Tonight.

The Lord of the Rings.

I've got the tickets. Lisa is getting in line at 5:30 or so while I go pick up my cousin Dave. We'll be met by Lisa's parents, as well as Connie and Colin, and probably a bunch of ConVersion people.

We're seeing the 8:00 show at the Paramount, for anyone who'll be in the area and wants to join our little line party. Heh.

I'm still feeling tingles of trepidation. I haven't heard any bad reviews so far, just a bunch of glowing ones and a few middle-of-the-road ones.

I think Ebert is a little scared of playing to the hype, so is being guardedly cautious in his review. But if things go well, we can play another game of 'Roger Ebert Is An Idiot' here tomorrow. Heh.

I'll let you know.

In truth, there's probably not much chance of the movie living up to my expectations.

I first tried reading Lord of the Rings when I was in grade school. Trying to read such a heavy tome wasn't out of character for me. I started reading around the same time as my sister (who was two years ahead of me), so by the time I started school I was beyond the standard texts of kids my age. I skipped over the children's section in the library and went straight to the young adult. One of the first novels I remember reading was Richard Bachman's 'The Long Walk'. This was before it was discovered that Bachman was actually Stephen King, and his books moved to the more restricted shelves.

As a result, I have a lot of holes in my youthful literary background. I never read the Narnia books, or anything about Oz or Wonderland. I touched on the Hardy Boys briefly, but not for very long. My Kipling was restricted to the stuff I read in Cub Scouts, and I somehow managed to miss Twain and Dahl completely.

Anyway. I wasn't able to get through the Rings books the first time around, but I gave it a good college try. I think I was about 12 when I finally made it through completely. I've read them through once every couple years since then.

The first time people watch Casablanca these days, they roll their eyes at the awful clichés and stereotypes. Eventually it dawns on them that this movie is the one that created those clichés. The movie rang so strongly in people's minds that it set preconceptions and concepts that have lasted for decades.

That's what Lord of the Rings is to the world of fantasy.

Everything is colored by its existence. Books, comics, role-playing games, movies, television shows. It hard coded the standard types of fantasy creatures: the dwarf, the elf, the orc. The Grand Quest existed before Tolkien, but LoR defined it in terms of distance, personal growth, and sacrifice.

I've lived the movie dozens of times in my head. I don't now how anything could match that.

But I'm hoping.

Boring Behind the Curtain Tidbit: I've done a reorganization of my site, finally putting all the archives in proper directories, rather than just leaving them in my main directory, which was beginning to look like the Smith section in the phone book. This month's entries haven't moved yet, (to minimize any broken links on other people's pages), but will after the New Year. If you have any links to here, please take a moment to update them. Thanks!

Christmas Movie of the Day: Scrooged. MSN has this one on their list of the Top Ten Dysfunctional Holiday Films. A remedy for those of you a little sick of the holiday spirit. Bill Murray rocks. Everyone else is pretty funny too, but this one is all about Bill.

Mom Rating: 3.5 out of 5. Mom likes Lord of the Rings too. But movies cost too damn much these days.

Boring Tuesday

Roger Ebert is an Idiot (2)

Take me home, big fella

A solemn pledge to try to post daily during the month of December, as both a gift to my readers, as well as a thank you for your support.