The Barenaked Archives – The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King

From 2003 up until 2007, I was lucky enough to have “movie reviewer” as my job description. As such, I’ve built up a *lot* of reviews for just about every movie that came out during those years, as well as reviews of classic movies.

The Barenaked Archives are reviews that I did for two previous websites. Sadly, they are both gone, so this is now the only place online you can see these old columns.

I won’t lie. I’ve been waiting impatiently for The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King since December 18, 2002, at about 10 p.m., when I walked out of The Two Towers.

And as December and Return of the King drew nearer, I began to wonder if it would live up to the hype, because so many times the third movie in a trilogy fails to meet the standards set by its predecessors (see: The Godfather III).

I can now say, with great relief and some sadness, that Return of the King meets every expectation you could possibly have set for it, and in some places exceeds it. It is amazing, and caps off perfectly what many are calling the best movie trilogy of our time.

In Return of the King, for the five of you who don’t know, Frodo and Sam continue their dangerous journey into Mordor, led by the deceitful Gollum. Meanwhile, the remaining members of the Fellowship cling to hope as they try to defend Gondor against the forces of Sauron and give Frodo the chance he needs to destroy the One Ring.

I will be forever grateful to Peter Jackson for not going the way of George Lucas and filming the whole movie in front of a green screen. The production design and special effects in this movie are just as fantastic as the first two, and gone is the slightly monotonous color scheme of The Two Towers.

Everything about this film is just outstanding, from the writing and directing to the cinematography and the acting. The acting is phenomenal, with exceptional turns by Ian McKellen as Gandalf the White and Sean Astin as Sam. Although there is less of Legolas and Gimli, which disappointed me, there is more of Merry and Pippin, which balanced it out.

However, the scene that most everybody will be talking about is the Battle of Pelennor Fields. The word has been that it puts Helm’s Deep to shame, and the word is not exaggerating. This battle isn’t so much about the hand-to-hand combat that Helm’s Deep was; this is about huge catapults and armored cave trolls and 200,000 Orcs trying to take down Minas Tirith, the capital city of Gondor. It is the most jaw-dropping action sequence I’ve seen all year, and I will not write more than that for fear of being attacked by the people who hate spoilers.

Intercut with the battle, though, is one of my favorite scenes: the showdown between Sam and Shelob, a creature that will strike fear in the hearts of arachnophobes everywhere. Watching the little hobbit take on this gigantic spider was definitely a highlight of the film for me, in a film where there are too many highlights to name.

And even though the action sequences are great, almost better are the character moments, and there are a lot of them. The bizarre triangle between Frodo, Sam, and Gollum; the relationship between Faramir and his father, Denethor; seeing Merry and Pippin separated for the first time…that’s such a huge part of these films and what makes them successful. You care about the characters and you want to know what happens to them.

That, perhaps, is what makes this movie so sad…it’s over. After spending the past two years waiting on pins and needles for December and the next installment of the trilogy, it’s over. That was the saddest part for me: seeing the words “The End” in black and white on the screen and realizing that this wonderful, grand, epic adventure was finished.

Do yourself a favor this Christmas break, or even this finals week. Go see this movie. Go see it multiple times. It is more than worth the price of admission and the three-and-a-half hour runtime. Return of the King is one of the few films of our time that actually lives up to and exceeds its hype, and no one should miss seeing it.

Reading List – Mini-Reviews

Well, I guess it’s a good thing when I’m two weeks into 2012 and have made considerable headway on one of my goals. Granted, it’s my “read everything I own that I haven’t read yet” goal, which is probably the easiest one on there, but still! I’m accomplishing something!

Here’s a brief update on a few of the books I’ve read since posting the list:

The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss
I started this back before Christmas and have been steadily making headway on it for the better part of a month. Not surprising, considering it’s a 1000-page behemoth, and it is dense.

The Wise Man’s Fear and its predecessor, The Name of the Wind, are quite possibly some of the best fantasy novels of the last few years. It’s rare to see a fantasy novel told in first-person POV, but Rothfuss makes it work.

He does get a little too much into describing things, and I do think he could stand to shave a few thousand words off the next book, but by and large, if you are at all into fantasy and you haven’t picked up this series, you need to remedy that now.

