LOTR Campout Begins

Rocknalle writes: "As reported on The One Ring queues have have already started lining up for The Fellowship Of The Ring. Team GladBlad (having placed themselves nr. 1-4 in the queue), are reporting live from the event via notebooks and and cellular networking (9.6 Kbps rules! :-). Visit GladBlad and see what happens when geeks goes outside." The other LOTR news I know of is a description of the journalistic teaser trailer. Salon seems to have liked what they saw.

Comments

In other news...

[Cutriss]

People with jobs report that working between October 20th and December 19th resulted in two months' worth of paychecks!

Re:In other news...

[ackthpt]

I can't get into the first night showing thing, really. I'd sooner wait a week or two and get a seat in the center of the theater, not jammed between a couple of overzealoud Tolkien fans, where the air is stale and I miss lines of dialogue from 400 other people all going "OOOHH!!!" or laughing at the same time.

Last experience like this was a midnight showing of Spike and Mike's Sick and Twisted Festival of Animation. Not a spare seat in the joint, hot, humid and too much background noise. For my $5 (mantinees, y'know :-) and another $7.75 for popcorn and pop (it's part of the experience, but smuggle a can of Pringles and a couple cans of Coke in a winter coat sleeve if you like) I like a smaller crowd. Besides, call me a Troll if you must, I'm actually looking forward to the Harry Potter movie as it looks, unlike Holy Wood productions, done up extremely well.

or when..

[gkuchta]

geeks goes to Enrish classes..

I wonder if any Krispy Kreme donut shops, or Chipolte grills have opened up next to theaters for this specifically this reason. I would, if I owned Krispy Kreme.

Echos of Ep1

[Telek]

I remember all that hype about episode 1 for star wars and people lining up for months in advance.

Was it worth it?

I doubt it. I walked up to my local AMC the night before and bought 12 tickets without problem for a show around 8pm on the opening day. As much as I am for camping, I think that this is a little ... too extreme, no?

Did anyone out there actually line up far in advance for Ep1?

Re:Echos of Ep1

[OblongPlatypus]

Here in Norway, they start selling tickets to these "big" movies a month or two in advance, and they usually play up to the whole queuing deal in various ways. During the last night of the Ep1 queue, they were showing Ep4-6 on a big screen outside the theatre, held a costume competition, etc. The first screening on the opening day is usually scheduled at 00:01. Basically, it's made into a big deal by the theatres.

Although I used the world "usually", so far Ep1 is actually the only movie in which the actual queuing process has been hyped in this way. The next will be LOTR, and I'm sure LOTR2&3 and SW2&3 will be handled similarly. Possibly Matrix2&3 as well, I'm not sure if Matrix has had time to acquire enough of a cult status yet though. The LOTR ticket sale starts on November 5th. It's cold outside already, it'll be freezing by then - at least the Ep1 release was in the summer :)

I also used "theatre", singular, in the first paragraph. That's because the ticket sale was limited to only one theatre in the entire country. Despite that, when I showed up at around midnight on the last night before the ticket sale started, there weren't more than about two hundred people in line before me; I got excellent tickets to the 6am screening on the opening day.

The conclusion would be that out of the almost 5 million people in my country, only about 200 cared enough about Ep1 to queue up more than 8 hours in advance, despite massive hyping by the theatres. Anyone know the statistics for the states? And is there any queue-specific hyping of the sort I described above going on over there?

Re:Echos of Ep1

[Black Parrot]

> Here in Norway, ... I also used "theatre", singular, in the first paragraph. That's because the ticket sale was limited to only one theatre in the entire country.

Here in Mordor, they aren't going to show it at all.

Re:Erm...

[DagSverre]

They might be opening for ticket pre-sales on monday though. I bought my Star Wars ep I ticket two months in advance for instance...

Re:What a bunch of losers

[TroyFoley]

And when people keep telling me that American stupidity runs rampant, I point to John Q. Condescend here who blames American culture for Danish fans obsessing over a New Zealand produced movie based on a book written by an Englishman.

