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Saw the midnight screening myself, and certainly suffering for it now, hehe. Overall, my favorite is still FOTR, specifically, the Extended Version. That movie has the feel of an epic adventure down pat, and I feel that is somewhat lost in the Two Towers. However, the technical scope of this film is quite brilliant, the two technically riskiest pieces, Gollum and the Ents attack on Isenguard, were top notch.

I believe this film will also get the Oscar nominations en masse but probably still won't win Best Picture or Director against stiffer competition from Gangs of New York and such, but it will still get its share.

The highlight of the film for me was seeing the Ents rip Isenguard a new @sshole and the first part of the battle of Helm's Deep. The Black Gate of Mordor was also very impressive. Things I didn't like so much, well, the ending of the battle of Helm's Deep, it would've been nice to actually see it instead of being told by Gandalf that it was over. The escape of Wormtongue from Hedderas, also, too corny and not believable.

OTOH, the Two Towers answers a question posed by my personal viewing of FOTR, namely, whereiseverybodyitis. As much as I love FOTR, it bothered me that throughout that that film I was wondering where everybody was. Outside of the Shire and Bree, Middle Earth looked pretty unpopulated, specifically of Humans and Dwarves. Even the two Elvish locations in that film, there weren't that many Elves on screen to give the feel that these were some heavy population centers. Anyway, that point was answered in the Two Towers, we actually see what's going on in the human world and why we didn't see much of them in the previous film, they're simply outmatched and on the run.

I'll definitely need a 2nd and 3rd viewing to take it all in, to get my final judgement. FOTR is still my favorite.

PS - bonus points for who can tell me where the hell the Dwarves are? I haven't read the books, but in FOTR Gimli and his cohorts came from somewhere, yet he was totally unaware that his cousin and the whole host of Dwarvendom in Moria was wiped out. Seemed unlikely to me.

Gimli, son of Gloin, is from the Lonely Mountain, now not so lonely since Bilbo did his thing in _The Hobbit_. Many of the other dwarves are still in the Iron Hills which is a little east and north of the Lonely Mountain.

The original Dwarven kingdom in Moria had been abandoned about a millenia before the FOTR arrived there when Dwarven miners had woken/freed the Balrog from the deeps of the Earth. From that point on, only Orcs dwelt there with the Balrog. About a decade or so before the FOTR, Gimli's cousin Balin and a small group of Dwarves from the Lonely Mountain had recolonized Moria. Contact was lost after a few years though. Gimli was unaware of Balin's destruction until the Fellowship found his tomb. He had been hopeful that the colony was still there, even after they found the bodies at the Westgate. The bodies at the gate were recent ones from Balin's ill-fated colony. But the overall ruins in Moria dated back centuries.

At the time of the trilogy, Dwarves lived mainly in Ered Luin, the Blue Mountains west of the Shire, the Lonely Mountain of Erebor (site of the pivotal events of The Hobbit), and the Iron Hills to the east of Erebor. Other Dwarven homes are not mentioned by Tolkien.

"I believe this film will also get the Oscar nominations en masse but probably still won't win Best Picture or Director against stiffer competition from Gangs of New York and such, but it will still get its share."

... and what is WITH Gangs of New York, anyway? Did Rupert Murdoch fund it or something? Fox News has been plugging GONY to such an absurd degree - we watched for a few hours yesterday, and I swear every half hour they felt the need to spotlight this stupid film in one way or another with more of it this morning (not a word about "Two Towers," by the way!).