Dave Orchard's Blog

Like many folks, I went and saw Return of the King on Wednesday. What a great movie. Held quite true to the books, gripped us the entire time, cinematography was wonderful, and acting was superb. The siege of Minas Tirith and Gollum's acting were particularly delightful. A couple Oscars for sure. Of course, it won't win for Best Picture, Best Actor, Best Supporting Actor. Let's not talk about Actress quality, particularly "Xenarwen". It really ought to win some serious hardware, but I think the "quelle artistes" in the Academy just couldn't give hardware to a hobbit. Though "Ghost"s ca get the hardware. Wierd.

I especially liked that the movie dealt with the intimacy between Frodo and Sam so well. It's very rare that a movie tries, let alone succeeds, in showing intimacy (and *gasp* crying) between two men in a non-sexual manner.

I rate this movie a 4/4 stars. Combined with the 4/4 stars for Master and Commander, they make up for the failing part of this years Christmas action movie trinity, that is the lame-o Matrix Revolutions. Two outstanding movies out of 3 works for me.

Apparently we weren't the only ones playing hookey from work :-) I had though that we might have a chance at seeing it before noted ROTK fans Allison and Cecila. Turns out that Cecilia had an inside scoop as MSFT (who her dad works for) rented a buncha theaters and the saw the 1pm show. Like I said, lotsa hookey being played. At least we saw it before Cathy and Allison :)