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Return of the King Wins Four Golden Globes
stubear writes "According to MSNBC, 'Lord of the Rings: Return of the King' won 4 Golden Globes, for Best Picture - Drama, Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Original Score (Howard Shore), and Best Original Song ("Into the West" by Howard Shore, Fran Walsh and Annie Lennox). LotR: RotK was the big winner for the night, at least for movies. Hopefully LotR: RotK will fare just as well, or better, at the Oscars."
When making ambitious trilogies, shoot the whole set in one go. Do not try to make a Version 2 years after the first one made it big, or you will end up looking like a fool. And yes, I'm still regretting having seen the second Matrix movie.
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Well done to PJ who takes home another well deserved award. LOTR will be remembered fondly twenty years from now, and as the influence for a whole new generation of filmmakers. Cold Mountain will be remembered as that forgettable film way back in Jude Law's filmography.
And I'm really glad for Peter Jackson and the crew, they really deserved it. Peter was pretty funny too, he said something like "I didn't realize that working 7 years on this film would turn me into a hobbit". And it really did. He was not much taller than Dustin Hoffman, who gave him the award.
I'm very grateful to Jackson. Hats off to you, sir, you almost made es forget the desaster the Matrix was.
Nah. I don't really think so.
Let's face it, LotR won't probably get more than 2 or 3 Oscars.
The problem here is that LotR isn't the average movie, and moreover it's a fantasy one. Fantasy and SciFi movies never did well at the Oscars. Sure, they can get best special effect, or best music, but they'll prolly never get a best movie, or best actor, or best photography.
I hope things will prove me wrong, but...
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Best TV comedy and best comedy actor for Ricky Gervais. Considering they were up against Will and Grace and Matt le Blanc in these categories this was a major surprise and makes me happy that such a fantastic series has been honoured.
Hopefully this will increase the awareness of the show in the USA. Hope the USA remake doesn't suck too much.
On the topic of Golden Globes, off the LOTR topic.
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The LOTR movies have all earned their respective awards easily. Peter Jackson managed to do the impossible and consistently improve over each 'instalment', despite the fact that each instalment was acclaimed by audiences and critics alike. I wouldn't normally be interested in King Kong, but Jackson has earned enough of my respect for me to go see it no matter what any critics say about it.
You write the movie...and the plot should not suck.
The first three star wars movies were episodes
IV-V-VI and these were each made over a 6 year span.
The difference between lord of the rings and SW/ESB/ROTJ versus the matrix sequels is that the first two there was a story that needed to be told. In the Matrix, they didnt have such a story.
Of course you can still have a story that needs to be told...and it still suck because of lousy execution.
I also thought that the ceremony would have been a good one had they simply given everything to Scarlett Johansson. The Oscar nominations will be published tomorrow and I am curious to see how closely they follow the lead from this awards-show. I would like to see Ang Lee to get at least a nomination as best director for "The Hulk", but am aware that the chances are slim. LOTR must be the big winner this year, but don't hold your breath for Gollum's nomination as best actor.
Hank! White!
OR ELSE!
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
The battle of Helm's Deep in TTT was gayer. Recall the bit where Gimli calls to Aragorn "Toss me! Toss me!", and then asks him not to tell anyone about it.
Congrats to the rest of the ROTK gang as well! Good going!
People say I'm crazy, I got diamonds on the soles of my shoes...
I don't normally respond to flamebait like this, but HOW IGNORANT CAN SOMEONE BE?????
/. readers will not need the correction).
LOTR was written about 50 years ago and draws upon a plethora of historical and mythical references which have existed for centuries (maybe even millenia). The dwarves, etc with their beards were quite well described in the books and the fims merely remained true to the descriptions in the books.
Book 2 (the Two Towers) was published in 1954 - way before the twin towers were even built.
I am also offended as an Englishman. As a nation we were appalled with the attacks on the Twin Towers (Note, not the Two Towers) and we have suffered enough terrorist attacks ourselves (although admittedly, not on this scale) over the years to be extremely sensitive to the victims of ANY terrorist attack (bali, etc).
Hope this sets the record straight (although I know that the majority of
Sorry for a slight rant.