One unexpected bonus in (finally) finishing the book: this Penny Arcade comic makes a lot more sense now.

Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
This was a surprisingly brisk and refreshing read, especially after The Wise Man’s Fear. As a shameless geek, I enjoyed it thoroughly. I didn’t get all the references — I was a bit too young when the ’80s ended for that — but it was a lot of fun nonetheless.

I did have some problems with it from a technical standpoint — far too much time was spent with Wade as Exposition Man, for example. I found myself skimming at a lot of these points, especially the points where he has to stop and explain certain gaming mechanics and history to ensure the non-geeks can follow along.

Overall, though, I really, really liked it, and if you’re at all into the geeky side of life, pick this up.

The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
I love the Mistborn series so very, very much, as you may be able to tell from the picture on my “About” page. So, it’s understandable that another book in that world has been in my to-read list since I found out it existed.

Unlike Mistborn, this is more of a steampunk/western romp than a fantasy epic. Action, suspense, betrayal, deceit, and a bit of romance…all of it comes together to make a wonderful, entertaining book that I practically flew through, finishing it in less than a day.

Plus, I love the little additions they have: the old newspaper pages interspersed throughout the book, the maps at the beginning, and as always, the Ars Arcanum that Sanderson includes at the end of each of his novels that sums up the magic system in a bit more detail.

I really, really hope there’s a sequel, not just because of the questions left unanswered at the end of the book, but also because I really want to spend more time with the characters created here. Wax, Wayne, and Marasi made a great team.

Have you guys read anything good lately?

The Barenaked Archives – Prime

From 2003 up until 2007, I was lucky enough to have “movie reviewer” as my job description. As such, I’ve built up a *lot* of reviews for just about every movie that came out during those years, as well as reviews of classic movies.

The Barenaked Archives are reviews that I did for two previous websites. Sadly, they are both gone, so this is now the only place online you can see these old columns.

You know, the advertising really is paramount in making a movie. Granted, it doesn’t come till the end, but it’s how you get the word out, how you make sure people know what kind of movie they’re getting themselves into. A good ad campaign that correctly captures the movie will hopefully result in a whole slew of people showing up opening weekend, and then getting word-of-mouth to do the rest.

A bad ad campaign, on the other hand, either doesn’t get the word out enough or completely mislabels the movie it’s promoting, resulting in people thinking they’re going in to watch, say, a mindless romantic comedy and instead walking into a movie that’s a pretty straightforward dissection of a relationship with very little saccharine sweetness.

Given the amount of bitching I do about the paint-by-numbers romantic comedies Hollywood churns out on a frighteningly regular basis, you’d think something like Prime would’ve been more appealing. The problem is that walking in unhappily expecting one thing and getting something else is not nearly as pleasant a surprise when the something else really doesn’t work.

In Prime, Rafi (Uma Thurman) is a recent divorcee who’s just started dating David (Bryan Greenburg), a very hot, very young artist. Fourteen years her junior, to be exact. The relationship gets even stickier when it turns out that David is actually the son of Rafi’s therapist, Lisa (Meryl Streep).

The way they’re advertising this, you’d think the next words in that synopsis should be “hijinks ensue” (don’t they always?), but alas, none really do. The movie is mostly about David and Rafi seriously working on a relationship that has a number of factors going against it, with age being the most obvious issue. At 23, David is still figuring out what he wants to do with his life, while Rafi, at 37, knows where she is and fears her ticking biological clock.

The fact that Rafi’s therapist is David’s mother just amounts to one more obstacle they have to overcome in their relationship. Honestly, that’s all it is, even though the movie does go out of its way to make it more. It hopes to be an idea that’s funny and clever and throws a wrench into the mix, but it doesn’t succeed. Aside from the one session where Rafi goes into detail about their sex life (used liberally in the trailer), the whole therapist-is-his-mom thing just doesn’t work. Ultimately, after the movie, you’re just kind of wondering what the whole point of that idea was, because it never comes to fruition.

On the other hand, it is nice to have a movie that depicts a relationship more realistically than usual. The characters live in apartments that actually reflect their income levels (for example, David, a struggling artist, lives in a tiny studio apartment), they have fights about who’s carrying the weight while they’re living together, and they have to deal with each other’s friends and family. Unlike most romantic comedy duos, they don’t live in a vacuum. It’s a refreshing change.

