Slashdot Mirror
LOTR Internet-Only Trailer
fjordboy writes: "The Lord of the Rings.net official movie site has an Internet-only teaser available tonight on their Web site and on their Real Channel. Go to the Web site to see the film, (or you can go to see the movie Thirteen Days in theaters to view the first theatrical release of the LOTR teaser)." If you're still awake in California (or in sympathy) and have power, guess you have first dibs.
It is 6:00 am. Your alarm is going off. Your first class is at 8:30.
>get up
It is 6:10 am. You have turned off your alarm.
>take shower
Halfway through your shower, Block B of Edison's interruptible load is taken offline.
It is pitch black. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
>grab towel
You are in the shower, holding a somewhat wet towel. The shower is no longer hot but is still warm. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
>turn off shower
You are in the shower, holding a somewhat wet towel. You are likely to be eaten by a grue.
>dry off
You dry off as quickly as you can using the wet towel.
As soon as you finish, you are eaten by a group of racketeers of underregulated electricity.
Tolkien is much more challenging to read, and when I picked up the Ring trilogy to read about 2 years ago, it took me a good 3 weeks of before-bed reading to finish one book out of it.
(And on a curiosity note, I find it ironic that several fantasy series all are based on "boy meets strange people, discovers he's got special/magical powers, goes on to save the world" type of ideas, including the Ring triology, Edding's series, Robert Jordan's Wheel of Time series, as well as the Sword of Shanadara (sp) series -- add to it Harry Potter, as well as Ender's Game -- I wonder why it always seems to come back to this theme, and nearly always from the POV of the 'boy' in question.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
Go to the Rinkworks (www.rinkworks.com) site, and look for the Bad Bad Bad Movie review page, and find the animated LotR movie entry (this is NOT the one done by Rankin/Bass who also did the Hobbit as a movie). I can't remember when the above movie came out (I think early 70s), but it was advertizes as the whole The Lord of the Rings. When people saw it, they found out it was only part 1 of 2 that they got; thankfully, based on the quality that the comments include above, part 2 was never made.
"Pinky, you've left the lens cap of your mind on again." - P&TB
"I can see my house from here!" - ST:
You'll be really pissed when the females strip down into studded leather bikinis, and rapid-fire from wrist-mounted fully-automatic crossbows, incendiary bolts, into an oncoming war cart (shaped like a corvette: credit to Lou Reed - This is the age of Video Violence) loaded with foaming-at-the-mouth, mohawked, tatooed, nipple-pierced Orcs.
These are my friends, See how they glisten. See this one shine, how he smiles in the light.
As a note of dissent, while I thought the rotoscoping in Bakshi's "Lord of the Rings" was profoundly annoying, it seems a lot of people concentrate on that to the exclusion of things like, oh, the script--which, at least in my dim recollection, was pretty first-rate. It was adapted for the screen by Peter Beagle, the author of "The Last Unicorn" and an amazing writer in his own right--as well as the guy who wrote the introduction to the first American publication of LotR. Ironically, "The Last Unicorn" was made into an animated movie produced by Rankin/Bass. (The actual animation house that did 'Unicorn' was a Japanese studio whose animators later became the core of Miyazaki's Studio Ghibli.)
Right here. please mirror
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
See it in QuickTime format.
People think Microsoft is the answer. Microsoft is just the question, "No" is the answer.
The reason why the Century 25 at Union Landing BETTER be good is the fact it's probably the first cinema complex I personally know of where EVERY SCREEN has full THX certification. Given that THX certification requires both quality sound levels AND quality picture projection, it's the only movie complex (other than the new Century complex at the Great Mall of the Bay Area, whose screens are also THX-certified) I'm willing to go see a movie, even at US$8.50 to US$9.00 evening prices.
I can't wait to see a lot of upcoming good movies this year, after a crappy 2000. HANNIBAL, PEARL HARBOR, HARRY POTTER AND THE SORCERER'S STONE, MONSTERS, INC., FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, A.I. and several other really good movies arriving this year bodes well for movie theater owners in 2001.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
I wouldn't be too worried about Peter Jackson over-mangling the story.
