Much as I wouldn't mind seeing Frakes and Sirtis in action again, it would only be because for nostalgia's sake. When your show becomes characterized by this kind of hysterical desperation, it's a pretty good sign you should just let it die.
TNG and DS9 were at the top of their repective games in their later seasons -- they just got better and better, IMHO. Neither shows needed this kind of nonsense to shore them up for another handful of weary episodes. If Enterprise doesn't have enough momentum to propel it after all this time, then it's just plain out of gas, and stunt casting is not going to save it.
Especially when I, as a not-so-fanatical Star Trek watcher, can probably tell you the plot of this episode right now. Picard and Troi, on board the Titan on a diplomatic mission to Head-Ridge VII, run into a subspace anomaly and are transported back in time, and must deal with the cultural and technological gaps while...zzz...
I'd advise letting Enterprise, and Trek, rest in peace for another few years while it still has some dignity, but unfortunately that moment is already long past (for me, the last of TNG's dignity departed with the introduction of Retarded Data in Nemesis). I guess now the best we can hope for is that these sorts of decisions don't bury the franchise altogether.
The review should have been, not on the way they would prefer to use the device, but how well the device works within the parameters it was designed for.
Then assume the criticism is that of the marketability of said feature or lack of feature. If a consumer finds they really want a feature that isn't there, it doesn't matter how well a device does everything else -- the consumer is going to go to another product.
I took one look at the iPod Shuffle and decided it was not for me based on this criteria alone. But it doesn't mean that I wouldn't like a low-end, affordable iPod that has more features than the Shuffle at a better price point.
Because a device is marketed a particular way doesn't suddenly render it devoid of shortcomings.
I'm as sympathetic as any fellow Slashdot reader (however much that may be)...but if you're spending 139 days sitting on the pavement, sacrificing every other aspect of life, aren't you begging to be labeled one-dimensionally?
I think if you're doing anything obsessively, for 139 days, you're not giving a damn what the world at large, especially Slashbots, think about what you're doing, much less begging for their largely irrelevant (and almost uniformly negative, xenophobic and unhappy) opinions.
No one cares what Slashbots think, and that's a good thing.
Now they are going further away from the right thing. Getting rid of more shows, and adding lame ones.
Welcome to television! I remember when, not too long ago, Sci-Fi dumped pretty much every sci-fi program it had, in favor of reality shows and 24 Hours a Day of John Edwards. Thankfully, they're getting a little back on track now, but it was pretty bleak for a while there.
Sooner or later all cable networks become the exact same network. In a while G4 will probably be indistinguishable from TNT.
Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Read Blogs
CHAPEL HILL, NCArea resident Jonathan Green does not read blogs, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers, as well as to his mailman, neighborhood convenience-store clerks, and the man who cleans the hallways in his apartment building.
"I, personally, would rather spend my time doing something useful than read blogs," Green told a random woman Monday at the Suds 'N' Duds Laundromat, noticing the establishment's Packard Bell. "I don't even own one."
According to Melinda Elkins, a coworker of Green's at The Frame Job, a Chapel Hill picture-frame shop, Green steers the conversation toward blogs whenever possible, just so he can mention not reading any.
"A few days ago, [store manager] Annette [Haig] was saying her new contacts were bothering her," Elkins said. "The second she said that, I knew Jonathan would pounce. He was like, 'I didn't know you had contacts, Annette. Are your eyes bad? That's a shame. I'm really lucky to have almost perfect vision. I need reading glasses, but that's it. I'm guessing it's because I don't read blogs."
According to Elkins, "renamed home pages" is Green's favorite derogatory term for blogs.
"He uses that one a lot," she said. "But he's got other ones, too, like 'livejournals' and 'murder and rape are misdemeanors.'"
Elkins said Green always makes sure to read Slashdot and Metafilter, "just so he can point out all the Internet personalities he's never heard of."
"Last week, in one of the magazines, there was a picture of Jenni from JenniCam," Elkins said, "and Jonathan announced, 'I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. Jenni who? Am I supposed to have heard of her? I'm sorry, but I haven't.'"
