Some award noms just came out: Chicago Film Critics nominations include eight for RotK, with both Sean Astin and Andy Serkis getting Best Supporting Actor nominations (!), and the Visual Effects Society announced their nominations, and RotK got a lot (I didn't count them all), including Sean Astin for Outstanding Performance in an Effects Film, and notice that the RotK nom for Outstanding Character Animation includes Andy Serkis with the techies!

The SAG nominations are being announced tomorrow morning (6:20 am PST, broadcast on the E! channel)--if Sean Astin gets a nom here, there's a good chance that he might snag an Oscar nom as well (Oscar ballots are due this Saturday, and noms are announced on Jan. 27th).

I did not get to see Andy Serkis. By the time we got there, a thousand people were ahead of us in the line, there wasn't anywhere large enough to do the reading, and contractually he was only able to sign movie-related stuff (of which there was none: the manager got 200 copies of the Gollum book from another store, and by the time the clerk got back to our section of the line to inform us of this, the books were gone).

There's another interesting Sean Astin interview in Rolling Stone.

Thanks, Kathy. That was good stuff too.

Amy, that bites! I'm thinking that Chicago might have had a similar situation if he hadn't cancelled.

John, I love that interview in RS. I thought this was funny:

When Astin was sixteen, he decided he wanted a real job. Over the vehement objections of his mother, he spent three months as a movie usher in L.A.'s Westwood district. He loved the work, even putting the butter in the popcorn machine. "I was making $8.25 an hour, and they withheld the tax," he says. "Those checks were more meaningful to me than the $50,000 or the $100,000 that had gone into the bank for acting work, because I understood exactly what I did for it."

On the job, Astin had to wear a blue polyester jacket and a name tag that read Patrick (his middle name). One night, Corey Feldman, his Goonies co-star, arrived with a large posse for the premiere of his new movie, Lost Boys. As Feldman stepped up to the concession stand, Astin was sweeping up the popcorn under his feet. When Feldman saw him, his jaw just dropped. "Sean?" he asked. Not believing his eyes, he flipped up his sunglasses. "What happened?"

Even funnier if Astin manages to snag an Oscar nom.

Even funnier if Astin manages to snag an Oscar nom.

Considering the on-going gangbusters career of C. Feldman esq, I think =suh-nerk= may be the only answer that night.

How much do I love this thread?

::opens arms very wide::

THIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIS MUCH!

I feel so informed now. And it was funnier (and pornier) than reading the Silmarillion.

I'm sure you all caught this:

Outstanding Visual Effects in a Television Series

Buffy The Vampire Slayer, Season 7, Episode #22 Loni Peristere, Patti Gannon, Ronald Thornton, Chris Zapara

My local theatre, the one that hosted Trilogy Tuesday, has cut RotK back to one theatre, and one matinee, one evening show per day. So very sad. DH and I went this afternoon. There were maybe half a dozen people in the theatre besides us.

I missed the cheering. Hell, I even missed the soft susurrus of sobbing across the theatre, the shifting in seats at tense moments, the collective indrawn breath at moments of great peril or great heroism.

I need to see this movie one more time with all of you on this thread.

A Buffista viewing would be fantastic.

My daughter and I saw it again last weekend and we were both in VERY snarky moods, which gave us both a very different viewing experience from the awe and ahhhh of our first couple of viewings.

Oh, that would be SO MUCH FUN.