Return of the King Wins Four Golden Globes 397
stubear writes "According to MSNBC, 'Lord of the Rings: Return of the King' won 4 Golden Globes, for Best Picture - Drama, Best Director (Peter Jackson), Best Original Score (Howard Shore), and Best Original Song ("Into the West" by Howard Shore, Fran Walsh and Annie Lennox). LotR: RotK was the big winner for the night, at least for movies. Hopefully LotR: RotK will fare just as well, or better, at the Oscars."
Re:There's a moral to this story (Score:2, Interesting)
The Office wins Two! (Score:5, Interesting)
Best TV comedy and best comedy actor for Ricky Gervais. Considering they were up against Will and Grace and Matt le Blanc in these categories this was a major surprise and makes me happy that such a fantastic series has been honoured.
Hopefully this will increase the awareness of the show in the USA. Hope the USA remake doesn't suck too much.
On the topic of Golden Globes, off the LOTR topic.
It deserves the awards, and then some (Score:2, Interesting)
LOTR was not the only noteworthy thing... (Score:2, Interesting)
I also thought that the ceremony would have been a good one had they simply given everything to Scarlett Johansson. The Oscar nominations will be published tomorrow and I am curious to see how closely they follow the lead from this awards-show. I would like to see Ang Lee to get at least a nomination as best director for "The Hulk", but am aware that the chances are slim. LOTR must be the big winner this year, but don't hold your breath for Gollum's nomination as best actor.
Howard Shore - my precious! (Score:5, Interesting)
Congrats to the rest of the ROTK gang as well! Good going!
Golden globes are a joke (Score:5, Interesting)
Hollywood is full of fake shit. But let's force them to be explicit about what is fiction and what is real [ninemsn.com.au]. The Golden Globes are awarded by an in-bred group of random no-nothing foreigners based in large part on who has given them the best perks [suntimes.com] that year. I think that the world's movie fans deserve better.
Why should we geeks care what 90 people, self-selected for a lack of integrity, think of the Lord of the Rings or anything else?
Re:I'm very happy about this (Score:5, Interesting)
Of course our opinions don't seem to mesh with the standard
but, eh, who wants to complicate things? RotK was a good movie, so it must have been the only good movie of the year. I mean, just look at the box office receipts!
Re:There's a moral to this story (Score:2, Interesting)
(Maybe the moral is: get James Cameron. ...TITANIC: THE REVENGE?)
Re:Two Towers... (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm not too sure. Various changes are made in the movies to punch up the drama; one is the Theoden/Eomer split, which didn't happen in the book. Consequently the Rohirrim weren't as prepared as they were in the book. The arrival of the elves underscore this. Of couse it could have been glossed over several other ways. I don't really understand why people object to this. This is precisely the kind of change Tolkien himself made from draft to draft in his various works. Had he rewritten LotR decade after decade like he did the Silmarillion, this version would have made a highly plausible draft.
What is up with Faramir?
Same thing. It's part of the translation of an epic medium into a dramatic one. In an epic, character is demonstrated by contrast, in drama it is demonstrated by change. This plot change give Faramir a chance to change his mind. I have no objection to this per se, but I think the reason that fans don't like this change (apart from the ones who don't like any change), is that it was poorly conceived. First it actually overestimates the power of the Ring. Tolkien didn't intend for the readers to take the Ring as being irresistable. Of course it could be resisted otherwise there is no point in the book. It just can't be resisted by people who yield to the temptation to use it. It is consistent with Jackson's desire to make the Ring and overpowering presence in the movie, almost a character in its own right.
Second, the way Faramir is won back has no credibility. Jackson having established the awesome corrupting power of the ring, Faramir simply overhears Sam's speech and suddenly his resolve is flipped 180 degrees. This could only be pulled off if they spent a huge amount of screen time showing agonizing over the decision. Since he is a minor character, it was't going to happen. All in all I think they would have been better of leaving this anamolous piece of epic logic in, rather than admit a mediocre piece of dramatic logic.
Ummm, where are the Hurons?
Until their defeat by the Iroquois, they would have been in central Ontario.
Why didn't the Ent's agree to attack Sauroman at the Ent-Moot?
Same as above. It is more dramatic (in the sense of more fitting to drama) to show characters changing their minds than simply making their minds up and carrying through.
Although I don't agree with them all, I actually like the fact that Peter Jackson took so many liberties with the text. It's interesting for the same reason it is interesting to have had Tolkien rewrite the same story with different viewpoints and events. It gives the story more of the flavor of a true, organically grown cultural artifact, which is what Tolkien was after anyway. With a real fairy tale and legend, there are always different local versions, and every storyteller makes it his own with his own details and embroidering.
Re:I was watching it (Score:4, Interesting)
I'm sorry, but it did. The main plot point all along was for Frodo to destroy the ring. I never read the books, but I never doubted that he would succeed. And he did destroy the ring.
In the Matrix, the ultimate goal was to destroy the machines and return control of the planet to the humans. I never doubted they would succeed. But they didn't. That caught me off guard, and I really like it whenever a movie can do that.
