11 oscars = overrated

[aardvark]

I have never said Titanic is a good film. It is cack of the highest order!

IMHO Titanic was a good film, but not a great one.  Technically it was of the highest order, but the soap opera love story..oh pulleeze.  Rather like an omlette made with spoiled ham..good in parts.

About LOTR
11 Oscars devided by three films = 3.67 Oscars per film (yeah, I know the other two films won a few oscars, but I can't be bothered to look them up)and none of the actors ever won any.  (Okay,I looked it up.  Two Towers nominated for six and won two; Fellowship of the Ring nominated for thirteen won four.  Ian McKellen was the only actor ever nominated and did not win)

I think it would be a far better to give films awards for their staying power. If people are still raving about a film say ten years after its release, it's worth giving an award to.

I think it's safe to say that these movies will be talked about for years, as are Lawrence of Arabia, Cleopatra, Gone With the Wind.

basically a Hollywood, watered-down, cliched re-hashing of a quite decent plot

I think that if it had been done Hollywood style, we would have had _one_ three hour movie to cover the whole thing and would have made even less sense.  Peter Jackson took very few liberties with the story and gave us extended versions on the DVDs.  Tolkien would have been appalled at even a quality Disney animated version and surely must be turning over in his grave about the Ralph Bakshi version.  I think he would have approved of Jackson's version although he might have quibbled over a few details.  I only hope that they get to do a version of The Hobbit if film rights can be worked out.  I'm not sure that The Silmarillion would be as suitable or any of the other books that his son Christopher Tolkien edited, but as always I keep hoping for more. :hat:
(just trying out the new smilies)

[aardvark]

Well, they have to screw around with it to an extent, otherwise we'd have a 50 hour long set of movies. Personally I miss Tom Bombadil and Saruman's takeover of the Shire.  Obviously a lot more will make sense if you've read the books. Oh and what about Merry and Pippin being taller after having drunk Entish refreshments or the sad tale of the Entwives. There's just no way they could have put it all in. It would have put people to sleep.  :banana:

[aardvark]

There will be a lot of sleepy people when they watch the Extended Edition of The Two Towers then!  Both of those scenes are in there, modified a bit mind you... ooh, were you refering to the extended edition??

Actually no.  I just got around to renting the extended edition yesterday. So far I'm up to chapiter nine, but I noticed the index referring to Entwives and Ent draughts, so I guess there is more of what I'd like to see in it. I can hardly wait for the extended edition of "Return of the King" :-o

[aardvark]

Ripoff is hardly what I would call it (unless of course they release the DVD set only in FULLSCREEN (4x3) rather then anamorphic/letterbox WIDESCREEN (16x9)

That would be a ripoff :-)
I refuse to buy any movie that only comes in a fullscreen version. For example Moonlighting (with Cher) or The Secret of N.I.M.H. Sometimes Blockbuster (spit) only orders in DVDs in Fullscreen (Kangaroo Jack (not that great a movie, but it's the principle of the thing)) I don't mind movies that have both, usually on two-sided disc, but widescreen is the only way to go.
I finally returned the 7 day rental of the extended Towers version three days late! And I still never got to look much at disk 3 or listen to the audio commentaries.  It was enough to tide me over until I purchase the 5 disk version with the Gollum statue.  Just waiting until it drops way below the sale price of around CDN$88.00 available many places. I got the bookends version of Fellowship for about $60 and now it's back up to the List price of over $100 8-)