Denver
Now I can go see it. I always wait to see how well a movie does in the Golden Globes before I am willing to shell out my hard earned dollars. ;-)
Well Does these awards really matter anymore?
I lost total faith in the system that time when shakespeare in love nabbed a lot of oscars, not becuase of quality but because of marketing tricks from the creators.
I dont think Golden Globe is any less vulnerable.
"Not only are we going to Rivendell. We're going to Caradhras, and Moria and Rohan and the Paths of the Dead, and we're going to Fangorn and West Emnet and Ithilien and Morannon. And then we're going to Minas Tirith, to take back the White Tree! YEEAAARGGHHHHHH!!!!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Hollywood is full of fake shit. But let's force them to be explicit about what is fiction and what is real. The Golden Globes are awarded by an in-bred group of random no-nothing foreigners based in large part on who has given them the best perks that year. I think that the world's movie fans deserve better.
Why should we geeks care what 90 people, self-selected for a lack of integrity, think of the Lord of the Rings or anything else?
Ents into hasty creatures, whose minds could be changed at the sight of a few tree stumps, that was most out of keeping to me.
"Run Forest, Run!!!!"
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
Merry and Pippin get into the fireworks. Instead of a premature dragon-launch, all of Hobbiton goes up in a 15-minute long orgy of pyrotechnic destruction.
When Gandalf defeats the Balrog, it blows up real good.
The orcs must be filled with gas at Helms Deep, because each time one of them is hit, it explodes like a Pinto.
The kill competition between Gimli and Legolas is made more exciting because each of them has a rocket-launcher instead of a bow or axe. Boom! Boom! Boom!
Those heads lobbed over the Minas Tirith walls? Those are EXPLODING heads now.
Just to make things more exciting, each time an Oliphaunt is killed and falls, it blows up in a fireball the size of Brooklyn.
Ring explodes when it hits the lava.
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
If you had read the book, you would have known that the "closeness" of Frodo and Sam (which you are presumably referring to) was not added by Peter Jackson, but already present in the original books.
Interesting discussion on the subject here.
It was a huge cast, don't write them all off like that eh.
This is my Sig, this is my Gun. One is for Slashdot and one is for Fun.
Just to buck the trend a bit - I actually thought Return of the King was by far the weakest of the three. It felt rushed - too many scenes had a 'we have to get this plot information across as quickly as possible and move on' quality to them, while other scenes seemed unnecessarily drawn out, complete with OTT slow-motion effects. Sure, he's trying to cram a lot of material in, but moving Shelob from the Two Towers to Return of the King didn't help, even after chopping out Saruman (and a very large part of the book at the same time). Dragging Arwen into the third film with slow, drawn-out scenes that don't really make sense didn't help either.
They got the general look right, and impressively so (perhaps with the exception of the very cheesy glowing green dead), however, in terms of script and direction, they could have done better. I was actually quite disappointed when I came out after seeing it. So for me, Peter Jackson didn't deserve a best director award for it. But that's just my opinion.
Oh, and the pipes in the score were bloody annoying sometimes. ;-)
What's with the Elves at Helms Deep?
;) The Huorns were lucky to make it into the extended edition DVD.
I'm not too sure. Various changes are made in the movies to punch up the drama; one is the Theoden/Eomer split, which didn't happen in the book. Consequently the Rohirrim weren't as prepared as they were in the book. The arrival of the elves underscore this. Of couse it could have been glossed over several other ways. I don't really understand why people object to this. This is precisely the kind of change Tolkien himself made from draft to draft in his various works. Had he rewritten LotR decade after decade like he did the Silmarillion, this version would have made a highly plausible draft.
What is up with Faramir?
Same thing. It's part of the translation of an epic medium into a dramatic one. In an epic, character is demonstrated by contrast, in drama it is demonstrated by change. This plot change give Faramir a chance to change his mind. I have no objection to this per se, but I think the reason that fans don't like this change (apart from the ones who don't like any change), is that it was poorly conceived. First it actually overestimates the power of the Ring. Tolkien didn't intend for the readers to take the Ring as being irresistable. Of course it could be resisted otherwise there is no point in the book. It just can't be resisted by people who yield to the temptation to use it. It is consistent with Jackson's desire to make the Ring and overpowering presence in the movie, almost a character in its own right.
