I've just seen THAT film today at Camden Odeon. Saving Private Aragorn.
DVDs are all very well, but I think the new LOTR films just have to be seen at the cinema at least once. I say this because I rented out the Fellowship the other day in prep for seeing the Two Towers, and on my little portable it's hardly the same.
I'm actually not a fan of the books, finding them turgid and silly, and taking themselves too seriously, though I loved "The Hobbit". And I associate them with rotten Roger Dean paintings and 70s prog rock bands, and tend to agree with that 80s Half Man Half Biscuit song:
"Mention the Lord Of The Rings one more time and I'll more than likely kill you…"
Hence my reluctance to watch the films.
But as soon as The Two Towers started, with that soaring opening shot of the snowy mountains, I nearly cried. I genuinely believed I'd been transported to another world for three hours. A beautiful world. How can it NOT all be real? When the lights went up and I was back in grimy old Camden, I immediately wanted to go back, and now fully understand why many people pay to see the films again and again, despite their bum-paralysing durations. I'd never dare to call such people sad. I believe!
Genius is a word bandied around all too freely, but in the case of Peter Jackson I feel it really does apply. Far more so than Tolkien. He IMPROVES on the books. I'd admired the bearded hobbit-like Kiwi director before, ever since seeing "Bad Taste", "Braindead" and "Meet The Feebles", three extremely original and inventive if gory and sick over-the-top comedy horror films that you have to have a strong stomach to sit through. But even then, it was clear Mr Jackson possessed that rare gift: a genuine talent to make the viewer believe the unreal is real. "Heavenly Creatures" proved that he could make 'proper' films where the actors don't take second place to the special effects, and I'd certainly recommend that film to anyone who enjoyed the LOTR films. It's about two New Zealand schoolgirls (including a then-unknown Kate Winslet) who romantically create their own fantasy world in order to escape their rotten circumstances in the real world, where the people around them are fools. A common feeling not restricted to teenage angst, of course.
And so Mr Jackson adapting the LOTR makes perfect sense. And goodness, does he do a good job of it. I know I'm somewhat late in adding my voice to the thousands that have said that already, but there you go. It's all too beautiful. LOTR has the Dickon seal of approval.
Warning: "The Two Towers" contains scenes of dwarf-tossing.
Never mind the pin-up features of Mr Aragorn, Mr Legolas et all, I am afraid to admit I even found Smeagol / Gollum curiously sexy.
By the way, fans of Orlando Bloom, and word has it there are a few, might like to know that he made his debut in the Stephen Fry film "Wilde" as a bowler-hatted Piccadilly rent boy, early on in the movie. He only appears for a few moments, and has one line, "Looking for someone?", but it's a pivotal scene, being the vital moment in Wilde's life when Wilde mentions (in his own words) that, at that second, "ice clutched his heart", and that seeing for the first time the boldness of rent boys on the streets of London, hit home to him revelatory thoughts of his own sexuality, if tinged with fear.
So there you go, Legolas The Elf "turned" Oscar Wilde. Who could blame him?
