CNN, AICN, ABC, NYT … arghh … I’m going review mad here! Anyway, here is a review round-up from critics and sites around the world. And remember, if you have a fan review, you’ll be able to post it in our Two Towers review section very very soon …
Spoilers may lurk in these reviews!!
First up, Ms Allegro’s review from BagEndInn.com [More]
The New York Times (registration required): [More]
A quote: The director Peter Jackson’s scrupulous devotion to the spirit of J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings” trilogy manifests itself in a gripping, intense fashion for the second of the film adaptations, “The Two Towers.”
Here’s an article I found in the German Cinema magazine, along with a brief portrait of Liv Tyler and a more detailed portrait of Viggo Mortensen. I translated and transcribed the articles.
The Lord of the Rings – The two Towers Into the heart of Evil
Everything about part 2 of the Epos: Gandalf’s rebirth and Frodo’s Odyssey through the Dead Marshes. Plus: Peter Jackson, director and Fantasy-Revolutioniser; Viggo Mortensen, Aragorn star and punk rocker; and: win a trip to New Zealand.
Actually Peter Jackson could be in the best mood. He’s sitting at the pool of the Four Season Hotel in Beverly Hills, a steaming mug of tea in front of him. The April rain from the evening before has washed away the smog from the air. Vases with freshly cut flowers are placed everywhere. But the New Zealander isn’t impressed by this kitsch idyll. Because he’s at a place that he dislikes from the bottom of his heart. “I never had the ambition to become a Hollywood director.” In his eyes, the movie city is Mordor, in Tolkien’s story the heart of evil. “They hire the foreign film makers because of their creativity, but then they want them to deliver hollow commercial products. That won’t ever happen to me.”
About six years ago, he spoke words like these easily. Back then he had just finished the queer horror comedy “The Frighteners” – for the cost of modest 17 million dollars. The ordeal of fire for his principles had still to come. Cinema audience all over the world know by now how this ended. With the first instalment of “The Lord of the Rings” he proved that a blockbuster doesn’t need an FX-Overkill. Besides he made the Fantasy-Genre acceptable. With “The two Towers”, the second instalment of the trilogy, he shows even more impressive, who’s the more powerful: The creative Kiwi – and not the Hollywood companies.
Yet at first Jackson hadn’t been considered as a suitable candidate for the Million Dollar Game about Middle Earth. In the late eighties he had taken the Splatter Fan Community by storm with films like “Bad Taste”. With the Oscar-nominated adolescence-drama “Heavenly Creatures” he gained critics’ merits in 1994. His first dream project, a re-make of “King Kong” got “shredded during the decisions of Universal. But in 1997, the deal of his life was within reach. He convinced Miramax company to purchase the rights for J. R. R. Tolkien’s “Lord of the Rings”, which were owned by “producer’s pope” Saul Zaentz at that time (“One flew over the cuckoo’s nest”, “Amadeus”). But only two years later on the next setback followed. Miramax only wanted to produce one “Ring” movie, not two, like previously agreed. Jackson was desperately looking for sponsors.
Fortunately Mark Ordesky, an old friend and mentor, was in the management of New Line Studios. His boss, Bob Shaye, granted the stubborn freak an audience. It’s told that he offered an extension to three films from the beginning, corresponding to the literary form. But before he signed the contract, he consulted Saul Zaentz.
In the meantime the triple Oscar winner had met Peter Jackson and his wife Frances Walsh for a dinner in San Francisco. Ever since his failed animated version in 1978, Saul Zaentz wanted to develop a “real” movie of the Tolkien epos. But directing candidates like John Boorman (“Excalibur”) failed with their concepts. But not his guest from the far side of the world. “Peter had a passion that I didn’t realize in any of the others. For all of the others it was just a chance to do a good movie. He wanted far more than that.”
Just the place of this dinner was under a bad star. Co-owner of the restaurant “Rubicon” was Francis Ford Coppola, Synonym for the megalo-maniac director who had hopelessly miscalculated himself with his extravagant visions.
