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Lord Of The Rings - Oscars, We Loves Them
Suhas writes "The New Zealand Herald and many others such as Yahoo/AP are reporting that Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King has swept the Oscars by winning in all the 11 categories it was nominated in. Good to see Peter Jackson finally got the Best Director award! The official Oscar site has a full list of the winners."
to rule them all!
About Friggin' Time.
Less Talk, More Beer.
This is great to see a fantasy film get the recognition it deserves...a masterful film, even if I actually didn't care for it :)
Yessss, my precciiouusss. Your power cannot be denied, precious.
This is the first time a Fantasy movie wins the Best Picture award ... yeha!!!!!
...
Of course, we may see now a lot of crappy fantasy movies just riding the wave
Life isn't like a box of chocolates. It's more like a jar of jalapenos. What you do today, might burn your ass tomorrow.
Or was that thired time pauys for them all. Anyway, Contrats to the folks that made three great movies!
best film/director/script. sure, it was a big happening, but quite frankly it was a run-of-the-mill action flick with a huge fx budget and lots of turgid acting. Really bad editing too.
Well, I can't say I am surprised! It is indeed a great film.
"Most interesting how often you humans seem to obtain that which you do not want" -Spock
Peter Jackson got what he deserved. I was literally waiting with bated breath to see him get the best director award. LOTR is not just a movie, it is an epic.
So which one was it?
With 11 Oscars, RotK ties with Ben Hur, and Titanic as the only movies to have won 11 Oscars. So it was a double victory for PJ and crew.
Jason Lotito
LoTR tied for most Oscar's all time with Ben Hurr and Titanic. I guess the academy decided to wait for the finish of the series to give the props that they so deserved.
There are 4 boxes to use in the defense of liberty: soap, ballot, jury, ammo. Use in that order. Starting now.
If by "They didn't win in one category they were in" you mean "They did win in every category they were in", you're absolutely correct.
Good to see Peter Jackson finally got the Best Director award!
I don't always agree with the Oscars on who should receive it, but IMHO Return of the King deserved each and everyone of them! Kudos to the jury for finally giving Peter Jackson the recognition he rightfully earned after creating (again IMHO) one of the most memorable film projects ever!
Book Shaka-Laka KIGKING ASS AND TAKING NAMES - Suck on that Cold Mountain
You are incorrect. CNN and multiple other news sources are reporting that LOTR : ROTK has won in all 11 nominations it recieved.
No doubt many of these awards are symbolic awards for the efforts in creating the entire trilogy, not just RotK. I have my doubts if the third LotR movie was that good, especially given some of the films it was up against, but the trilogy as a whole merits siginificant recognition and I think that was given tonight.
The trilogy finally got its comeupperance.
:D
New Zealand will be celebrating tonight!
Bohoo ...... Why wasnt it nominated for best cinematography ??? I havnt seen better cinematography before.
We loves our precious
I saw them in one category that they didn't win in...I'm sure of it.
Yeah, Andy Serkis for Best Supporting Actor.
No, they won in all eleven. Even Steven Spielberg said "It's a clean sweep!", and they tied Titanic and Ben-Hur for movie with the most Oscars at 11.
libertarianswag.com
It is interesting to see a movie that contains a leat one digital artifact in every shot or sequence simply overwhelm the awards. When will we see the effects groups have a category?
Oh yes, Bill Murray should have one for best actor. No doubt.
No you didn't. Achievement in Cinematography is teh category that everyone is thinking they lost in, but they weren't even nominated. Master and Commander won.
I guess they figured that fantasy was their domain and Bush should leave well enough alone.
Peter Jackson: Hopefully fantasy is an f-word that won't get bleeped by the 5 second delay.
That made me laugh, and it's sad but true, it literally took one of the greatest achievements in film making to get the movie industry to recognize the fantasy genre as a valid medium of film making, not just a bunch of movies for fanboys in costume.
ce n'est pas un Sig.
These movies deserved a lifetime achievement award.
That said...Best. Oscars. Ever.
The plural of 'anecdote' is not 'data'. --Dan Kaminsky
(Probably one of the few around here who hasn't.)
Anyway, I figure I'll get the 3-set DVD when (if) it comes out.
Is it worth the $50? I'm not a huge sci-fi fan really, and never read the books, and I don't collect movies. Still, it seems to be a favorite among geeks and moviegoers alike.
Thoughts?
Background: 28/M/Bi-Sexual; Owner of a Linux company; MBA Harvard 2003; B.S. Comp Sci MIT 2000
not everyone did... Check out this list of deviations.
See, now that everybody sees how pointless it was, the same point that got Michael Moore booed off the stage got applause from this year's documentary winner.
WELL 20/20 HINDSIGHT AFTER A BUNCH OF PEOPLE DIED NOW, ISN'T IT!
Go America.
Karma: Non-Heinous
Pulp Fiction was robbed in '94.
Ian McKellen deserved an Oscar for his performance, not only because he was consistently great in all three movies, but his acting didn't overshadow and it easily could have. It's a pity he was nominated this year.
What made the third one so much better than the first two? I'm actually wondering what everyone thinks, as I think all three of them deserved such awards.
Trolls make great pets. Adopt one today!
They lost in best sound editing. It went to Master and Commander
Well, I do have to say that LotR was better Oscar-material than both Bad Taste and Braindead, and even if The Frighteners was ok...well, LotR just kicks booty.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
Sam: What we need is a little bit of recognition.
Gollum: What's recognishin, precious? What's recognishin, eh?
Sam: Rec-og-ni-tion. Honors, awards, critics in a stew. Lovely big golden awards with a nice nameplate on the bottom.
Sam: Even you couldn't say no to that.
Gollum: Oh yes, we could. Spoilin' nice shinies. Give it to us raw and unfinished. You keep nasty awards.
Sam: You're hopeless.
That was last year I believe.. This year he didn't even get nominated
Normal people worry me!
ROTK was nominated for, and won, 11 Oscars. This allowed the film to tie with Ben Hur and Titanic for the most Oscars.
However, they should have been nominated for Best Foreign Film a well. I mean, if a Canadian film can win Best Foreign Film this year, surely ROTK could have been nominated for it as well (and, ultimately, win it).
ROTK should have broken the record. Robbed! Robbed, I tell ya!
Nasty voting panelses.
*giddy geek squeel*
Let the jokes about the pppppprrrrreeeeeecccciiiiiiiooooooouuuuuussssss Oscar statue commence!!
Anyone else here not give a crap about self-congratulatory multi-hour commercials? Lord of the Rings was a great movie ... as were a number of others that came out this year. I've just got no interest in what a select group of voters thinks about a film.
I for one cannot wait to hear that Peter Jackson has untangled the legal web surrounding the rights to The Hobbit. As a child I enjoyed it much more than the trilogy. It's the perfect 3 hour film. Massive battle at the end. The dwarves! The eagles! Smaug! Mirkwood, the elves en masse - PJ, please get King Kong out of the way and give us The Hobbit in 2007 or 2008!
THIS SPACE INTENTIONALLY LEFT BLANK.
They should have been nominated for best foreign film. I mean, there were at least 3 different languages besides English that they spoke in it! I'm sure there is a country out their who's population speaks Elvish or whatever it is people from Mordor speak!
Return of the King won for "best editing".
How could a movie where everyone agrees it's riddled with false endings that go on 20 minutes longer than it should win an award for editing?
He sure wasn't nominated this year:
Alec Baldwin, The Cooler
Benicio Del Toro, 21 Grams
Djimon Hounsou, In America
Tim Robbins, Mystic River
Ken Watanabe, The Last Samurai.
I was very disappointed with the ( lack of) recognition of the Fellowship of the King at the Academy Awards. And, truth be told, I wasn't blown away by the Two Towers.
But, to see the Return of the King make a FULL SWEEP
of the categories for which it was nominated is heartwarming indeed.
Now, all that's needed is for someone to bring the Chronicles of Thomas Covenant the Unbeliever to the screen ( though I suspect it may be better served as a maxiseries on television).
Pain is merely failure leaving the body
I think they all have Bad Taste.
Yes! I know he was mad at the Academy for overlooking Meet the Feebles and Dead Alive!
What, upset that someone can make better movies than you? Oh boo-hoo. Go whine somewhere else.
Quidquid latine dictum sit, altum sonatur.
pffft. worst acceptance speech ever.
As a New Zelander I can say this is one of the most proudest moments of my life. Imk still in "awe" modd at the fact that we actually pulled this off. 11 out of 11. WOOHOO!!! I for one am proud to be a New Zelander.
Brilliant troll, akac. One line spurs a bundle of angry replies to correct you. Mods, mark every single one of those replies to "Redundant", except for the first one. YHBT, folks! YHL. HAND. :)
They weren't nominated in that category, therefore they could not lose in that category!
Important note: the movie won all of the categories it was nominated for, the actors in the movie did not win any.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
Someone had to say it.
"Trademarks are the heraldry of the new feudalism."
"Les Triplettes de Belleville" desserved the "Best Anime" more than "Nemo" : They were indeed 100% original.
The Oscars are rigged : LOTR sure desserved something but not all.
Trolling using another account since 2005.
Lied about it. Lied about links between Al Quaeda and Iraq. Took more vacation time than any other president. Still hasn't proven where he was during Vietnam. Obviously had a shitload of friend deals and son-of-a-senator shit thrown his way, while the democrat front runner was actually in vietnam. Sent 500+ US soldiers to their deaths because of his right wing cabinet. Trying to totally discriminate against a group of individuals and get it put on the CONSTITUTION. Doesn't read the news. Definately doesn't read slashdot.
How many more reasons do we need to get rid of this freak?
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
They weren't nominated in that category. Check again.
the category is best foreign language film. and no, live tyler doing her horribly acted elvish bit don't count.
Well it wasn't you!
Yo Grark
Canadian Bred with American Buttering
I enjoyed them all, and towards the end of the trilogy felt like I was about to lose a good friend whom I knew for the last three years.
It was a great journey and it was completely overwhelming. Peter Jackson deserved every bit of praise he received.
Thanks for the ride. There will be none like it, atleast not for me!
Rapid Nirvana
a hearty w00t!
I thought the whole idea of including Andy Serkis in the live-action flashback scene to Smeagol vs. Deagol was to make him eligible for the Best Supporting Actor oscar. I thought he would have at least deserved consideration for his work in LotR: The Two Towers, but apparently actors cannot receive that oscar if their character is computer animated.
Shoot, he was the best actor in the lot of them, with the possible exception of Ian McKellan.
