i'm glad they're making it into two movies, and think that there's more than enough story to fill all that time, especially with following gandalf/the white council/the necromancer.

sounds like your friends need to find a new friend.

when i read the books as a lad, i would always try to tough out the songs, but they always sounded sing-songy in my head and i just ended up skipping them.  but the use of the song in the trailer was brilliant— very moody.  haunting, almost.  lends a lot of depth to what could be a bunch of silly dwarves.

is making a live action movie of a 75 year old book that's one of the most successful and beloved of all time really a cash in?

well, martin freeman took a break from shooting the hobbit to return to england to shoot a series of sherlock, which he was contractually obligated to do, and which almost kept him from committing to the hobbit until jackson and co shuffled shooting schedules around to accommodate him.

i don't know, i could see the first movie being the more fanciful, merry part of the tale, then the second movie being the more portentous, lotr-style story.  or maybe jackson's giving the more portenous aspects to gandalf, the white council and the necromancer, which frees up the dwarves and bilbo for the more fun,…

there is that bit in the two towers extended edition, taken from the tom bombadil section, where merry and pippin get attacked by a tree.  but it's treebeard that comes to the rescue.  i think it worked quite nicely.

well…

well, it did have good music.

the secret ingredient is salt!

you look like the window of a butcher shop!

her?

the paul rieser show was not good (and certainly not original), but i didn't think that it was completely terrible, and possibly showed promise (for a network comedy).  whitney, on the other hand, is god-awful.

eh, modern family's ok.

yeah, even the ones that i don't think are very good (jurassic 2, minority report, war of the worlds) are shot extremely well and edited masterfully.  it's always 100% clear what's going on and who's doing what.  even when he's schlocking it up, he's still a master craftsman.

minority report a "masterpiece"?  i place it right alongside war of the worlds in it's utter averageness.

i agree with this list (esp. hook and kingdom of the crystal skull), though i have not seen amistad.

the fincher alien definitely had more of the tone of the previous alien movies, it just failed in that it didn't make all that much sense, and never really built towards anything.  the juenet alien had a very different style or tone from the previous three (which they tried to explain away by setting it 400 years in…

yeah, the duelists was good.  not great, but good— especially for an early (his first?) effort.  and it's visually a stunner, which i guess should come as no surprise.

he had to lose the weight to keep up with his hot young new girlfriend.  probably bought new underwear and started grooming his eyebrows too.