Still forming your own images of Middle-earth, or stuck with Elijah and co.?

[Mithalwen]

Actually to be fair, although Sam says that about her...there aren't actually many moments of cheer recorded in FOtr that I recall..... and I do see Galadriel as Cate now.......but then she very much ressembles aiee either John Howard or Alan Lee's famous pictures of G so I guess that that helped...seeing as they were responsible for so much of the design....... and I was lucky enough to see the LOTR exhibition in London last october and that dress was amazing..it really did seem to radiate light..in a non tacky way.....


Liv Tyler was not my idea of Arwen and her acting did not win me over ..... and though I have mellowed because she does seem saner and more grounded than you would expect given the unorthodox upbringing amd marrying someone named after the "League of Gentlemen" village but I am afraid I still find her profoundly irritating... irrational maybe but there you go.... To be fair I think she would have been more convincing somehow if they had kept Stuart Townsend as Aragorn (but thank the Valar they didn't) somehow they make a more convincing couple... I feel Viggo needed someone with more depth and although neither he nor Miranda Otto exactly fitted my ideas of their chars (think Hugh Jackman maybe and oh bother can't think of the name...) ....there was a much stronger chemistry between them and both have now usurped my previous mental images...

For me Frodo and Sam have Iam Holm and Bill Nighy's voices from the BBC radio version - I think they outclass the too young and irritating Elijah and Dopey Sean.... and I think it got the nature of the relationship better .... far less gay... With Elijah and Sean... I just thought "Ted and Ralph"..... and nearly got thrown out of the cinema for laughing during Shelob....

Christopher Lee won me over as Saruman aslong as I forget the "honey tongue" ... his voice is powerful but not enchanting....

Darling, beloved Hugo is definitely Elrond.... *thud*... Legolas was not a plutonium blonde I am sure but he's got the moves if not the touch....

Sean Bean as Boromir was good, though I wish he had diluted the yorkshire accent a bit .......


However Faramir and Denethor were definitely impostors..... Denethor would never have had such table manners and Faramir should have looked more Numenorean ...... I mean David Wenham looks nice enough but Fararmir was rather special.... should have looked like a younger Hugo Weaving

[VanimaEdhel]

This opinion surprises me.

In Maine, back in 1979, I knew a lithe, extremely talented cowgirl (named Karen) who had a barrel-racing palomino named Buck. While the horse was standing still, she could swing up onto his saddle one-handed.

A few of my friends are able to perform this trick, but there is completely different motion involved. In order for it to work, the horse cannot move forward at all. Typically, if they horse did move forward, it is not so much that the person would most likely misjudge the jump as it is that, no matter how light the person, the horse would be thrown off-balance. Arod is going to gallop right down a hill after the maneuver and, while Legolas is supposedly lighter due to his Elf-frame, I would think that it would still make it more difficult, especially with the compact Gimli already on his back.

And I cannot see how Orlando could have done that stunt himself unless he was attached to a harness. It is a very difficult stunt to perform without some sort of equipment aiding in lifting him onto the horse.

Actually, one flaw that irked me is that they obviously used two different horses to play Shadowfax. Look at the horse throughout The Two Towers and you will see that there are two horses of very different appearances. As well as basic physical appearances, they also had very separate demeanors. While one was very docile around horses and the other frequently moved to bite them. I do not know whether, as an avid horseback rider, I just noticed it because I was paying special attention to the horses or whether it was generally very obvious. Did anyone else notice this?

On the topic of the horses, the horse that played Asfaloth was great. He was so beautiful, and he was a real stallion rather than a gelding. Actually, he looked just like a horse at the barn at which I ride.

Viggo Mortensen, in my opinion, did very, very well in the scene where the horse that played Brego knelt next to him like that and licked his face. Although I am sure the horse was a very sweet creature, accidents do happen. If the horse was off-balance, it may have kneeled on him, breaking ribs or worse, and when it was licking him, even the most well-meaning horse can accidentally catch you with his or her teeth. These guys really did a lot for the job.

