Day-Naming and Movie Musings
Dec. 17th, 2003 11:08 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
greenstormTechnically yesterday wasn't LoTR day -- technically, since it started at midnight, that was today. Is today.
Yesterday was nice, though. I got a bunch of sleep, staggered around in a semi-dazed state most of the day, and spent an unholy amount of tme on transit. It was spent with good people. I'd have to say, though, that with all that yesterday was still the day of Cuddling Up In Bed Together After LoTR. It was, as I've been saying lately, important.
I liked the third movie. I dislike the sledgehammer treatment of gollum, as I did in the second, although there were one or two brilliant moments with him at the end. The pacing was exquisite, and almost matches the book for that sense of despair two-thirds of the way through. It didn't, however, match the book for the sheer power of emotion conveyed after that -- I cried when I finished the book and at the chapter right after the climax, but not at the end of the movie nor at any other time during it.
Still, exquisite pacing, a lot of good stuff... the series seemed very true to the books at the beginning, arced away into a kind of reinterpretation, and then came close to the books near the end. There were a number of times when I thought, yes! That's how it was in the book! Though I admit I go more for feel than details.
Worth staying up till 4am for, though I don't need to work today so it's not that much of a terrible thing for me to do. They did miss one part of a poem that they recited (surprise, surprise... they mutilated his poems all the way through). I believe the important line that they left out, which was captured in film but not in the verse, was:
Dawn behind us, death before us...
They did, though, do a lot of the rest of that one, which I think is one of the most stirring of his pieces of verse.
Movies and books, I find, are good at doing different things. Movies present you with a ton of detail, and also with the sense of what is important in that detail. They aren't as good at telling a series of events plainly, of doing a narrative with pieces that fit together. So during a movie, it tells you something is imporrtant, and what exactly it looked like, and you need to ferret out the meaning of why the violins are swelling at just that minute. During a book you generally know what's going on, and it's up to you to decide which parts are important and what the details are. Interesting, that.
Today, I go and deal with some reiki aftermath, I bake and boil sugar, and hopefully have a date with TOW. :)
Yesterday was nice, though. I got a bunch of sleep, staggered around in a semi-dazed state most of the day, and spent an unholy amount of tme on transit. It was spent with good people. I'd have to say, though, that with all that yesterday was still the day of Cuddling Up In Bed Together After LoTR. It was, as I've been saying lately, important.
I liked the third movie. I dislike the sledgehammer treatment of gollum, as I did in the second, although there were one or two brilliant moments with him at the end. The pacing was exquisite, and almost matches the book for that sense of despair two-thirds of the way through. It didn't, however, match the book for the sheer power of emotion conveyed after that -- I cried when I finished the book and at the chapter right after the climax, but not at the end of the movie nor at any other time during it.
Still, exquisite pacing, a lot of good stuff... the series seemed very true to the books at the beginning, arced away into a kind of reinterpretation, and then came close to the books near the end. There were a number of times when I thought, yes! That's how it was in the book! Though I admit I go more for feel than details.
Worth staying up till 4am for, though I don't need to work today so it's not that much of a terrible thing for me to do. They did miss one part of a poem that they recited (surprise, surprise... they mutilated his poems all the way through). I believe the important line that they left out, which was captured in film but not in the verse, was:
Dawn behind us, death before us...
They did, though, do a lot of the rest of that one, which I think is one of the most stirring of his pieces of verse.
Movies and books, I find, are good at doing different things. Movies present you with a ton of detail, and also with the sense of what is important in that detail. They aren't as good at telling a series of events plainly, of doing a narrative with pieces that fit together. So during a movie, it tells you something is imporrtant, and what exactly it looked like, and you need to ferret out the meaning of why the violins are swelling at just that minute. During a book you generally know what's going on, and it's up to you to decide which parts are important and what the details are. Interesting, that.
Today, I go and deal with some reiki aftermath, I bake and boil sugar, and hopefully have a date with TOW. :)
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reiki aftermath?
Date: 2003-12-18 02:48 pm (UTC)I am glad that someone else is appreciating the verse and song in the movies. Around here everyone is scoffing at those parts, I was beginning to feel alone.
Re: reiki aftermath?
Date: 2003-12-19 12:09 am (UTC)