:-)
The reason is simple: PJ darn well knows that the movie(s) will literally be nitpicked to death. He has to stick to the book pretty closely for accuracy reasons or Tolkien fans will read the riot act to him on the scale of an Orc invasion.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
The lack of stadium-style seating and THX-quality sound are two of the reasons I don't GO to the Century 16 Mountain View.
:-)
The other reason is that traffic and parking around that theater is horrible, especially in evening hours. I'd rather go to the Century 25 in Union Landing and Century 20 at Great Mall, where parking IS very plentiful and the sound system is obvious top-notch.
Raymond in Mountain View, CA
And tears well up in my eyes... it's like the first time I heard Yes play The Revealing Science of God live...
This has got to be the most anticipated movie of my lifetime. Of course it will never live up to my expectations. As literature so often points out, it's the longing to have something that is the best experience. I don't know if thats true, but if it is Peter Jackson has just given me 11 months of bliss.
> 1) There will be no Tom Bombadil in the movie, that part of the plot will be left out.
Thank Eru Ilúvatar! That weird section has kept me from re-reading the books for lo, these many years.
> 2) Arwen's character will be expanded. I'm not sure the implications of this, but some have said Arwen will be more like Xena: Warrior Princess.
Eru Ilúvatar, I hope like Angband not! Should we just stay home and watch Xena instead?
--
Sheesh, evil *and* a jerk. -- Jade
They need not mangle the story at all. The story is perfect as it is. However, hollywood has a tendancy to try to "improve" a good story by adding in more modern elements in an attempt to draw a larger audience. This is the ultimate failing in a great many movies that are based upon a book. I can see many possible "modifications" that they might attempt to make to the trilogy. First of all, the characters in the books are predominantly male. Certainly, there are female characters, but they don't have much "screen time" as compared to the male characters. This is not all together a bad thing. There is an underlying moral to be gained from this as in Return of the King it is a female (one who was ordered to remain behind for her safety) who ends up slaying the King of the Nazgul. This makes several powerful, if somewhat subliminal statements.
However, someone will probably tamper with the script to add larger roles for female characters and this will ultimately serve to undermine the underlying themes. And this is only one example. I can think of many other ways they could screw it up.
In addition, a big problem with the other LOTR movie was the fact that too much time was spent on scenes that should have been fast and furious (the end of book 1 where Frodo is being chased toward the Ford by all 9 riders). This is a 3 minute scene in the movie, but I can read the entire sequence in the book in less time. Other scenes which explain the history and background of the entire legend that the story is about, will be quickly skimmed over, leaving out a great deal of information which is useful to digest the rest of the story with (the council meeting).
I DO believe a good movie can be made though. I just don't know if hollywood is capable of making it.
-Restil
Play with my webcams and lights here
Here is an amusing parody of the trailer. Best line: "One shiny ring to rule them all."
I actually preferred the older teaser-trailer to this one. (I too saw it in the theaters.) There was more homage paid to the story in the previous trailer.
This trailer didn't mention Tolkien's name at all, aloud or on the screen.
Also, having read LOTR over and over again since I was a child, as well as The Silmarillion and other works so many times I can almost recite major passages, I am fairly certain that Arwen never rolls around on a bed of rose petals, eyes closed and smiling dreamily. Or if she did, Tolkien never told anyone. Except for maybe his wife.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
Not to complain about hot babes, but I don't recall any women having anything more than very minor parts in the books. You know, they meet a fairy princess in the woods for 10 pages.
My gripe is there seemed to be a few hot chicks walking around in that clip. Did they decide the books needed help and Frodo needs a love interest?
Does anyone have any idea how faithfull it is to the books? I defended the movie in a previous discussion saying that for times sake, they couldn't put every line in the book in the movie or it would be 34 hours long. However, if they start throwing a bunch of Hollywood shit in there, I'm going to be pissed. Maybe they go visit Castle Anthrax and give out good spankings.
- I like pudding.
To the first person to remove the "internet only" part so we can just download the damn thing!
Mike.