[Mithalwen]

I read an interview with Sir Ian McKellen and they did use two horses for Shadowfax - quite reasonable if your actor is and aged thespian who hadn't ridden before as I recall bareback and reinless would have been a bit of a challenge... "the galloping double" was indeed coinsiderably more fiery. They used a horse and a pony for gandalf's cart scenes for scale but his favourite was the pony who played Bill if I remember rightly.

Actually I was convinced there were 2 Asfaloths ..... one in close ups one in long shots (again understanderble since Liv Tyler was another novice) seems to have different markings if not different breeds...... and in half the shots he is overbent and int he others he has normal head carriage.....

[Encaitare]

I used to have a crush on Orlando Bloom but I've since moved on and now I think he's just a pansy. Legolas had dark hair! So that's how I've begun to think of Legolas. Also, Faramir and Boromir had dark hair, but I love David Wenham and Sean Bean's performances, so I don't mind. Eowyn was more or less how I pictured her, but I only read the third book without seeing the respective movie.

I thought Brad Dourif was perfect as Grima... I wish PJ had done the Scouring of the Shire, because he and Christopher Lee would have done it AMAZINGLY.

[VanimaEdhel]

Actually I was convinced there were 2 Asfaloths ..... one in close ups one in long shots (again understanderble since Liv Tyler was another novice) seems to have different markings if not different breeds...... and in half the shots he is overbent and int he others he has normal head carriage.....

But, then again, you can make any horse carry his head like that. The stunt double would certainly have been much more comfortable riding, and would have let the head out. Whereas Liv Tyler said that, when she was on the horse, she was pulling back with a lot of force the whole time. A lot of the riding where you just see her pumping her arms was apparently done on a model of a horse as well. I seem to recall that she said that the only scene where she was really doing the riding is where she mounted behind Frodo and urged Asfaloth forward. The rest was the stunt rider or Liv on a model.

Back to the head carriage, that overbent neck, as I said, is typically a result of a rider trying to hold the horse back too much. Technically, it's not really good for the horse's motion, but many people encourage it in the horse because it has taken on the reputation as looking fancy. However, holding a horse back because he is barrelling into turns very quickly is another reason one might force such an angle of the neck. However, on the far shots, they are typically on straight bearing, a reason for the rider to let the horse's neck out and allow it to gallop - provided, of course that they keep the horse from being front-heavy and perhaps tumbling.

Now that we have covered so much else, on the topic of what you imagined, how was the clothing and armor? Some of the detailing - even down to fraying of a sleeve - was great, in my opinion. Aragorn's clothing was especially well-done, in my opinion. Then again, Viggo Mortensen did take extra care that his outfit was typically just thread-bare enough. I, personally, was not a big fan of the dress Arwen wore in Aragorn's memory, not because I did not think the dress was gorgeous, but because I, personally, thought it departed from the general Arwen style a bit too much for my liking. Others will probably disagree, but it was just not my personal preferred style for what Arwen should wear in that scene.

[Mithalwen]

I must admit it occurred to me that the rider might have had to keep the horse much more in hand for the benefit of the camera in the close ups .... and the Liv close ups are about as subtle fakes as the Frodo doll - io haven't had time to look again but I remember thinking sometimes the grey was more of an "iron grey" with darker mane and dappling on his quarters and since I knew there had been more than one Shadowfax I thought it likely that there was more than one Asfaloth..... And while it is a while since I left the horse world...I do recall that being overbent was highly frowned on ... no more than perpendicular ... Personally I think it looks horrible; as if the horse is fighting the bit, much rather the horse was going into the bridle....anyway this is getting far to technical for teh majority I guess!

I loved the elvish armour and weapons........ it was great to be able to see them close up - the only thing was I wondered if they would have used runes rather than script for engraving...? But the attention to detail was more than enough to satisfy this Tolkien pedant .....