Well, just got back from my second viewing in, oh, about 19 hours. (What? Obsessive geekiness? Yeah, so what!) I had to watch it separate from the trilogy showing, because my brain wasn't processing as well as it should have been last night.

Second viewing comments: Why oh why did the couple in front of me bring in their 3-year-old? Although she was as cute as could be and really didn't make any fuss (I had more complaints about the grown up guy sitting across the aisle and three rows back, who insisted on talking throughout the entire damn film, and also was laughing during the Sam/Frodo post Ring-toss conversation).

Anyway, my favorite moments:

* The beacons!!! Amazing use of aerial photography, loved Pippin's climb up to the MT beacon (did you notice that Christian Rivers played one of the beacon guards?), and Aragorn's reaction was great--you can tell he was just waiting for the call.

* The entire suicide ride to Osgiliath sequence, starting with Pippin's oath and Denethor's rejection of Faramir (David Wenham played this wonderfully), all the way through the great editing done between the Orcs waiting, the Gondorians riding full-tilt, Pippin singing, and Denethor eating. All the other music on this track in the soundtrack equals Pippin's song (btw, did you know that Billy Boyd was given the lyrics and told to improv the tune?)--love the muted martial strains that sound so desperately futile.

* Pippin/Gandalf's conversation about death. The use of the Valinor imagery for heaven had me weeping.

* How utterly broken Frodo was. From the first time we see him fondling the Ring while Sam sleeps, we see how strung out he is. His eyes, his very posture just spells "wreck." I read this somewhere (either oscarwatch or council-of-elrond), but it's a great point: Gollum/Smeagol is an old junkie, and Frodo is a young junkie. As sometimes happens in druggie circles, the young junkie hooks up with the old one who aids and abets his habit, and rejects his lifelong non-junkie friends. I like this explanation for Frodo's telling Sam to go home.

* The way that neither Sam nor Frodo hesitated to smack Gollum around when it became necessary (Sam clocked him with the pot after overhearing the pond conversation!). Choking, punching--very violent stuff from our mild-mannered hobbits.

* Frodo crawling up Mt. Doom. The close-up camera work, James Galway's flute, the determined yet hopeless expression on Frodo's face...just amazing.

Oh, just the whole damn movie!! Now I really am going to wait to see it for the third time. I'm hoping to talk my sister and mom into taking a few hours out of one of our afternoons during Christmas week to go see this. My mom accompanied me to the first two films, but still has never really appreciated either one. I'm thinking this one will suck her in, though.

It appears I am seeing it tomorrow.

Never underestimate a determined geek boy. Huh.

This next bit is from Hubby as he was coming out of the anesthesia today. "I kept seeing the big birds, but I told them I couldn't go. Because I promised you I wouldn't go somewhere you couldn't follow." The drugged human mind is an odd place,

Oh, connie.

I'm trying to get out of a Christmas luncheon so DH and I can go see it before his second shift on Friday. I really missed having him see it at the same time.

Oh! My favorite object, as opposed to creature or location or whatever? The flaming rhino-ram.

I just now got to open and look at my three bits of film. I got Elrond on the battlefield from FotR, Arwen in mourning from TTT, and Gandalf (no Pippin) on the gallery at Minas Tirith from RotK.

(I had more complaints about the grown up guy sitting across the aisle and three rows back, who insisted on talking throughout the entire damn film, and also was laughing during the [whitefont] conversation).

So, where did you bury the body?

I was surprised by the number of people in bondage pants at my screening. Nothing to do with "hey, people who like wearing bondage pants also like LotR," but did none of them consider that they'd be sitting down for 4 hours??? With all those zippers and rivets, and in some cases, spikes on their ass? Ouch!

Kathy, I couldn't have processed anything if I'd seen it again so soon. I do want to see it again before another week, though.

This is absolutely the closest I've been to a hangover since about 10 years ago when I rang in New Year's with champagne. And that was the first and only hangover I'd ever had. I never drink enough to earn a hangover. But with the weeping and the weeping and the just more weeping... I'm a wreck. Such a headache.

I just looked at my picture frame, and I got Gandalf from RotK, Frodo, Sam, and Gollum walking through Emyn Muil in TTT, and my favorite FotR image: Boromir holding the Ring on Caradhras!!

Another thing I noticed on the second viewing: if you read what Frodo's writing at the end, you see that Sam is already Mayor at that point!

VICTOR!!!

AIMEE!!!

Arty film critic who hates this kind of stuff, or someone who should know better?

Probably the latter. He's usually a passable critic, he just has a terrible hate on for all things LotR. It's kind of weird.

The beacon scene was tremendous, but I kept thinking, "Man, some poor schmoes really pulled the crap duty stations."

I've been ranting elsewhere for 1.5 hours on the inconsistencies and whatevers within the movies, but upon sober reflection, there's only one part in this movie that might come close to the disaster that is Brunhilde-Having-An-Orgasm Galadriel in FOTR. I literally cannot watch that scene anymore. I don't think there's anything in ROTK I won't be able to watch over and over, except maybe Gollum twirling around on invisible Frodo.

Elijah Wood did a fantastic job at the end with his facial acting. And I don't understand how Orlando Bloom can look so amazingly perfect as Legolas.

Fangirl question: do Legolas' eyes keep changing color? I could swear they are brown except when he gets an intense dilated-eye closeup.

Fangirl question: do Legolas' eyes keep changing color? I could swear they are brown except when he gets an intense dilated-eye closeup.

Orlando's eyes are a gorgeous brown--but he wears blue contacts for Legolas. I'm wondering if that wasn't a continuity problem? I didn't notice any change, though.

Finally catching up here -- between the sinus headache I had going in and the crying during, I got dizzy/nauseous after the movie and had to come home and lie down for a couple of hours.

Not that I was having an emotional reaction to the movie or anything. :-)

Just a few points --

* I loved how =happy= Gollum was to get the ring back -- all the way down the fall.

* Also loved how the Ring heated up and showed its lettering as it lay on the lava -- and then did dissolve. A friend at the showing said that she thinks the last thing you could see of it was the shadow of the letters, but she'll have to see the DVD to be sure.

* We also got one of the few small cheers in our mid-day theatre audience when the eagles swooped in on the remaining aerial Nazgul

* my crypoints were Pippin's song, Theoden's death, and the Pippin/Gandalf conversation about death. Billy Boyd was the biggest surprise about the movie for me. From the book I would have expected that Merry would have been the more dramatic part....

More as I think of them. Still well-satisfied, even if there's a bunch of stuff missing that I wanted to see.