Tales from behind the Lagom Curtain
I've complained to THX a whole bunch of times, but to no avail. Apparently, as long as Sony pays their fee for using the THX name, Lucasfilm is happy. I think Century does a good job because they want to, not because THX makes them.
The new Century 20 at the so-called "Great Mall" is pretty nice, but the auditoriums are a lot smaller than the ones at the Century 25 at Union City. I hate it when the screen is below a certain size, because then the little perforations in the screen's surface become objectionable. Still, I'd rather go the the Century Great Mall than most other places.
Also of note is the Century 16 on Shoreline Blvd. in Mountain View (your town!). True, they don't have stadium seating or THX, but they still do a very good job. And unlike the Union City or Great Mall theaters, their screens are "maxed out" for a 2.39:1 image, rather than a 1.85:1 image. That is, they use masking on the sides for 1.85 movies instead of masking on the top for 2.39 movies. That's the way it should be in all theaters.
Free Hans!
Just because you're too damned stupid to know what I'm talking about does not make me a troll!!
Free Hans!
So you work at WETA? I have to ask -- why did you make all the CG lens flares in that trailer oval shaped as though they were from anamorphic lenses, when you know bloody well that the movie is being filmed in Super-35 with spherical lenses? Please tell me you're not making that mistake all throughout the movie!
Free Hans!
BTW, did anyone else find it strange that even though the movie is being shot with spherical lenses, all the computer-generated lens flares in the trailer are oval-shaped (like those produced by anamorphic lenses)? A minor detail, but it's a tad sloppy. I would have expected them to be more careful about little things like that...
Free Hans!
Eddings writing style is more chatty and reveals more of the ole' internal dialog. His characters are generally all very likeable and he follows them through book after book after book. I really liked Eddings a lot when I was younger, but I think I'd find his writing to be a bit too clumsy now that I'm more well exposed to non-sci-fi books. I don't stand by that though, I should probably read some of it again. What's clear is that Eddings, for some, is just about the most "immersive" fantasy author. In other words, don't start reading unless you are going to finish. I can't tell you how many times as a teen I started reading an Eddings book on Friday night and had to finish by Sunday. Couldn't put the damned thing down.
1. Looks nice. Seamless effects, has that "big-budget" look. As long as they don't mangle the story, this could be great.
2. I didn't know, but it's a trilogy! Three movies, each to be released at Christmas a year apart. The Fellowship of the Ring 2001, The Two Towers 2002, The Return of the King 2003. Enough screen time to do the story right? Maybe... I hope so!
3. There is a review of this trailer on Ain't It Cool News.
4. It made me want to pull the books out and read them again!
steveha
lf(1): it's like ls(1) but sorts filenames by extension, tersely
carmina burana by carl orff is probably what you are looking for.
A blog about stuff.
The reason Real and Quicktime can get by with their proprietary formats is because people will go through the trouble to install them and use them. Look at all the trouble you went through. It's also easier for those who think the web should be full of full-motion video and Flash pages everywhere. If they have to right-click|Save as for IE or right-click|Save Location As for Netscape or Shift|Right-click if it doesn't work, that's more trouble for the site (well, not really, but keeping it simple for even the biggest dolts is tough. However, AOL seems to manage :) ).
If you want them not to use Real or Quicktime (Sorenson, in particular) then don't install their player and write to the site maintainers and request the video in an easier-to-deal-with format like MPEG, DivX;-), or AVI. Perhaps they'll blow you off, perhaps they'll think about it (what's 30MB more and less bandwidth wasteage since people can download it only once if they want to see it over and over?). Either way, as long as you'll go through the trouble to use their product, they'll make it and others will use it.
Withdrawal before climax is very ineffective and those who try this are usually called "parents."
Remember when Real were the good guys? I just had to reinstall the RealPlayer because my beta had expired. After 5 minutes of downloading, installing, disabling startcenter, disabling automatic desktop icons, unselecting email notification (luckily, sales@real.com was accepted), dumping the 'content panel' (which is the crap that goes around the content), getting rid of the the ad bar, keeping Realplayer (tm) from being the default media player for every fricking type multimedia file, denying the right to set inbc.com or real.com as my home page, and stopping the automatic "welcome to Real" movie, I was sent to a real.com web page.
