Tag: Cinema

This Film is On.

As an hour’s distraction, I’ve created a central clearinghouse for movie reviews on GitM and added it to the sidebar at left. Unfortunately, some of the older ones (written during the hand-coded Geocities days) may be hard to find, but they’re in there…somewhere. I’ll also probably try to reconstruct the 10-point ratings at some point, but that’s an improvement for another day.

Pacific Heights.

So I caught Peter Weir’s Master and Commander last night and, if you have little trouble discerning the differences among a gaggle of grubby British salts (One looks like Eric Idle, another talks like Captain McAllister, and who knew Pippen was coxswain material?) and don’t go in expecting the action-fiesta promised in the ads, you should come out satisfied. Like pretty much all of Weir’s other films, Commander is an extremely competent piece of work, in some ways even masterful. And, while Crowe’s Captain “Lucky Jack” Aubrey is yet another variation of the strong, silent type he’s done several times elsewhere, he nevertheless commands attention and seems plausible as the glue that holds the creaky H.M.S. Surprise together.

I’d never read any of the Patrick O’Brian novels, so I can’t attest to the movie’s literary veracity. But the historical details seemed right to my landlubber’s eye, and I thought the languid, episodic pacing of the film — which some may find boring, particularly after Jack Sparrow’s romp earlier in the year — helped to convey the rhythm of life at sea in the Napoleonic era, when it took forever and a day to get from place to place. Speaking of which, there’s not all that much suspense about where the film’s going — like the crew of the Surprise, you can see the destination long before Commander gets there. But most of the detours, from the woeful tale of an accursed Jonah to the pre-Darwinian excursions in the Galapagos, are gripping in their own way. In the end, I left Master and Commander feeling like I’d sat through a longer film, but also feeling that I’d traveled somewhere. And while I doubt Commander will spawn many sea epic sequels, nor do I think I’d want to see this film again anytime in the very near future, kudos go out to Peter Weir & crew for making a picture as engrossing and transporting as this one.

Endnotes.


TORN.net get the full version of Annie Lennox’s “Into the West,” soon to close a splendid fantasy trilogy at a theater near you. Those of you who found the Soundtrack.net excerpt to be a tad shrill will be happy to discover that that 30 seconds was the loudest part of the song. Also, in LotR news, I missed out on the TTT:EE Grand Central extravangaza yesterday, although it may have been just as well given some of the complaints coming in.

Getting Sirius.

The trailer for Harry Potter and the Prisoner of Azkaban is now online. Alfonso Cuaron, Gary Oldman, David Thewlis, Tim Spall…this has to be better than the first two, right?

Voice of Saruman.

Christopher Lee speaks out about the editing decisions to RotK noted here, and he sounds quite put off. I’m worried too, frankly, but I’ll assume PJ knows what he’s doing. (Via Metafilter. Speaking of which, thanks to Kestrel’s Nest for Mefi’ing my TTT:EE review and effectively doubling my hits today, not that I still check that kinda thing, of course. I also liked the poster who suggested that the GOP is behind the Saruman cut, a la Ronald Reagan.)

This Modern Life.

AICN points the way to the trailer for Charlie Chaplin’s Modern Times, soon to be re-released at a theater (possibly) near you. Hmm…I wonder if free-market conservatives will try to protect Frederick Winslow Taylor the way they recently did Ronnie Reagan?

A Lament for the Third Age.

Eat your heart out, Glenn Yarbrough. Soundtrack.Net posts their review of the Return of the King score, complete with 30 second clips from each song. For the third time in a row, it sounds like Howard Shore hit it out of the park…I don’t think you can overestimate how much he’s improved these films with his work, particularly after you consider the pedestrian and distracting score of the new Matrix movies. If you’ve never read the trilogy and don’t know how it all ends, I wouldn’t click through. But if you have…some of these snippets are really beautiful and tantalizing (“Hope and Memory” and “Twilight and Shadow,” for example), and none more so than “The End of all Things” and “The Grey Havens.” The Annie Lennox song that closes the film isn’t exactly what I was expecting, to be honest, but I can see it growing on me.

But We Wants it Now, Preciouss!


So the main reason it’s been so quiet around here this week is that, through a fanboy nation connection that shall remain safely anonymous, I’ve managed to procure a copy of the Two Towers Extended Edition two weeks before its release date. The rest of this post is going to involve considerable spoilers, so if you don’t want to know, just skip on down to the next entry.

The film: As in the longer Fellowship, the additional 43 minutes of the extended Two Towers mostly offers new character beats (for example, as in FOTR:EE, hobbits now act more like hobbits) and a more languid pacing in various locales (such as the Dead Marshes, where new footage helps lend the feeling that it’s not just a hop-skip-jump from the Emyn Muil to the Black Gate.) And as with FOTR, I think after a few viewings that almost all of the inclusions help the film — in fact, some even seem necessary.