Another example: Kurt Russell's new movie, "Miracle." In the final showdown for Olympic gold, between Kurt's Americans and those nasty Russians, who do you think will win? Do you even need to see the movie? What's the point? You know America wins. America always wins in its movies. There'll be flags waving all over the place, moving patriotic speeches, uplifting music, it happens every time. "Armageddon" (yay, the US saved the world), "Independance Day" (yay, the US saved the world again),
NOT a "trilogy" (Score:3, Interesting)
If you had not seen the first two, the last one would not have made any sense at all.
Interpretting the music... (Score:4, Interesting)
I personally found the score rather disappointing. It's not bad at all but, I found nothing "Tolkienish" in it.
If "music" is defined by what's on MTV, then it might be considered brilliant; but with bands like Summoning and Blind Guardian ( LotR-related interview ) around to convert Tolkien's stories into music, I consider the LotR soundtrack somewhat of a missed chance.
I was actually fairly impressed by the music for LotR when I first went to the showings. I'm even more impressed now that I have had the opportunity to watch the DVDs at home and actually give the music some serious attention.
Interpretting a book and putting music to it is inevitably a big problem - very few books go as far as actually adding a score (!) or even an indicator of the music associated with each group of people so what one person expects is a very personal response. Having watched the appendecies to FotR and TTT about the scoring of the LotRs, Howard Shore has been very attentive to the vision that Peter Jackson bought to the film in terms of the histories associated with each of the various groups in the film without falling into the trap of going completely native and only using original instruments. For example, the Eoras are derived/inspired from the Anglo-Saxon peoples (think Beowulf on horses) and the key instrument for the Eoras themes is the Norweigen fiddle - an instrument which has a wilder timbre than a normal violin. The use of various vocalists to provide different textures to various important scenes in the films is another example of the care found in augmenting the vision.
Someone else mentioned predictability. For an effectively 10 hour score, each major character and each major group has their own theme. This theme is then moulded into the scenes where they appear, so during the battle of Helm's Deep you have a mixture of the music associated with the Uruk-Hai and the Eoras with some of the Elven themes woven in. It is both unrealistic and more importantly unworkable to not have this sort of thematic approach to the scoring - the viewer is often guided through a movie on the wings of the musical score, often at a subliminal level. The thematic approach actually helps the viewer following the (often rapid) switches in the film between the story lines - to keep throwing brand new ideas in all the time would actually disorientate many audiences in what is already a complex film (in TTT there are 5 simultaneous story threads at some points).
I think Howard Shore is a deserving recipient of this Golden Globe.
Cheers,
Toby Haynes
Re:Oscar ? (Score:5, Interesting)
ROTK will win best movie and it will win for three reasons, it's a good flick, the Miramax flick of the year aint that good, and it's a compensation win. However ROTK is NOT the best movie of the year, really. (personal choice, Lost In Translation) The trilogy in its completion is the best movie of 2001-2003 combined but each of the parts is not the best of the year. But it will win none the less. It SHOULD win. ROTK will also win best director, but that's a given.
As for actors and photography ROTK should NOT win any of it, it just aint that good. The acting of the ring trilogy consists mainly of yelling at props, speaking in tongues and beards and staring plainly into the camera subverting you into thinking there is something going on inside. The only acting presence of the trilogy has been the Gollum charachter, an astounding achievement in itself. But compare Gollum to Andy Serkis technique in the flesh as the real-life version of Gollum, it's apallingly BAD acting in real-life. Once again the synergy of the production has created something extraordinary out of average or better than average sub-parts. Given, most actors prices are given for a big Cry part (think Sean Penn in Mystic River) or transformation act (think Charlize Theron in Monster), and that's sad as there are many other excellent works outside those frames. Especially the ensemble act problem. But look at Bill Murrays acting in Lost In Translation which is a very fine piece of tragedy and comedy combined. Gollums schiophrenic scene in TTT is on Murray's level, but all other acting sequences and parts in ring trilogy are not. I hope Murray wins this one, he deserves it. This year in Big Hollywood Popcorn movies had one (1) fine performance and that was Johnny Depp in Pirates of the Caribbean. Viggo Mortensen is nice and the right man for his part in the ring trilogy but he is a stiff Dubya Bush compared to Depps rip-off of Keith Richard.
As for cinematography, well thats a bit trickier. Personally I don't think ROTK looks pretty enough. It's very good, but not outstanding, and if it is something that has moved forward the last decade in terms of moviemaking it is cinematography. Look at Christopher Doyle's work in Hero (shelved in US -only by Miramax, for all time. Buy the DVD.)and In The Mood For Love, or Conrad S Hall's work in Road To Perdition or even an average flick from the factory and compare it to a flick from fifteen years ago, how good they look now. ROTKs cinematography is technically brilliant at keeping the long production even in terms of the look, but it doesnt make you go "wow what a pictureframe" like excellent cinematography should. It has some nice fly-bys and mass-scenes but the lighting in many scenes are just off whack. ROTK looks flat as a picture, IMO. Kill Bill looks better (and also uses several different types of cinematographic styles, which is very interesting) and Lost In Translation and Elephant blows it out of the water.