But psychologically Jackson is on the opposite side of the spectrum. And this exactly explains why the New Zealander did not experience an “Apocalypse Now”. Whereas “Godfather” Coppola acted the big shot like a big circus director, the Lord of the Hobbits took the part of a teamplayer.
One word is the leitmotif of all the stories from the “Lord of the Rings” set: Comraderie. Whenever he thought it necessary, the director shared his power. In writing the screenplay, the real wirepullers were Frances Walsh and Philippa Boyens. Whereas Jackson was dealing with production, they worked on scenes and dialogues every day. The actors gave lots of inputs. There were real seminars about the different roles. Whenever the actors had questions about their characters, the authors answered. Especially “The two Towers” shows that two women did the storylines. It’s not only swords and wizards that drive the story, but also love and jealousy. And of course it’s no coincidence that the background story in the prologue is presented by a female narrator.
Jackson even put the design of this world into others’ hands, even though he owns an extensive library with Tolkien- and Tolkien-related literature. From England and Switzerland illustrators Alan Lee and John Howe were flown in, who had brought Middle-Earth to paper countless times before. As Europeans they were experienced in the style of old cultures – unlike most New Zealanders. “We didn’t want to copy other Fantasy movies, we wanted to interpret the story”, John Howe points out.
Even in directing, Jackson left the field to others. Because of the extraordinary dimensions of the project, there were up to seven teams at work, each one with a different director. Jackson himself sat in front of several screens like a mix between a Buddha and Big Brother, and watched the material that kept being submitted via satellite.
Jackson’s way of working explains that in the age of effect spectacles the species of directing dictators belongs to the extinctive kind. For that, there are just too many “minor” directors part of the game. Nevertheless, “The Lord of the Rings” is everything else but “lived democracy”. Richard Taylor, who was awarded with two Oscars for his fantastic tricks and make-up work on “The Fellowship of the Ring” points out clear who was the boss: “Peter has done a job like Alexander the Great.”
The respective teams listened exactly to the voice of their Lord in the Ring. There wasn’t much of creative freedom anyway, because all of the scenes had been laid down detailed in Jackson’s storyboard. So they rather shot one take too many, than one too less, so Jackson had enough material to choose of. Important scenes were done by the master-director himself anyway. Despite the dimensions of this project he remained in control of his vision. That’s why he kept his actors at close reins. He watched exactly the movements, told them about dialogue tempo and rhythm. He forced “Gandalf” Ian McKellen to 24 takes for a mini-dialogue. With “Mikro-Management” like this he even brought veterans like “Ex-Dracula” Christopher Lee on the edge of desperation.
Peter Jackson was pushing for realism from the beginning. That’s why he refused to use computer graphics whenever possible. If in doubt, he’d rather have the fantastic scenarios built as models. In impressive sizes. For example, the mountain fortress Helm’s Deep was constructed on a scale of 1:8. There was a 4-m-high puppet of Treebeard, the bizarre forest creature. All this wasn’t just looking impressive, it also made the entrance in the world of Middle-Earth easier for the actors. “I felt like I was living in another world”, Karl Urban, who gives his debut in the “Two Towers” as prince Éomer, confirms.
With his inclination to perfectionism, Peter Jackson didn’t stop for anything – let alone for his sponsors. Backed up by the success of “The Fellowship”, he squeezed a couple of millions out of New Line, to prepare “The Two Towers” to the high expectations. It didn’t really make it easier, that the storylines got even more complex than in Part 1.
The story parts into three separate storylines: Sam’s and Frodo’s odyssey to Mordor and the adventures of their scattered fellows in the country of Rohan. Also, the effort in effects increased immensely. There is the first spectacular battle of the trilogy at the mountain fortress Helm’s Deep, and with the outcast hobbit Gollum a fully digital character is being introduced, on whose plausibility the most important storylines depend. Therefore Jackson extended the re-shootings far over the planned time. Until the last, he was working on effects, especially on the appearances of the Ents, the tree creatures who live in the forest of Fangorn. Die impersonated spirits of nature have the ability to walk, but in a very slow manner, but have the ability to blast mighty walls by the incredible power of their roots.