Tony Gerela, who lives in the apartment directly below Green's and occasionally chats with the 37-year-old by the mailboxes, is well aware of his neighbor's disdain for blogs.
"About a week after I met him, we were talking, and I made some kind of BoingBoing reference," Gerela said. "He asked me what I was talking about, and when I told him it was from a blog, he just went off, saying he could only read for about two minutes before having to shut it off because it insulted his intelligence so terribly."
Added Gerela: "Once, I made the mistake of saying I saw something on the news, and he started in with, 'Saw the news? I don't know about you, but I read the news."
Green has lived without blogs since 1989, when his then-girlfriend moved out and took her set with her.
"When Claudia went, the blog bookmarks went with her," Green said. "But instead of just going out and bookmarking more, which I certainly could have done, that wasn't the issue. I decided to stand up to the blog teat."
"I'm not an elitist," Green said. "It's just that I'd much rather sculpt or write in my journal or read Proust than sit there passively staring at some phosphorescent screen."
"If I need a fix of passive audio-visual stimulation, I'll go to catch a Bergman or Truffaut film down at the university," Green said. "I certainly wouldn't waste my time reading the so-called Blogspot or, God forbid, Fark."
Continued Green: "People don't realize just how much time their blog-reading habit, or, shall I say, addiction eats up. Four hours of blogs a day, over the course of a month, adds up to 120 hours. That's five entire days! Why not spend that time living your own life, instead of reading fictional people live theirs? I can't begin to tell you how happy I am not to read blogs."
Well-acted? Ok, well I guess Mark Hamill got all these great acting jobs after Episode IV because of his amazing talent.
Tee-hee-hee! Snarking on Mark Hamill is easy, and also wholly inaccurate. The man has one of the biggest voice acting portfolios I've ever seen, and has worked nearly every year since Star Wars. No, he wasn't fortunate enough to get as stellar a movie career as Harrison Ford, but then again, no one else in Star Wars was either. Bottom line, he's working steadily and everyone still knows who he is after twenty-five years. That's more than most actors ever get. He's doing just fine.
As for the rest of your post: It's not Lucas's movie alone. Lucas got as rich and powerful as he is because of the tickets, action figures, and breakfast cereals -- all paid for by his fans. The fans made Lucas, and for that I think they (not we; I'm not a fan anymore) deserve better than the rank indifference Lucas has given them. He's said flat-out he doesn't care how much his fans enjoy the movies. If they hate it, that's just too bad, because it's his and his alone, the money for producing it apparently having come out of nowhere. It's George's world, and he could give a fuck about anyone's childhood memories.
Star Wars doesn't have to be King Lear to be important to people. It unleashed a lot of kids' imaginations, and I think that's a good thing. Also, being a kid has nothing to do with it. Yes, being young and seeing Star Wars for the first time is like nothing else, but watching the Lord of the Rings adaptations taught me that I don't have to be ten to be blown away by a movie, or to rediscover a sense of wonder. I think Lucas has lost sight of what made the original Star Wars great, but can't realize it because he's determined to do exactly as he pleases, regardless of how poor his decisions regularly seem to be these days. Yes, it's not the most important issue in the world, but these are beloved films that are getting butchered and their original forms lost. It's not fanatical to object to that.
I feel that Star Wars is too big and influential a piece of pop culture to be so crassly handled by one man with a runaway ego. Millions of kids grew up with this stuff, and Lucas is twiddling with it like he's a kid with a home movie in his basement. Only he's messing with something that millions of kids have very fond memories of, and, yeah, whether it's rational or not, people have problems with that. That's completely irresponsible, and I won't support it with my dollars anymore. You go ahead and "take what Lucas gives you;" I don't feel I have to.
That's just the original trilogy though. The prequels -- they're just mediocre. In my opinion, no one will really remember them, not like they do the OT.
And somewhere out there, there is a television watcher who won't get defensive and accusatory when he learns other people have chosen not to live their lives as he does. But I've yet to meet one of those guys either.