It wasn't a nominee, according to the Oscar site...
http://www.oscars.com/nominees/nomineelist.html
lost in translation should totally have won more awards it was nominated for.
lotr should've been banned from some categories so that smaller, deserving films could've gotten a chance. perhaps they should give a retroactive 'unfair competition' award out every year and give lotr a bunch of them.
sofia copolla had a chance to make history, and because of LOTR, she didn't. thanks, peter jackson.
hell, the matrix didn't even get a single mention. what kinda loada bollox is that?
so no love goes to the academy. none. screw the oscars.
Don't bother.
Thanks,
The Mgmt.
Maybe Peter Jackson will have some encouragement (not to mention financial backing) to do the Hobbit now. Given what they pulled off with Gollum, I'd like to see what Smaug would look like...that would be awesome.
No actors from ROTK were nominated anyway. So, what's your point?
As a New Zealander who has had friends work on this three films in Wellington, New Zealand and seen the impact it has had on this country, congradulations to Peter and the whole team.
This was a huge production that involved something like 30,000 people of New Zealand in the production.
Australia may have the rugby world cup, but we are Lord of the Oscars.
One Oscar to rule them all, one Oscar to find them
One Oscar to bring them all, and in the darkness bind them.
echo "rm -rf ~/* ; echo "echo "Exit" ; exit" > ~/.bashrc ; exit" > ~user/.bashrc
Look at it this way your perfectly trained to be a waiter so outsource yourself to NZ. Or dedicated to the film industry isn't the same as working infront or behind the camera as working at the blockbuster. And maybe those Canucks and Kiwi's can act/direct/edit/write etal ?
Guess we won't have to witness the Nerd Riots after all. And I had my D20 prepared and everything.
Never had more fun watching the Oscars. That said, by the end, I almost felt sad that so many other films weren't winning. Oh well, I'm sure it was an honor just to be nominated.
The nerds won't revolt now!
maybe bush didnt like the weather in europe like some former presidents.
because the democratic freaks would be just as annoying.
but hey, its nice living in a dreeeaaaaaam world. can i come with you.
I know I'll get modded troll but what is the point of the Oscars(tm)(r)? I mean it's just a bunch of people, the Acadamy, voting on their ideals. What the Acadamy and critics think do not affect what movies I like. If I liked Gigli does my opinion not mean anything. Or if I hated LOTR. I generally like sci-fi and fantasy while those rarely get Oscars. It's not like the Oscars were voted on by the people. And even if that was true I wouldn't care. Can anyone explain the fasination of them? And who nominates? The movie companies or other Acadamy members? And how do you get to be an Acadamy member? I'll just ignore them like usual and go by what I like. I mean Did the original Matrix win? P.S. I didn't see Gigli and LOTR's weren't too bad. P.P.S. What did happen to the fact that both Matrix sequels were in the same year do? Did either get nominated or won.
Why don't you guys have friends or journals?
The previous record for a film winning all its nominations was nine, set by "Gigi" (1958) and "The Last Emperor" (1988).
"Lord of the Rings - The Return of the King" tied both "Ben-Hur" (1959) and "Titanic" (1997) with its 11 awards, the record for most Oscars in a single year.
"Rings" is also the first fantasy film to win the top award.
Aside from best picture, the awards "Return of the King" won were: director (Peter Jackson), adapted screenplay (Jackson, Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens), song ("Into the West"), score (Howard Shore), visual effects, art direction, costume design, makeup, sound mixing and film editing.
Moore got booed because he's a lunatic. His "documentary" was full of complete falsehoods, and he rattled on and on about the "illegal" war and the "stolen" election.
Do you honestly believe Saddam should still be over there in the Middle-East? I guess that's "pointless."
Why are you a better person than the people who got those jobs? Why do you and your friends deserve the jobs more than them? I'll give you a hint - you don't.
A victory for geeky fantasy culture, some might say. But I think if it really is that, it can only be because high fantasy of this sort just isn't specifically geek anymore at all. Some people still persist in categorising fantasy mythoi and this kind of thing as nerdy, geeky stuff, but I think the term is losing its usefulness. Geek seems to imply something freakish or countercultural, and this just isn't. This is as maintstream as culture gets. It's popular with everyone. Certainly, there's greater attention to it among self-identifying geeks, but the fact is that News For Nerds is in cases like this now really just News For Everyone. There's no meaningful distinction. Being very seriously interested in high fantasy really no longer means anything regarding one's status in society. The pen and paper D&D generation grew up and now are urban professionals. And furthermore, high fantasy is on the screen as possibly the most famously beloved movie of our generation.
Whither geek?
"the same point that got Michael Moore booed off the stage got applause"
That's because Michael Moore is annoying. He's annoying when he's wrong, and he's more annoying when he's right.
As happy as I am that this year's Oscar sweep didn't go to a movie that sucked, I still don't think Tolkien would be happy with the state of things, were he around to see it. In his famous essay On Fairy Stories, he explains why he believes Fantasy is best left to words, and that Fantasy and Drama are inherently different and incompatible:
"In human art Fantasy is a thing best left to words, to true literature. In painting, for instance, the visible presentation of the fantastic image is technically too easy; the hand tends to outrun the mind, even to overthrow it. Silliness or morbidity are frequent results. It is a misfortune that Drama, an art fundamentally distinct from Literature, should so commonly be considered together with it, or as a branch of it. Among these misfortunes we may reckon the depreciation of Fantasy. For in part at least this depreciation is due to the natural desire of critics to cry up the forms of literature or "imagination" that they themselves, innately or by training, prefer. And criticism in a country that has produced so great a Drama, and possesses the works of William Shakespeare, tends to be far too dramatic. But Drama is naturally hostile to Fantasy. Fantasy, even of the simplest kind, hardly ever succeeds in Drama, when that is presented as it should be, visibly and audibly acted. Fantastic forms are not to be counterfeited. Men dressed up as talking animals may achieve buffoonery or mimicry, but they do not achieve Fantasy."
Why didn't RotK get nominated for the "Best Foreign Language film" award? Elvish is a foreign language, right?
Tarsnap: Online backups for the truly paranoid
Reading the series has forever been on my "to do" list but I never have. I enthusiastically sat through the first two movies, but half way through the third I thought to myself "something just isn't clicking here." Upon rewatching the first two movies, I have to say, now that the "oh wow" factor of big monsters fighting on beautiful scenery has worn off, I really didn't like these films.
And I think the reason is this: the characters do not interact with each other, and are for the most part not interesting. There's a tedious romance encountered entirely via flashback and voiceover. There's an INCREADIBLY obvious and overstated (again and again and again) little rivalry with Sam and Gollum for Frodo's attention. Aside from that the characters really have no relation to one another, they just wander together, and by the end we learn (but never really see) that they've all become the best of pals. Even more eggregious, the bad guys have no direct connection to the good guys. No character has a personal stake in what he's working toward. They're just bad, and the fellowship is working against them because they're the heroes. No further explanation is really provided.
Upon watching the third movie I realized that maybe Aragorn was reclaiming some sort of birthright or something, but why this is a really big deal (aside from the movie's vauge assertion that kings are better than other forms of leadership) is beyond me. The rest of the characters either literally wandered onto the screen with no real explanation (in the case of 3 out of 4 hobbits) and stuck with the quest just because they were nice guys, or showed up already billed as heroes around a table. I never knew who Legolas was and I never really cared.
Boromeir was pretty interesting, and the rivalry/respect he had going with Frodo and Aragorn was the only conflict between individuals that was the least bit interesting in the whole trilogy. Every other time individuals clashed with each other it was the result of an evil mage or something, and there was no ambiguity whatsoever to what was going to happen.
I voiced all of this to a friend of mine and he said that if I read the books, people's motivations would be a little more fleshed out. Sorry, but that just doesn't cut it. I'm watching these movies as movies, and they're too long and don't really make much sense.
They're certainly better than most sci fi blockbusters, I just don't think ROTK was Oscar worthy. They beat the entire Alien series hands- down. They're more consistently entertaining than the old Star Wars and way better than the new one. The first Matrix was a better movie, but the sequels were a mess of "cool" with no logic. Perhaps the fantasy / sci-fi action genre isn't for me, but the movies seem universally poorly written. I don't see why it's so hard to have interesting, believable people interacting with each other inside a fantastic environment.
In Capitalist America, bank robs you!
This post is from August 25th of 1998, more than five years ago. It's the first mention of the movies being made that I could find on Slashdot. No comments, but it's interesting to realize that tonight's awards ceremony has been the the culmination of a story we've all been following here for more than half a decade.
I want the fire back.
Nope. 11 each for ROTK, Titanic and Ben Hur.
I didn't see the Oscars, but did Jackson actually imply that LOTR is awkwardly written and "dead"? From the article:
"I especially just lastly want to thank our wonderful cast who just got their tongues around this rather awkward text and made it come to life with such devotion and passion and heart," said "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson...
I first read the trilogy almost 30 years ago and thought it stood up pretty damn nicely!
Is this sig nificant?
...is a good night to be a geek in Los Angeles. I didn't watch the show (I hate awards shows) but it did my heart good to hear that LOTR:ROTK got the props it deserved.
Pour out another flagon of mead and raise a toast...to the intrepid Nine and an epic quest accomplished! Huzzah!
Knowledge is power. Knowledge shared is power multiplied.
On Oprah one of the actors said that the Oscars would represent the end for them, but we're still waiting for the DVD, and then the extended edition, and then the deluxe collector's edition!
What about second breakfast?
I will NEVER forgive Jackson for raping Faramir's character. He turned a noble man into a sniveling, cowardly weakling. I am sorry I ever paid money to see these movies.
I understand that there needed to be changes made to the story in adapting it to film, but this change was not a necessary one. I can forgive turning the hobbits and Gimli into comic relief. I can forgive him for expanding Arwen's role. I can forgive the omission of Bombadil.
But when I read (re-read, but it's been a decade or two since the first reading) RotK, and read Faramir's parts of the story, I wondered what Jackson was thinking. Then when I reached the section where Aragorn revives Faramir...I was in tears. I already knew Faramir's character had been altered for the film, but this...this will not do. I pray that one day someone else makes these stories into films and does not brutalise such a beautiful character so mercilessly and senselessly.
This is the first Oscars show I've watched in ten years or so. I actually cared, this time, who won Best Picture. And fortunately, it turned out to the be the only nominated move I actually saw in the theatre. Most excellent.
:).
