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[itsallovernow]

Blue Eyes is now 101,849 words and 170 pages long (Times 12 point font, single spaced). This is astonishing to me. And I'm estimating another 15-20 pages left. I'm so damned close. And too anyone who was traumatized yesterday, I will only say that the story is not over. These characters still have choices in front of them.

My mother called me at work yesterday to get my flight itinerary. She knew vaguely when I was coming in, but silly woman, she wanted specifics. Then says this to me as an afterthought, like a comfort.

My mother: "You know they caught Saddam, right?"

Me (having no idea where this statement came from): "Cause I was worried that he was hanging out at the Burbank airport."

She then burst into fits of giggles and I had to wait while she got herself under control. I know exactly where I got my stream of consciousness brain. Happily, I didn't inherit her paranoia. She thinks they're tapping the phones at work. I'm not saying she's wrong, but she's not selling state secrets.

And thank you Hotwire for allowing me to fly out of Burbank. That's like a little Christmas gift all by itself.

***
Yes, I'm admittedly jealous that people got to see the whole LOTR trilogy back to back. When we saw Fellowship in the theater, the credits rolled and my dad looked over at me, "Can't we just stay here? Surely we should be able to see them all at once."

He hasn't seen TTT yet because of the stroke, but come hell or high water, we're going to ROTK. He would have loved to sit there in the dark for 10 hours and just keep watching.

He'd let me play the records of The Hobbit and Return of the King over and over again when I was little, and while I think the movies are brilliant, and Ian McKellan has become the epitome of Gandalf, it still trips me up a little to not hear John Huston's voice booming out some of those phrases.

My dad read The Hobbit to me when I was a kid, got me a picture book with all of the text of the novel, but with pictures from the cartoon, and finally had to laminate it for me because I read it so frequently. I can still see where his good copies of the trilogy sat in our house, remember how the pages felt, the color of the ink on the spine of each one. The movies are fantastic, but the experience of going, of seeing them, it's so visceral, so tied to my childhood.

Sigh, I'm sure I'll be a mess at the end. Even thinking about the ending of ROTK makes me sniffle. I can't imagine the impact it will have for people pulled in by the movie, never having read the books.

Comments

[cofax7]

I miss John Huston's voice too. Even though McKellan is magnificent.

In an hour I leave for the theater to stand in line for... 2 hours? Just to get good seats? Even though I already have tickets? Am I inSANE?

New icon, from Saava!

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

Gorgeous icon (just liberated two from that same round myself:)

Have a fabulous time!! I am very jealous. It should be worth the waiting, and the line:) I stood outside the Chinese theater in Hollywood for an hour and a half to see The Phantom Menace. You vigil will definitely be time better spent:)

[raithen.livejournal.com]

see, for me, The Hobbit came at about 14 -- I loved it, but didn't get to LOTR until first year university. People I regularly babysat for had beautiful old paperback copies from the 1960s. The darling 3 year old had gone to bed in a timely fashion, and I started trolling the bookshelves in the study. The covers caught my fancy, and I made the connection with the hobbit. I started reading, out of curiosity, and that was it, I was hooked.

In a few years, when I had to pick an honours thesis topic, LOTR was way more interesting than Victorian lit. So I spent 8 GLORIOUS months studying Tolkien, and fantasy in general, and writing about Frodo as a an archetypal hero. It was wonderful, but when I was done, I needed a break from the trilogy. For the first time in years, I did not re-read it the next year. Or any year, until 3 Novembers ago.

When I heard Jackson was making the movie, I was skeptical. I loved the books, and i tend to be disappointed by film adaptations. So I dismissed the phenomenon as something to ignore. Then I saw the trailer for Fellowship. I ran out, bought fresh, unmarked copies of the trilogy that still had bindings as you know, a thesis can murder a book ;). I voraciously re-read fellowship, then saw the movie. Oops. I HATED it. With a passion that started with the "exposition" at the beginning I saw the necessity, but as a purist, was annoyed. There is a REASON Tolkien waits till the party to tell Frodo about the Ring, and which grew even greater when Arwen "swooped" in to save Frodo at the Ford of Bruinen. I spent the movie comparing book and film, a dumb move, but one which was hard to avoid, given my analytical mindset. And as electricland will tell you ;), I continue to have issues with the changes in the roles of the women in the tale. When Saruman was brought into Fellowship as a major character, instead of waiting for the Two Towers, I cringed, and dismissed it as filmmaking. Filmmaking I would not see again.

And I have not. I avoided the Two Towers, and will not see RoTK. I understand the appeal, I really really do. But for me, the movie(s) did not work. Which is ok, I am SOOO grateful that the release of Fellowship got me back to likely the trilogy qua trilogy, and not as over-done school subject. And I am SOOOO glad this is something you and your Dad can enjoy together. But for me, this is one set of books I want as books, and nothing more.....

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

We've talked about this a little before, but I still find it fascinating, how the whole experience is different for different people, and thank god, because what's the point of art if we all take the same thing from it:)

I think the movies are brilliant because while I love the books and the make me weep and smile and feel caught in the epic sensibilities and the world Tolkien created. But I find his dialogue stilted, the books exposition heavy, and find that there is entirely too much running around the countryside in the trilogy:) I see all of your points, but I think what I like about the movies is that they are movies. That it's a visual rather than a literary tale, the changes serve the visual aspect, serve that form of storytelling better than a stricter adherence to the books would have.

But obviously to each his own, and the process of analyzing these for your thesis must have been fantastic:)

[raithen.livejournal.com]

You have some valid points. I must admit, I am NOT a big film buff, so that is likely part of it.

the process of analyzing these for your thesis must have been fantastic:)
It was. I was just inspired to open the final paper on my computer I save EVERYTHING and it isn't half bad, for undergrad work.

[thassalia.livejournal.com]

It's always nice to find that out, isn't it? To read something you wrote at a different stage in your life and find out that it was worthwhile, after all?

There are books that I can't imagine seeing on film because the process of reading the books, seeing the words on the page is so visceral for me. I imagine your reaction to LOTR must be something like that.