Way's World

Tuesday, 30 December 2003

Film Review - The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King

A couple of years ago my Dad got tricked into taking us to see "LOTR: The Fellowship Of The Ring". Last year he treated us to "LOTR: The Two Towers", and today he took us to the cinema to see the final part of the trilogy, "The Lord Of The Rings: The Return Of The King".

At 3.5 hours long you imagine you'd come out of the cinema thinking the film was too long, and you'd be right to a certain extent - the end of the film was a bit too long (although it's in the book, so I don't suppose I can really complain), but it did seem a little too cheesy. But other than that, it was brilliant!

I'm not really giving anything away by writing this (after all, if you were that bothered you could have read the book - it's only been available for the last 50 years!), but if you don't want to know anything about the film, don't read any further! (Mind you, if you've not seen the film or read the book, none of this will make any sense anyway...)

The battle scenes are absolutely breath-taking - herds of Oliphants, thousands of Rohirrim, tens of thousands of Orcs, and the siege of Minas Tirith, this film has it all. Frodo grows more weary as he, Sam, and Gollum get ever nearer to Mount Doom, and Gollum continues to plot against them to win back The Ring. He leads Frodo into a trap, resulting in Frodo's capture by the Orcs and Urak-Hai (although he actually manages to get Frodo a little nearer to his goal in the process). Fortunately Sam is hot on his trail and manages to free him, and together they carry on to Mount Doom.

Meanwhile, Minas Tirith is under siege and Denethor (father of Boromir and Faramir) is losing his sanity, actually trying to burn Faramir alive at one point. It's down to Pippin and Gandalf to rescue him and rally the outnumbered troops of Gondor to defend the city against the forces of Mordor. At the same time, Aragorn, Legolas and Gimli go off to rally some undead warriors to bolster their numbers (and a bloody good job too, 'cos they make nifty fighters!)

The film does leave some points hanging - for example, at the beginning of the film Saruman is seen trapped in his castle by the Ents (the tree people), but you don't find out what happens to him. For all I know, he's still there under guard! (Mind you, it does leave plenty for the special edition DVD due out next year). And as I mentioned earlier, the ending does go on a little bit too long - for example, Aragorn is crowned king, gives a thankful speech about the Hobbits, everybody cheers and the screen fades to black. Oh, and then Frodo's recovering in his sickbed, everyone comes in to wish him well, and the screen fades to black. Oh, and then Sam gets married, says his goodbye's to Frodo, Gandalf and all, and the screen fades to black. Oh, and then - well, you get the idea. Also, Cate Blanchett (Galadriel) insists on speaking soooo slowly, trying to sound serious but sounding seriously demented instead.

These few nitpicks aside, however, this is a great ending to a great trilogy of films. You really do feel that you've been on a great journey with the Frodo and co. - the only sad part is knowing that next Christmas we'll have nothing to look forward too cinema-wise.

Monday, 29 December 2003

PC Case - continued!

Well that went better than I thought - I managed to get everything transferred over okay and when I powered up my PC worked fine, first time!

Here's a few pictures, one showing the front of the case (the bubble lights on the front change colour, too), and the other two are shots of the inside through the case window (I've got a UV light and cables, along with a fan with 4 LED's in there at the moment) - they don't really do it justice, but at least you'll have some idea of how it looks.

A late Christmas present!

Linda gave me some money for Christmas to put towards a new computer case - there's nothing wrong with the old one, I just fancied a change. We went and bought one today, so I'm just making this post before I start dismantling my PC to make the changeover!

Hopefully it won't be too long before my next post...!!!

Wednesday, 24 December 2003

One More Sleep to Go!

Here we are... Just one more sleep to Santa,and no more work for the rest of the year - marvelous!!!

We started dishing out the Secret Santa presents at around 12.45pm, and then we had a raffle which raised approximately £75 for charity. All the prizes had been donated by members of staff, including various bottles of wine, champagne, a wine making kit (there's a pattern forming here) and a plastic wall clock, kindly (?) donated by our Chairman.

Strangely enough, the clock was the last prize left. The final ticket was pulled out, only to have the Chairman's name written on it! Talk about justice!!!

Friday, 12 December 2003

At the third stroke...

Wondering what the time is? Click here!

Tuesday, 02 December 2003

Oops!

Compton Acres are giving out free passes again, so Linda and I went and picked one up on Sunday.

Because it's valid for six months (but only made out of thin card), I thought I'd put it throught the laminator at work to protect it. Unfortunately, it's obviously printed on some sort of heat-sensitive paper, because when it came out of the laminator it was pitch-black.. oh, oh!!