Second, the way Faramir is won back has no credibility. Jackson having established the awesome corrupting power of the ring, Faramir simply overhears Sam's speech and suddenly his resolve is flipped 180 degrees. This could only be pulled off if they spent a huge amount of screen time showing agonizing over the decision. Since he is a minor character, it was't going to happen. All in all I think they would have been better of leaving this anamolous piece of epic logic in, rather than admit a mediocre piece of dramatic logic.
Ummm, where are the Hurons?
Until their defeat by the Iroquois, they would have been in central Ontario.
Why didn't the Ent's agree to attack Sauroman at the Ent-Moot?
Same as above. It is more dramatic (in the sense of more fitting to drama) to show characters changing their minds than simply making their minds up and carrying through.
Although I don't agree with them all, I actually like the fact that Peter Jackson took so many liberties with the text. It's interesting for the same reason it is interesting to have had Tolkien rewrite the same story with different viewpoints and events. It gives the story more of the flavor of a true, organically grown cultural artifact, which is what Tolkien was after anyway. With a real fairy tale and legend, there are always different local versions, and every storyteller makes it his own with his own details and embroidering.
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If you had not seen the first two, the last one would not have made any sense at all.
50% of the Oscar voting body is women, who have historically voted for whatever the most romance-based movie is of the bunch (Cold Mountain in this case.) Put another way, 50% of the voting body is interested in movies about relationships as opposed to epic cinema - unless of course it's about romance; think "Titanic."
Remember when "Shakespeare in Love" beat "Saving Private Ryan"; "Forrest Gump" beat "Pulp Fiction", etc.?
While there certainly can be exceptions to this rule, and hopefully this year will be one, past history suggests that the Oscar will go to something like Cold Mountain or Big Fish.
"It isn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it is sufficient to delay the news until it no longer matters." - N
I personally found the score rather disappointing. It's not bad at all but, I found nothing "Tolkienish" in it.
If "music" is defined by what's on MTV, then it might be considered brilliant; but with bands like Summoning and Blind Guardian ( LotR-related interview ) around to convert Tolkien's stories into music, I consider the LotR soundtrack somewhat of a missed chance.
I was actually fairly impressed by the music for LotR when I first went to the showings. I'm even more impressed now that I have had the opportunity to watch the DVDs at home and actually give the music some serious attention.
Interpretting a book and putting music to it is inevitably a big problem - very few books go as far as actually adding a score (!) or even an indicator of the music associated with each group of people so what one person expects is a very personal response. Having watched the appendecies to FotR and TTT about the scoring of the LotRs, Howard Shore has been very attentive to the vision that Peter Jackson bought to the film in terms of the histories associated with each of the various groups in the film without falling into the trap of going completely native and only using original instruments. For example, the Eoras are derived/inspired from the Anglo-Saxon peoples (think Beowulf on horses) and the key instrument for the Eoras themes is the Norweigen fiddle - an instrument which has a wilder timbre than a normal violin. The use of various vocalists to provide different textures to various important scenes in the films is another example of the care found in augmenting the vision.
Someone else mentioned predictability. For an effectively 10 hour score, each major character and each major group has their own theme. This theme is then moulded into the scenes where they appear, so during the battle of Helm's Deep you have a mixture of the music associated with the Uruk-Hai and the Eoras with some of the Elven themes woven in. It is both unrealistic and more importantly unworkable to not have this sort of thematic approach to the scoring - the viewer is often guided through a movie on the wings of the musical score, often at a subliminal level. The thematic approach actually helps the viewer following the (often rapid) switches in the film between the story lines - to keep throwing brand new ideas in all the time would actually disorientate many audiences in what is already a complex film (in TTT there are 5 simultaneous story threads at some points).
I think Howard Shore is a deserving recipient of this Golden Globe.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Anything I post is strictly my own thoughts and doesn't necessarily have anything to do with the opinions of IBM.
I can't find the source right now (probably boxofficemojo) but I recall that the cost of making RotK was listed at around 95 million $, with advertsing costs of 50 million $. I'm amazed by the amount spent on advertising---it's hard to believe that it's cost effective, ie, that box office receipts or even total revenue would have fallen by 10 million if they had only spent 40 million on advertising.
