Play it Again, Samwise.

THRILL to the adventure. MARVEL at the journey. EXPLORE worlds of wonder in (drumroll) Howard Hawks’ Lord of the Rings. Starring Humphrey Bogart as Frodo, the courageous hobbit. Marlene Dietrich as the alluring elf queen. Orson Welles as the wise wizard horribly corrupted. And Peter Lorre as the sinister guide with a secret to tell. (Spoilers for those who haven’t read the trilogy.)

Byrd-Hunting.

Drudge is trying his damnedest today to get a Lott-size stink brewing around Robert Byrd for his Confederate cameo in Gods and Generals. As I mentioned a few months ago, I do think this is a bit strange, but hardly in the league of Lott openly advocating segregation in his capacity as majority leader.

Warriors…come out and play!

Update 12/4/07: If you’re here from The Carpetbagger today, welcome, and have a look around. The front page of GitM is this way, and the movie review archive is over there.

Caught the Weinstein edit of Gangs of New York this afternoon, and still not sure how I feel about it. A beautifully shot and often entrancing film, but sadly there’s not much there there. Once you get past Daniel Day-Lewis and Jim Broadbent chewing the scenery (Day-Lewis pretty much has to win Best Actor for this – he almost singlehandedly carries the film), you’re basically left with a rather perfunctory revenge thriller that, despite the carnival of Five Points, drags on in the third act. Plus, not to get all history geek about it, but this take on the Civil War draft riots seems a bit dubious. Scorsese doesn’t flinch in depicting the atrocities committed against African-Americans during the riots, but you still get the sense that (a) the Irish are too busy rising up against Bill the Butcher’s hordes to be involved and (b) the Union troops are firing on innocent civilians in order to protect the Schermerhorns of New York. In fact, despite whatever friendship Leo struck up with Jimmy Spoils, his black companion in the Dead Rabbits, the Irish — much as it pains me to say it — were the prime instigators of both the riots and the grotesque racial violence that accompanied it. And regarding the federal troops, they arrived weary from Gettysburg on Day 4 of the riots, long after this “innocent” crowd had been engaged in an ethnic murder spree. And these soldiers were attacked by the rioters before they fired on anybody. Most annoying, US Navy ships never fired on the city, as they do during the critical mano a mano moment in the film.

Scorsese’s thesis is interesting – that the Draft Riots represent a turning point in American history when the Federal Government proves itself more powerful than the tribal warlords of the city. But I take issue with the idea, made explicit by Scorsese’s intercutting at the climax of the film, that the Union army is just a bigger, badder gang out solely to protect the parochial interests of the wealthy elite. Obviously, America’s military power has been used to serve narrow economic ends, as attested by our imperial engagements at the turn of the century (and note I didn’t specify which century.) But making that argument in this instance severely downplays the racial element of the riots…In sum, Federal troops weren’t slaughtering an innocent coalition of multi-ethnic immigrants in the name of the almighty buck. They were putting an end to a four-day nightmare of racist terror perpetuated primarily by the Irish, the heroes of Scorsese’s film.

All that being said, Gangs is definitely worth seeing, for Daniel Day-Lewis as much as the exotic flavor of Gotham throughout. And I’m curious to see if the longer cut gives a fuller picture of the riots, which seem almost superfluous in this edit.

The Doctor is In.

With a little push out the door from George Allen, Lott goes down, to be replaced by Bill Frist of Tennessee. Smart move by the GOP, even if their Contract on America is temporarily hampered…Frist is a much more congenial and Daschle-esque character than Lott, and it’ll be harder for the Dems to paint him as a right-wing ideologue. (Fortunately, there’s always Tom DeLay.)

Elrod’s (Sour) Grapes of Wrath


In the same vein as the Brin piece linked to the other day, Tomb of Horrors and Lake Effect (he’s back!) have pointed to Epic Pooh, another Tolkien-bashing article, this time by Michael Moorcock. Obviously, I disagree with a lot of what Moorcock has to say here, although I did find the Pratchett quote a bit eerie. (“Terry Pratchett once remarked that all his readers were called Kevin.“) It’s irrefutable that much of Tolkien‘s writing is infused by a near-Luddite paranoia about the industrial order and a backwards-looking regret for a lost Golden Age. And yes, our beloved Oxford don is a bit of a snob – both the Cockney speech of the orcs and the often-limited imagination of Samwise attest to that. But it’s fatuous to compare Tolkien’s pre-industrial nostalgia to that of bored Bournemouth vacationers (and a bit hypocritical to accuse Tolkien of fostering anti-humanist Thatcherism while continually bagging on commuters who enjoy reading “addictive cabbage”…who’s the elitist here?) Considering both his youth in Birmingham and his experience in WWI, Tolkien’s loathing of modernity was to my mind hard-earned and deeply felt.

