(Debby) 3 things of note:

1) Daniel is not going to be writing on this blog. We are going to set up another Aunt/Nephew blog (stay tuned for that). So no worries - a 4 1/2 year old is not reading whatever we write.

2) METROPOLIS!!! I LOVE THAT MOVIE!! Amanda! Amanda! I LOVE Metropolis! I saw it that summer I went to Ohio for nerd camp and we sat around and watched Triumph of the Will and read Nietzsche (did i misspell that?) and Kerouac. Oh man - you didn't mention the whole science fiction / dystopia angle of it! Awesome. I am so glad you are in that class.

3) Here is a very long post that I wrote some time in November last year. I think it's okay if you write as long as you want to, Amanda, because I like to read what you like (although I am not yet convinced about The Gilmore Girls and the cutsiness of small-town New England).

Reading Lord of the Rings: Jumping on the Bandwagon Long After It Has Left the Station

I read the Hobbit when I was probably between 10 and 12. I loved it.

I followed that up with the Lord of the Rings trilogy. My love for the Hobbit provided enough momentum for me to get through the trilogy and all the way to picking up the Silmarillion from the local library, and there it ground to a stop. There were too many characters – I couldn’t keep track of who was who, I could barely keep track of who was a hobbit and who was a man, and I definitely couldn’t keep track of Elves and Dwarves. I hated the battle scenes, and the whole series felt like nothing but battle scenes. I remember deciding, at the end, that 1) I was probably too young – at least for me- for this, and now I had ruined these books for me forever, so I should learn from that (I didn’t), and 2) the whole thing felt like reading a series of history books, which I don’t particularly like even when the history is real, and in this case, it was not real, so why was I reading them.

And that was that for about a decade, until the first Lord of the Rings movie came out. (Actually, now that I think of it, one time when my sister and I were both sick we rented an animated version of Lord of the Rings (or the Hobbit?) and it bloody well freaked us both out completely. We already had high fevers, and all I remember is being terrified and confused the entire time. I think we might have followed it up with the animated version of Watership Down, which also was completely terrifying and confusing. We should have stuck to The Apple Dumpling Gang.)

My family all went to see Fellowship of the Ring in the movie theatres. It was a special event and something of a Christmas tradition – well, a tradition in that we don’t tend to ever otherwise go to the movies together, except that sometimes we do around Christmas time. So, special occasion. 3 things kept me from appreciating the wonder of the movie: 1) Frodo does this really creepy wide-eyed-wonder happy look during the beginning sequences, and it gave me the willies; 2) about 15 minutes into the movie I had to pee, and since everyone is constantly in mortal peril I couldn’t really leave, so I was really, really pressed by the end; 3) honestly, man, every time Viggo Mortenson was on screen I had this voice in my head going “Viggo MorTENsen…Viggo MorTENsen”. Unnerving.

Well, last fall I finally sat down and re-read the books, and they really are good. Really, they are. Not Ursula LeGuin good, but nonetheless very good. And I also watched the movies, and they, too, are good, though perhaps a bit heavy on lingering up-close hazy shots of woman’s faces.