Or is movie attendance so ruled by herding and cascade effects that the effects of advertising are nonlinear?
foldplay your photos won't know what hit them.
But I thought that Slashdot was above that. This site has a reputation of journalistic integrity that should be upheld.
You must be new here. Let me show you around a bit.
What you are looking at now, is a crispy critter(you) being flamed for good measure for the following things: appearing pro-american (slashdot is Euro centric), bringing up that whole terrorist 9/11 twin towers thing, and mixing LoTR in with the previous two.
Down the hall you'll see the SCO section filled with people who are not lawyers, but play one on slashdot. Across from there is a broom closet, which is also labeled the Journalistic Integrity Vault, there you'll find boxes of repeat stories, mis-spelings, and summaries written by people who never read the article.
Your ignorance is welcome here, but please adjust it according to slashdot standards. 9/11, Osama, et. al are not a national security concern, but more of a vast right-wing conspiracy, LoTR 0wnes j00 and you will recognize it, also LoTR is considered by some more in-line with Christian ideals vs the Muslim ones you suggest.
No.
I'm actually even more impressed with how FEW liberties he took.
The Lord of the Rings is a monsterous book, and (as one learns when one reads the Simarillion, Unfinished Tales et al) there are precious few throwaway scenes, or even LINES. Almost everything has a fully realized backstory out there somewhere.
The notable exception is Bombadil... but almost everything else is fully fleshed out somewhere.
You can indulge in this luxury in print, because you are working with the imagination and because you're not limited in time.
But with a film, you're working with a visual medium and a fixed run time. Dialogue, especially, is resistant to time compression. So too is the exposition of backstory - otherwise you are faced with somebody delivering a history lecture in the midst of your movie.
(Amazingly, Jackson pulled this part off in the prologue to FotR - but in the DVD commentaries, we learn just how contraversial that was amongst the filmmakers. They know the dangers of characters lecturing the screen)
Given this, I'm amazed at just how much of the book they were able to work in (more or less) untouched - and certainly, they stayed very true to the spirit of the original work.
There were a couple of decisions made that I would have done differently had I been in charge, but nothing there is egrariously WRONG.
Incidently, after watching LotR/TTT back to back with the Bashki animated version, I was struck by the enormous influence Bashki had on Jackson. In fact, I think that with no Bashki version, there is no Jackson version - Ralph's movie, flawed as it was, shows how the book _could_ be successfully adopted to film.
DG
Want to learn about race cars? Read my Book
people in the UK seem to more aware of subtle humour and irony than many people in the US.
Two words: Benny Hill.
You just can't get more subtle than that!
Don't blame Durga. I voted for Centauri.
One very simple reason. Jackson doesn't have the rights to make the Hobbit (at least yet).
There is much pleasure to be gained in useless knowledge.
Just look at his film bio
Yeah, he didn't really have many "good" movies under his belt other than Heavenly Creatures. But this is an argument for a good director? All good to great directors had excellent, epic, quality movies before their "big break"? Hmm...let's have a look:
Francis Ford Coppola: Had a handfull of movies before The Godfather put him on the map. Remember movies like The Terror or Playgirls and the Bellboy? Maybe The Rain People was his Heavenly Creatures?
Robert Zemeckis: Again, a few handfull of films before a breakthrough movie like Back to the Future. Though I was a big fan of Used Cars. But if we judged him on only his first few films, he would be considered a hack.
I could go on...but I'm tired of typing. But hopefully you get my point. A prior film bio is not a good judge of a persons directing skills before the "big break". Yes, I know there are directors that make a masterpiece right out of the box, but not all can be Orson Welles.
Also, these were his movies. He produced them, produced the fx with his company Weta, he directed them, co-wrote them. These were his babies. And frankly, the statement you made: The only thing he should get credit for is for letting the camera crew and art department do their thing shows your ingorance to movie making, or else you wouldn't have said such a thing.
For a look at "bad directing" look no further than Lucas with the Star Wars pictures that he directed personally. Star Wars is the only one that stands up to "good direction". "Empire" was a much better movie because he didn't direct it. "Jedi" wasn't that good, but it was basically the story itself and not the direction...which was good. Look how stiff and un-natural everyone looks and acts in "Menace" and "Clones".