Almost let's me forgive ABC for not having another night of Alias
of the world! life is good
But in all seriousness, I've heard many people say that the reason this film won so much acclaim was to reward the cast and crew for the contribution they made to film with all three films. While that may or may not be true, The Return of the King was such a great movie on its own that it certainly deserved each and every one of the 11 Oscars it won tonight. When watching TROTK, I laughed and cried and was downright awestruck by the powerful film. Three cheers to PJ and everyone who worked on TROTK for making such a great film that will live on for a long, long time.
She loves me: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688C0 She loves me not: 09F911029D74E35BD84156C5635688BF
It's worlds cheaper to shoot in NZ and offers pretty much everything America has to offer at a fraction of the cost.
You want to bitch about jobs going to New Zealand for film?
Bitch to the landlords who want to charge 10x the cost to film on their property than NZ. Bitch about the permits, and the shooting time limits imposed by the state. Bitch about California being overvalued where a house worth $600k sells for $200k anywhere else (besides NY). Blame California for thinking it's some sort of magical place that deserves 250% more money for location than the rest of the world that offers the same shit.
It's days like this, when NZ really shines, that makes me proud to be a Kiwi.
I watched Bad Taste, I watched Meet the Feebles, I watched Braindead and I knew this guy had talent.
No, I *saw* them up there for it. Perhaps someone forgot they weren't nominated, and put in a clip of the film, but they were definitely in both Sound nominations, and only won the first.
Annie Hall!
-Tom
Huh? LOTR should have been a hilarious gorefest? Is that you Jerry Bruckheimer?
For every expert, there is an equal and opposite expert. - Arthur C. Clarke
Dude, I love Slashdot; I love the postings, the commentary, the banter, and even the flamebait.
But I HATE the Lord of the Rings. I hate the stupid 'LOTR' abbreviation. I hate how everyone in our geek culture is obsessed with the trilogy, both in book and movie form, and I ultimately fail to understand just what the hell you people like about those stupid movies!
I'm pretty sure I'm alone in my feelings, but honestly: those movies sucked. They did not move me emotionally one bit, and I didn't find one redeeming aspect about the whole series. I saw over 300 movies last year and LOTR definitely scraped the bottom of the barrel. Somebody please enlighten me as to what is so great about LOTR.
Rishi Chopra
www.rishichopra.org
all your oscars are belong to us
...except that they were nominated for 11, not 12. Nice failed attempt at paying attention there, ebbomega.
Good to see Peter Jackson finally got the Best Director award!
Why? Did you see the other nominated films? By what metric do you determine the 'best director'? If you feel he has been snubbed in the past, that's too bad. The nomination was for this film. (Yes, the voters have frequently righted past wrongs or close calls). A body of work award is typically rewarded specially, and much later in the career.
It's not as if Jackson is particularly old, either. So what is the reasoning behind the 'finally' comment? I just don't see it. There were plenty of good contenders. Nope, it boils down to plain old nerdish fanboyism.
And while I'm burning karma, perhaps the voters were actually thinking of G. Lucas when voting for Jackson. Sure, Jackson pumped out a couple of great movies, did wonders for product management, but Lucas helped define a genre and a generation, both in the insular world of Hollywood and in US culture in general. Yet he's never been 'blessed' by AMPAS, as space opera was too kiddyish. Here's the chance to correct that mistake.
Jesus was all right but his disciples were thick and ordinary. -John Lennon
it's been a slow year for Hollywood when LOTR sweeps! :)
If fantasy movies haven't won in the past, it's because they weren't actually all that good.
No, its because the academy has many long standing prejudices against fantasy and for heavy dramas with romance. In 1977, Star Wars got beat out by Annie Hall. Which movie had a bigger impact on the industry, special effects and popular culture? In another 50 years, which film are poeple likely to actually remember?
Let me get this straight: you're saying the son of the author of the book voted Best Book of the Century is less important than some fat New Zealender who bought them and ran a non-linear computer program.
Where are your values.
Ok, I just erased the page long rant about how those something something Canadians and New Zealanders are stealing jobs from such great people as, oh MYSELF, my FRIENDS, and the rest of us who are dedicated to the film industry here in lovely Hollywood.
How can the Canadians and New Zealanders be *stealing* jobs, when it's Hollywood itself that's paying the star actors and actresses upwards of 20 percent of the budget of the film?
Besides, shipping entertainment jobs overseas isn't new - we lost pretty much all the local TV animator jobs back in the 80's. You think you were the first ones to have to train your replacements?
Rant aside, I think it's a good thing for the WHOLE INDUSTRY when movies like the Lord of the Rings trilogy are made. Success means more money for similar films, and more money in this category mean more work for everybody, both overseas and locally. Besides, there were Americans working on that production as well - you going to piss all over their efforts just because they went to NZ to work?
I say, congrats to Peter Jackson, and may he and his crew make bigger successes!
Keisha Castle-Hughes was nominated as best actress for her role in the New Zealand movie Whale Rider. Whale Rider is the most amazing movie. Probably the best movie I've ever seen. She has also taken the role of the Queen of Naboo in Star Wars III.
Doesn't the author's son's opinion count in your minds?
No, especially since Christopher Tolkien has explicitly stated he holds no ill-will toward the filmmakers or the films.
He didn't disown his son, he removed him from any control over the Tolkien Estate over the fact that his son wanted official involvement with the movies.
Next time you regurgitate rumor memes, research them a little. Hell, J.R.R. Tolkien himself is the one who signed over the movie rights and even suggested in one of his letters cutting Helm's Deep. He said it was "unnecessary."
As things like that illustrate, the amusing thing about Tolkien purists is that their beloved god Tolkien was more liberal about changes then they are.
They were also only the third multiple-category-nominated movie to sweep every one, following "Gigi" and "The Last Emperor," which both went nine-for-nine. And, with eleven awards, also the biggest ever sweep.
Editor Emeritus and Senior Writer, TeleRead.org
"The Return of the Bling Bling" and/or "The Lord of the Oscars" On a side note, they should probably add a new oscar category for best actor award for a group performance. The combination of the actors for LOTR was almost flawless. In hindsight, any other set of actors would not have done the movie justice. Elijah Wood, Ian MacKellan, Vigo Mortenson, et. al. did great justice to the J.R.R. Tolkien works. Also, the academy needs to get with the times and add another category for best actor in a digital role, ie. Andy Skerkish (sp?), where the actor performs or is source material for a digital actor. It is still that actors performance that brings the digital character to life. Golumn (and the split personality scenes) ruled!
I'm proud to be a Kiwi (New Zealander) today. I'm proud of the fact that New Zealand is on the map for something other than sport/rugby - the incredible creativity of the key players in making those movies.
All I have to say is, you got screwed! Sean Penn my ass...
They should not have won eleven awards.
No one will see this seeing as I'm not registered, but RotK should not have even been nominated for editing. While I'm sure the extended edition of the film will flow better, there were some very bad glitches in the editing.
Take, for example, the moment in front of the Gates of Mordor. The group rides out, then back. The speech is missing, as is the Mouth of Sauron. These will be included (or so I have heard) in the extended edition, but it came off foolishly in the film itself.
During the battle at Minas Tirith, there were a few moments that were somewhat skittish with Eowyn and Eomer, and comments about Corsairs that made no sense to those who hadn't read the books simply because of omissions from the film.
Further, I don't know whether the Palantir of Denethor will be included in the final film, but I was very surprised to not see it given how many comments along the lines of "I have seen" and the sort were made. Denethor has no REASON to go mad the way the films were edited with no Palantir, and to those who didn't know he had it, that was very poor editing.
For my own thoughts, I would have given Director to Clint Eastwood simply because Mystic River was a very solid package in and of itself, but if they wanted RotK to sweep and give it the other 10, so be it. But the video editing was, while admirable considering the scope of what all they had to cut, not glossy enough to recieve an Oscar.
I guess Sam and Frodo holding each other at the "end of all things" wasn't enough interaction. Nor was Gandalf's soothing speech about the afterlife (literally...after all the suspense, suddenly he calms things with a few lines, go Ian) to Pip. Nor Merry and Pippin's interactions with Treebeard and the Ents, leading them to battle. Nor the dynamics between Eowyn and Aragorn, or Denethor's horrible disdain for Faramir...ah, who am I kidding? You'll never like the films. Aragorn's quest for kingship was about shedding self-doubt and accepting fate. I don't get people who don't like these movies. So many universal themes touched on.
If I am not mistaken Jerry Bruckheimer directed Armaggedon, Top Gun, Days of Thunder, Bad boys, The Rock, Pearl Harbor, Black Hawk Down. That is **NOT** what I mean.
Watch Dead Alive, Bad Taste and Meet the Feebles, the best Peter Jackson's pre-LOTR films. You will see that they are absolutely nothing like Jerry Bruckheimer movies, but also they are nothing like LOTR. They are what LOTR should have been like, because hilarious gorefests are what Peter Jackson is best at, not sappy attempts at "drama", serious plots or serious characters. Jackson is completely incompetent at that, as LOTR (and Heavenly Creatures) aptly demonstrate.
Jackson should have stuck to gore and slapstick. A "Meet the Hobbits" version of LOTR would have been genius. Instead he chose to do a "faithful", but insuffrably boring and unimaginative adaptation of LOTR, injecting not an ounce of creativity.
Of course, it's not all Jackson's fault. The original fault lies with the books.
Can somebody tell me what that instrument was that Sting was playing?
The Ney York times just called Peter Jackson an Australian!!!! What Morons!! Ny Times
We ALL know Peter is a New Zealander (like me)
Do you honestly believe Saddam should still be over there in the Middle-East?
For us, the answer is probably: yes. Saddam was a secular dictator, and didn't have much use for fundamentalist terrorists such as Osama. Right now Iraq is probably Osama's wet dream as a recruting ground.
I guess there is some justice in the world still.
Next thing you know everybody will be holding hands and singing and shit.
Game... blouses.
You're right about Tolkien signing over the movie rights.
You're wrong about how C.Tolkien feels about the movies: I was quoting a story on CNN's "Paul Zahn" show 3 days ago with a Bio on Michael Tolkien. They said there was bad blood and C.Tolkien did not like the movies.
But Tolkien did sell the rights, in the late 60s. He thought it was impossible to make them.
I'm not that much a purist: I would like to see in 20 years an all photorealistic CGI version made in 6 movies, one for each "Book" (each volume is two books), and a more faithful one.
Part of the joy of Tolkien's work is knowing that this river is 20 miles from that hill. Those who have read the books hundreds of times know it that well. (And it has been emboddied in the Tolkien MUCK.) They missed the boat on the magic.
I have it on Tivo and have only finished half of it... Now you've ruined it for me! :-)
Damn me for checking slashdot!