There are two different stories about Jackson’s deep occupation with the Ents. The first tells, he was so pleased with the visual appearance of the good-hearted Ents, that he went and developed more scenes for them. The second story tells exactly the opposite: The first Ent-animations had failed. Fearing the Ents being disliked like the Star Wars Ramble-Alien Jar Jar Binks, Jackson ordered a major overhaul for the wooden rangers. No matter which one of the stories is right: There was lots of overtime work – even though Jackson already had expanded his effect team. It was planned that the effect team was to be expanded on 110 workers – in the end 350 were hired. Compared to the “Fellowship”, the efficiency of the processors grew about 10 times as much.
Insignificant (an attribute that forbids itself with “The Lord of the Rings”) in all this expensive and extravagant production only one person: Peter Jackson himself. Physically, he could be Coppola’s cuddly cousin. His wardrobe only seems to consist of t-shirts and shorts. If he has to dress formally (that happens rarely enough), he wears shoes.
The comparison to the barefoot Hobbits pops on one’s mind, since they also like to stay unrecognised and don’t think much about exaggerated politeness. But Hobbits are a conservative people. Jackson’s mind instead is subversive. Someone like this doesn’t let Hollywood take him in. “I do my kind of movies. That’s it.” That’s why he did the “Ring” production in “funny, small” New Zealand, where no one was able to try and botch-up in his job. Where other laws – his laws – counted. Jackson’s first commandment was “You shall have fun – even at the hardest work.” And his crew had fun.
Not only that a string quartet was on-set all of the time, playing during the breaks, there also were some other obscure “Ring” rituals that confused non-prepared guests. For example, one day Peter Jackson welcomed a group of New Zealand Generals, who were to make their soldiers available for mass scenes. When they entered the Hall of the costume designers, a fully-dressed Drag Queen was waiting for the Generals. Even worse – everywhere the soldiers looked, they saw men in Drag and women in men’s clothes. It was then that they were explained that the costume designers were celebrating their annual “Frock Day”, a day when men wear skirts and dresses and women wear pants. And everything else that belongs to it. Peter Jackson did get his soldiers anyway.
The Crowning of the Stubborn
Loner, Stubborn, Punk-rocker in spirit. How – of all people – Viggo Mortensen became as Aragorn a hero and a sex symbol
He is the most stubborn star who was ever put on the list of the 50 most beautiful people by US glamour magazine “People”. He avoids mirrors and hates parties. He recorded three albums between lyric and noise together with “Guns ‘n’ Roses” guitarist Buckethead. He was married to punk rock singer Exene Cervenka. For his book “A hole in the sun” he photographed nothing but swimming pools. And this man is now on eye level with Britney Spears and Hayden Christensen. (note: Britney Spears?? That’s a downright insult to Viggo!!) “Now it’s definitely too late to change my name into Vic Morton” he grumbles. He fired the agent who suggested changing his Danish name into a more “mainstream” pseudonym.
Until the very day when he was chosen to become a ranger, Mr. M. had done 32 movies – from his debut in “Witness” to “28 Days” with Sandra Bullock. In between: a steady change between ambitious projects that didn’t find an audience and simple parts that secured him paying his rent (“Daylight”, “Psycho”). Apart from an hypnotic guest appearance as Lucifer in “God’s Army”, his “hard-on-the-outside/good-at-heart” manner is most intensive in Ridley Scott’s army flop “G.I. Jane”. As Demi Moore’s slave driver in the Navy-training camp he quotes D. H. Lawrence “I’ve never seen a wild animal feeling self pity”. Viggo Mortensen is the kind of guy who puts out a flame with his fingers.