In all honesty, while Prime is something different, it’s not really executed well enough to warrant purchasing a ticket. Unless you’re a huge fan of the actors and actresses involved, there isn’t much of a reason to go.

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

When you’re making a sequel to a surprisingly successful movie, there’s always the question of whether it will live up to expectations. This goes doubly so when said sequel is bringing in a classic villain.

And thus we have the dilemma that faces Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Not only does it have to follow in the footsteps of Sherlock Holmes, which was so very much fun, but it brought in Moriarty, Holmes’s greatest enemy.

In A Game of Shadows, Holmes has buried himself in untangling a conspiracy involving bombings and assassinations that are slowly pushing the world to the brink of war. Though he knows Professor James Moriarty is behind it, Holmes does not yet know the how or the why.

Who's going to blink first?

He “encourages” the newlywed Watson to come with him to continental Europe, where they engage in a deadly game, fighting to get one step ahead of the devious Moriarty, perhaps the only man in the world who rivals Holmes’s prodigious intellect.

Admittedly, the movie gets off to a rocky start. Though it’s nice to see Irene Adler (Rachel McAdams) again, the beginning chase and fight just doesn’t grab you the same way as the first scene in Sherlock Holmes. It seems a little lighter, perhaps because it’s taking place during the day, rather than at night, and involves more verbal sparring between Holmes and Adler.

In fact, it’s not until Adler has her meeting with Moriarty that the movie really finds its footing. (And talk about a great way to introduce the face of the man we only saw in shadows in the previous film. We see just how powerful Moriarty really is and how far his reach extends.) But once it does, it settles in and takes off.

Both Robert Downey Jr. and Jude Law reprise their roles as Holmes and Watson, respectively, and they’re just as good in this movie as they were in the first one. After we left the movie, my brother said he would watch a movie that was nothing but Holmes and Watson talking for two hours, and I have to agree.

They bicker like an old married couple, and there are many times you wouldn’t blame Watson for punching Holmes in the face. However, they are still best friends, and that comes through no matter what they do.

Very dashing detectives.

Casting Stephen Fry as Mycroft Holmes, Sherlock’s older brother, was a stroke of genius. Fry is a phenomenal actor, and he fits Mycroft like a glove. He steals the show every time he’s on screen, and the scene between him and Watson’s wife, Mary, is just hilarious.

But the most compelling part of the movie is easily the game between Holmes and Moriarty. For once, Holmes has found someone who is his mental equal, and that makes their every interaction tense and fascinating, as each tries to outwit and out-think the other.

Each time they come together, it stands out: their initial meeting, the powerfully silent encounter at the opera, and most especially, their final confrontation. The chess game between the two is absolutely brilliant, and more than makes up for the slow beginning.

And I would be remiss talking about this movie without mentioning the score, which I have listened to virtually nonstop since I purchased it the day after Christmas. Hans Zimmer really outdoes himself with this one. It expands on some of the musical themes from the first movie and adds some really excellent new ones on its own. (Listen to “Romanian Wind,” if you get a chance, and I dare you not to dance at least a little when you hear it.)

Of course, there were aspects that didn’t work. Though Noomi Rapace did a good job as Sim, the gypsy woman who aids Holmes and Watson in their search, she was not quite as memorable as the other characters. Plus, the “fight vision,” where Holmes predicts a fight and the moves his opponents will make before having the fight itself, has a slightly different format, and it doesn’t work quite as well as it did in the first movie.

But really, those are minor nitpicks. Overall, A Game of Shadows is an entertaining movie and a worthy successor to the first one. If you get a chance, go see it in theaters. And if you don’t get a chance to catch it in theaters, be sure to rent it the second you can.

Pictures from ComingSoon.net and most likely copyright Warner Bros. Pictures.

Trailer Park – The Good Stuff

Yes, I’m late to the party on both of these. But they are awesome, and thus, worth the wait.

The Dark Knight Rises

First up: the trailer for The Dark Knight Rises. I talked about the awesome poster that was released a few weeks ago.

