I have seen one movie that was almost identical to its mother book. That movie was A&E's Pride and Prejudice. It was excellently made and it was an excellent movie that is one of my family's favorites.
Another movie that was made
like it's book was Master and Commander. This was actually a story that the director and script makers made up with the characters from the books, basing it losely off of one of the books in the Aubrey/Maturin series, but it was written, made, and performed in the spirit of the book and turned out wonderful.
Now Bombadil...hehe. I understand your feeling of being slighted, but I think that Jackson made a good call in drawing him out. All that stuff that you mentioned that could have been left out and that would have left open time could have been used for other characters. A LOT of the fellowship didn't have proper development in the movie that they could have had if they had taken out the stuff that P.J. added.
I think it is possible to make a movie fairly close to the book its based off of. I think if people did it more often, movies would be better.