He owes the part that made the loner a sex symbol to a workplace accident. Shooting to “The Fellowship” was already weeks in progress, when Peter Jackson separated from Aragorn-actor Stuart Townshend – too young. Viggo was old enough. The 44-year-old remembers, shaking his head: “There was that call ‘Hey, Viggo, do you want to go to New Zealand tomorrow for 1 ½ years?’ “ He said no. Until Henry Mortensen, his then 11-year-old son, told his father (who had never read Tolkien) “Aragorn is the coolest guy in the book!”. Already Viggo’s call back gave an impression that the ultimate Aragorn had been found: “Okay, how old was I when I came to live with the Elves?”
Viggo fits in very quickly. The son of a Danish father and American mother grew up in New York, Buenos Aires and Venezuela. After school, the nomad travelled through Denmark as a carpenter. And now New Zealand! Adventures! At the plane, he studies Tolkien’s work and discovered motifs of the tales that he read as a boy. “In northern mythology there’s no promise of a paradise. Knowing that one did right is the only reward one has to expect.” The man who left the plane was Aragorn.
Veni, Viggo, vici. The crew greeted the newest member of the Fellowship like a hero. His total “fusion” with the part is notorious – like a legend that is told on camp fires. When Peter Jackson once called him “Aragorn” for hours, no one corrected him – because no one noticed. When Viggo cracked a tooth during an action scene he called for superglue and continued the scene. Viggo sleeps in his boots. Viggo retired to the woods by himself for days. The method actor weights out: “I was fishing a couple of times, but I didn’t live in the woods. How would I receive my call for duty every day?” Viggo despises cell phones.
But he can’t deny his sometimes noxious devotion: “Sometimes I was so exhausted that I hallucinated. At a time, I really thought Liv Tyler was an Elven princess! Fortunately, there was always somebody to watch over me. We were a real community. Like a big circus family.”
Elijah Wood praises Viggo’s infectious energy: “I bow to Viggo. He saved us.” Viggo is embarrassed about the fuss: “There is no star in “Lord of the Rings”. The Fellowship is a unity.” Away, bad spell vanity! Viggo turns stained t-shirts to the left side, and as jewellery, he only has the one ring: As a memory and a sign of attachment to the Fellowship he has kept Aragorn’s ring.
It’s his hands that betray him. They’re never the strong, callous hands of a fighter. Those beautiful fingers belong to an artist. In the Hitchcock-remake “A perfect Murder” in 1998, Viggo played a deceiving painter. An average movie, yet it means much to him. “It was nice to kiss Gwyneth Paltrow.” And all paintings in his film-studio were his work. That Douglas refers to his work in one scene as “trashy, but potent” – that’s still a reason for Viggo to party.
The artist Viggo Mortensen has shown his work in Athens, New York and L. A, four books have been published. His spoken-words-CD’s are sold out. Viggo’s pictures reveal him as a watcher of the little things, saving the moment. He always keeps dried flowers in his pick-up truck. His paintings are always a “work in progress”, he’s always able to add something: collages, over-painted photos, parts of poems – symbols of a world in motion. Worth up to $ 5,000.
To the opening of his “Sign Language” exhibition in New York back in July about 1300 fans showed up. “I know they didn’t come because of my photos and paintings.” Viggo grants himself a smile “But now that they’re here I hope they like them. If not, than not.”
But he’s not always seeing things so casually. “Sometimes I stand in front of my pictures and I think: God!! What’s all this?? Then I question everything. Am I a good actor? A good father? I should stop harassing people with this shit. I can understand some people jumping out of the window.” When the doubts threaten to eat him up, he calls his Danish relatives in (can it be true?) Ringsted, leaves L. A. in a hurry and relaxes in his cabin in the mountains of Idaho. “You have to face your demons. I have to tolerate my mistakes”. His creative output isn’t limited to one form. His “curiosity” puts the shy guy in front of the camera. His longing for independence ties him to the arts. “The working progress and the result are mine.” That’s why he distributes his books himself: His publishing company is named “Perceval Press” after Perceval, the knight from the Arthur’s tale who searched the holy grail.
