First Online Review of FOTR DVD!

Lights Out Entertainment ^ | kerouac

[Penny1]

Found the link to this article at TORn--I'd say this guy liked the film!

Hair and Ecurbh, should we ping the ringers to this one? I think I only have a very old version of the Green Dragon list...

[LowOiL]

When the three (series) makes it out. I plan to purchase them.

[Penny1]

You have more patience than I do! I could never wait that long. Knowing me, I'll probably buy them all as they come out and then buy them again when they package up some multi-disc collector's edition of all three movies with tons of extra footage.

I have no willpower whatsoever! :o

[HairOfTheDog]

Thanks Penny! - You know I will buy them all too...

If ecurbh doesn't happen along soon I will ping the GD list... but his list is better for this kind of stuff unless he is AWOL...

[Overtaxed]

Ii'm still waiting for the director's cut.

[HairOfTheDog]

HEAR HEAR!

The best ensemble cast that I have ever seen...
Ian McKellan as Gandalf was incredible...
Orlando Bloom as Legolas made me believe in Elves...
John Rhys-Davies eats up the screen as the diminutive, yet powerful, Gimli the dwarf...
Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan add comic relief...
Viggo Mortensen...he's just the man!...
Sean Astin... Sam proves time and again what true friendship is about...
Elijah Wood is the heart and soul of this film. Without his performance, the film just wouldn't have worked...

Yet, great effects, a great story, and amazing performances can all still be muddled if the person in charge drops the ball. That leads me to director Peter Jackson. One thing you discover when watching this film is that Jackson obviously has a deep rooted love for his source material. Great pains were taken to get this movie right; to maintain the heart of Tolkien's books, yet make them accessible to a mass audience, and to transfer the story to film...

Gotta keep tryin' once in a while Tuor... It's a sin that you are missing this....

[HairOfTheDog]

I can ping the spoiler list! - They'll try anything! (I wish it was a review of the extended version! Dang!

FoTR DVD alert!

[HairOfTheDog]

Do you have any experience to add on the widescreen version vs the "other" kind?... I imagine I will get the wide screen version, but it does lose quite a bit of size that way... does the TV-formatted version will just cut off the edges? Should I miss the edges?- or does it "squish" it to fit?

[HairOfTheDog]

Ack.... from above... does the TV-formatted version will just cut off the edges?

[SuziQ]

Hey Mikey, I think he likes it!!
Thank you for the ping, Penny. We are actually going to wait until the extended DVD comes out before we buy it. We'll probably get it for our daughter for Christmas. Unless of course someone has a fabulous sale on the first one that we just CAN'T pass up before the other one comes out! Then we'll just have to have two of them, I guess!

[Rocko]

It usually cuts off the left and right sides; sometimes just the left; sometimes just the right, depending on the acton. I prefer letterbox.

[HairOfTheDog]

Thanks. I will likely buy the letterbox too... although you make the other sound better than I thought if they choose frame-by-frame which side(s) to cut... (I was picturing the same chop through the whole film)

[Penny1]

There are several things they do to make it fit the screen. They do crop the left and right sides, but the other thing they do is "pan and scan" where scenes that normally have more than one character on the screen at a time will instead flip back and forth between the characters. What you miss out on is a lot of interacting between characters and some reaction shots.

I urge you to get the widescreen edition. What will probably happen with a movie like LOTR is all that lovely scenery will be chopped to pieces, characters will be cut out of frames, and shots like the following will likely be unrecognizable:

You know, looking at these I wonder why in the world PJ would even ALLOW a pan-and-scan DVD to be released.

[HairOfTheDog]

Thanks for the fine examples!

[Penny1]

Here's another, in case you need even more convincing....this is the kind of character interaction you miss completely when you watch stuff "pan-and-scan:"

Okay, I'll stop now.... ;)

[HairOfTheDog]

Oh don't stop on my account! - I mean who is still on dial-up these days anyway? heh heh

[ecurbh]

Ring Ping!!

Tolkien Bump-List

The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (Widescreen)

[maquiladora]

Wow....that was fast. Howard Shore was only composing the music for the DVD scenes about a month ago.

How come he never mentions the extra parts at all?

[ThomasMore]

Looking forward to it Bump!