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assuming that there is no increase in posting as the great day gets near.

A mistaken assumption, I'd say! I'm a loyal lurker, but as the buzz builds for TTT I expect I won't be able to contain myself from posting. I'm sure others will feel likewise!

BTW, the first hard cover book of the art of the FOTR movie is out now. Coffee table book, $30, stunning and wonderful. First book, I believe, to show for example the design stages that the Balrog went through. Originally, they were visualizing him as more manlike. Lots of other interesting tidbits and tales from the Weta and costume folks.

Another part I found interesting, PJ said the design of the cave troll was supposed to look like a human baby, only huge and monstrous. Supposed to suggest a kind of innocence harnessed for evil by the much more consciously evil orcs. Interesting angle. He said he was even hoping that viewers would feel a kind of sadness at the cave troll's demise. I didn't really, but now through the prism of this statement of PJ's I can see how I might have. Something else to think about when I watch the DVD!

I guess I felt a bit of empathy for the cave troll, so it worked for me. His reactions to pain were so animated... We could see when he had been hurt... and the idea that he was a chained "bad dog" of the orcs was not lost on me. His aggression was random... he took out several orcs in the battle.

Contrast that with Lurtz... who I could have felt compassion for when Saruman was whispering and poisoning his mind... Lurtz had this kind of animal (almost sexual) quality about him.... but in the end, a brutishness that made me cheer his death without remorse at all... Why do you suppose that is? - Isn't he is just as "innocent"? -just as much a brutish but brainwashed pawn in someone else's war?

Or am I just in my cups?