Galadriel is, in fact, Elrond's mother-in-law and Arwen's grandmother.

Galadriel is, by the way, much older than Elrond.

Of course she is. She's his mother-in-law, after all.

(eta: massively geeky x-post!)

Galadriel was there the day the sun and the moon first rose over Middle Earth.

So apparently she REALLY hits the Botox hard.

Ooh, and my other realization was a big huge environmental/Lorax thing when Gandalf first went to Isengard. It didn't really click on first watching and in the next 2 films, but in that first Isengard scene, it's all pastoral and pretty. Not Shire-pastoral, but still. And then Saruman trashes it. Anti-environment wanker. The Lorax would kick Saruman's ass.

D'oh! I meant to include that fact as well, but forgot about it while overemphasizing the whole watched the first sun and moon rise thing.

So apparently she REALLY hits the Botox hard.

Yep.

Ooh, and my other realization was a big huge environmental/Lorax thing when Gandalf first went to Isengard.

Something that comes through even more in the books. Tolkien was very unhappy to watch industry destroying his cherished English countrysides.

The Lorax would kick Saruman's ass

He's like a tiny orange Ent!

Sooo...to continue on with Steph's line of questioning. The ring was known 3000 years ago, and then virtually lost. So much so that Gandalf didn't really know what it was, and had to bust his ass researching the thing. And then after that, everyone seems to know about it! What's up with that?

Yeah, that was one of the liberties Jackson took when translating the books into film.

In the books nobody knows squat about it, in the movies, everybody's a friggin' History of the Second Age, and it's Attendant Relics and Artifacts scholar.

Everyone knew about the One Ring from legend, but assumed it had been lost forever, since it had been a few thousand years since anyone had seen it. All Isildur's records added was the way for Gandalf to prove that Bilbo's ring was The One, and not just some Elvish trinket.

[edit:

In the books nobody knows squat about it

Well, not exactly. The hobbits were totally ignorant, but the more wordly characters had at least heard of it in a historical context.]

the more wordly characters had at least heard of it in a historical context.

Although IIRC even Boromir didn't know that Isildur's Bane, which he had been warned of in prophetic dreams, was the fabled One Ring of Sauron, that everyone but the White Council* had thought was destroyed when Sauron's army was destroyed in the Last Alliance.

* the White Council was made up of, IIRC, Saruman, Gandalf, Radagast, the other 2 unnamed wizards, Elrond, Galadriel, Cirdan the Shipwright, and I dunno who else. Never found any indication of their jurisdiction, but when anyone mentions "The Wise", they generally mean these guys.