It’s perhaps an understatement to say that I have faith in Christopher Nolan to pull this off. I have enjoyed both his Batman and non-Batman movies tremendously, and he’s one of the few directors whose name can put a film on my radar.

And the trailer, well…let’s just say that there are a handful of movies that I will make an effort to see in theaters next year, and this trailer has ensured that The Dark Knight Rises is one of them. This is how you get people excited

Taking place eight years after the events of The Dark Knight, it seems that Gotham has been enjoying a bit of a renaissance. But then the terrorist Bane shows up, and now Bruce Wayne must once again don the cowl of Batman to protect his city.

Yes, I am SO there.

The Hobbit

Now, this next trailer makes me go all gooey-fangirl in a way that few things do. In fact, I may even stretch it to say NOTHING makes me go gooey-fangirl like The Lord of the Rings, and thus by extension, The Hobbit.

Up until I watched The Lord of the Rings movies, I was of the opinion that movies, while awesome, would never be as good as the books on which they were based.

The Fellowship of the Ring proved me wrong. The trilogy ranks at the top of my list of favorite movies, and sentimentality demands that Fellowship take the top spot.

When I count it all up, I saw The Lord of the Rings films eleven times in theaters (collectively), and far more than that on DVD. I own three different versions of the films on DVD, and the only reason I don’t have them on Blu-ray is because I don’t yet own a Blu-ray player.

Yes. A fangirl I am.

You have to understand, I’ve been waiting for this movie since 2003. Literally the moment after I left the theater after watching Return of the King for the first time, I was ready for The Hobbit. And for several years, I was afraid it would never happen.

So to finally see the trailer, to see so many of the places that we came to know and love during the original Lord of the Rings trilogy, to hear the haunting dwarf song, well…as I said, I go all gooey-fangirl. It’s absolutely perfect, and I cannot wait.

What are your thoughts? Do these trailers meet your expectations? Exceed them? Make you weep for the future? Let me know!

Books, books, books, books, BOOKS!

You may recall that one of my goals for this year was to read all the unread books currently mocking me from my bookshelf.

I have a terrible habit of collecting books — borrowed from friends, sampled on the Kindle, picked up at the used bookstore (God save me from the used bookstore; I never leave without at least 3 books in hand) — and then not reading them. Either I get distracted by something else (like NaNoWriMo or Doctor Who), or I just find about 15 other books that I want to read FIRST.

Well, I’m going to try to fix that this year.

These are the books I want to read in the next year, organized in 3 columns: fiction books, nonfiction books, and books I have already finished in the past 2 months. Let’s see if we can get that third column a little taller, shall we?

Kindle books:
As You Like It by William Shakespeare
Dracula by Bram Stoker
The Castle of Otranto by Horace Walpole

Fiction:
Endymion by Dan Simmons
The Ancient by R.A. Salvatore
Long Lost by David Morrell
A Coral Kiss by Jayne Ann Krentz
If on a winter’s night a traveler by Italo Calvino
Twilight by Stephenie Meyer (I don’t want to hear a damn word.)
Ready Player One by Ernest Cline
The Shadow of the Wind by Carlos Ruiz Zafon
The Moon is a Harsh Mistress by Robert Heinlein
The Alloy of Law by Brandon Sanderson
The Wise Man’s Fear by Patrick Rothfuss

Nonfiction
The Pirate Queen: Queen Elizabeth I, Her Pirate Adventurers, and the Dawn of Empire by Susan Ronald
Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V. Swain
Scene & Structure by Jack Bickham
Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card
The Writer’s Journey by Christopher Vogler
EntreLeadership by Dave Ramsey
Story by Robert McKee

Books already read:
Miss Wonderful by Loretta Chase
The Lost Duke of Wyndham by Julia Quinn
Waiting for Nick and Considering Kate by Nora Roberts
Kushiel’s Dart by Jacqueline Carey
Heart of Steel by Meljean Brook (Kindle)

I’ve actually made headway on this; Heart of Steel was added to the “read” pile on the first day of January (Short review: Find it and its predecessor, The Iron Duke, and read them NOW.).

Next up on my list is probably going to be The Wise Man’s Fear, or at least I will try to make a dent in that behemoth.

What are you reading? Got any recommendations for me to add to the list?