I've found that not watching TV is like being a vegetarian -- it doesn't matter how nicely you mention it, how many disclaimers you add, how much you insist that you're not judging anyone else's lifestyle, but merely found that this works really well for you personally and you're glad you did it -- someone will get offended and decide that you are an elitist asshole out to get people to change their own lives.
Well, let me be totally clear on this: I don't watch television. I don't give a flying fuck how much of it you watch. You can watch Dr. Phil twelve hours a day for all I care. I don't watch it because I don't like being bombarded with ads and the conditioning effects that come with it, I dislike branding and interstitials, and I have the kind of personality that gravitates towards the lowest common denominator, so if I spend any time in front of TV, I end up watching the most abominable crap in the world and wondering why I'm doing so. So I stay away from it. I don't deny that there's quality programming out there -- for me, however, the cons outweigh the pros most of the time.
But God help me if I reveal this to other people, no matter how innocuously. I've suddenly become a "pompous windbag" and the most judgmental being on earth. Most of the time, anymore, I just assume people are either insecure about their own recreational habits, or have issues with themselves someone else that they want to hash out with me.
What I find funny is that these same people frequently watch shows they seem to despise, yet they can't turn it off. And I've seen people who have to have it on all the time, "for noise," and can't even have a face-to-face conversation with someone. They talk to the TV. I personally don't think that's terribly healthy, but hey, whatever -- if it works for them, great.
And as the grandparent poster said -- no, I don't miss it; yes, I do enjoy my life more because of it, and your life is your life, so you go ahead and do what you like. Not everyone who chooses not to watch TV spends that free time sitting around silently judging you. Trust me, no one cares that much.
By the way, the final sentence of your post reduces it to hypocrisy. I don't spend my time sitting in my living room with other people, reading shitty novels to myself, any more than I suspect you sit around watching Who Wants To See My Chewed-Up Food? all day. If you're going to berate people for slinging stereotypes and acting from uninformed opinions, I humbly suggest doing so yourself first.
"I see Saruman throwing fireballs. Now I believe Peter Jackson didn't want to make *that* kind of movie with wizards casting fireballs when I see the original theatrical releases, but now this?"
Well, in three movies, totaling over nine hours run-time, Gandalf shines a light a few times, knocks an arrow and an axe out of the air with his staff, breaks Saruman's staff... and spends the rest of the time stabbing Orcs and beating the living crap out of the Steward of Gondor. I think it's safe to say he didn't make "that kind of movie." One fireball is quite the exception to the rule, and pretty much Saruman's only pyrotechnic. So personally, I think it's forgivable.
As for Gandalf casting lightning on Weathertop; it would have been cool to see, but might have dramatically undermined the mystery of Gandalf's disappearance as well as making for two fights on Weathertop (-1, Redundant?), so I can see why they didn't put it in.
For some people, painstakingly picking out little details and differences is how they enjoy the film.
When I first saw Fellowship, I took a great delight in picking out all the differences between the books and the films, and either annoying non-LotR fans with trivial knowledge (just a little) or discussing said differences with other LotR fans. It's fun, when you've read the books enough to know these little details, to see what was left out and what was kept in. I personally wouldn't have gone to the trouble to catalog them this extensively, but this guide is obviously a labor of love for the author.
Of course, by the time we got to RotK there were so many deviations from the book that I just sort of gave up -- but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the film any.
I think the author of the nitpicker's guide is having much more fun picking out little details than he likes to let on. He states that he's not happy with many of the changes, but apparently he liked the films enough to buy all three of the extended editions on DVD, presumably after seeing them (perhaps more than once) in the theater. Hardly the work of a man who's filled with hate.
Some people just have fun with minutiae and little details. I agree with you that prose and film are completely different, and I personally think Jackson's interpretation of Lord of the Rings is as good of a film adaptation as fans could have possibly wished for. For those who want something 100% identical to the books, there's the books.
I think dramatically, they cut TTT the only place where it made sense to end it. If you follow the books and end TTT with Frodo getting captured by the orcs at Cirith Ungol, there's not enough material left over for ROTK. It's Mount Doom, and then bam, done. Not worth waiting a year for. I complained about that too when I first saw TTT, but I think it was the right decision.
