Top 5: Scenes from The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (IMDB Top 250 #11)

Every month (or so…..I swear they’re coming more regularly) we take a look at a movie on the Internet Movie Database’s List of the TOP 250 FILMS OF ALL-TIME.  These are movies that transcend a simple “My Favorite Scene” column.  These are movies that are hard to just pry five gems from, but we do and examine the film overall.  We’re on our eleventh installment in this series.  Click on the links for The Shawshank Redemption, The Godfather, The Godfather Part II, The Dark Knight, Pulp Fiction , Schindler’s List, 12 Angry Men, The Good The Bad and The Ugly, The Return of the King, and Fight Club to check out previous installments.

Having made it through the top 10, we come to #11 on the IMDB Top 250: the opening chapter in Peter Jackson’s flawless adaptation of The Lord of the Rings.  Taking Tolkien’s masterpiece from the province of literary scholars and the kids who sat alone at lunch in high school, Jackson showed the whole world the scope of Middle-Earth (to such extent that New Zealand, where both the LOTR and Hobbit films were shot, pretty much considers itself Middle-Earth).  The Lord of the Rings is my favorite film, and I treat it as one 12 hour epic, not three parts, but this works out to my advantage as all three chapters are in the top 15 and I get to showcase fifteen scenes instead of just five.

My Favorite Scene: The Lord of the Rings – The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

To complete my backward journey through my favorite movie of all-time, we arrive at the first installment: The Fellowship of the Ring.  One of my favorite theater experience of all time was seeing this on opening night.  My friends and I were such Tolkien geeks that we bought out about half of the theater, and I got to see my favorite movie begin (I really consider LOTR one film with two intermissions) with most of the people I held dear at the time.  It was probably one of the best nights of my life.

One of the things we were all excited about going into the film was the Balrog.  They’d kept it out of the trailers and we couldn’t wait to see what this thing was going to look like.  It gets a fantastic slow-almost Jaws like-dread approach as we see thousands of goblins scatter like flies just from hearing its footsteps, the Fellowship (all 9 together for the last time) making a harrowing journey down the stairs to this slim, bare Bridge of Khazad-dum (yes I know where to put the accent marks, fellow Tolkienites but I’m too lazy to figure out where they are on the keyboard).  Whatever expectation I had; whatever prior mental picture I had of the Balrog, was blown away when it bursts through a wall of stone; shadow and flame.  The confrontation between Gandalf and the Balrog is one of the defining scenes, not only of LOTR, but of the last twenty years of cinema.  It never fails to thrill me, nor tear me apart when Gandalf falls (or rather lets go, so as not to expose the rest of the company to incoming fire while trying to rescue him on a collapsing bridge).  It’s my favorite scene in Fellowship and one of my favorite movie moments of all-time.

Empire Magazine’s The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug Photo Gallery

Earlier this week, Empire Magazine leaked their cover for their upcoming issue where they focus on the middle child of the The Hobbit trilogy – The Desolation of Smaug. The article is primarily elvish in nature; appropriate since I think we’re going to be spending a fair amount of the film in Thranduil’s Woodland Realm. Now, we have the pictures that accompany the article spotlighting both the elves and the barrel escape that eventually moves the Dwarven company closer to Erebor. The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug opens December 14th and I included the trailer again because it is just that cool. You’re welcome.

Details on The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey Extended Edition

In the same Empire Magazine issue that features Thranduil, Tauriel and Legolas on the cover, Peter Jackson gives his first details on the extended edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey.  Now, I loved AUJ.  Loved it.  I’ve watched it several times in the theater and again on Blu Ray and it is just a joy.  The complaints about it being boring or too long, baffle me.  A movie is too long if you don’t have enough story.  A 90 minute film can seem like an eternity if you don’t have a story, but a three-hour film flies by if you’re invested.

If you haven’t read The Hobbit recently, it does start with an extended dinner party, which also serves in the film to introduce and begin to differentiate between the dwarves.  The Hobbit is a different pace than the LOTR.  Things aren’t so dire yet.  No one knows Sauron is back.  The ring has not been found.  In many ways it’s an allegory for a sleeping Europe in the 1930’s; ignoring or choosing to overlook the rising menace.  If someone took a hose to Radagast’s face, I’d go so far as to call it a perfect beginning.

The extended edition was coming; we all knew it.  It’s going to run 169 minutes, which is only nine minutes longer than the theatrical cut.  I’m intrigued by some of the scenes Jackson outlines below.  I don’t know that we need more dwarf crassness.  We get it.  They do not like elves and it is mutual.  But the bit with the black arrow and a bit of Thranduil sounds intriguing.  We’ll find out when the extended edition hits stores in November.

If Peter Jackson’s The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey wasn’t long enough for you, then we have some goods news. The filmmakers have revealed some of the scenes you can expect to see in the extended cut of the movie.

“You are going to get some serious Dwarvish disrespect of the elves at Rivendell,” director Peter Jackson told Empire.

“You are going to get more of Hobbiton,” said producer/co-writer Philippa Boyens. “We always wanted to wend our way through Hobbiton, but in the end Bilbo has to run out of the door.”

“You are going to get more Goblin Town, and the Great Goblin singing his song,” said Fran Walsh. “It is a great song, but it was just another delay in terms of moving the story along.”

“We are putting things in the extended cut that are going to play straight into the second film,” Jackson continued, “like this character Girion, who is defending [the city of] Dale using black arrows against Smaug. And the black arrows play a part in an ongoing story, for they are the one thing that can pierce the dragon’s hide…There are also issues with [king of the elves] Thranduil. We get some of the reason why he and the dwarves had a falling out – to do with these white gems…”

The extended edition of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey will be releasd this November, just in time for The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug which opens in 2D, 3D, and IMAX theaters on December 13, 2014.

Desolation of Smaug Empire Magazine Cover – Legolas, Thranduil and Tauriel

It’s all about the Woodland Elves on Empire Magazine‘s latest cover.  The cover features Thranduil (Lee Pace), the King of the Wood Elves; Legolas (Orlando Bloom) and Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly).  It looks like from the trailer that we’ll be spending a fair amount of time in the Woodland Realm and I loved how the design motif seemed to mirror Lorien’s only in wood.  Tauriel, as has been much discussed on KT, is a character solely made for the movies and comes from no Tolkien lore.  I thought what we saw in the trailer looked really good; but we’ll see.  We’ll probably get one more trailer in October/November.

The second film in The Hobbit trilogy will bring us  Beorn!  Smaug!  Lake Town!  Bard the Bowman!  Wood Elves!  Spiders!  The Necromancer!  There’s no place I’d rather return to than Middle Earth.  The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug will release on December 13, 2013, and the trilogy will finish with The Hobbit: There and Back Again on December 17, 2014.