"And now for an aside: Having recently attended my 20th (yes, 2-0) high school reunion, I was struck not by how some had changed but more so by one of my friends who hadn’t. We speak routinely electronically yet rarely have the time to meet, with families and all. Anyway, theories abound, and I’ve considered that she’s either been frozen in ice, has discovered either the elixir vitae or time travel, bears one of the Rings of Power or is a doppleganger."
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Or perhaps she's got a picture of herself in her bedroom that ages.
As for the topic: I find quite interesting the difference in speaker, and context,
of (in the movie) Frodo/Gandalf, and (in the extended dvd) Bilbo, discussing
events in the outside world. In the movie, Gandalf effectively brushes off
Frod's queries while basically the same observation in the dvd makes more
sense.
I also puzzled over the (nonbook) Bilbo comment about a Baggins at Bagend.
You could argue that Sam and Rosie were effectively "adopted", and
in the book lived with Frodo there, but in the movie they seem to have their
own cottage.
The children asking for fireworks (a great bit) could be explained as them hearing tales of Gandalf (perhaps by Bilbo). And I thought that the approving hobbit and his disapproving wife might be (and I think should have been) Lobelia and her
rather hen-picked husband- the actual dvd ones seemed too much a
characature.
And it's amazing the cake scene worked so well when it actually caught on
fire during the filming.