While we're on the subject of the appendices, it mentions in one of the documentaries that Tolkien, of course, didn't intercut between Frodo / Sam and the rest of the Fellowship in the books, which of course movies have to do to keep audiences interested. So while the Battle of Minas Tirith is going on, Frodo and Sam are in Shelob's lair; when the party is at the Black Gates, Frodo and Sam are on Mount Doom, etc.
The upshot being that while Jackson's films don't slavishly follow the structure of the books, they are chronologically correct.
As far as #4 is concerned, I don't see it as "six endings" (which I think is a wild exaggeration BTW), so much as a rather too long denoument (it's 20 minutes, which is barely a burp in the 10+ hour total of the series).
I think the big directorial mistake Jackson made was in so many slow fades-to-black so close together. After such a huge build-up, the movie needed to maintain a bit more momentum than I did. I think all the moments that Jackson put in the ending deserved to be there, but some editing to make it tighter would have improved things dramatically.
At least he stuck to his guns in not including the Scouring of the Shire, which so many people were clamoring for, but would have been excruciating from a film perspective.
See, and here I initially thought this should be rated "Funny" because the parent poster found it extremely hard to believe that anyone would still be playing Gamma World.
And here I was ready to provide that helpful link and everything...
Slashdot Mirror
Much as I wouldn't mind seeing Frakes and Sirtis in action again, it would only be because for nostalgia's sake. When your show becomes characterized by this kind of hysterical desperation, it's a pretty good sign you should just let it die.
TNG and DS9 were at the top of their repective games in their later seasons -- they just got better and better, IMHO. Neither shows needed this kind of nonsense to shore them up for another handful of weary episodes. If Enterprise doesn't have enough momentum to propel it after all this time, then it's just plain out of gas, and stunt casting is not going to save it.
Especially when I, as a not-so-fanatical Star Trek watcher, can probably tell you the plot of this episode right now. Picard and Troi, on board the Titan on a diplomatic mission to Head-Ridge VII, run into a subspace anomaly and are transported back in time, and must deal with the cultural and technological gaps while...zzz...
I'd advise letting Enterprise, and Trek, rest in peace for another few years while it still has some dignity, but unfortunately that moment is already long past (for me, the last of TNG's dignity departed with the introduction of Retarded Data in Nemesis). I guess now the best we can hope for is that these sorts of decisions don't bury the franchise altogether.
And to save work for people who will actually do this:
k eh rslaufendervonSlashdotdurchverbundenwerdenverursac htwird
DieseWebsiteläßtnichtmehrwegendesübermäßigenVer
Survey Says Internet Users Confuse Shit, Shinola
Survey Says Internet Users Confuse Ass, Hole in the Ground
Survey Says Internet Users Unaware Bears Shit in Woods
Survey Says Internet Users Unable to Find Own Head with Both Hands, Flashlight
Survey Says Internet Users Approximately as Smart as Submarine Screen Door, Rubber Crutch, Solar-Powered Flashlight
The review should have been, not on the way they would prefer to use the device, but how well the device works within the parameters it was designed for.
Then assume the criticism is that of the marketability of said feature or lack of feature. If a consumer finds they really want a feature that isn't there, it doesn't matter how well a device does everything else -- the consumer is going to go to another product.
I took one look at the iPod Shuffle and decided it was not for me based on this criteria alone. But it doesn't mean that I wouldn't like a low-end, affordable iPod that has more features than the Shuffle at a better price point.
Because a device is marketed a particular way doesn't suddenly render it devoid of shortcomings.
I'm as sympathetic as any fellow Slashdot reader (however much that may be)...but if you're spending 139 days sitting on the pavement, sacrificing every other aspect of life, aren't you begging to be labeled one-dimensionally?
I think if you're doing anything obsessively, for 139 days, you're not giving a damn what the world at large, especially Slashbots, think about what you're doing, much less begging for their largely irrelevant (and almost uniformly negative, xenophobic and unhappy) opinions.
No one cares what Slashbots think, and that's a good thing.
Yeah, that would teach him to "get a life" and show him what's really impo-- oh wait.
"Reworded to something more like reality..."