What exactly is new, you may ask? Well, I don’t want to give away everything, but both the beginning and the end of the film have been extensively reworked. Frodo and Sam now spend more time lost in the Emyn Muil, using Galadriel’s rope to climb down a jagged rock face, looking gloomy in the rain, and exchanging a Shire moment over a little box carried by Sam (I had hoped that it might be full of seedlings and dirt, but alas, it’s just salt.) Smeagol and Gollum get into it earlier now too, arguing over whether to honor an oath made on the precious. And we see more of Merry and Pippen’s Uruk-Hai captors, and why they turn on each other so quickly at the borders of Fangorn (The reason in the book is alluded to but not specifically stated.)

As for the end, the inclusion to Helm’s Deep noted here is indeed present. Also, Merry and Pip indulge in some Flotsam and Jetsam-style pipeweed shenanigans, and Faramir sends off Frodo, Sam, and Smeagol with a word of warning about the caverns near Cirith Ungol (This last part is troubling to me, actually, since it occurs before Gollum talks about her. Of course, Gollum’s had the plan all along – perhaps he’s just letting Smeagol know in the final scene. Still, Faramir’s comment seems like premature foreshadowing.)

In between, there are a number of small and moderate changes along the way. Faramir is fleshed out more — word has been out for awhile about his flashback scene with Boromir and Denethor, and he also gets to ruminate on the death of a Southron, as in the book. Those who found his characterization jarring in the theatrical release, however, will probably still feel that way — particularly after you see what the Men of Gondor do to Gollum on Faramir’s watch. Over on the Rohan side of the Anduin, Theodred’s death is given more dramatic weight, and Eowyn is given some nice character beats — one in which she complains about getting cooped up in the Glittering Caves, another where she stumbles onto Aragorn’s real age (87, important because it establishes Aragorn as being not only Numenorean but also between worlds…he’s too old for Eowyn and too young for Arwen.) Finally, fans of the Ents will be greatly enthused by the Extended Edition — there’s several more scenes involving Treebeard & co., and one very nice nod to the Old Forest of Tom Bombadil that really should’ve made the original cut.

As for me, my favorite inclusion at the moment is two scenes involving Gandalf (one of which was featured prominently in the original 4-minute preview and the TTT video game.) I thought these two scenes — where Gandalf discusses his broader strategy against Sauron and Saruman’s machinations (something notably missing in the theatrical release) — helped to tie the first two films together and passed along information that seems absolutely crucial to non-readers of the trilogy.

The Extras: Owners of the extended Fellowship won’t be all that surprised by what’s on the second set of discs — exactly the type of well-made, in-depth documentaries that we’ve come to expect. What may be most interesting here are the claims by multiple people that the post-production on TTT was a “nightmare,” the most stressful point in the entire making of the trilogy. I haven’t watched nearly all the extra stuff yet, but some of the enthralling discoveries made so far include:

  • Small glimpses of RotK footage, including a nice pan over Cirith Ungol in the Tolkien documentary and unfinished footage of Gandalf & co. approaching Isengard in the book-to-script video. Update: Footage which, as it turns out, they might as well have kept in Towers after hearing this shocking revelation about who’s been cut from the theatrical release of RotK. Trust PJ and all that, but still…this is bad news. I wonder how they’ll manage to introduce Pippen and the palantir now.

  • Intriguing discussion (by Tom Shippey and others) on the Dead Marshes as indicative of Tolkien’s memory of WWI battlefields.

  • The revelation that a longer Gandalf-Balrog battle, including an underwater fight and the Endless Stair, was stripped out due to CGI “budgetary constraints” (Budgetary constraints? Are you kidding me? C’mon, y’all, you’ll make it back.)

  • Lots of funny and/or revealing interactions between members of the cast, including Viggo Mortensen’s penchant for painful head butts at inappropriate times, a Serkis-Astin feud at the Black Gate involving a hobbit wig, and the bicycle seat torture inflicted by Misters Monaghan and Boyd by a colossal Treebeard puppet.

  • A honest discussion about the changes made from book to script for the Two Towers, one that explicitly notes fanboy discontent over Faramir’s shift and Arwen’s early role at Helm’s Deep. (Apparently, Liv Tyler cried after reading snide comments about “Liv Tyler, Warrior Princess” all over a fan site — most likely AICN, since that used to be posted all over the place there.)

  • A fascinating look at Elijah Wood in evil, Gollum-like make-up, from a deleted scene which would have occurred in the supply cave, after Frodo snatches the ring away from Faramir’s sword.

  • The Gollum acceptance speech at the MTV Movie Awards, occupying the Easter Egg spot where the Buffy ‘n’ Black Council of Elrond parody resided on FotR.

The Upshot: All in all, as with Fellowship, the extended Two Towers DVD includes a better, richer film loaded with tons of fascinating extras. If you’re a fan, I’m sure you’re getting it anyway…but if you’re a casual Rings admirer, the TTT:EE is just as worth picking up as the FOTR:EE. And they look great together on the shelf.

Now, does anyone out there have tix to an advance screening of Return of the King…?