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Hullo yourself! I do love Rivendell; it'll be nice to have a little rest here. Anyone have any historical background questions they'd like to have answered?

Some fairly random thoughts, just the way they fly out of my head:

Rivendell in the movie looks very like how I pictured it. I think my mental picture was a little more Greco-Roman-esque (is that a word?) but I love how they did it. Very Elvish. Speaking of which I wish they'd shown a few more Elves in the movie, instead of just Elrond, Legolas, and the Snoots of Lorien.

As we discussed briefly in the Hole last week, no one should ever ask the Mirkwood elves to guard anyone. Back in The Hobbit they let Bilbo and the Dwarves escape. Now Legolas is bringing word that they let Gollum escape. I wonder if these are the same guys who run the Texas prisons that had all those escapes recently? Then again nobody in these books is good at keeping others locked up.

I really need a quote to make this next point, but someone packed up and took all my books home last weekend (couldn't have been me! I couldn't have been so stupid as to strand myself without books for a whole ten days!) and I can't access the hobbit files copy, but... there's a quote from Boromir about using the Ring that really forshadows stuff later. I have to ask the Boromir defenders whether they think he was plotting to take the Ring already. There are quotes in later books from his father (and stuff from Faramir that could be construed similarly) that indicates that Denethor had an idea that whatever Isildur's Bane was, it was powerful, and that Boromir was supposed to bring it back to Minas Tirith for his father. Can we talk about this, Hair? Or should I go to the Hobbit Hole?

The Lay of Earendil is beautiful, isn't it?...the Flammifer of Westernesse! Everyone knows Earendil and Elwing were Elrond's parents, right? That's what Aragorn meant about Bilbo having the 'cheek to make verses about Earendil in the house of Elrond'.

... there's a quote from Boromir about using the Ring that really forshadows stuff later.

Is this the quote?

Boromir stirred, and Frodo looked at him. He was fingering his great horn and frowning. At leangth he spoke.
'I do not understand all this,' he said. 'Saruman is a traitor, but did he not have a glimpse of wisdom? Why do you speak ever of hiding and destroying? Why should we not think that the Great Ring has come into our hands to serve us in the very hour of need? Wielding it the Free Lords of the Free may surely defeat the Enemy. That is what he most fears, I deem.
'The Men of Gondor are valiant, and they will never submit; but they may be beaten down. Valour needs first strength, and then a weapon. Let the Ring be your weapon, if it has such power as you say. Take it and go forth to victory!'

I don't think he was thinking of stealing the Ring at this point. I think he bring this up because he truly doesn't understand why the good guys can't use the ring.

The Lay of Earendil....don't those Elves have any stories that end "and they lived happily ever after"?

When I went in to the movie I was surprised by how soon the confrontation between Sauruman and Gandalf occurred. I remembered from the book that Sauruman's treachery didn't come out until the council an was revealed in dialogue. The palintar(sp) was not known to exist then either. Nor was the "birth" of the Urak Hai covered until much later. I guess this added more excitement early, but the book kept building the tension as it progressed following only the hobbits until all the threads are pulled together at Rivendell.