnan. 

the charcter was ok, halle berry just looked a lost kid in a playground holding a gun.

brsonan makes a decent bond, and I wouldnt say the latest films have strong female chorots, just try hard strong female cohorts.

Some of the older bond films have proper strong female cohorts without that aspect ever getting in the way of them being eyecandy. 

Loved it in the cinema, but it'll be much better when the extended edition comes out which is supposedly the longest of the extended editions, (TTT extended was fantastic, specially actually giving some decent screen time to merry and pippin) Hopefully it will give some closure to Saruman( though definitely not in the scouring of the shire way), the kingsfoil bit, faramir et Eowyn etc.

As for Die another Day, it is one of the shittest films i saw in a long time. Now if they had got the second half of Tomorrow never dies right (the first half was spectacular), it could quite possibly have beaten goldeneye. As it is however, the best bonds are still goldeneye and goldfinger. Just make the next film have the word "gold" in it, and not some meshed up combination of "dies", "world", "tomorrow" etc. 

I just saw ROTK last night and I figured out what bugs me so much about the LOTR movies: Frodo and Sam. I don't know whether to blame the actors or the screenwriters. They're probably both to blame, but every time I see them on screen I want to beat the shit out of them. They weren't such whiny, neurotic, incompetent twats in the book. They bore their duty with some dignity, which is completely lost in the movies. Not to mention the fact that the actors were absolutely terrible at expressing inner turmoil. The director/screenwriter/whoeverisresponsible certainly doesn't help them by pacing their parts of the movie so slowly.

They ruined three otherwise good movies, for me.

The rest was all enjoyable, though. 

That was supposed to be "director / screenwriter / whoeverisresponsible" in the post above. 

yeah, that's basically what I was saying in my earlier post. 

H-Hour, I actually thought the extended FOTR was brilliant. 

Pirates of the Caribbean

Good old plain fun action movie, Mr Bloom's sleepwalking nicely balanced by Miss Knightley's heaving bosom.

Donnie Darko

Brilliant, original, dripping with atmosphere, only slightly spoiled by Miss Barrymore's autocue reading and the slight impression of a puppy jumping up and down and squeaking "look! look! I'm so clever and referential". 

saw this last night. Pretty good and very funny in parts but IMHO it was covering way too much territory for there to be any real focus. Still, good stuff. 

Something about this movie made me watch it again immediately. I guess I liked the mood of the movie and was trying to soak it up or something.

Also i had this theory that Diane had somehow snuck into Howard Beale's bedroom that night he had the vision, but unfortunately it didn't fit the facts. 

I think what cracked me up the most was Ned Beatty's monologue to Beale, that just came out of left field without any warning.