Finally, if the direction is bad as you stated, it would have spoiled the movies no matter what. The Star Wars movies show that the amount of money and effects and art direction that you throw at a movie doesn't equal a good movie alone.
But hey, that's just my opinion...I could be wrong.
"Music is everybody's possession. It's only publishers who think that people own it." - John Lennon.
Some may feel their hackles rising at the above statement. The real question is why? At its core, those feelings stem from petty jealousy and envy.
How about plain-old "factual accuracy?"
the United States has the world's greatest military
You think? I'm morbidly curious to see the US and China duke it out. If nothing else, they outnumber you by about 3 to 1. If the US is so much stronger than China, why are they so afraid of them? When China captured the US's spyplane, by didn't the US just go in and take it back? They've bullied other nations for less, firing missiles into Afghanistan in retaliation for the embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, so why did they pussyfoot around China, letting the world see them begging for their plane back? Why did the US pull some strings to give Beijing the 2008 Olympics, instead of just going in, asserting their dominance, and taking back their plane?
greatest eccononmy
This is just plain dumb, given the current state of world affairs. The US economy WAS the strongest in the world, until shortly after Dubya took the helm. Now it's in a shambles. Heck, just look at Canada. They have less unemployment and a more stable economy than the US, with a comparable GDP when compared on a per-capita basis. Granted, it wasn't always that way, but as I said, I'm looking at the state currently.
This is also coupled with general freedom and great generosity.
Freedom? FREEDOM??? Uh, do any of these TLA's ring a bell? DMCA, CDA, CDA-II, PATRIOT-ACT, BATF? How about the War on Freedom^H^H^H^H^H^H^HDrugs?
You think just because you're allowed to have guns, you're "free?" Newsflash: you're not the only nation where citizens are allowed to own firearms. If you're so free, why are drugs, prostitution, nudity, and gambling all prohibited or extremely tightly controlled, compared to other freer nations?
The United states went to the moon.
So? Russia went to Mars. Long before the US. Actually, Russia was the first in space, and has many other milestones in space travel. IIRC, that's the whole reason why the US went to the moon - they were getting their asses kicked by the Russkies. First man in orbit, first probe to Mars, first space station, etc. etc. - all Russian.
Truly, a remarkable nation.
This is true, but the US is by no means the only "remarkable" nation, nor even the MOST "remarkable." It's far too young to really be that remarkable. China, Egypt, and the UK are far more interesting and remarkable, with their rich histories and fascinating pasts.
Note: I'm not US-bashing. I like the US. I agree that they are remarkable. I simply object to your assertion that anyone disagreeing with your statements is jealous or envious. The truth is, your statements were simply provably, factually incorrect.
Now, for the larger point about "movies always depict the US winning because the US has a long history of winning." This is easy to disprove. Somalia. Korea. Vietnam. Cuba (how's that embargo going? Is Castro out yet?). Russia.
9/11. Waco. Heck, even Canada defeated your armies and burned your capital to the ground.
The US's list of defeats is easily as long as their list of victories. And if you forget that, then you risk the terrible carnage that is borne out of such arrogance that can collapse entire empires.
Like woodworking? Build your own picture frames.
If I'm not mistaken, linguists call this the difference between phonetics and phonemics.
Phonetics are what everybody believes that they are saying and phonemics are the sounds that are actually spoken as determined by lab audio analysis.
I've heard that the Arabic language considers the 'k' sounds at the beginning of the English words 'cat' and 'kitten' to be different letters, which makes it very difficult for English speakers to learn the language.
As for the Middle-Earth storyline, I think that The Silmarillion, not The Hobbit, should be made next.
Ok, I love you man, but thinking that you can make *a* movie out of the Silmarillion is just, well, I mean, I'm at a loss for words. The Silmarillion is over 3,000 years of history, with TONS of different stories. It's not a single, continuous work. It's a collection of different stories with different characters covering two separate ages. There is NO WAY you could take that and make it into a single movie and have it worth two shits. Each individual story would be so short as to eliminate the possilibty for meaningful plot or character development.