Real Magic

The kind of Bleat that I look forward to today. Lileks offers his awed assessment of the Two Towers Extended Edition DVD, which he watched along with the Fellowship Extended Edition in preparation for the release of the final installment of the LOTR trilogy. I actually had the same idea, and plan to spend my Thanksgiving Friday, in the Lazy Boy watching both of the extended edition DVDs. It is pretty much a days work, but I agree with James that these movies are pretty much the height of grandiose film making.

Lileks bleats, "When asked for my favorite movie I give the old standard reply - Casablanca, because it has everything I want in glorious Warner Brothers monophonic silvery-toned perfection. It's a movie in the sense that LOTR isn't. Short, self-contained, pop culture that effortlessly transcends its limitations (perhaps because it isn't trying to do anything of the sort.) But LOTR may be the most impressive thing I've ever seen on the screen."

This is a fair take. There are better movies that function purely as movies (I would list the aforementioned Casablanca, but also The Maltese Falcon and Touch of Evil as examples of pure movie making that functions on the level that James is describing), but the LOTR trilogy seems to offer a loftier experience more akin to the great epics and opera.

And James even manages to get some lilexia into the post without being overly cute. And he has a nice idea for The Fantastic Four movie.

Read the whole bleat here.