The achievement of the Ring films lies in the production entire and that it actually has worked as a film version of a book, something quite uncommon. I don't think Peter Jackson bothered that much to get the best acting or the best cinematography of the year into each film, but primarily tried to fit the story itself onto film while not making it look outright cheesy. It doesnt, so he's succeeded. You maximize some efforts and give up others, cut him some slack.
Given Jacksons next project is King Kong, an all out emotionally based film, I think he'll go for good acting (by actors and creatures alike) for that one. And as it's a single picture more time can be spent on makin it look good too. So perhaps, next time alas.
-pahpabut
Marketing budgets (Score:3, Interesting)
I can't find the source right now (probably boxofficemojo) but I recall that the cost of making RotK was listed at around 95 million $, with advertsing costs of 50 million $. I'm amazed by the amount spent on advertising---it's hard to believe that it's cost effective, ie, that box office receipts or even total revenue would have fallen by 10 million if they had only spent 40 million on advertising.
Or is movie attendance so ruled by herding and cascade effects that the effects of advertising are nonlinear?
Re:Two Towers... (Score:3, Interesting)
The Lord of the Rings is a monsterous book, and (as one learns when one reads the Simarillion, Unfinished Tales et al) there are precious few throwaway scenes, or even LINES. Almost everything has a fully realized backstory out there somewhere.
The notable exception is Bombadil... but almost everything else is fully fleshed out somewhere.
You can indulge in this luxury in print, because you are working with the imagination and because you're not limited in time.
But with a film, you're working with a visual medium and a fixed run time. Dialogue, especially, is resistant to time compression. So too is the exposition of backstory - otherwise you are faced with somebody delivering a history lecture in the midst of your movie.
(Amazingly, Jackson pulled this part off in the prologue to FotR - but in the DVD commentaries, we learn just how contraversial that was amongst the filmmakers. They know the dangers of characters lecturing the screen)
Given this, I'm amazed at just how much of the book they were able to work in (more or less) untouched - and certainly, they stayed very true to the spirit of the original work.
There were a couple of decisions made that I would have done differently had I been in charge, but nothing there is egrariously WRONG.
Incidently, after watching LotR/TTT back to back with the Bashki animated version, I was struck by the enormous influence Bashki had on Jackson. In fact, I think that with no Bashki version, there is no Jackson version - Ralph's movie, flawed as it was, shows how the book _could_ be successfully adopted to film.
DG
Re:I was watching it (Score:3, Interesting)
2. In the first movie, Jason wasn't the killer.
3. You can't complain about the ending of RotK being predictable because, duh, it was predicted 50 years ago by the book.
4. The main plot point of LotR was not for Frodo to destroy the ring. You missed the point. (And Moby Dick is not about a whale.)
5. It's been pointed out already, but bares repeating--in 1980 the USA Olympic hockey team beat the Soviet Olympic hockey team. Let the Soviets make movies about all the years the Soviets won, and the Americans will make the movie about the years they won.
6. You mention a couple movies to prove your point, but there are obvious counter-examples. Yes, there was "Armageddon", but there was also "Deep Impact" in which the world was not destroyed, but disaster was not completely averted either.
7. What about the multiple movies about Steve Prefontaine? He didn't win in the end. There goes your theory.
Re:Howard Shore - my precious! (Score:4, Interesting)
That's because all the instruments were made out of - you guessed it - wood. Wooden instruments accompanying wooden creatures. It's good stuff!
Re:There's a moral to this story (Score:2, Interesting)
Huh? Did you and I see the same movies? I watched TPM, not really liking it, but thinking "ok, let's give him a chance, let's see where he's going with this..." and then AOTC? WTF was that all about? Padme and Skywalker romance? About as much as two bricks can have. It was one of the worst movies I've ever seen! I'll watch the third one if I can get it as a free rental.
Now, granted, my tastes do not necessarily reflect the tastes of a great many people here, but "excellent"? What were you smoking before you saw them that gave you that opinion? And did it make you hungry afterwards?
Re:There's a moral to this story (Score:3, Interesting)
Idiot movies like this will continue to be made indefinitely because the cost of maintaining the luxurious lifestyles of the filmmakers, stars, and studio executives are considered part of the basic cost of the film.
I saw M:R in the second run theatre for $3 on the last 1960's era giant screen left in town, so I didn't feel all that cheated by the stupid dialog, redundant plotting, and boring cliches. But I only go to about 1/10th of the movies that I did five years ago. If all the people in audience follow my pattern, then the movie biz is in trouble because they are on the verge of losing their audience to boredom at the same time that they have locked themselves into making these horribly expensive movie projects.
Re:sequels...ya need to know the plot BEFORE... (Score:3, Interesting)
Re:Why ROTK will probably not win... (Score:3, Interesting)