As for evil being “never really defined” in Tolkien’s book, I emphatically disagree. It seems clear that evil is defined by the will to, and temptation of, power. Both Brin and Moorcock argue that Tolkien never gives Sauron’s POV about matters, that evil is one-dimensional. That’s garbage. Evil is manifested throughout the trilogy not as a state of being but as a choice made, by Saruman deciding the world would be better if he were in charge, by Boromir attempting to harness the power of the ring as a weapon, by Frodo learning the seduction of domination through the taming of Smeagol. As such, in Tolkien’s trilogy, all good characters are capable of evil…Frodo, Galadriel, Gandalf (yes, even the “white men in grey clothing who somehow have a handle on what’s best for us,”), and most evil characters (Sauron, Saruman, the Nazgul) were once good. (This duality is most obviously and explicitly represented by the tortured Smeagol/Gollum.) Thus, Tolkien’s representation of evil in the Lord of the Rings is much more nuanced and complex than either Brin or Moorcock suggest. It is a complexity that belies Moorcock’s charge of “infantilism.”

Also, it should be noted that Tolkien’s backward-looking elitism is tempered somewhat by a forward-looking faith in pluralism. As emphasized in the films, multilateralism becomes a necessity in Middle Earth. Men, elves, dwarves, hobbits, ents…all have to come together and work together to have any chance of countering the threat of Mordor. Indeed, as Brin noted, Tolkien himself declared the aristocratic Elves’ fleeing to the West to be “selfish.” Southrons and Easterlings notwithstanding, Tolkien’s writings argue passionately for a pluralism more at home in the modern age than any previous.

I’m not going to deal with Moorcock’s attempted dismantling of other authors here…of his other targets I’ll confess a fondness for Richard Adams Watership Down, but I was never much into the Narnia books. That being said, I quite liked David Brin’s Uplift War series, and people I trust tell me that the film version of The Postman was a horrible translation of a quite-good novel. So when Brin has something to say about Tolkien’s writing, I’ll give him his due. But Michael Moorcock?! Are you kidding me? As a teenager, when I would devour all the science-fiction and fantasy books I could get my hands on (“addictive cabbage” and otherwise), I read the first couple of Elric books…not to put too fine a point on it, I thought they were pretty lousy. (And even then, it was clear Moorcock had an axe to grind with Tolkien.) I’ll get my brooding and platitudinous Goth melodrama from Anne Rice, thank you very much. I say, I say, give me Elrod the Albino over the “Stormbringer” any day. Update: Perhaps Moorcock would prefer a different author for the Rings trilogy? (Some of these are hilarious.)

So here are the answers to all the riddles…

So, seen TTT yet? After two showings yesterday, I must say I’m delighted and (still) surprised at how wondrous this second chapter turned out. [As with FOTR, I spent the first showing half-reeling from information overload and half-running aggravating fanboy self-diagnostics the whole time. (“Wow! I like it! Do I like it? Do I really like it? I want to really like it. I think I like it. Wow! Hey, that wasn’t in the book! Was it? I’m not sure. Do I like it?“) The second time I could just sit back and enjoy it for the glorious epic it is. Be warned – although TTT is seamlessly integrated with the first movie, it’s not Fellowship. But then again, it really shouldn’t be. Anyway, there is much I love about this second installment, particularly… [The post from now on will feature TTT SPOILERS.]

1) Gollum (“Leave and never come back!“): My biggest concern entering the back-end of the trilogy was that Smeagol would come off cartoony and Jar Jar-ish. He doesn’t…at all. (As one wag put it, the Jar Jar in this film is Gimli.) In fact, I’d say Smeagol’s moonlit and schizophrenic soliloquy stands as the showstopping highlight of a film filled with amazing moments and indelible images. Kudos to Andy Serkis and the WETA gang for what they’ve done here. By the end, I wanted to see more Gollum and less preparation for Helm’s Deep (But to be fair that’s the same problem I have with Tolkien’s book – The events east of the Anduin seem so much more interesting and important due to the presence of the ring.) And, speaking of the eastern theater…

