xparrot | it's good to be a fangirl

Tuesday I got my 4 shiny discs of The Two Towers and my 2 shiny Finding Nemo discs. Shiny discs make X-parrot happy. And X-2 is out next week...

I love Lord of the Rings. I love the books, I love the movies. I didn't love TTT quite as much as FotR, but every time I saw it in the theater I liked it better, and I liked it last night even more. That may be because the first time, I'm noticing everything that's changed from the books, the missing bits and the added (Aragorn was not doing Legolas in Tolkien's original text. I'm sure I would remember that.) But once I know what to expect, I can enjoy the movie for what it is. It also helps that nearly all the changes, I can understand why they were made, and I agree with most of them. Still, there's moments I wished I had been able to see.

Which is what makes the extended version such a treat, because there's all those things I missed in the original, that are suddenly there. Mention of the EntWives, the trees, the end of the orc-count (I can see why that was cut, since closing such a dark movie so light-heartedly is problematic, but still, hee!). I don't remember if Aragorn's "He's not alone, Sam went with him," is in the book but damn if it wasn't a lovely little moment.

Most especially there's Faramir. I was one of the few fans who wasn't overly bothered by what the movie did to his character (dramatically speaking, Faramir served to redeem Boromir, but that wasn't so necessary in the movies because Boromir redeemed himself) but I think everyone who was will be pleased by the additional insight into his character. And everything else. Just his little speech (originally Sam's thoughts) about the boy who fell off the oliphaunt, that flash of Tolkien's feelings on war--I was so happy to have that back.

And then there's all the things I liked before, that I had forgotten how much I did. There's a sense of scale in these movies - it's what makes them epic, but I'll be damned if I know how Peter Jackson gets it to work as well as he did. In Matrix: Revolutions, Zion is an awesome city, but I was always aware that it's a CG model. But even though I technically know there's not actually ten thousand orcs marching on Helm's Deep, I'm hard-pressed to remember that in the heat of battle. I remember being vaguely annoyed by the Arwen interlude the first time I saw it; now I think that's a beautiful moment. Gollum continues to blow me away as one of the most pathetic and simultaneously disturbing characters I've ever seen. And flying Nazgul are fscking cool.

The only problem is now my longing for Return of the King is a zillion times worse - want to see! want to know what'll be there, and what won't - Shelob, I'm sure she'll be awesome, but I'll be most upset if Pippin doesn't look into the Palantir (it's all set up for him to, but still...) and then the final battles...and Mt.Doom...been waiting 2 years for this!
And speaking of things I've been waiting a while for...

And then in the latest chapter of GetBackers, Ban and Ginji are BACK TOGETHER after many many many moons...I have no idea what's actually going on story-wise, but--hugging! gratuitous shoujo sparkles! "The 's' means we're never alone"! (how many times does that make it?) *happy sigh*

The butterflies make me curious - when Madoka got abducted, I believe it was by guys who could turn themselves into such butterflies? And dammit, I still want Ban to say "I'm sorry." Even if he had reason to do it - good reason, if it really was to get Ginji to finally forsake Raitei - it still was a terrible thing to do to his ~~boyfriend~~ best friend. Ginji deserves an apology. ~~And a kiss.~~

Also, is Emishi there or not? In the scans only Shido and the other three Maryuudou are visible...are he and Amon still together? One hopes?

But still...the GetBackers are back together, all set to kick major insect ass...it's amazing how happy a little shounen manga can make me ^_^