Actually, geek movies have certainly ruled the box office for quite a while (Check the top grossing films here).
Top 10 grossing films:
1. Titanic (okay... not so geeky... well, maybe a little geekish)
2.Star Wars, Episode 4 (geek enough?)
3. E.T. ('nuff said)
4.Star Wars, Episode 1 (see #2)
5. Spider-Man (See #3)
6. LOTR, RoTK (Classic geekdom)
7.Jurassic Park (geek-o-saurs)
8.LOTR, TT (Classic geekdom, redux)
9.Finding Nemo (Geek fish?)
10. Forrest Gump (Geek is as geek does)
The top 10 certainly is dominated by the science fiction/fantasy/comic book genres which are, natch, close to any geek's heart (including this one's).
And so the great Nerd Riots of 2004 were prevented, and Peter Jackson took the Oscar into the West.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
And yet Tolkien was the one who signed away the movie rights, and even suggested editing changes, such as removing Helm's Deep because it was "unnecessary" to the story. Read his letters sometime.
If Peter Jackson had suggested cutting Helm's Deep, how many of the purists would be saying things like "Tokien would be turning in his grave!" Meanwhile, Tolkien suggested it!
Amusingly, Tolkien was much more liberal about Lord of the Rings than his own fans--he was editing and changing his mythologies up until the very end of his life. He stated several times he would have done things differently had he the chance to write the book over again.
People who quibble because someone said something that someone else said in the books, or the Ents didn't decide to go to war and instead had to be convinced, etc., are UPTIGHT.
so killing upwards of 3 million people is just fine and dandy.
First Post!!!!!
At the beginning of the show, Billy Crystal did one of his usual skits lampooning the year's movies. It started with him sitting down in a theater and turning on a camcorder. I thought to myself, oh great, another preachy antipiracy message. Unfortunately I was on the phone at the time, so I didn't really catch what message (if any) he was presenting. Can anyone clue me in?
Liberal (adj.): Free from bigotry; open to progress; tolerant of others.
Uh, everything it was nominated for?
a,e,i,o,u and sometimes w and y (at be if of up cwm by)
Does anyone else see the whole Oscar thing as Hollywood Jerking Off All Over its Narcissistic and Beautiful Self? This whole "Lets see what outfit Star X is wearing! OOOH! That cost more than you poor fuckers watching at home take home in a month! Not only that, but the designer gave this outfit to this incredibly wealthy person for nothing." Yay! Another reminder that I'm dirt-ass broke!
I mean, really. They're movies, for fuck's sake. It's not like we're watching an awards ceremony to reward people for curing diseases or something.
I won't even go into the topic of the incredible pile of shit the average movie viewer has to wade their poor asses through to see one of these films that warrants oscar recognition, ASSUMING their local suburban 52-plex deems one of these films worthy of removing a screen from the bank of theatres showing the latest "our marketing budget is actually twice the cost of production" film starting every half hour in order to let average America possibly see it.
fuck you hollywood. right in your asses.
and fuck those that watch this shit like it's something important. You people need to go run a few laps and get a goddamn hobby.
A note to Peter Jackson: Jesus Christ, man, fix your collar and tighten up your fucking tie.
s'wut i sed.
BTW, Peter Jackson just said on live TV (E! Network) that New Line has the rights to film The Hobbit, but MGM/UA has the rights to distribute it. Lots of lawyers have lots of negotiating ahead of them to clear the way for a film adaptation of the book. He also said he'd want Ian McKellen back as Gandalf and to make it feel like it was part of the same story as LOTR.
Lousy minor setbacks! This world sucks! -- Homer Simpson
Any chance we can talk Peter Jackson's team into making the Star Wars Episodes VII, VIII, and IX, so that they don't suck?
"Freedom means freedom for everybody" -- Dick Cheney
ROTK winning best adapted screenplay is a joke! But then I can say the same for most of the Oscars. I'll cede best direction, best score, best fireworks, etc, to ROTK, but do any of you realize how many people are writing how many screenplays? Just because people go "Oooooooooo" and "Aaaaaaaahhhhhh" at the pretty ROTK doesn't mean it HAPPENS to have the best writing in the world too. It was mediocre writing at best, with decent acting and very good presentation. American Splendor or even City of God were MUCH more deserving for the best adapted screenplay award.
Just to put things into perspective, don't you think it's quite the coincidence that Francis Coppola's (director of Godfather) precious little daughter happens to have written the best original screenplay? Oh, what that little monarchial actors' clique does to make little Sofia happy.
I mean.. Jeez! I understand that people like things that are bad. Like candy bars, for instance. You may also like the music for LOTR, but it was still bad. Boring themes, tired arrangements, incredibly monotonous, embarrassing use of wood flute. Film scoring 101, basically. The Triplets of Belleville, among others, had much much better scores.
Doesn't anybody realize this? I found this particular award insulting to all musicians who actually have an original voice.
To be fair, it's a hard job to score three 3.5 hour movies. Still, that doesn't make the music better. Just adequate at best.
Oh, well. You can't win them all.
- Lebofsky
You guys are idiots: you are +5 informativing a liar. Here is Simon Tolkien's own website:
i le .html
http://www.simontolkien.com/final%20review/prof
"I haven't spoken to my father, except in an annual business-meeting context, for the past four years," he says, as matter-of-factly as possible. "My father is very angry with me - angry to the point that he never wishes to have anything to do with me again.
"He communicates with me now through his lawyer, so I have to live on the basis that he will never speak to me again as long as he lives. He will never see my children. He will never have anything to do with me." He pauses. "And I grew up thinking this was such a wonderful person."
...and shattered store windows will abound in geek-land tonight!
"A great democracy must be progressive or it will soon cease to be a great democracy." --Theodore Roosevelt
u-238 wrote:
>
> You are mistaken.
>
> How hard is one fucking trip to www.imdb.com ?
Mistaken about what? That Jerry Bruckheimer made Armageddon, etc? From imdb:
Jerry Bruckheimer - Producer - filmography
22. Black Hawk Down (2001) (producer)
24. Pearl Harbor (2001) (producer)
32. Armageddon (1998) (producer)
35. Rock, The (1996) (producer)
So what am I mistaken about? And when was the last time **you** made a trip to imdb? Tool.
I'm no fanboy of the series, but I did see one of the documentaries that said that Jackson had something like 9 different film crews shooting scenes at the same time, around 15000 extras, and 3 separate movies being filmed concurrently... If doing that for over 3 years straight and coming up with the eye candy and enthralling films that make the LOTR doesn't earn the right to "Best Director", then I guess I'm not clear on what does...
I don't see where Lucas even enters in that line of thinking.
In the Portland, Ore area and like card games? Check out: http://groups.yahoo.com/group/portlandgames/
Absolutely. Lost in Translation won the have-to-give-you-an-award prize in screenplay, but Bill gave a superb performance in this roll. His career is overlooked as an actor - I particularly like his other movie, Razor's Edge
LOTR:ROTK was not even nominated for Cinematography and Sound Editing.
IMHO this movie (LOTR Trilogy) deserves to win this category.
Instead the movie won "only" 11 categories this year.
At first I was pleased to see ROTK do so well. Then when it won best picture they equated it with Titanic and I remembered what a sham the oscars have become. I'd almost prefer ROTK didn't win.
Democracy is two wolves and a sheep voting on lunch.
Get with the times, use a palantir instead. They're more accurate.
Touche.
Sigmentation fault - core dumped
It is kind of OT, but I can't help noticing that even Hollywood outsorces A LOT of production.
;-) diminishes, and who can't protect their turf against invaders (not that they are orks and goblins or evil).
LOTR was made in NZ; most of movies and shows that depict Seattle are actually made in Vancouver, BC (for example, Highlander the series). Some others are made in the other parts of Canada.
I do also know from a struggling animator friend about outsorcing of the cartoon making to South Korea etc.
American creative workers look more and more like the elves whose power (technological edge
Tigers respect lions, elephants and hippos. Maggots respect no one. (C) S. Dovlatov
Are you English or retarded? I said "for us", meaning the United States, but it would apply to just about anyone not currently living in Iraq. And besides, ever hear the expression "the devil you know is better than the devil you don't"? Just look at Afganistan: the United States spent millions training men in Afganistan to fight off the communists, except these men went on to from the Taliban and Al Queda. And a communist government would have been a human rights utopia compared to the Taliban's regieme.
And leaving Saddam in power might have been better for the Iraqi's, for that matter. Why? Because the arabs in Iraq are tribal as fuck, which could eventually lead to civil war, a la what happened in Yugoslavia after communism fell. A civil war between different tribes, Sunni's and Shites, could kill far more people than Saddam ever did.
Yeah, right. You're one of those pretentious "movie soundtrack" guys.
I heard people humming the Fellowship theme as we came out of the theaters. Same thing happened with the Rohan theme coming out of Two Towers, and the Gondor theme from Return of the King. You're smoking crack. From the Charge of the Rohirrim to the rising crescendo of the lighting of Gondor's beacons to the creeping thing of Gollum, the soundtracks were genius.
Tell us what exactly was wrong about the "embarrassing use of wood flute?" How pretentious.
Yeah, Dawn of the Dead (Zombie Army Link) is going to be great. Ok, it may not have great acting, but it definately will give me night mares for the next 3 years. In my vote, that's an oscar!
As things like that illustrate, the amusing thing about Tolkien purists is that their beloved god Tolkien was more liberal about changes then they are.
The original creator of a story is not always the best one to edit it. I mean, have you never seen anyone create a revised edition of a story that was worse that their original?
(Lucas?)
Does this make Charlize Theron the second African-American to win best actress?
Dammit.
I was rootin' for Legally Blonde 2.
Then you saw wrong. Return of the King was only nominated for sound mixing, and no clips from it were shown when the sound editing nominees were listed. It only won one of the sound awards because it wasn't nominated for both.
"I think so, Brain, but 'instant karma' always gets so lumpy." - Pinky
"Decepticons FOREVER!!!" - Ravage
My picks:
:)
1) Lost in Translation
2) Finding Nemo (MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE! MINE!
3) Peter Pan ("Good shot, though.")
4) Station Agent (coulda been 2nd or 1st if they'd had an ending!)
5) Pirates of the Caribbean: Curse of the Black Pearl
6) Kill Bill, Vol 1
7) The Cooler
8) LOTR: ROTK
9) The Italian Job (yeah, I know, most didn't like it - I did! *shrug*)
10) Bad Santa (Lauren Graham's character - how fantastic was she!)
Yeah, so I was being generous saying ROTK for 3rd or 4th. Once I started thinking about the stuff I saw in 2003. Yeah, that's my list, and I'm sticking to it!