This Salon guy's scaring me

[stevens]

What does it mean that the action scenes were described thusly:

• "distinctive vision" — "distinctive" is often used as a euphemism for "screwy."
• "edited frenetically in the modern style" — frenetic? modern? I hope this isn't describing the string of 1/10 sec cuts that films like Tomb Raider called an action sequence.
• "such jittery vision" — This is worrisome. I'd rather not see LOTR with "jittery" anything.

I've loved the trailers so far, and even booked a private matinee screening for myself and my programming team in advance, so you know I'm a booster of this film. But these descriptions make me wonder what the Salon writer was trying to get across.

High Hopes

[solendril]

All I can say is that with the release of each passing trailer I become more impressed with Peter Jackson. Considering he's practicly unknown and had $300 Million dropped in his lap I was expecting nothing less than a disaster. But When I started seeing footage I was impressed. Look at some of the camera direction and cinematography that went into some of those shots in the latest trailer. Something as simple as Frodo reading under a tree was given a very artistic, moving camera touch. I've always appreciated artistic directorial styles. Look at Ridley Scott or Kubrick Vs. Spielburg. The first two are ARTISTS, and the movies they make (made in Kubrick's case) each carry the hallmarks of great artistry. Spielburg, on the other hand has never used a very interesting canvas. (There are some HUGE exceptions to this such as the Color Purple or Shindler's List) He gets good scripts and makes solid movies. What will make or break Peter Jackson will be his ARTISTRY. LotR is not a book that could be rendered in a bland style. It's simply too complex, too rich, too magnificent on it's own account. In translation to the big screen Jackson will have to pull out some of those visual tricks to make LotR not only a great book, but a great MOVIE.

If he pulls this off, he'll be considered one of the next great director of American film. If he doesn't, they'll be people lining up to piss on his grave. I sure wouldn't want to be in his shoes...

Re:What a bunch of losers

[DeadMeat (TM)]

I think when people keep telling me that American culture is going down the tubes, all they would have to do is point me to this as evidence and I would be pretty well convinced.

So Denmark's an American colony now?

Avoiding lines

[ackthpt]

EP1 had lines all over the place, but down in Watsonville, CA (down that is from San Jose and Santa Cruz) was this beautiful new theater with stadium seating and no lines for EP1, I snuck out of work 30 minutes early, walked up to the 3 other people in line, bought ticket, bought fizzy drink and banged grain and then went in to get a seat in the center of the cinema -- the day after it opened!

You might try calling theaters which are futher off the beaten path and see if they have campers.

Coming soon, to a screen near you, in Kluge-O-Rama: Invalid form key: AAR1ArWHID !

Big clarification

[OblongPlatypus]

Although the movie opens on December 19th, these people are not lining up for a two-month wait. The ticket pre-sale starts next Tuesday, so it's more like 4 or 5 days.

That's my Geek!

[tcc]

Locked home for over a year, camping in front of his computer, camping in a game of Quake, going out for the first time since forever, for something OTHER than his job, and guess where he's going? CAMPING in front of the theatre...

I'm starting to beleive all those psychologists claiming "games have a negative impact on human behaviour" :)

jeez

[zerocool^]

Freakin' campers. Now you can't even go to the movies. They're everywhere.

jeez, just used to be that you couldn't get to the quad damage.

~z

That Evil Gandalf

[Ellen Spertus]

According to the San Francisco Chronicle:

This first installment focuses on Frodo (Elijah Wood), the Hobbit, who embarks on a quest to destroy the One Ring before the evil Gandalf (Ian McKellen) can get his hands on it.

People should try as hard to stop the SSSCA

[ajm]

If only people would put one tenth as much effort into trying to stop bad laws such as the SSSCA as they put into waiting to suck at the corporate teat of the company that pays for those laws we might not be in such a bad state. LOTR will probably be a good movie, but it's not as important as having Disney/Hollywood control your digital life. Wake Up.