So you work for Fox News, then?
Amen.
Now they are going further away from the right thing. Getting rid of more shows, and adding lame ones.
Welcome to television! I remember when, not too long ago, Sci-Fi dumped pretty much every sci-fi program it had, in favor of reality shows and 24 Hours a Day of John Edwards. Thankfully, they're getting a little back on track now, but it was pretty bleak for a while there.
Sooner or later all cable networks become the exact same network. In a while G4 will probably be indistinguishable from TNT.
LOL. Someone call The Onion.
the Onion
Volume 39 Issue 24
25 June 2003
Area Man Constantly Mentioning He Doesn't Read Blogs
CHAPEL HILL, NCArea resident Jonathan Green does not read blogs, a fact he repeatedly points out to friends, family, and coworkers, as well as to his mailman, neighborhood convenience-store clerks, and the man who cleans the hallways in his apartment building.
"I, personally, would rather spend my time doing something useful than read blogs," Green told a random woman Monday at the Suds 'N' Duds Laundromat, noticing the establishment's Packard Bell. "I don't even own one."
According to Melinda Elkins, a coworker of Green's at The Frame Job, a Chapel Hill picture-frame shop, Green steers the conversation toward blogs whenever possible, just so he can mention not reading any.
"A few days ago, [store manager] Annette [Haig] was saying her new contacts were bothering her," Elkins said. "The second she said that, I knew Jonathan would pounce. He was like, 'I didn't know you had contacts, Annette. Are your eyes bad? That's a shame. I'm really lucky to have almost perfect vision. I need reading glasses, but that's it. I'm guessing it's because I don't read blogs."
According to Elkins, "renamed home pages" is Green's favorite derogatory term for blogs.
"He uses that one a lot," she said. "But he's got other ones, too, like 'livejournals' and 'murder and rape are misdemeanors.'"
Elkins said Green always makes sure to read Slashdot and Metafilter, "just so he can point out all the Internet personalities he's never heard of."
"Last week, in one of the magazines, there was a picture of Jenni from JenniCam," Elkins said, "and Jonathan announced, 'I have absolutely no idea who this woman is. Jenni who? Am I supposed to have heard of her? I'm sorry, but I haven't.'"
Tony Gerela, who lives in the apartment directly below Green's and occasionally chats with the 37-year-old by the mailboxes, is well aware of his neighbor's disdain for blogs.
"About a week after I met him, we were talking, and I made some kind of BoingBoing reference," Gerela said. "He asked me what I was talking about, and when I told him it was from a blog, he just went off, saying he could only read for about two minutes before having to shut it off because it insulted his intelligence so terribly."
Added Gerela: "Once, I made the mistake of saying I saw something on the news, and he started in with, 'Saw the news? I don't know about you, but I read the news."
Green has lived without blogs since 1989, when his then-girlfriend moved out and took her set with her.
"When Claudia went, the blog bookmarks went with her," Green said. "But instead of just going out and bookmarking more, which I certainly could have done, that wasn't the issue. I decided to stand up to the blog teat."
"I'm not an elitist," Green said. "It's just that I'd much rather sculpt or write in my journal or read Proust than sit there passively staring at some phosphorescent screen."
"If I need a fix of passive audio-visual stimulation, I'll go to catch a Bergman or Truffaut film down at the university," Green said. "I certainly wouldn't waste my time reading the so-called Blogspot or, God forbid, Fark."
Continued Green: "People don't realize just how much time their blog-reading habit, or, shall I say, addiction eats up. Four hours of blogs a day, over the course of a month, adds up to 120 hours. That's five entire days! Why not spend that time living your own life, instead of reading fictional people live theirs? I can't begin to tell you how happy I am not to read blogs."
Well-acted? Ok, well I guess Mark Hamill got all these great acting jobs after Episode IV because of his amazing talent.
Tee-hee-hee! Snarking on Mark Hamill is easy, and also wholly inaccurate. The man has one of the biggest voice acting portfolios I've ever seen, and has worked nearly every year since Star Wars. No, he wasn't fortunate enough to get as stellar a movie career as Harrison Ford, but then again, no one else in Star Wars was either. Bottom line, he's working steadily and everyone still knows who he is after twenty-five years. That's more than most actors ever get. He's doing just fine.
