There's a great review of the Lord of the Rings extended edition DVD over at Salon.com. He nails a lot of stuff:
Without a doubt, the theatrically released version of the film is a superior movie, quicker off the dime and less likely to dawdle over intriguing peripheries like one of those friends who insists on stopping to investigate every garage sale on the way to Sunday brunch.
Like the best DVDs, this one teaches you a bit about the particular movie at hand and a lot more about how movies are made in general; in this case, you can see how good filmmaking sometimes means slicing out good material.
I didn't watch the extra material yet ("This stuff is kinda fun, but, on the other hand, life is short."), but it turns out that the moth Gandalf talks to is a real moth!
Finally...
But for Tolkien cognoscenti, probably the most exciting restoration is a much longer Lothlorien sequence, including Galadriel's gift-giving scene. The movie doesn't really need a long, chatty interlude at this point [exactly, this is one of the things that really hurt the extended edition for me], but even so this bit felt truncated in the theatrical version, the only less than graceful aspect of the adaptation.
Oh, forgot to quote this awesome bit:
What's best about "The Fellowship of the Ring" is still terrific: the almost scary commitment of all the performances (my sole reservation is Hugo Weaving's slightly campy Elrond); Elijah Wood's translucent, stricken cherub's face; the expert comic relief delivered by Billy Boyd and Dominic Monaghan as Pippin and Merry, who have the panache of Shakespearean clowns; the terrifying Black Riders; the mad dash for the Bucklebury Ferry; the mines of Moria. Then there's the magnificent horsemanship; when was the last time you saw that, let alone fight scenes that look like real fighting -- sweaty, confusing and very, very hard -- instead of like a gymnastics demonstration performed in zero gravity? (This is a movie that, however extravagantly it may ravish the eye, always lets you know how much everything weighs.) Finally there's the New Zealand landscape, seemingly wilder and grander than any other place on earth, and what is, for me, the film's gem, Sean Bean's performance throughout Boromir's last stand, a sequence that never fails to break my heart.
Fellowship of the Ring is such a great movie... it's freaking 3 hours long and I want to watch it over and over again. I'd watch it right now if I had the time.
Tuesday, December 3, 2002
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