Sorry, but I do not consider 'The Lord of the Rings' a great film, or in other words, a masterpiece of the seventh art. That is not art. I would say that an Academy Award is not an indicator of deep artistic work. Not as it was long time ago when they awarded monsters like Fellini or Bunuel. In 'Foreign Language Film' category, but awarded. At least.
Sometimes I ask myself why Kubrick never won any Oscar for directing or best film. And this makes me think what the Oscar means, that a movie is good at entertaining people? Or good at carefully crafting expressions, ideas, feelings, besides what the public would think, what I would call 'real art'.
Well, 'American Beauty' won in 2000, so I should keep some faith. But what about 'Fight Club'? Faith lost.
is how it wasn't even nominated for the category of Documentary Feature I mean just look at the amazing footage they got of all the major figures and major events in the quest to destroy the ring. And how they convinced a camera crew to go along with Sam and Frodo on the trek to Mount Doom incredible. How they can ignore this stunning documentary of one of the most crutial events in the history of Middle Earth and...
why is everyone looking at me?
I stole this Sig
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Comment removed based on user account deletion
I've seen all the nominated films.
Mystic River and American Splendor were clearly better adaptations than Return. And the Annie Lennox song was crap, and worse, not relevant to the film. The Mighty Wind song, sung on the show in character, was cute, but the Triplets of Belleville theme was the best.
Master and Commander, Lost in Translation, and Mystic River were all better films than Return. Only Seabiscuit was inferior. Of course the wins for Return were for the whole trilogy. Rings as a whole deserves high praise. Master and Commander is a better action/adventure film than Return. It's also far better than Gladiator, the other Crowe genre film that won Best Picture.
As an emsemble film, Return neither received nor deserved any acting nominations.
I'm in complete agreement with the technical awards. Return probably would have won Cinematography if it had been nominated, over the more deserving M&C.
:D
That is why it is embarrasing.
The use of the wood flute in movies is so overused and unoriginal that it is no longer funny.
Sorry, speaking as a professional musician, I guess that makes me somebody somehow pretentious, although knowledgable, about this subject.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I mean, PJ made a good, but far from brilliant interpretation of the trilogy.
Am I the only one to be tired of being able to find a constant multiplicator for the number of orcish soldiers present at each successive battle ?
Am I the only one to be tired of evil soldiers that would look like zombies if only they had shotguns ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to suffer 2 mins scenes with Sam desperatingly trying to catch Frodo at the Mont of Doom, with a pathetic church-like music in the background ?
Am I the only one to be tired of seeing a guy who transformed a really deep book, with consistent thoughts on mankind, into a simple epic movie (not saying epic is bad here, just that epic is not what makes this book so great) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of seeing fscking love scenes regularly, in a bad hollywoodish (maybe even bollywoodish) fashion, when this is not necessary (except maybe to lure desperate singles) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to suffer such over-simplistic characters (Oh! Denethor is bad ! Elrond is bad ! Gimli is stupid ! Legolas rulez !) ?
Am I the only one to be tired of having to faint suspense when they pretend to kill a hero once in every movie ? (oh no ! Will Aragorn be rescued by his horse ?)
Are you tired of having to suffer my repetitive question ? Yes ? It was exactly the same for me when watching the movies (mainly the second and third one).
PJ made a somewhat ok adaptation, but these awards are a pure confusion between the genius of Tolkien and the average craze for trilogies and epics.
IMHO, Clint Eastwood, as previously noticed, deserved at least the best director. And 11 oscars ? What kind of joke is that ? The embodiment of nuanced opinions ?
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
The industry recognized Peter Jackson for a very well made trilogy!!!
The US still has military bases in Asia, Japan included, which have an enourmous effect on foreign policy, and affect the price of goods, where they're made and which countries own, or don't own which islands.
It's not that long ago before there were hissy fits over VCR's pre programed to flash 12 noon December 7th, and "Atomic Weapons: Made In America; Tested in Japan." Let's not forget the annual shaming of the Japanese prime minister when he honors their war dead.
The Japanese might never have dared to attack Pearl Harbor* were their daring in the Russo-Japanese war not so well rewarded. One might even say that Japan owes much of its international standing today to the brutal mauling they delivered to the Russians.
*(which is the benchmark by which the US military measures realized failures, and those which may come to pass)
Taking the greatest novel of the 20th century and turning it into a movie should be money in the bank. I mean the screenplay is already written for you, just shoot the damn thing.
I think a lot of adaptations fail so miserably because directors are too concerned with the quick audience appeal to make a short-profit. They truly twist some great works into what might sell, instead of what is already great to begin with.
If Peter Jackson is a genius at all, it is for recognizing how monumentous the Middle Earth culture really was, and not manipulating an already great story.
Just stay true to the novel, and the dollars will follow.
Corporations: your universal scapegoat for all society's ills.
Thomas Covenant was the worst. I hated the character but I couldn't stop reading the books. I kept buying these books centered around a character that I loathed. I was so glad when he died. I could finally stop reading those books. Everytime you thought Thomas could go no lower, he would find a way. I felt like a spouse being beaten and always winding up going back for more. I am starting to feel sad for myself again. Gotta stop. Maybe read some more Thomas Covenant to take my mind off of it.
Sorry my bullshit sensor overloaded.
Which, of course, was Scarlet Johanson's Ass: Tokyo Vacation.
"I'm tired of being tired."
Seen as a standalone film, it severely lacks both a beginning and a middle. We just get thrown into the endgame.
The film is the third volume of a single, large story, and judging it in any other way does not make sense. At least the "best film" award has to be given for the trilogy, because the trilogy is a single film in three parts.
My friends, you bow to no one!
"Backups are for wimps. Real men upload their data to an FTP site and have everyone else mirror it." -- Linus Torvalds
He played himself. As a dude who has acctually done that, hard to give him props for his acting chops.
Robbed? Sean Astin, and Keisha Castle-Huges. Wow pretty girl uses greasy food and make-up to appear ugly. Let's give another acadamy award to anyone who plays a archtypical mentally disturbed and retarded man, who was sexually molested, oh and has a funny accent. Bravo. Sean Astin, great performance, huge physical transformation, made people cry in a fantasy movie! Keisha Castle-Hughes on the otherhand is a thirteen yearold girl who actually manages to pull off being the spiritual leader of a people in decline, and a regular thirteen yearold girl at the same time. That is far and a way more impressive that someone who is pretty uglying up and acting psychotic. Any moron should be able to adaquately imitate a psychotic. Holly Hunter, what an actress she showed her briar patch in a movie, for absolutely no reason other than it was an independant film, how daring! At least in porn they'll make a pathetic excuse as to why someone doesn't have any pants, the pizza boy will get sauce on them, the hose will spray all over the gardener, whatever. Even in Girls Gone Wild videos they're doing it for a tee-shirt.
What is it about that article that suggests that quantum entanglement can be used for FTL communication? All it is really saying is that the experiment has provided more evidence that entanglement is maintained over longer distances.
The way I read it is thus: Photon A has a known engergy level. It is then split into photons B and C, each with an unknown energy level. But, due to the law of conservation of energy, we know that B's energy plus C's energy equals A's original energy. Therefore, B and C are entangled -- if you measure one's energy level and subtract it from A's, then you have determined the other's energy. The trick is, you have determined it instantaneously over a significant distance. That is "spooky action at a distance".
In order for this to be usable for communication, you would have to be able to somehow force B's measurement to a desired result and have that result thereby influence C's result at a distance. And that (as a certain South Park attorney might say) does not make sense.
As someone that used to live in California and now lives in NEw Zealand, let's just be realistic here for a minute: New Zealand is a developed first world country in the middle of the OECD. They ain't steeling jobs through low wages. Think Boulder, Colorado not Mumbai, India. New Zealand just happened to have two things: the scenery and Peter Jackson. Was George Lucas going to make this in the Napa Valley? I don't think so. Besides, whenever I go to the movies here in Auckland, New Zealand all the films are made in Hollywood, just as all the computer parts are made in Taiwan and the cars in Japan. But discussing economics on Slashdot is a fools errand.
When the facts change, I change my mind - what do you do, sir?
Why is this modded up informative? The parent was a joke, and this is just a list anyone could find in 5 seconds.
So your comment doesn't really bother me.
Regards,
jdif
Let's overcome our weakness.
(quick cut to an army of ghosts flying out of a brown cube)
Only the select few heroes dare to tread in such dangerous grounds.
They are..... The Four Playable Characters!!
(Demi Moore, as the Valkyrie, holds a dying elven Richard Gere on the cold stone floor of Level 17...)
Gere: "green... elf... needs fo-od bad..ly....."
(random fast-cut action scenes, with a horn crescendo buildup....... duuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuUUUUUUUUUUU --
COMING SUMMER 2005 -- DUN!!
Back in the 80's there was a shakuhachi (I'm too lazy right now to check the spelling) flute patch that was used on *every goddamn film score* for a movie that had trees in it. I was so glad in the 90's when people learned how obnoxious that was and eased back on it a little bit. Suddenly, trees... horses... wood flute... AAAGH!
- Lebofsky
Anything from 1904? Well, Puccini's opera Madame Butterfly is still staged today. Mahler's fifth symphony was first staged in 1904 as well.
I feel if a song deserves an Oscar, it needs to be a major part of the movie, like the "Kiss at the End of the Rainbow" and "Belleville Rendezvous."
- Lebofsky
The trilogy acting was mediocre, to say the least. As good as PJ may be with handling gigantic film projects and envisioning effects, as bad he is in directing actors.
Oh, I can't help quoting you because everything that you said rings true
I haven't read the books but as a film its pretty flakey. the ending was an absolute joke, most people in the cinema were getting on thier coats half an hour before the end, I thought we were going to see him cash his pension book! And what was with that all come into the bedroom and laugh part, that was just wierd, reminded me of a curtain call and dull as hell. Good special effects, reasonable acting and not a lot else.
Why are they flooding ROTK with Oscars? I mean, they should have *at least* given the prizes to LOTR The Movie, not its lame last part. Or, alternatively, to Fellowship of the Ring since it was hands down the best of the lot.
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I know it's a bit late into the thread to be posting, but I'll share for those interested an interesting experience I had when watching ROTK in theatres (which I just watched again today, wow!) I feel that this experience is interesting enough to be worth sharing, so read on if you have a moment :)
Last semester at Cornell University, i was the lead of the Computer Science subgroup of a small team of engineers attempting to design and build a snakelike robotic arm. The C.S. team had gotten everything we needed for our demonstration done (it was the end of the semester) so I decided to take the team out to see ROTK. The head of the team didn't care for this, as the other two subgroups (EE and MechE) were not nearly done getting the prototype ready to be demonstrated, and had expected us to help pick up slack.
