Watched the extended version of Fellowship Of The Ring tonight. Actually, I watched the first part last night, and the second part tonight. I’ve seen it twice already, but needed to see the additional footage… For the most part, it definitely enhanced the film and it’s a pity it was cut from the theatrical version. Some of the footage wasn’t missed, like the extra scenes in the Shire, but the additional material in Rivendell and Lothlorian would definitely have helped explain some of the stuff we saw in The Two Towers and probably will in Return Of The King as well. The extra exposition also helped round out Boromir’s character and gave him extra depth as a tragic figure. Again – a pity, but it’s a good bet that most people who’d care about such details will see the extended versions anyway.

It seems that one of my New Year’s resolutions will be to read more comic books. Once again taking advantage of Hairy Tarantula’s Boxing Week sale, I grabbed another stack of graphic novels (since they’re the trade paperbacks, I can call the graphic novels and not comic books! Though they are comic books…). More of the Marvel Ultimate stuff – this time the first Ultimate X-Men collection, the first Ultimate Spider-Man collection and the JLA : Earth 2 paperback.

While I enjoyed the Ultimate X-Men and Spider-Mans, they didn’t impress me the way that The Ultimates did, which is funny because I was never an Avengers guy back in the day. Part of the problem, at least with the Spidey, was that it retold the basic origin for the umpteenth time though with some material taken from the movie version. It wasn’t as sophisticated or engrossing as The Ultimates. Sorry Vic and Kevin, but I’m not getting the Brian Michael Bendis worship angle. X-Men was better, though again, I’m biased towards mutant titles anyway. I will be picking up the other Ultimate X-Men collections… can’t necessarily say the same for the Spidey. I am definitely a fan of the Ultimate universe concept – taking the classic characters, stripping them of the 30-odd years of back story and continuity, and starting from scratch in the modern day with a very capable creative team behind it all. I just hope they keep things small, tight and mangeable and avoid the money-grabbing title sprawl that drove me out of comics years ago.

The JLA : Earth 2 is courtesy of Grant Morrison and Frank Quitely. I’ve really liked their work on New X-Men, so I was pretty keen to see their take on the JLA. It’s classic Morrison… meaning I’m gonna have to read it a few more times to figure out exactly what went on. Some things never change.

np – The Soft Boys / Underwater Moonlight

Responses are currently closed, but you can trackback from your own site.