As for the rest of your post: It's not Lucas's movie alone. Lucas got as rich and powerful as he is because of the tickets, action figures, and breakfast cereals -- all paid for by his fans. The fans made Lucas, and for that I think they (not we; I'm not a fan anymore) deserve better than the rank indifference Lucas has given them. He's said flat-out he doesn't care how much his fans enjoy the movies. If they hate it, that's just too bad, because it's his and his alone, the money for producing it apparently having come out of nowhere. It's George's world, and he could give a fuck about anyone's childhood memories.
Star Wars doesn't have to be King Lear to be important to people. It unleashed a lot of kids' imaginations, and I think that's a good thing. Also, being a kid has nothing to do with it. Yes, being young and seeing Star Wars for the first time is like nothing else, but watching the Lord of the Rings adaptations taught me that I don't have to be ten to be blown away by a movie, or to rediscover a sense of wonder. I think Lucas has lost sight of what made the original Star Wars great, but can't realize it because he's determined to do exactly as he pleases, regardless of how poor his decisions regularly seem to be these days. Yes, it's not the most important issue in the world, but these are beloved films that are getting butchered and their original forms lost. It's not fanatical to object to that.
I feel that Star Wars is too big and influential a piece of pop culture to be so crassly handled by one man with a runaway ego. Millions of kids grew up with this stuff, and Lucas is twiddling with it like he's a kid with a home movie in his basement. Only he's messing with something that millions of kids have very fond memories of, and, yeah, whether it's rational or not, people have problems with that. That's completely irresponsible, and I won't support it with my dollars anymore. You go ahead and "take what Lucas gives you;" I don't feel I have to.
That's just the original trilogy though. The prequels -- they're just mediocre. In my opinion, no one will really remember them, not like they do the OT.
"The PC as we know it probably only has a decade or so left."
Aw, again?! It's died so many times already...
Eh, from looking upthread now it looks like IHBT. Oh, well.
And somewhere out there, there is a television watcher who won't get defensive and accusatory when he learns other people have chosen not to live their lives as he does. But I've yet to meet one of those guys either.
I've found that not watching TV is like being a vegetarian -- it doesn't matter how nicely you mention it, how many disclaimers you add, how much you insist that you're not judging anyone else's lifestyle, but merely found that this works really well for you personally and you're glad you did it -- someone will get offended and decide that you are an elitist asshole out to get people to change their own lives.
Well, let me be totally clear on this: I don't watch television. I don't give a flying fuck how much of it you watch. You can watch Dr. Phil twelve hours a day for all I care. I don't watch it because I don't like being bombarded with ads and the conditioning effects that come with it, I dislike branding and interstitials, and I have the kind of personality that gravitates towards the lowest common denominator, so if I spend any time in front of TV, I end up watching the most abominable crap in the world and wondering why I'm doing so. So I stay away from it. I don't deny that there's quality programming out there -- for me, however, the cons outweigh the pros most of the time.
But God help me if I reveal this to other people, no matter how innocuously. I've suddenly become a "pompous windbag" and the most judgmental being on earth. Most of the time, anymore, I just assume people are either insecure about their own recreational habits, or have issues with themselves someone else that they want to hash out with me.
What I find funny is that these same people frequently watch shows they seem to despise, yet they can't turn it off. And I've seen people who have to have it on all the time, "for noise," and can't even have a face-to-face conversation with someone. They talk to the TV. I personally don't think that's terribly healthy, but hey, whatever -- if it works for them, great.
And as the grandparent poster said -- no, I don't miss it; yes, I do enjoy my life more because of it, and your life is your life, so you go ahead and do what you like. Not everyone who chooses not to watch TV spends that free time sitting around silently judging you. Trust me, no one cares that much.
By the way, the final sentence of your post reduces it to hypocrisy. I don't spend my time sitting in my living room with other people, reading shitty novels to myself, any more than I suspect you sit around watching Who Wants To See My Chewed-Up Food? all day. If you're going to berate people for slinging stereotypes and acting from uninformed opinions, I humbly suggest doing so yourself first.