Viggo keeps on searching. “Do I have an aim? I want to be happy – even if I play a tortured person.”
There’s still a few seats left at the Amnesty International early screening of The Two Towers at 7pm Tuesday 17 in San Francisco. I’ve just been talking to the organisers and it sounds like a fantastic event, if you can get to it! Peter Jackson’s been an incredible supporter of Amnesty International, and for this screening he filmed a special introduction in which he talks about the relationship between Tolkien’s story and the world we live in, and the way the films can make us think about issues of power, freedom and the abuses of force that affect us all. Everyone who attends this special showing will receive a compilation book about all three movies, and a movie poster. Those alone are worth $35, so the $50 ticket seems like a pretty good deal. To book a ticket to the screening, click here for an invitation. All proceeds from this charity screening go to Amnesty International
NEW YORK – Peter Jackson’s middle movie may suffer a severe case of middle-child syndrome.
“The next one is my favorite. I shouldn’t actually say that. I’m supposed to be promoting this film,” says the director, who’s come from New Zealand to flog the second in “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy, “The Two Towers,” which opens Wednesday.
“In ‘The Return of the King’ we get to pay it all off in a very triumphant kind of a way,” he says. “There are just great bits of drama; it’s very heroic and very emotional.”
OK, but before we skip ahead to next Christmas and that film, what about this one?
“The Two Towers” was the toughest of the three, he says, explaining that he pulled apart the book to make it more cinematic and make sure that “the bottom didn’t drop out” in any of the three story lines, which will converge in the conclusion.
“This one is a classic kind of middle chapter. Which is tough in a sense in that it doesn’t have a beginning and it doesn’t have an end.”
Is he afraid that will leave fans unsatisfied?
“I hope not. The first one didn’t have an ending, either,” he says, laughing. “Only one of them is actually going to have an end. . . . We’re going to become specialists in movies with no endings.”
The absence of a beginning in “The Two Towers” was “a blessing,” Jackson says, because he didn’t need the complicated, introductory exposition that began last year’s “The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring.”
And he deliberately avoided a recap of the first film.
“So many people last year said, ‘Oh God, I wish I could have just sat there and seen the second film straight away.’ So I thought: Let’s treat this film in that way,” he says. “We just pretend the year hasn’t gone by and we’re just carrying the story on from the moment that we left off.”
Even though Jackson’s cinematic magnum opus has very detailed, definitive source material in J.R.R. Tolkien’s books, the 41-year-old New Zealand filmmaker always saw himself and his collaborators as more than just conduits of the legendary literature.
“As filmmakers, we never felt that it was our job to faithfully take everything that Tolkien had written — in the way that he wrote it — and just put that on screen,” he says. “Our primary responsibility was as filmmakers and to make an entertaining film, or three entertaining films in this case. And by doing that we’ve had to change a lot of things in the book.
“And I think people have forgiven us.”
Tolkien fans who five years ago would have howled at the thought of any changes have appreciated his efforts, he says.
More things were changed in “The Two Towers” than in the other two films. (Aficionados will notice, for instance, that Jackson developed more scenes for the Gollum/Frodo plot line than the second book contained. And the confrontation with a giant spider, which ends the second book, has been moved to the third movie.)
“Everything deviates from the books in some degree. I mean, we don’t have a single scene in any of our films that sort of takes the book and verbatim just translates the dialogue and the events . . . into the movie.”
He prepared for three years (1997 through 1999) before he even started shooting. Besides writing the script, he did a lot of storyboards, made models of castles and used little plastic soldiers to map out the battle scenes.
He also approached the story as if it were history, rather than fantasy.
“I don’t know anybody else who could have done this, who could have gone through this whole period and stayed with these three films,” says Mirando Otto, who plays Eowyn, the niece of the king of Rohan, who lost her parents to marauding orcs.