When I finally got to the trailer, it luckily wasn't /.ed yet. Don't these companies REALize that if they put their media in non-proprietary formats, it might be cheaper and better for both them and their targeted audience? Too bad there aren't any commonly used, stable, high-quality, free, FREE media formats out there.
Anyway, the preview was very nicely done. Starts off showing a ring floating, spinning, et cetera, with the narrator saying the "one ring to..." poem. It had a different tone than I would have imagined, but it was nicely done. Additionally, they did some effects as the ring came to rest in a hand (whose, I don't know). It's hard to describe, but it looks like the magical powers of the Ring will be conveyed quite well.
They went on to show some epic scenes of the band wandering along. There wasn't much of Gandalf, but there was a quick shot of him slamming down his staff with some resulting lightning flashies. I recognized Legolas, Gimli, and the hobbits, plus a short narration by someone I presumed to be the Lady Galadriel, who seemed to be portrayed quite well (beautiful, poised, etc).
There were a few quick scenes with the Nazgul, as well as one breathtaking shot of a tremendously large army (of Orcs) swooping over the plains. To be quite honest, the preview itself was rather disappointing, but as the story itself is already known, it didn't matter so much. I'm looking forward to the movie(s) a lot; this did a great job of whetting my appetite.
--
TO BUY A NEW CAR WOULD MAKE YOU SEXUALLY ATTRACTIVE.
/me translates: What this person is saying, is that when we read the LOTR we each get our own personal understanding of the book in our imaginations. Everyone has their own little way of imagining hobbiton and frodo and gandalf and such. Everyone imagines them differently, and as soon as the movie comes out, each of our own perceptions of the books will be gone and we will all be forced to go with the "Group think" on the book. My father tells me that he doesn't want to go see the movie for that reason...once you see the movie, your imaginad LOTR land is partially destroyed.
Personally, i don't care all that much...i like to see what other people imagined in the book, especially if they took 368 million dollars to find what it should look like.
The anti-salmon
There are people in parts of the world other than Europe and America who read Slashdot. You forgot to insult whole continents full of people.
1) There will be no Tom Bombadil in the movie, that part of the plot will be left out.
2) Arwen's character will be expanded. I'm not sure the implications of this, but some have said Arwen will be more like Xena: Warrior Princess. This is probably an exagerration. In addition, the relationship between Arwen and Aragorn will be seen more often, and sooner than it surfaces in the books.
3) Some of the events that are told about (such as the fight between Saruman and Gandalf) will happen real-time in the movies, rather than 'as told by Gandalf'.
4) a few minor characters will be left out, and a few will be added.
5) the scouring of the shire will be rather different, though it is not certain how.
For more stuff like this, there's about a dozen LotR movie fanatic pages, with all sorts of images and details.
Back off, man. I'm a scientist.
I can't believe they're leaving out Tom Bombadil. Bombadil is necessary.
This may sound a bit funny coming from an agnostic semi-Wiccan like myself...But here I go. Tolkien was good buddies with C.S. Lewis, and a very religious Christian. Therefore The Lord of the Rings was written with heavy religious significance. Just like Star Wars it is meant to portray the struggle of good vs. evil. The character of Bombadil shows that there is a greater good; he can see through evil's best attempt at making things suck, if that makes sense.
I sure hope they decide to put him back.
Anyway I heard rumors of one more change: right after leaving Lothlorien, instead of merely following the Fellowship, Gollum attacks and attempts to take the ring. Perhaps he succeeds; I can not quite remember the rumor's exact wording.
Aciel
aciel@speakeasy.net
I'm using Netscape 4.75 on a Mandrake 7.1, and the site works OK, even the Flash thingies.
try:
--
.sigs: Just Say No!
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.sigs: Just Say No!
Maybe they won't botch this like they did the DnD movie. :-)
For those who haven't yet seen it (and some others), there's a trailer at:
This place
Here!