2. Faramir: (“Time for Faramir Captain of Gondor to show his quality.“) The dramatic alteration to Boromir’s bro seems to be the change most bothering the Tolkien fan nation. To be honest, I preferred Faramir this way. In the books, he alway came off to me as an Aragorn clone…in this version, I think he shows more depth, and it keeps the ring interesting. The detour to Osgiliath was jarring at first, but it makes sense…not only in giving Frodo and Sam more to do but also explaining why Sauron might concentrate so heavily on Gondor in ROTK (Y’all know what I mean.) As for Faramir’s change of heart at the end of the film, it seemed a bit too quick to me the first time around, but the second time it made more sense. By then, Faramir has already discovered the ring has (a) possibly killed his brother and (b) driven this creature with “an ill-favored look” thoroughly batty. When he witnesses trance-Frodo trying to give the Ring of Power to a Nazgul rather than trying to wield its vaunted power, I could see how he’d put it all together.

3. Rohan: (“Forth Eorlingas!“) Theoden, Grima, and Eowyn all do very well here, as does the magnificent set design of Edoras. I could look at Grima most of the time and not think Brad Dourif, which is no small achievement (the accent helped.) And Theoden seemed legitimately staggered by the forces arrayed against his kingdom. (“Such reckless hate…how did it come to this?“) I wish they’d kept the scene of Eowyn dispatching some wayward Uruk-Hai in the Glittering Caves, but perhaps it’ll make the extended cut.

4. Gandalf the White: (“I did not brave fire and death to bandy craven words with a witless worm.”) The transition (and dislocation) from grey to white was handled quite well, I thought, and Ian McKellen was superb once again. I’m even more annoyed now with the Academy for passing him over last year in favor of the admittedly good Jim Broadbent (who won for Iris but no doubt got most of his votes for Moulin Rouge), since the Gandalf scenes are too slim here to warrant nomination.

5. Treebeard and the Ents: (“That does not make sense to me. But, you are very small.“) Looked a bit fake, sure. And they fell out of the picture for a good two hours in the middle there. But, the payoff at the end was huge and, as I said before, I’ve never been enough of an Ent fan to feel slighted anyway. And, speaking of ents…

6. Magnificent moments: (“Stupid fat hobbit!“) How ’bout the Ent on fire taking advantage of the flooding Isen? There are so many stand-out scenes in the film that I could never list them all here. I love the wide-angle shot of a flaming ball(rog) descending into the underground sea. The dialogue between the orcs and Uruk-Hai was great fun. (“How ’bout their legs? They don’t need their legs.“) The exorcism of Theoden was a novel take on the healing, and the subsequent mourning of Theodred was well-handled. Arwen at the grave of Elessar was very touching. Much of the battle of Helm’s Deep was not only surprisingly easy to follow but also pure eye candy, from the Olympic-torch-wielding Uruk Hai to Legolas’ dispatching of the mega-siege ladder. Don’t forget the wonderful shot of Frodo confronting the fell beast on the Osgiliath roofs. And, then of course, there’s pretty much everything involving Gollum. Of course, though, they’d take away my fanboy cred if I didn’t have a few…

7. Quibbles: (“So few…Lord Aragorn, where is he?“) I really could have done without the whole Aragorn-falling-off-the-cliff bit, and Brego the Wonder Horse doesn’t help matters. There’s already too many “dead-not dead!” moments in the trilogy (and too many deus ex machinas, while I’m at it), and PJ really shouldn’t have tested the audience’s patience by throwing in one more. Also, while I like seeing what the elves were up to, the Galadriel speech came across like a recap for the plot-impaired. We’ve been watching the movie for two hours now, so if we haven’t figured it out by now…Same goes for the Middle-Earth map brought out right thereafter – It would have been much more useful earlier, I’d think. Other questions…Why is so much footage from the early previews missing? (“Sauron is not yet so mighty that he does not know fear…“) How does Grima just miss the fact that 10,000 Uruk Hai have lined up outside Orthanc? Why isn’t the back of Haldir’s head split open during his death scene? And when the Ents attack, why does Saruman seem like he just lost a contact?

And so on and so on. But I’m nitpicking what I thought was overall a deliciously good second installment in the Tolkien trilogy. And, with the ends of both the Isengard and Cirith Ungol storylines to be packed in with all the multitudinous events of ROTK, I see no way the next one can clock in under 210 minutes. Should be grand!