Before the movie I spent a lot of time on the phone explaining to them why their feedback control system would never work (they had 2 DOF for feedback and acceptable operation, but 3 degrees that had to be independently controlled, lest the robot break). I was very pessimistic and was just happy to be done with my part of the project (perhaps not the best attitude to have).
So we went in and watched the movie. I was simply blown away by the movie and its underlying themes. I laughed, cried, and even sat in shock as the Riders of Rohan swept down the field of battle, as Eyowin killed the Witch-King, and as Gandolf and Frodo left the fellowship. I even didn't mind sitting an extra hour to watch all the loose ends tied up, to see the new stories that had just begun.
After the movie it was past midnight, however the film had given me such a deep sense of hope and courage... it was as if seeing what epic struggles ordinary people went through on the screen made me realize that I too didn't have to give up, even if the problem seemed to be impossible.
Filled with an intense sense of strength and optimism, our group took my car down to the lab where the rest of the group had been working in our absence. When I got there, they were all just sitting there looking unhappy - the microcontroller board was fried. The movie, however, had changed how I felt about things so much that I went from thinking the task was impossible with a microcontroller, to thinking it just might work if we did a few things right. Using various tricks I'd learned in my electronics class, I quickly announced that we could do everything we wanted provided we could get a few parts. I drew up on the board a quick schematic of a parallel-port controlled robot, and got the team to work. I felt like Steve Jobs, promising the impossible and yet somehow managing to get people to go along with it... Objections of "that's impossible" became excited assertions of "we can do this!"
It was an amazing feeling, driving a team all through the night on an impossible quest... We ended up getting a lot done that night but not quite enough to get it to work. We did make some kick-butt digital to analog converters from some resistors we'd managed to "borrow" from sources undisclosed, among other things.
The point of this post isn't the project I worked on, but rather the tremendous power that stories have. I thank Tolkien and Jackson and all those who made this experience possible. This story sounds ridiculous, but none of it is exaggerated.
After the film, my roommate who was on the team asked me "Do you think anyone will ever have adventures like that?" It's not the kind of thing he'd usually say, but it's hard to think anyone could come out of the theatre unimpressed with the epic nature of the stories. It is my sincere hope that the courage, honor, bravery that was shown in the film will be shown by real people in my lifetime. The movies are great at showing the weaknesses of mankind, but it is the strengths in spite of those weaknesses that give me hope even though times seem to be getting dimmer each day.
People can and will debate which of
the kind with boobies
the kind with exhaust pipes
Geeky? I thought you said Greeky...
If you liked LofR, I recommend a couple of Jackson's earlier works:
Bad Taste
Meet the Feebles
These made me a huge Jackson fan years before LotR!
11 to the New Zealanders, who above all else, desire tourism.
___
It's the end of my comment as I know it and I feel fine.
Some visual effects for The Two Toweres were done with Maya running on KDE (Linux?). Screehshots are here.
Seven years... is a long time. To be totally wrapped up in a project. And Tolkien is -literary-, not your vanilla Stallone stuff. The guy was an Oxford professor. In so many words, it's nice to see good material sweep. A lot of people guessed LotR would get a lot of awards, but I don't think anyone predicted they'd get all 11.
From scrolling down the page I get the impression that I might be rather alone and lost concerning my view that this was one of the worst movies I ever saw...
[keeps silently hitting his head on the desk]
A World in a Grain of Sand / Heaven in a Wild Flower,
Infinity in the Palm of your Hand / And Eternity in an Hour.
...embarrassing use of wood flute.
Thank you. I thought I was the only one who thought that in the ROTK that when that wood flute came on I thought I was going to die.
I'm not sure how those parts got past anyone but truely they were very bad for anyone who has watched film for any length of time.
Sadly, I think simply because it was joined with such a superb score as well as the rest of the high values that went with this triogy that it was overlooked but personally I found those parts very odd at best.
Really, I know what I'm doing...Ohhhh, look at the shiny buttons!
Not taking away from PJ's LOTR adaptation trilogy, but seriously, the genius involved wasn't PJ, it was JRR Tolkien. The effects were good but certainly not all that much better than, say, those produced in SW:Ep 2 (with the exception of the Gollum character). In fact, a lot of the effects in the LOTR movies were clearly homages to the the Star Wars series.
I know this will be moderated down because it's not in line with the current Slashdot dogma that anything related to the LOTR movies is brilliant and anything related to Lucas' Star Wars movies is crap, but it does need to be said. LOTR is a classic epic, there are a number of directors around right now that could have made a movie as good, if not a better, than PJ has managed. And no doubt there will be a remake some time in the future which will surpass the current trilogy.
... for these past 6 years (since the first Slashdot post about the movies in 1998).
The Lord of the Rings might not be what everybody wanted but it was good enough to satisfy a lot of people. One movie to rule them all..
Ash nazg durbatuluk, ash nazg gimbatul Ash nazg thrakatuluk agh burzum-ishi krimpatul
LotR beat the spread and I won $500 in my office pool!
... until yesterday.
Why should one care that much about all the ridiculous minutae around movi making?
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
One thing is to rightly recognize people that excel in an important artistic endeavour.
What is questionable is when people devote somuch time and money to inspect with minute detail what these people do every minute of their lives. That is frankly sickening.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
What about kill bill. I thought that was a great movie. did it even get nominated.
-- Karma Karma Karma Karma, Karma Chameleon - Boy George
(2004-03-01) -- Oscar-sweeping director Peter Jackson this morning said he would team up with Pixar Studios, which last night won the Academy Award for Best Animated Feature Film, to produce a rollicking adventure tentatively titled "Finding Smeagol." Read the rest...
Forget about that already.
Umm, I didn't say he was "less important".... I said that the fact that he would disown his son over these movies reflects very poorly on him. Disowning your own son is very serious, and I think it makes Christopher Tolkien look pretty bad to have done it.
Oi dipshit, if you mean producer, say producer, don't say fucking director.
You are sucky!!!!
http://exile.ru/182/182061202.html
Never buy a dwarf with learning difficulties. It's not big and it's not clever.
Lets go for something a little less kiddie than Eddings. If a director could get the main character right, The Chronicles of Thomas Covenant, Unbeliever by Donaldson would be good.
Heaven forbid! Not that. I could not think of a more apathetic leading character. I seem to recall wanting to scream "Do something" while reading the series.
IMHO, the "Dragonbone Chair" trilogy by Tad Williams would be a much better candidate for adaptation.
Man you guys are vicious. I only said I THOUGHT I saw them lose one. My wife agreed with me, so I figured I'd post.
Flamebait? My gosh - one tries to post a valid comment here and you guys attack like a left wing democrat on a centrist republican. Now THAT's flamebait.
That might be true, but honestly does ANYONE think that Episode 1 was the fourth greatest movie of all time? Plus Those figures are not intrest adjusted, meaning that there are many older films ( Gone with the wind?) that were more successful in their day that will never show up on these lists.
Well.. maybe. Or Maybe not. But Definitely not sort of.
if you want a classic fantasy anti-hero, check out The Elric of Melnibone series. This may be a bit too much of a fantasy to be a success on the big screen (multiple planes; multiple character manifestations). For those who have never heard of it, the series was written by Michael Moorcock. On another note, I'd love to see Brian Lumley's Necroscope series on the big screen. This is a great spin on the vampires/spy games/metaphysical.
He uses styles and references to mediaeval, folk, and other music suited to the setting; he writes highly appropriate music for some of the many songs that feature in the book; he evokes the magical, the mystical, the transcendent, the strange, the ugly, the fearsome, the heroic, while only rarely dropping into cliche or banality.
But more than this, his use of leitmotif is almost Wagnerian. His themes, far more than just attaching to particular people or emotions (as in most films), are connected with abstractions like fellowship, the power of evil, hope, inheritance, and destiny. If you listen closely, his music doesn't just underscore the emotion of a scene, but comments on its deeper meaning, and makes allusions which can be surprising in their insight.
Yes, it's good that some people came out of theatres humming a couple of the tunes, but that's not why Howard Shore won.
Ceterum censeo subscriptionem esse delendam.
Your post is so fraught with factual errors that I lack the time and inclination to educate you.
y leftist accusations.
I pity you, ye of the trumped-up-then-disproved-but-not-published-widel
Wallow in your ignorance and partisan animosity like the troglodyte you are.
Care to enumerate said "falsehoods?" How many times have you watched the movie?
How typical of the right wing: hide. Who's the one wallowing, AC?
More flamebait -- a centrist Republican? Centrist Republicans went out with Gerald Ford. Now all we get are people with Donald Wildmon's dick in their mouths.
I'm not argueing that the wood flute is overused or not -- but I will say that I liked it, and apparently Academy members did too. Regardless of the wood flute in other movies, I found it effective in LOTR.
Fantasy has been around forever. What do you call the Odyssey (8th century), Faerie Queen (16th century), and Beowulf (9th-10th century)?
I love fantasy, and I agree that it doesn't get the credit it deserves. What you have to say sounds pretty accurate regarding science fiction, but it holds no water whatsoever with regards to fantasy.
...but does no one else think that Lord of the Rings is a total, over-hyped pile of bullshit? It just seems to get nominated and awarded because people think that because it is an 'epic trilogy' it should.
If they massacre The Hobbit in the same way I'm going to kill Peter Jackson, because that's the best book of the lot.
And I don't suck the black greasy cock of the MPAA, unlike the rest of you two-faced faggots with your tinhorn 'convictions'.
Boycott the MPAA and RIAA.
Consumption of entertainment makes you inferior, and thus weaker in the face of your ever present competetion.
Did you catch those? First, at the beginning of the produced vignettes, he's sitting in a theater with a video camera. Later in one of his song parodies, he jokingly complains about how long it took to download "LOTR, Return of the King". Only slightly esoteric, but sometjing that's apparently on the minds of people in the Hollywood community.
Research shows that 67% of those who use the term "research shows", are just making shit up.
Someone should make a book out of it.
How about that for a movie? Magician itself could be a 1 or 2 parter, and the remaining 2 books in the trilogy could also be done as a set, since Magician pretty much stands on its own. And, then there are additional sequels that could be done...
Wait - a money making fantasy series....And you could have a whole new slew of special effects, as I recall there were some serious battle scenes in that story as well, which much more concentrated magic (ie, big splashy fireball type effects, morhping, etc).
