Last night and into the wee hours of this morning (until four, to be exact) K. and I sat in bed and watched the first two installments of The Lord of the Rings, because, although we do live in a cave, we like to peek outside once in a while. How was it outside? Well, the scenery was breath-taking, but as for Frodo and friends, they're boring. This is not an I-have-the-attention-span-of-a-gnat-and- therefore-can't-appreciate-shit boring, this a can-you-be-any-more-predictable- and-Hollywood-? boring. While I understand that the source material for the movies is also boring (I never made it through the first book), I thought that I could find a glimpse of the cause for the collective hysteria surrounding the movies. Nah. The battle scenes and camera angles felt like something out of a video game, there were far too many meaningful glances, and the open idyll scenes dragged. Peter Jackson did do a fabulous job creating tension in the first film, though. Every time there were frolicking, lovey-dovey, or righteous-wisdom-being-spoken anything on screen, I found myself longing for the Ring Wraiths to appear. The scene in which Gollum has a prolonged conversation with his lesser half was also fun, if only because the actual mechanics of making a conventional Hollywood film were laid bare. Oh, and the elves, when they weren't speaking their elvish truths and were kicking some butt, were pretty cool too. While this makes it sound as though I wanted fluff and not something profound from The Lord of the Rings, I prefer my profound worded as something other than clichés. It may be an epic world, but no one should have to speak like a soap-box preacher.

Wither Cancon? (It's a pun, I do know how to spell.) -Zh.