post-movie

Me, in lineup with Allison and Jodi. Note my
Weta Eye of Sauron t-shirt! I'm holding up one finger because there was
only one hour to go until the movie. Photo by John.


Hey, apparently Urban Tapestry made it onto CTV news and CITY-Pulse news! Pretty cool.

So I lined up with Allison, her husband John, Jodi and a huge crowd of other Lord of the Rings fans to see "Return Of The King" last night. After three days of solid programming and events related to the movie and books (and longer... "I've been waiting for this for 25 years," Allison said), we were all super-hyped and pumped high with expectations. We had our packages of tissues, had carefully timed our liquid intake so we wouldn't have to leave our seats during the three-and-a-half hour movie...we were ready!



We ran into Adam English during the convention. Sadly, we
missed seeing his Blandalf the Beige costume.


And we weren't disappointed. HOLY TOLEDO, what a fantastic experience. The three hours flashed by in a heartbeat; I was stunned when I realized that the movie was coming to an end. Not just the movie, but also the years of excited anticipation, the speculation. I was glad I brought an extra package of Kleenex :-)... I was a water faucet by the time the credits rolled. When I got on the subway to go home, there were two women next to me who obviously came from the same showing; they huddled together with tissues clutched in their hands, red-eyed and blowing their noses.



Allison and some of her Tolkien Online friends.


Can't wait to see this again. And again. And...well, let's just say that I am very much looking forward to the release of the extended version of this movie, which apparently includes about an extra hour's worth(!). Looks like I'm not the only one who loved the movie; Metacritic has a 95% reviews rating for "Return Of The King" while Rotten Tomatoes has a 98% rating. I'm tremendously curious about what ranking the movie eventually ends up with on IMDB.

Kudos to Peter Jackson and his crew; they had better score bigtime at the Oscars next year.

Some more photos from The Gathering:



Urban Tapestry on Monday night.




David Barker with a temporary Elvish tattoo
(Translation: "one ring to rule them all")




Me and Michael (Luisa's and Reid's son). Photo by David.

December/2003 comments: Read | Post | LJ