What I’m watching

Not for free. You have to buy/rent it at more than it costs to go see it in the theater. Might as well do that.

Well, if there is two or more of you, $24.99 is less than 2 tickets now days. Plus, you don’t have to listen to all the other people coughing behind you and making all the noise with the popcorn and wrappers… :wink:

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Ah. Then I’ll probably watch this instead:

Watched “Return of the King” with the kids this morning. It was their first time seeing it. While I’ve seen it a dozen times and can recite every line by heart, being with a group of people (especially kids) who are seeing it for the first time was really fantastic.

The audible cheering, gasping, and “eeeeeeew”'ing (at Shelob) was pretty awesome. Daughter 15.8 jumped off the couch with a “YES” and a fist-pump at the “I am no man!” moment

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Just finished bingeing “The Rings of Power”, both seasons. It’s been fun.

As much as I like LOTR and consider it to be the greatest film trilogy ever made, I also feel like everything that has come after the original trilogy has been very…underwhelming.

I’ve only seen one of the Hobbit movies and only made it through half of the first season of the show. I found them both to be pretty boring, sadly.

While the kids are playing Fortnite, I think I’ll watch one of my favorite horror comedies.

Also, wildly appropriate for post #666 in this thread. :joy:

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The “Hobbit” films suffered from excess bloat due to the fact that they squeezed out three movies from a single book. Two might have been more reasonable. Even the second two LOTR movies were hard to take at times. Peter Jackson’s excessive use of CGI action during the massive battle scenes and occasional over-the-top melodrama became annoying/distracting, and the mischaracterization of Faromir and especially Samwise Gamgee in comparison to their personas in the books was almost unforgivable.

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That “I am no man!” scene was awesome. Eowin was definitely not done dirty in those films. Miranda Otto :+1::+1:

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I actually saw Sean Astin on Broadway play Santa in Elf the Musical. Better performance.

Flight home watched this 10/10 documentary:

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Oh, I didn’t mind Sean Astin’s performance so much, it was more the way they characterized him in the script. He was far more whiny, avaricious and petulant in the films versus his persona in the books. In the books he was a stalwart friend to Frodo, and always above suspicion. In fact, he possesses the ring for a while in the third book (Return of the King), not by design but by necessity. He is never tempted by it and readily gives it back to Frodo at the first opportunity. In the films, they make it appear that he desires the ring, all in order to increase the melodrama. It’s a shame because Sam comes off as less of a hero than he is in the books.

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Sam does offer to carry the ring (after Gollum tells Frodo he would) but only to ease Frodo’s burden, not because he wanted it for himself. And he does carry the ring for a while after Shelob’s attack, but gives it back to Frodo without question after finding him at Cirith Ungol.

I don’t recall a time in the films where it was hinted that Sam wanted the ring for himself.

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