With his eyes twinkling through big round glasses amid a forest of long hair and beard, Jackson does come across as unflappable.
After the success of the first film — $860 million worldwide box office, 13 Academy Award nominations and four statuettes — he says the pressure this time is different.
“The pressure on the first film was basically, would the studio survive? — this folly of making three films at once,” Jackson says.
Now the pressure stems simply from not wanting to disappoint people who loved the first film, he says.
Thought this might interest you – it’s from this week’s Computer Weekly (cover date 12th december, published by my company RBI) about the chief techie at WETA.
Best regards, Mitz.
Dream job: Lord of the Software Scott Houston started out as a Cobol coder and is now chief technology officer for WETA, producer of the digital effects on The Lord of the Rings films. Karl Cushing reports
If you are looking for a challenging and rewarding IT career head for the silver screen. That is the advice of Scott Houston, who worked on the latest Lord of the Rings movie, The Two Towers.
“I have spent my entire 22-year career in the IT sector but the film industry has to be the most demanding and time-critical I have ever worked in,” says Houston, who is chief technical officer at digital effects company WETA Digital in Wellington, New Zealand. Although being an IT professional on a movie like The Two Towers is high-pressured, challenging and demanding, Houston says it is also exhilarating and highly satisfying when the team delivers.
Houston says he became obsessed with The Lord of the Rings project when, as a salesman for Silicon Graphics, he began managing the WETA account. He finally got the chance to join the project team at the end of April. Luckily for Houston there was already a world class IT team in place and this helped to ease the transition into the new role. “Having a bullet-proof hide did come in handy from time to time,” he adds.
A high-profile movie like The Two Towers, which is so heavily reliant on network-hungry digital effect production to bring all the orcs, elves and goblins to life, creates some major challenges for a chief technology officer – not least coping with the scale and speed of growth in the facility. In the last six months Houston’s 30-strong team had to triple the online storage capacity and quadruple the processing power available to the facility. “This was all while we were in a 24×7 production environment,” he says. “It was like changing the engines on a Boeing 747 whilst flying at 10,000 feet, at 900km/h, with 400 people on board. Thankfully the plane didn’t crash, and neither did we, and the movie got made.”
A lot of the key technical challenges Houston faced mirror those of chief technology officers in the commercial sphere. A key consideration was that the film’s producer New Line wanted the project to follow the central structure of JRR Tolkien’s Lord of the Rings story, which is a trilogy. This meant building an IT platform that was sufficiently robust to last until the third movie, The Return of the King, and beyond. It also had to be scalable enough to meet the ever-increasing demands of visual effects production and to manage the integration of new technologies. Enabling future expandability to 10 Gigabit Ethernet was essential.
Houston didn’t work on the first Lord of the Rings movie, The Fellowship of the Ring, but he says the increase in the technology used for The Two Towers has been “exponential”, resulting in a massive overhaul of its IT infrastructure. For the first film, WETA used a high-speed network to handle its multiple gigabit throughputs and enable the digital effect production teams to analyse and cross-reference the digital film segments quickly and efficiently. WETA believes that infrastructure, based on technology from Foundry Networks, significantly helped to reduce production time and cost. However, for The Two Towers it has had to invest in some more powerful network switches and 450 new dual-processor servers.
Houston says working on the project represents one of the highlights of his 22-year IT career. He says his job is “immensely rewarding” and he would not hesitate to recommend the movie sector to IT professionals in other industries.
“The attraction of being on the leading edge of technology has always kept me in the IT sector and I can honestly say the work we are doing at WETA is right on the leading edge, using the latest technology to its maximum potential,” he says. “The work is never boring, always challenging and if you are lucky enough to work on a project like The Lord of the Rings you get something to tell your grandchildren about.”
For The Fellowship of the Ring, WETA used a high-speed network based on technology from Foundry Networks, with storage from NetApps and StorageTek.