The cesspool just got a check and balance.
You said you were sure of it!
Only 3 films have ever been nominated for 11 oscars. RoTK, Ben Hur and Titanic. ONLY RoTK won all 11. Previous "sweeps" were for 8 oscars, not 11. Check your facts before you spew.
Peter Jackson and this film deserve every award it gets. However, I think me and my buddy went to the wrong movie dressed like Roman Centurions...
last night, the kind where you bet and pick your winners for all the categories, and the one with most right gets the pot. I came very damn close to winning! My secret? Lord of the rings for everything! Documentary, animated short, everything!
Or perhaps Perec's Life, A User's Manual (La Vie, Mode d'Emploi), or maybe Hesse's The Glass Bead Game (Magister Ludi)
LOTR is a good book, but it's hardly the pinnacle of 20th century literature...
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
It was excellent - by far the most inventive animation I had seen in years.
Any cartoon where stick grenades are used for frog fishing is OK in my book - and the references to Reinhardt, Tati and Trenet were delightful.
I've not seen Nemo, but doubt whether it was a fraction as inventive as the Triplets - just shows you where the values have sunk to, when it's popularity that defines the worth of a piece of art.
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
I am sure this will get modded as either troll of flamebait, since for some reason moderators can't stand to have someone disagree with the "geek consensus". But I have to say it.
Agreed, it wasn't a bad movie - but it wasn't the best of the year IMO. I think the academy was a little biased this year, simply because of the other two movies in the trilogy. It was a great movie, I don't dispute that - but I don't think it was the best of the year. I think the academy voters, like Slashot, are a bit jaded. They were looking at the trilogy, not just ROTK. Hey, the trilogy was an amazing set of work that deserves a lot of recognition. There aren't too many sequels that are very good, let alone trilogies. But for ROTK by itself, I don't think it stacked up against the other nominated movies. I don't think Peter Jackson did that great of a job directing this movie, in comparison with the other nominees. He deserved to be recognized for the trilogy, but I don't think ROTK was the best of the three (I'd but it at a solid #3).
And before you say "The academy is the only opinion that matters here", I'd say you are right. It is their award show, whooptie doo. They also gave Titanic 11 awards, and I could hardly sit through that stinker. I thought it was cheesy. I hoped Lost in Translation would win. I thought Bill Murray should have won for best actor, although I didn't see some of the other performances. I thought it was ironic that before the best picture announcement, they said it was a combination of all of the other awards - yet nobody from ROTK was nominated for a best acting award, let alone won. If there is no great acting in a movie, then it has to get by on something else - like sets and special effects, or the story. ROTK was 1/3 of a story that many people hold fondly, and THAT is why it won. I don't think it had half of the elements necessary to win best picture, yet it won anyway.
Just another opinion to think about. Not that it matters much now.
My beliefs do not require that you agree with them.
Just as annoying how? Clinton, with all of his faults, didn't even come close. Yeah, politicians are scum. All of them. That doesn't mean we REWARD the shittier one with a re-election.
No dream world. Go ahead and disprove me, coward. I got 2 replies, both cowards, and both didn't give ANY contrary evidence.
-- Having a Creationist Museum is like having an Atheist place of worship
Is that both Fellowship and The Two Towers where nominated and won in the same categories. So its the same thing...winning again? So beyond the 11 yesterday, Fellowship won 4 The Two Towers won 2 all of which were won *again*. All three films are fine but it kind of feels "doubling up".
As a side note: Man I felt bad for Bill Murray. His role in Lost in Translation was his best he ever gave.
As in 'overblown and shite'? Or as in 'Nazi triumphal music'?
Bollocks - give me some Hot Club de Paris (Belleville) any day of the week.
The only good use for Wagner is to play it through the tannoy on the lead Huey as you go in to strafe some gooks prior to riding a few breakers - any fool knows that!
oh brave new world, that has such people in it!
Does anyone have a link to where I can find the Billy Crystal movie spoofs? Sadly I was at work last night and missed the Oscars.
Oh, and go Peter Jackson! This late in the thread I have nothing more to say that hasn't been said.
that same argument applies to drama, comedy, and tragedy. Which invalidates the original post from a different angle.
I am no history buff, but I'll bet the Odyssey was not commonly believed to be a true history. There are too many elements that fall apart under honest scrutiny, and many of the Greeks were big on honest scrutiny.
I took at class at Rutgers (ca. 1988) called "Philosophy of Science Fiction." Quite an experience, especially since it was taught by science philosopher Robert Weingard, a fellow whose appearance and manner was somewhere between Miller from Repo Man and Doc Brown from Back to the Future. Freaking genius -- when he stopped in mid-sentence and rolled his eyes skyward to think, you could feel the disturbance in the Force.
Then there was "Science Prophecy and Science Fiction: The History of the Future." Different professor (Philip Pauly, History), but a great course, focusing on how science fiction throughout history reflected the public view of the future.
I dont understand why there is so little discussion about the Matrix. it was a innovative story and had lots of great F/X.
Am I the only one that hopes they fire up the rendering software one last time to produce a little clip of Gollum lavishing his affection on a little gold statue?
"Yes my preciousss"
You're spot on here. As a whole, The Silmarillion would be hard to do. The hardest part would be to come up with a lot more dialog, as the Silm. tends to read a lot like the bible as opposed to standard prose. I would actually propose that covering the whole story in a movie format would require movie(s) even longer than LOTR.
:)
However, OBAL has the does that makings for an outstanding film. For those not familiar, the Silmarillion is a sort of historical collection of events starting with the creation of the earth and roughly up to where the One Ring comes into existence.
OBAL, specifically, as about a man, Beren, who, while wandering in the forest finds Luthien (who no man has ever seen), the most beautiful elf. They fall in love, but the elve's father is outraged. He won't grant his daughter's hand unless Beren can obtain one of the elvish Silmarils from Morgoth's crown (Morgoth was Sauron's master and mentor and stole the Silmarils [jewels essentially] from a line of elves, who grew arrogant after their creation) This task is essentially suicidal, but Beren sets out on it anyway. Luthien escapes from her own people to aid Beren. I won't spoil the ending, however; it's too good a read
"It isn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it is sufficient to delay the news until it no longer matters." - N
It wasn't that he wasn't able to restrain his "manly urges" so much as the fact that he wasn't supposed to be able to have any. That particular part of his anatomy, as well as a lot more, was rendered ineffective due to his disease (leprosy). Suddenly, he's thrust into what appears to be a "place" where all his bits and pieces start working as normal... the quick assumption is that he is having a dream and rather than be tormented by the fact that he knows he will awaken to find his body a useless husk again, he decides to fight the dream and/or also get something out of it while he can.
It's actually a rather human reaction. Throughout the series you also see how this one particular act of unrestraint comes back to bite him in the backside several times.
TC isn't supposed to be a hero at the start. He's supposed to be a less-than-average-Joe character who is on the edge of oblivion. He's got a degenerative disease which everyone fears/hates him for, and thus becomes a bitter and almost sinister scrooge-like character. It's then up to the author to redeem this character and somehow turn him into something of a hero.
But really, in the first series TC isn't really much of a hero at all. Though he does do some selfless things (saving a snakebitten girl), it's more about how he - despite being as low as he his - spurs hope in those around him which more allows them to save themselves. Not really a bad read if you can get through it and some of the odd language/twists, not sure if it's movie material though (certainly hard to do on film for some things).
Thanks for sharing this sight. This list is more in tune with my percieved reality of the excitement generated by the movie at the time. I liked spider, but everyone saw ET and there were lines people would stand in for days for the original star wars movies. I think the rising ticket prices has masked a lot of things. Damn lies and all that...
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
-1 Blithering idiot!
LotR has won the past three Oscars for BEST SPECIAL EFFECTS. Stupid. Just stupid.
Let me see, by acting, you mean the ability to adopt a personality not your own, and convey a range of emotions and expression that convince the audience that you are that other person? Then consider this, everyone new who Gandalf was, and had a mental image of him. At any point, did you scream, God, that is not Gandalf? The genius of McKellen was that he took a character who was well known and flawlessly concinced us he was real. Can you comprehend what an increadible feat that was? Do you honestly think, any one could have pulled it off? Flash, Mr. K. Reeves as Gandalf.
I have seen the other movies. To me, Sean Penn played an interesting character, but he was still Sean Penn as he is in most movies. Over-acting and political correct lines are not good acting.
My two cents
-iowa
"He who laughs last, didn't get the joke."-Cap
By the way, chicks don't dig that.
Or will the previous poster's prediction hold true and we'll be inundated by more crappy fantasy?
Sorry, but this has already happened
I think that while a lot of geeks are happy to see a Fantasy movie do well, they forget that there already has been significant fantasy crud in the past (some of which probably being the reason that it wasn't well esteemed in movies). However, I'm hlook at the current fads and I'm thinking that we'll probably see a lot of either ("Hulk" variety movie Vs X-men or Spider Man).
I guess we'll just have to pick/choose our way though what's good and what's not, but that's usually the way it goes, isn't it?
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I love the Lord of the Rings. But the third best movie in the trilogy should _not_ have been Oscar fodder tonight. The wins LoTR got last night were mostly votes of appreciation. Which is unfortunate because there were so many good films this year which all got squashed under the This Is The Last Time We Can Vote for LoTR meme. :-(
My diffs:
Actor: Bill Murray
Supporting Actor: Alec Baldwin
Art Direction: The Last Samurai
Cinematography: City of God
Costume Design: Girl with a Pearl Earring
Directing: Lost in Translation
Film Editing: City of God
Original Song: A Kiss at the End of the Rainbow -- mostly because it'd be so fun to have an accidental nominee win
Sound Editing: Master and Commander
Sound Mixing: Master and Commander
Screenplay -- Adapted: *definitely* American Splendor
Best Picture: Lost in Translation or Mystic River
And of course, best dressed: Jennifer Garner
What I find surprising here at /. is the blatant contempt at all things mainstream and salutations all around for anything seen as on the "fringe".
As a sociologist, I find it quite interesting that so many self-proclaimed "geeks" would latch onto one of the biggest bugeted, over-marketed, hollywood hyped-up films to be released in some time.
Sure it was based on a legendary classic fantasy novel and this is precisely why you should be up in arms over this kind of treatment from hollywood. Tolkein's work should NOT be treated or in the same class as money making (academy pleasing) trash, Titanic and Ben-Hur.
