Lord of the Rings
We bought ourselves the extended DVD set of the Lord of the Rings as a Christmas present (my precious!) and have been working our way through the "bonus" material. Perhaps not of interest to everyone, we find it fascinating for a number of reasons. Some of these have a research perspective (since I seem to see everything these days that way):
- How is such a vast amount of material organized? The answer is heirarchically. There is nary an index in sight, which makes keeping track of what is where on the DVDs a baffling proposition.
- The movies themselves were shot totally out of time sequence, and also (using blue screen and myriad other CGI techniques) partly of reality and partly of made-up elements. Peter Jackson and company must have hade superb organizational tools to keep track of all the material. It's mind boggling.
Just as a comment on the movies themselves, I've been a fan of Tolkien and the Lord of the Rings since I was almost my son Julian's age (he's seven). I have a few misgivings about the films (there's a little too much B-grade blood and guts for my taste, I miss Tom Bombadil, and the character of Treebeard doesn't quite do it for me), but quibbles aside they are an incredible achievement and a remarkable extension of the original works. Which themselves have some problematic aspects -- isn't there even one good Orc in all the hordes of Urak-hai and Shagrats?
Posted by Harold Davis at January 16, 2005 08:52 AM
