La lala. Christmas was yesterday! I hope everyone enjoyed whatever they happened to be doing.

Christmas eve I went and ate with my father and his mother and my sister. I gave my dad a bottle (as I suppose is now customary) of scotch. Oh, but this is no normal scotch! It is one hundred and twenty proof scotch. "You might wanna drop an ice cube or two in there," said the clerk who assisted me in the selection. Ha ha! He was very pleased with the gift, as animated as I've ever seen him get about anything. My dad I mean, not the clerk.

Before said meal I went to Best Buy, God help me, to purchase gifts for my mother and sister. It was very very hot in Best Buy, I like to think this is because Best Buy is an offshoot of Hell. While walking around the pit of Best Buy, sweating, I passed the computer section and saw a fucking point-of-sale box for DOOM 3, and I almost screamed. Then I took a closer look and saw that it was a pre-order box. Fuck Best Buy. So anyways I violated my pact with myself to never buy anything at Best Buy again, but maybe this doesn't count since I bought nothing for myself. 
¶ 12:15 PM

  I have, at this point, seen The Return of the King three times in as many days. Midnight Monday, midnight Tuesday, yesterday afternoon. So I'm a little Lord of the Rings'd-out. If that is an acceptable phrase.

Anyways the film is still excellent and I enjoyed it more the second time through. I can't think of another film or another series that is as epic, that has comparable scope. The shot that cements that for me happens right as Gandalf starts riding back to Minas Tirith after scaring the Nazgul away. It's just for a second but the camera pans from a bunch of soldiers to Gandalf on Shadowfax to Minas Tirith, in this churning riding shot that is simply breathtaking. Not saying other moments aren't impressive - when the Black Gate opens and Barad-dur and Mount Doom are visible in the distance and everything is lit by the lidless eye, it's like a giant fresco panorama painting of Hell - but that's the moment that cemented it for me. Yeah, I used the word cemented twice, it's early and I'm tired, fuck off.

In any case, only a few things bother me, and I'd be willing to be that at least some of them show up on the extended DVD when it arrives next year, so I'm not too upset. Really complaining at all seems kind of petty, like pointing out that the gold brick that just fell from the sky in front of you broke your little toe. Anyways don't read the next three paragraphs if you haven't seen the movie.

I imagine there will be more Denethor on the DVD. The point was made that he is pretty nuts but why he is nuts goes unexplained. In the book he has one of the three seeing stones (one of which was Sauromon's palantir, which Pippin gazed into), and has used it to talk to Sauron, hence he is a bit nuts. Also, I know that scenes involving the Mouth of Sauron (Sauron's top lieutenant, and kind of a Metatron of sorts for him) were filmed, so I'm betting those show up too. Finally, I was really looking forward to seeing the Nazgul King confronting Gandalf (basically, "You shall not pass" part 2), but it was not present. There is a shot right before Gandalf explains death to Pippin where you see the Nazgul King flying away from Minas Tirith, but there was no shot of him flying there in the first place (apart from a bit earlier when he was dive-bombing the catapults). Shortly thereafter the Nazgul King kills Theoden and then gets rocked by Merry and Eowyn. Anyways, in the original teaser trailer for ROTK, the last shot present shows a hooded figure, most likely Gandalf, standing next to a little person, most likely Pippin, and one of the Nazgul's flying steeds lands on the level of the city that they're on, right by them. I'm willing to bet that the Gandalf/Witch King confrontation will be on the DVD, and that shot is the start of it. Why it was cut is beyond me. Finally, it would have been nice if Pippin got his troll kill at the Black Gate, but I understand why he didn't...Pippin was already very prominent and important in the film, and to have him kill a troll (presumably the one that's about to kill Aragorn near the end) would both make him more prominent, and undercut the tension at the end, where everything rests on Frodo's decision and all the people are basically screwed.

Finally, it would have been nice to see Gimli and Legolas go off together, since everyone else got their send-offs (except Merry and Pippin, I guess), but there were already six endings and the most important ones were taken care of.

Really I'm kind of hoping that the entire one hour of saved footage is just Aragorn talking to the King of the Dead a whole lot. That scene was great.

Here is a scene-by-scene breakdown if you are interested.

So but yeah, I think ROTK is really good, go see it. Hell, it'd be worth it for the Spiderman 2 trailer alone. I had my doubts about Doc Ock, but hey, they made him a badass. Who knew it could be done? 
¶ 5:54 AM

  I saw Return of the King last night. It's very good, I don't really have much to say beyond that. In theatrical cut it's better than extended Fellowship or Two Towers; all that upsets me about it is that I know a four hour cut of it exists that I don't get to see until August. The third installment is the most visually magnificent, yet it is also the strongest emotionally, and the most faithful to the book. The images that stays with me from this film are the stunning view through the Black Gate when it is opened, and those of Frodo and the ring in the Crack of Doom.

I'm a little saddened by the end of this trilogy - it will be quite a while before any film attempts anything like what Peter Jackson has done with this series. The scale and ambition of it, and just the sheer quality and heart, are stunning. 
¶ 7:11 AM

  Mesmerizing. 
¶ 10:42 AM

  Ran out of weed, so I'm sipping on this Hennessey, tell me do you feel me? 
¶ 7:50 AM