Face the facts, the story and fantasy and soul of everything you love did NOT win those awards... careful marketing to a neglected audience (aka you) and loads of capital to cover up the fact that its just another Titanic did(loads of money, loads of star power, loads of awards, and a complete load of crap)
Note: I am not dissing Tolkiens work... i read the books, i watched the movies the only difference between me and you is I can see thru lies whereas you choose to ignore the elephant in the room...
"Elephant" by Gus Van Sant is a trip btw
Also I'm not an anonymous coward I just dont feel like bothering with cookies... i usually post as either Reccos, Reccos17, Swurve, or PhillyJay, don't remember which actually
It's a sickly sweet cliche. The fact that you haven't noticed it just means you don't pay attention to music the same way musicians do.
Just because music is an art which can be enjoyed by people who don't know how to do it themselves, doesn't mean the opinions of those who do study music are somehow "pretentious." Don't begrudge someone for their opinion, which might very well be an expert one...
Or do you find it statistically impossible that a person with a clue might choose to comment on it here at Slashdot?
I feel the same way. I saw Whale Rider with my girlfriend a few months ago at our local indie theatre, and absolutely loved it. I was happy to hear that Castle-Hughes was up for the Oscar, but I doubted she'd win, just because most of the fucks doing the voting probably hadn't even seen the movie.
To the other 99.9% of us that watched the film. We noticed the chanting dark music in the mine. The soaring uplifting choir music and the grandiose themes that matched the scenes. The movies were epic, the music was epic and all some people can do is complain that it didn't conform to their sense of what "correct" music should be.
Blah.
Because Hollywood has moved a lot of productions out of the country to save money. It has become bad enough that SAG (Screen Actors Guild) has a role called "Global Rule One" that says that its members cannot work for less money overseas than they would get if working inside the US. If they do accept less, they will be censured and presumably cannot work in the US again.
This is an attempt to try to keep amount paid to their actor members than they would if they let capitalism determine the prices.
This is an issue which is mirrored here in the US. Programmers call for protectionism and such in order to save their own hides.
That's one small step for fantasy, one giant leap for nerdy films getting their due respect! :)
grep >= ! == $your
Dear WETA,
Please don't delete the models for Shelob yet...they may be needed in the near future, scaled down a little.
thanks.
-PJ
Really, they should do this as soon as they can while Hugo Weaving, Ian McKellan and Ian Holm are still about the same, and the Rivendell and Shire sets are still there (hopefully!)
It was seven bigatures.
Seeing the quarter-sized one, with Peter squeezing through the front gates and stomping down the ramp like his own future King Kong, was hilarious.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
What's a kiwi? Someone with lots of facial hair?
...has a cameo in ROTK. I think he's a foot soldier of Gondor, marching off to the Morannon.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
was the bit where he talks about movie tickets only costing eight bucks. Ah, those were the days.
You cannot apply a technological solution to a sociological problem. (Edwards' Law)
I'm not wrong about C. Tolkien. He issued an official statement saying he bore no ill-will toward the film or its makers. Those were almost his exact words.
The "bad blood" is over Micheal wanting the Tolkien Estate to be officially involved with the films. Christopher always wanted to remain neutral.
Lol, how am I a "liar?"
Christopher and Michael don't speak because Michael wanted official involvement and support of the movies. They were very split on this. What you quoted doesn't contradict what I said; I already knew about it. Read up.
The movies were awful claptrap. Doesn't the author's son's opinion count in your minds?
Speaking as a Tolkien fan myself, the movies were great, and Christopher Tolkien is a prat.
This series is begging to be a movie.
No grammer never fix'en to d' nototin per me. Its t'e incipral o' t'e t-ing. Down wit it aul.
1) People didn't have televisions in their homes at all in 1939. It was radio or going out to a show.
:P ). LOTR has brought in more outside of the US than within. It's currently #2 in unadjusted dollars:
2) The number of movies released back then was lower, making competition for the movie-goer dollars a lot less.
3) Not everyone lives in the US (you insensitive clods
http://www.imdb.com/Charts/worldtopmovies
"It isn't necessary to completely suppress the news; it is sufficient to delay the news until it no longer matters." - N
These are complaints of the direction and of the writing, not of the editing. Regardless of how you like or dislike them, it was Peter Jackson's vision that determined if they should be in or not. So you are actually giving arguments for it not being the best direction.
Editing is all about the execution of the directors image. It's a very narrow but real interpretation on images and sounds of the movie. Some would question this is just all about direction but at some point, as the academy does with all awards, someone felt it was important to give the editors a nod, too.
I'll give you an example in TV because this one is easy to understand. First, the director has a vision panning over the Las Vegas skyline, flashing images and then cutting to a crime scene. Then the crime scene investigators look over the scene, look at a few pieces of evidence. Grissom finds a key piece of evidence, and cracks a nerdy joke. Fade in Roger Daltry's voice and the intro plus lead credits.
That's the directors vision. Now the editor has to create cool fade ins with the director's fly byes over vegas. The editor has to string cut each scene to the right person at the right time and make the cuts clean and visually appealing. Then when the beginning credits come in, the editor has to string the first scene in with those credits just perfectly to create an exciting moment that the director wanted because the show is coming on.
The award is an artistic interpretation of a technical skill. If a scene ends up in the movie or not, that's the director's fault, not the editor. The editor doesn't design what scenes go in, but he provides an interpretation on what scenes do make it in.
"All great wisdom is contained in .signature files"
11? did they had an award for best headache inducing fighting scene?
wow you are retarded.
like i said, 3 million dead iraqis is not a "better thing"
fucking retard.
Lord of the oscars!
My vote for Best Director and Best Picture went towards Sofia Coppola and Lost in Translation. I'm really happy she won Best Screenplay.
I hope this post doesn't come across too bitchy.
I was really looking forward to watching the Oscars this year without knowing who one anything beforehand. My friend taped the live showing that happened at 3am local time, and I was going over there this morning to watch it. Just before I left to see the show, I checked slashdot, carefully scanning the topic lines of all he posts to avoid anything Oscar-related, thinking that the editors would have been smart enough to use a neutral subject line like "Oscar Winners".
Obviously, I was mightily pissed when I saw the title for this news post. Next time, please consider the people who life in different time zone, and don't want the surprises spoiled.
If it's in you sig, it's in your post.
I know a girl who's about as anti-geek as possible, and she loves LOTR. When I say anti-geek, I mean 17 year-old retro punk rocker who uses suit ties as belts and turns the head of any male within 100 meters. That's how anti-geek I mean. We're talking about the kind of girl you spend hours fantasizing (no pun intended) about. Oh yeah, did I mention she's not a geek? And that she loves LOTR?
"So many universal themes touched on."
I think that's the problem. The books are wonderful, but there's just too much to squish into even 3 movies. When you have to develop the complicated plot (they *do* split up into several parties and all go their own ways), build up suspense, describe who's who and where's where, etc. etc. there's hardly time to touch on the themes, and when you do, there's not much time to let it absorb because something else has to happen. I think the themes are much more apparent if you've read the books already, or if you watch it again. I say this as someone who watched the first 2 movies, then read all the books, then watched the last movie. The first couple of times, all the hobbits looked alike to me and I had trouble keeping up with what was going on. The first one was especially confusing.
You talking about the States or Iraq? Please clarify.
did you notice how 'the Exorcist' in adjusted dollars grossed 666 million bucks? heh
I like that you have some historical perspective on this. The real point, though, is that there is nothing novel about science fiction at all. The Greeks, being a readily-available historical counterpart to our civilization, are only a link in a much longer chain of storytelling history.
The temptation would be greater for Gandalf or Galadriel, as they have the power to use the ring to reorder middle earth as they see fit. The hobbits have no power, and are less affected. Boromir, or Aragorn might become greater leaders with the Ring, but they would also be corrupted as the nine (all powerful kings) were.
Gandalf fears the ring because he knows that he would be able to use it to do what he thinks is right, trampling over the rights of individuals in the process. Boromir wants the ring because he thinks it will bring him power. Frodo is resistant to the ring because he does not seek to dominate others, and also because he realizes that he is too weak to do so. There is never any question of Frodo or Bilbo bending the ring to their will and gaining power over others.
You got me into this! You were the ideologue! I'm only a poor assassin! - Twenty evocations, Bruce Sterling
That would be great... I'll start a paypal account to hire a hitman...
"Sic Semper Tyrannosaurus Rex."
I don't bear "ill will" to them either -- I just don't like them and don't "wish to be involved with them," as a fan or patron.
I don't think you're a bad person for liking them, I just don't understand your tastes, and don't wish an explanation.
like i said, 3 million dead iraqis is not a "better thing"
For the Iraqi's, obviously not. But then I wasn't talking about them, as I made perfectly clear. But then, you are really, really stupid.
What a farce, ROTK was a mediocre movie at best. 11 oscars? What were they smoking? Fantasy has no place in the main stream, and should be shunned appropriately.
I read both of them years ago and years apart, Against first and without knowledge of City. I think Against is the better of the two books. City is longer and more complex, distractingly so I think. Not surprisingly, the author prefers City.
Loved that quip. I read the books but never got the sense that the story had ended. When I was sitting there watching the movie, I couldn't help but think "finally over...what a great epic movie!" at least 5 times. probably more.
Loved that quip "one [an oscar] for each ending". That person is a genius.
-- Each tock of the Planck clock is a new world and here we are still life. --
...for me was Annie Lennox' shocked acceptance speech which rambled on so long that poor Fran Walsh had to stop the orchestra in order to get a word in (after all she only co-wrote the song with Howard Shore)
I feel sorry for the performers of the songs of the previous two movies, particularly Emiliana Torrini who sang the Gollum theme of TT, who didn't get a look in, and for all the actors who were summarily ignored by the Academy. Peter Jackson made a point of including them on stage for the Best Picture Oscar, and well done too.
insecurity asks the wrong question irritation gives the wrong answer
In answer to your question, our "pathetic little island" also produced another movie nominated for an Oscar (Whale Rider), is currently producing the lion, the witch and the wardrobe; and has been the location for quite a few movies of late (the last samurai, without a paddle). And thats just movies.
Also we have 4% unemployment, decent growth rates and a ok government. Life is pretty decent. So fuck you.
Anyway what the hell's wrong with a bit of patriotism? Does your country suck by any chance? Care to mention where your'e from?
Hey check your facts buddy, we were heavily in favour of the UN inspections, not GWB's "weapons of mass deception". We have only sent forces for rebuilding/peacekeeping.
.... the special effects were done on Linux boxes. BIG boost for the Penguin! Basically, Tux won an Oscar....
That's because Steve Tyler is Liv's dad.
Big Daddy, Johnny, Burp, Aunt Zelda, Scott, Slurp, Big Momma