Yeah, why don't these medical students published in the British Medical Journal get lives?
Your only choice now is to write a Nitpicker's Guide to the Nitpickers of the Nitpicker's Guide to Lord of the Rings.
Maybe he has a job!
(I'm just kidding. I love the Appendices, but there is a lot of material there.)
"I see Saruman throwing fireballs. Now I believe Peter Jackson didn't want to make *that* kind of movie with wizards casting fireballs when I see the original theatrical releases, but now this?"
Well, in three movies, totaling over nine hours run-time, Gandalf shines a light a few times, knocks an arrow and an axe out of the air with his staff, breaks Saruman's staff... and spends the rest of the time stabbing Orcs and beating the living crap out of the Steward of Gondor. I think it's safe to say he didn't make "that kind of movie." One fireball is quite the exception to the rule, and pretty much Saruman's only pyrotechnic. So personally, I think it's forgivable.
As for Gandalf casting lightning on Weathertop; it would have been cool to see, but might have dramatically undermined the mystery of Gandalf's disappearance as well as making for two fights on Weathertop (-1, Redundant?), so I can see why they didn't put it in.
For some people, painstakingly picking out little details and differences is how they enjoy the film.
When I first saw Fellowship, I took a great delight in picking out all the differences between the books and the films, and either annoying non-LotR fans with trivial knowledge (just a little) or discussing said differences with other LotR fans. It's fun, when you've read the books enough to know these little details, to see what was left out and what was kept in. I personally wouldn't have gone to the trouble to catalog them this extensively, but this guide is obviously a labor of love for the author.
Of course, by the time we got to RotK there were so many deviations from the book that I just sort of gave up -- but that didn't diminish my enjoyment of the film any.
I think the author of the nitpicker's guide is having much more fun picking out little details than he likes to let on. He states that he's not happy with many of the changes, but apparently he liked the films enough to buy all three of the extended editions on DVD, presumably after seeing them (perhaps more than once) in the theater. Hardly the work of a man who's filled with hate.
Some people just have fun with minutiae and little details. I agree with you that prose and film are completely different, and I personally think Jackson's interpretation of Lord of the Rings is as good of a film adaptation as fans could have possibly wished for. For those who want something 100% identical to the books, there's the books.
I think dramatically, they cut TTT the only place where it made sense to end it. If you follow the books and end TTT with Frodo getting captured by the orcs at Cirith Ungol, there's not enough material left over for ROTK. It's Mount Doom, and then bam, done. Not worth waiting a year for. I complained about that too when I first saw TTT, but I think it was the right decision.
While we're on the subject of the appendices, it mentions in one of the documentaries that Tolkien, of course, didn't intercut between Frodo / Sam and the rest of the Fellowship in the books, which of course movies have to do to keep audiences interested. So while the Battle of Minas Tirith is going on, Frodo and Sam are in Shelob's lair; when the party is at the Black Gates, Frodo and Sam are on Mount Doom, etc.
The upshot being that while Jackson's films don't slavishly follow the structure of the books, they are chronologically correct.
As far as #4 is concerned, I don't see it as "six endings" (which I think is a wild exaggeration BTW), so much as a rather too long denoument (it's 20 minutes, which is barely a burp in the 10+ hour total of the series).
I think the big directorial mistake Jackson made was in so many slow fades-to-black so close together. After such a huge build-up, the movie needed to maintain a bit more momentum than I did. I think all the moments that Jackson put in the ending deserved to be there, but some editing to make it tighter would have improved things dramatically.
At least he stuck to his guns in not including the Scouring of the Shire, which so many people were clamoring for, but would have been excruciating from a film perspective.
So wait... he gets two Liv Tylers then?
How come he gets two?!
(Can I have two Miranda Ottos?)
This far into the discussion and no one's made an "AIM High!" joke yet? C'mon, people.
See, and here I initially thought this should be rated "Funny" because the parent poster found it extremely hard to believe that anyone would still be playing Gamma World.
And here I was ready to provide that helpful link and everything...