My work bought Karen and I a present when we got married, a voucher from Amazon.co.uk. We used it to buy a stack of DVD's that we'd been meaning to get and we also pre-ordered The Lord of the Rings Trilogy Extended Edition Box Set. It dully arrived last week, so we decided to watch all three movies back to back yesterday. Karen was feeling rather on the tired side so slept through quite a bit of it and went to bed way before I'd finished watching all three.
It's basically been a year since we saw all three movies on the big screen; the first two were the extended editions, so I was really excited to see how the extra footage in The Return of the King would change the feel of the movie. Unlike a lot of trilogies that are filmed over a number of years, LOTR really holds together well over all three films, I think they made the right decision to film them all back to back.
The only disappointment to watching the movies at home is the TV is just too small to do justice to the cinematography. These films really need to be seen of a big screen with a thumping sound system to really do them justice. I'm not sure if they've tidied up some of the effect from The Fellowship of the Ring, but I'm sure when I saw it at the cinema some of the CGI was a bit on the ropey side, it all looked pretty good on the telly.
The real question has to be, is The Return of the King improved by the extra footage? I have to say an unequivocal yes. I just can't believe they chopped some of it from the original theatrical edition. Granted, some of it's just background information, but the who bit about Aragon, Legolas, Gimli and army of the un-dead arriving on the ships was totally crap in the original, but it is explained much better in the extended edition and doesn't take up that many more minutes.
The only disappointing thing is that Denathor's madness is still not explained, so you're left wondering how he seems to know so much, but yet is not doing anything about it. I really think they missed a trick there and should have had him looking into one of those black ball things. Of course there's still the Hollywood ending and killing off of Saruman and Grima Wormtongue that detract from the original story, but you can't have everything.
Over all it's a great package and I would recommend to anyone who liked the movies to see the extended editions as they give a far better story than the original, in my opinion. If you're going to do them all in one sitting then I would recommend that you start in the morning as it's one long day for movie magic that's sitting before you.
Just finished reading The Da Vinci Code by Dan Brown at around 01.30 this morning. I'd had it recommended to me by a number of people, so I bought if from Tesco's a month or so ago and only got round to picking it up a couple of days ago. It turned out to be one of those books that was totally unputdownable and I found myself reading it instead of watching the telly, for those that know me this is almost unheard of.
Unless you've been living on another planet for the last year, you've probably heard of this book and what it's about, if not then I suggest you get out and get hold of a copy. It's turned in to a bit of a phenomenon as it's spawned a whole raft of other books and websites both for and against its central premise. For some reason there are quite a few people who seem to believe that it's all based on reality.
One thing to remember though is that it's just a work of fiction, bits might be based on reality, but the work as a whole shouldn't be taken as gospel. It has raised a few issues that I'd like to delve into in greater depth though, as I've been meaning to look into various aspects of Christianity for a while.
The central premise that Jesus was in fact just a mortal man, who got married and had a child, does seem to me to be more believable that what I was force fed at Sunday school. I've never really bought into this whole religion thing even though I come from quite a religious family, just the whole idea of a God doesn't seem right.
Anyway enough of the religion nonsense, the book is a great read wither you believe or not, so you should definitely read it either way. It was so good that I went out and bought another one of his books, Deception Point and am currently thoroughly enjoying that as well.
I've been drinking a bit too much Red Bull recently, so much so that I've had trouble getting to sleep at night. So today is my second day without any Red Bull and I feel like shit. I'm totally asleep and am so lackadaisical that I'm not getting anything done. I don't want to resort to having a can of the stuff to wake me up as that would defeat the point. I hope I manage to kick the habit, as I worked out that is would cost me nearly £500 a year to sustain it with the amount I drink at the moment.
Karen and I had our twenty week scan today at the Rosie today and everything is fine. The scan was far more detailed than the twelve week one, although the scans we got to take home aren't as good as what we saw on the monitor. So the wee blighter is all intact but is still causing its mother some grief.
Work took us to Barcelona for the weekend for the company Xmas party. We were delayed flying out of Stanstead due to fog and had to divert to Luton on the way back, again due to fog, other than that it was the usual beer soaked company trip. I didn't see much of Barcelona as I want to go with Karen and explore at some point in the future, but I did see some of the sights. Photographic evidence that I didn't spent all my time in the pub will arrive shortly...
