Slashdot Mirror

Here's a sample of what your average 'blog will look like by the end of the Summer:

8/20/01:
Just sitting here at my new Dell Dimension sipping a Jolt and I began to wonder about the future of the Internet. I mean, my Comcast @ Home service is wicked-fast. But what's next? I want to be able to stream the new LOTR trailer and snag the demo for Half-Life 2 without a long download.

I can't imagine sites pimping misleading links. But it could happen.

The Lord of the Rings movies look excellent. Not too long ago, we all watched the Episode 1 trailer, and then were rather disappointed by that movie, and disgusted by the hype:quality ratio.
The Lord of the Rings movies may not have a fan base substantial enough to generate major hype, but the quality should be amzazing. Again I feel the lure of trailers.

Does anyone wonder if Yahoo's selling their own porn will affect how they link to other porn-for-pay sites? Just seems to be they wouldn't really have any reason not to....

Ah well, Yahoo sucks for finding free porn I say. May my cable usenet access never die! Precious porn. Precious, precious, precioussssss.......

I guess some compromises will inevitably be made, given the differing natures of the two media, but you may be pleasantly surprised, and perhaps even slightly reassured, as I was, by the answers to "fan questions" given by director Peter Jackson at the video archive part of the lotr site.

He specifically addresses some of these points: Council of Elrond is in the movie - though no doubt played for cinematic impact, for example. Also interesting were long and thoughtful answers on the thorny question of racist (and "patriarchal") interpretations of the original work.
--

try:

http://www.lordoftherings.net/index_flat.html

--
.sigs: Just Say No!
--

Those of you who haven't found it already, a quasi-mirror of this trailer can be found at lordoftherings.net.

The official movie site is http://www.lordoftherings.net Apple also has the preview on its site Apple.com or maybe here some of this seems to be leading back to the same feed so I don't know if it helps at all :)

lordoftherings.net Man, Why is this such a big deal? I downloaded this trailer in May. Is there something new that I don't know about?

And here is a very good fan movie site.

And Another...

Are there any? DnD obviously isn't, what other past fantasy films have been decent? I can't wait for The Lord of the Rings series to come out, as it looks REALLY good. Of course we have to wait another year for the first one. :-(

Blake

...Was not as good as the previous two I had been to, the last of which was the year before WOTC bought TSR.

Firstly, I must admit I was not there to play games, I was there for info on starting a game company. Mission relatively accomplished.

There were kids playing card games everywhere. They're like roaches that you just get used to and ignore, but if one gets in your way, you dispose of it.

Third Edition D&D. Better rules, still isn't r-o-l-e playing.

WOTC needs to get over themselves. Seriously. Does anyone else remember the press release circa 1995 that said, "We don't want to be the biggest game company in the world."

It also seemed to me that even though the new convention hall is bigger now, the Con itself was smaller than three years ago.

Comment Quickies:

• New Star Wars RPG to be based on D20 system/D&D rules
• Decipher announced the CCG license to LOTR
• The little blond running around in the chainmail bikini on Saturday was stunning
• Even I could tell the smell was coming from the anime corner.
• Rainbow-headed goths? The apocalypse is upon us.
• I know the guy in the picture with the Mystery Machine.

GenCon was still fun, but not as fun as it had been

There has (apparently) been a long-standing correlation between Magneto/Xavier and M.L.King, Jr./Malcolm X. Xavier is obviously Rev. King, being a voice of passive resistance and harmonious coexistance. Malcolm X/Magneto, on the other hand, advocate that the two sub-species (Homo sapiens sapiens and Homo superior) can only exist without coexistance; each would rather live among their own kind. This brings to mind segregation of blacks and whites through the 1950s, and that "separate cannot be equal", but I digress.

All-in-all, I would have to say that Brian Singer did a remarkable job considering the varied audiences he had to please. Character development is limited, but theoretically unnecessary due to the pre-education of the audience throught the comics over the last 34+ years. Plus, there is plenty of time for character development (and introduction) in the obligatory sequels.

Finally, no it's not the greatest movie of all time, but then, does anyone honestly expect that from an action flick? All I can say, is that if Singer can do this faithful a job with X-Men, I hope Peter Jackson can do as well, if not better with his highly anticipated Lord of the Rings trilogy.

What is wrong with xanim ?? It plays quicktime movies

Except any new ones. Remember Star Wars and the Lord of the Rings?

I have been told that Quicktime is a wonderful open standard. The reality is opposite; the sorenson codec, which is now the defacto standard, just won't decode on my linux box. Practically all new quicktime movies are unplayable. Any supposed openness of Quicktime has been de-commoditized by apple.

I sent a pretty-please email to apple a while back. So should everybody.

These were more like nano-clips.

If New Line ever decides to put the 2 minute montage from ShoWest the other day up on http://www.lordoftherings.net, then *that* could be considered a trailer. But only because it contains actual footage that will not hit the theaters for 21 months.


Dracos

Correction: I misposted the link to the LOTR page. I gave a fan page. Apparently, this is the official one. Sorry about that. It's very hard to read with lynx, however. :-(

WETA is Peter Jackson's special/vfx that he's using in the ubercool upcoming "Lord of the Rings" trilogy. The shooting location for those movies is in New Zealand, so that's where they're working right now, but I'm unsure of where their permanent base of operations are.

For the trilogy, at least, I've read that the special fx are not really Matrixish, but still damn cool. They have a software program called MASSIVE which will be largely responsible for creating and animating in a true-to-life manner armies of 400,000+ orcs in complex battle scenes. WETA is also creating a character for the movie -- Gollum -- and all reports say that Gollum is the most lifelike, unfake pure fx character yet. Furthermore, they're using CGI to shrink the actors playing hobbits to half their normal size or so. Finally, they're altering the filmed landscape in subtle ways to make it more magical.

For more info, see:
Ringbearer.org
The Official Movie Site with preview stills

SCOOP 1 2 3 4 5
Unofficial P.J. Online
Dave Dobbyn as Dobbo, the bard Hobbit and his merry band?
LOTR movie site by an apparent stalker (oh, excellent)
Official LOTR



==
remove pointy nose to email me
Little Stalker Boy (of websites and girls)

Hrm, I think The 13th Warrior looks pretty good. Michael Crichton, despite spending too long on the played out ER, is a frist rate director.

Then there's The Lord Of The Rings Movie comming out god knows when, but it looks excellent. According to Imladris They are considering casting Uma Thurman as Eowyn and Cate Blanchett as Galadriel (yummy).

I think we'll start seeing high quality Fantasy Movies due to the successes of syndicated TV shows such as Xena... What has been missing in the past was high quality CGI and money. You need the computer generated images for the special effects, and the money to spend on A Movie actors and directors.

I'd also throw in Film Threat for independent movies, with a caveat. These guys are, as a rule, downright hostile to anything with actual financial support. But you will learn about some excellent stuff!