I discovered this never-posted blog entry when I was cleaning out my C drive at work. I can write at work, but I can't log into blogger, becaue it's just too obvious. My monitor faces God and everybody and no matter what I'm doing, people look into my cubicle to see what I'm doing.

That, for those of you who want to know, is why I don't blog very often.

This is my ramblings after seeing Return of the King. It amused me. The post I mean. The movie too.
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Really creative fight choreography bores me. So does Cirque du Soleil. I used to be a ballet dancer, but I have never chosen to attend a ballet unless someone I know was dancing in it. I think that happened once about 10 years ago. Something about movement without words fails to speak to me... at least, I haven't seen any that does in a very long time.

Which means Virtually the entire 2-3 hours of The Two Towers was a snoozer for me. I expected more of that in Return of the King, but I was instead thrilled by a noted shift toward more overhead visuals and mass-movement of fighting armies than an up-close analysis of two guys in armor's well-thought-out and executed thrusts and parries.

Yeah, it's not real. But it's some of the best damn computer animation I've ever seen. An eagle's eye view of a few thousand men being surrounded by tens of thousands of darkly-clad swarming goons is thrilling. You know they're gonna get their asses kicked. (Of course, they don't, this is fiction.) Good acting. Grim, heroic determination. A slight smile on Gimli's and Legolas's faces - they love the thrill of battle. (Excellent German/Celt archetypes!) So I get to see the heroism, the great costumes and props, see the seemingly insurmountable odds, and don't have to sit through this dance routine that lasts oh, twenty minutes and has me wondering if I can make it to and from the bathroom and still find out who wins.

That's really all I care about. Who won? I'm sort of like that about most sports. "You should have seen that play!" ok... but who won?

You'd think I'd dig fight choreography. The best fight sequences I've ever enjoyed were in The Princess Bride ("I'm not left-handed either!") and The Court Jester ("Remember Griselda... if he dies, you die.") But they were, you see, funny. Maybe that's got something to do with it.

Maybe I just don't find people trying to kill each other entertaining. That might be it.

So - Two Towers, snore. Return of the King, impressive!

Also the immensely groovy smackdown of the elephant creatures was, I am almost ashamed to admit this, action cinema at it's finest. The theatre audience of +/- 1000 practically jumped out of their seats cheering when Legolas took down the evil elephant and it's riders, counting off how many bad guys he'd skewered in the process (31, 32, 33...). Of course, most of us jumped out of our seats cheering in a previous scene when his tunic ripped. But I digress.

Now, I'm an animal-rights person, on a small scale. I eat meat and wear wool and leather. I just think animals should be allowed to live happy, free-ranging lives until we slaughter them. And the thought of eating downed animals is enough to make anyone sick, I should think. Careless cruelty in the name of profits is something I cannot abide. I know that certain types of animal research in the medical field (cancer research, for example) may always be necessary, but nobody needs to die so I can have shiny hair.

The regulations followed in Hollywood since 1940 are one of the most important pieces of legislation to impact the entertainment industry. "No elephants were harmed in the making of this film!" I kept repeating to myself. Then I realized no elephants were probably even used to a large extent. Computers. It's all computers. Once I got that through my head, it was a blast. But man. Evil elephants!? That's a hard concept. Especially for the Dumbo generation.

Ok, so we got big mass-scale warring, peaceful animals portrayed as evil monsters being brutally killed. Add to that the fact that I've been in a grouchy, misanthropic mood for the last month and a half.

I was oddly riveted by this film, and undeniably entertained. I had no idea almost 4 hours had passed by the time we all staggered out of the theatre. I didn’t even step in any spilled soda on the way out. So I was glad I went. Which, actually, is the highest compliment I can give any entertainment event. I’m glad I went.