[Kalimac]

Movie-Denethor is very similar to movie-Faramir (in the theatrical TTT) in some ways. That is, he acts in a callous and ultimately self-destructive manner for what appears to be no purpose whatsoever. Movie-Faramir was redeemed quite a bit by his flashback scene in the EE, so I'm reeeeaally hoping that Denethor gets the same treatment later on. When you think about it, just adding the Palantir at the end would really alter a lot of the scenes that we've already seen - it would cast a sort of backwards shadow - "Wow, no wonder he lost it so badly. Sauron was showing him A, B and C." It's the same way that in TTT, Faramir's lines about "a mighty gift" and so forth were rendered much deeper and bitterer just by our having seen the flashback where his father uses those exact words.<P>I seem to be the only one who didn't think that Denethor's eating scene was that bad . The way I saw it at the time was that it served a couple of purposes; first showing how cold and abstracted he is at the same moment his only remaining son is riding to pretty much certain death (nobody who's nervous could put away that kind of food), and second to give Pippin a chance to actually do his duties and get to talk to Denethor for a few minutes before the end. What made it seem so sick was, I think, the closeups - nobody looks good when they're eating, and he really wasn't any worse than anyone else we've seen eat in the movies. For someone living in a medieval-like place, he was pretty good. As for the closeups, I can only hypothesize that they were there partly to show that Pippin is hungry (that was the impression that I got) and to show what exactly how much he's getting through at the same moment that Faramir etc etc etc. OK, I did wonder about the juice on the chin a little bit . The fact that it's red - coincidence? Surely not! That was a little heavyhanded. But otherwise it seemed OK.