For the latest installment, WETA added Foundry’s Bigiron Layer 3 network switches, three Bigiron 15-slot chassis, and two Bigiron 8-slot chassis with multiple gigabit copper and fibre interfaces. WETA will test 10 Gigabit Ethernet between switches and high-end filters next year. Its dedicated render wall, which turns the special effects and footage into film sequences, now has 1,200 processors.
How Scott Houston’s career developed
* 1980 Began a data processing course in New Zealand
* 1981-1983 Cobol programming using batch punch cards and systems design
* 1984-1986 Cobol programming in London, where he designed, wrote and implemented supermarket chain Sainsbury’s maternity pay system and worked on the computerisation of the London Stock Exchange
* 1987-1990 Returned to New Zealand and set up a PC sales and services company with a friend
* 1991 “I tried to sell IBM AS/400s and discovered virtual reality,” says Houston
* 1992-1995 London again. “Tried to find, write or discover the virtual reality killer app,” he says
* 1996-1998 “Marriage and young children meant safe, stable and secure hannel management role for Compaq, back in New ealand”
* 1998-2002 “The old virtual reality bug bit again”, resulting in a sales role at supplier Silicon Graphics, where he started to manage the WETA account and fell in love with the Lord of the Rings project
* 2002 Got a chance to join the WETA project team.
Last Friday (the 13th), I was lucky enough to attend a TTT pre-release screening at a benefit for producer Barrie Osborne’s Alma Mater, on Friday the 13th. It was held at a brand new entertainment complex in downtown Minneapolis.
Mr. Osborne introduced the film by saying that Peter Jackson would have been there if he could, but the director was home in New Zealand to prepare for the release there. Barrie also announced, to much applause, that he would try to have a pre-release screening for The Return of the King, next year. The film was shown immediately after.
When it was over there was a party at Gameworks; which is a restaurant, bar, video game center and bowling alley that is set up like a nightclub. There were free appetizers, soda, and best of all, TTT movie posters.
During the party I had the opportunity to get several people’s reactions to the film. Everyone I talked to thought is was very good and they will see it again soon. (WARNING: Minor Spoilers Ahead) Specific positive comments were;
“The one thing I was worried about was the Treants, but they nailed him dead-on. It couldn’t have been done any better”.
“Gollum deserves a Best Actor Nomination”
“The battle of Helm’s Deep was amazing”
Among the things not so positive things that people said were;
“I like the first one better”
“Every time Gimli was on the screen it just for comic relief. How many short jokes can you fit into a movie”?
After the movie itself, the highlight of my evening was talking to Barrie Osborne. At the party I was lucky enough to get a few minutes with him to ask a few questions. Please note that his responses are paraphrased and not direct quotes.
Sal: The Lord of the Rings has unprecedented cooperation between the studio and the fan sites. Do you feel this has been a positive experience or is there anything that didn’t work out?
Barrie Osborne: it’s not an industry standard but Peter Jackson is a big fan of the Internet, as am I. Some sites took a while to get up to speed, but all in all it was a good experience.
S: Ian Mc Kellan has stated that he would be interested in playing Gandalf in a film adaptation of ‘The Hobbit’. Is this something you would be interested in producing?
BO: (Laughing) Well, after this is over, I am going to take a big break. But, there are so many Tolkien stories out there that could be made, that you never know what will be done.
S: What difficulties do you see in getting the cast back to New Zealand this summer to shoot additional footage?
BO: I’ve talked to most of the cast and we became such a family that I believe that we will be able to get it done. Of course, many of them have other things going on, but I believe we will be able to work around everyone’s schedules.
This was all the time I had to talk to Mr. Osborne or I would have asked him a lot more.
All in all it was worth the $50 per ticket. The movie was great, the party was fun, and Mr. Osborne was very Gracious. The biggest problem with seeing the move when I did is; I have to wait 5 days before I can see it again.
