This isn’t good. I’m in a ranty mood and my brother goes and posts his opinions on Lord of the Rings. Here’s part of what he said: “…I watched Lord of the Rings. This movie was made for fanboys (and girls… Heather). It was long. It was good, but I got a little bored with the ‘Short guys and bearded hunks running from munsters’ that seemed to compose two thirds of the movie. The rest was elves, and Hobbitts and tedious exposition. If it weren’t for the fact that Elijah Wood and Ian McKellen were excellent, and Viggo Mortensen was impressive in an understated role, I would have been disappointed. The scene at the end with Sam and Frodo in the boat made it all worth it. It was touching, and perfectly played. It is a beautiful movie, but man it was long (I’m preempting retorts from my sister).”
I only have two comments. First, I’m not an obsessive fan girl. This may sound silly, but hear me out. Whenever I try to say this in person I’m always cut off by one of my family members saying, “Yeah, whatever, you have a fan site.” It’s not a fan site. In fact, very shortly the DP will change completely. A fan site is where people obsess over something, like which character’s cuter or who they’d rather go out with if they were real. The Daily Prophet’s different. I made it initially not out of some insane urge to become a part of Harry Potter, but because I wanted to learn how to make a website and I needed a topic that would attract visitors. Once I realized the educational potential of the site I kept it going. It wasn’t just educational for the kids I hired and tutored, but for myself. It gave me a forum where I could practice my writing and get honest feedback from readers. That’s all. At times I got seriously into covering news. Look at the times when I did that. I had *nothing* else to do. It was practice being a good journalist by collecting news, or lay around watching movies. I was sick, I couldn’t walk, most of the time I either had pins in my foot, an IV line in my chest, or a brain infection. I devoted my time to the Daily Prophet because it was the most effective use of the little energy I had left.
And I’m definitely not an obessive LotR fan. I’ve tried reading The Hobbit and I haven’t been able to get into it at all. True, I *loved* the movie. It was a great movie and I was happy to see the dedication and passion that went into making it. Movies like that always excite me and get me going. Like the Sixth Sense; I got that on DVD almost right away and have seen it probably a dozen times. Does that make me an obsessive fan girl? No. I just appreciate good movies.
So there.
Finally, the movie was long, yeah, but it couldn’t really have been any other way. Everything in that movie was important because it’s such a detailed book. You can’t rush through Tolkien because you’d lose the symbolism. Every time I’ve watched it I’ve gotten something new out of almost every minute of the movie. It had to be that long.
Okay, sorry, like I said, I’m in a ranty mood. And you don’t want to know what I really wanted to rant about. So, thanks to Kevin I had something less disturbing to rant about. And now I’ve finally gotten it off my chest that I’m not a Harry Potter fanatic. I liked the books at a time, I made a webpage, sure. But they were never really my favorite books. (In fact, now that I’ve seen Lord of the Rings and learned more about those books, I’m actually kind of mad at J.K. Rowling.) I love Ender’s Game way more, Blood Ties kicked Potter’s butt, and I probably love The Power of One even more. But I didn’t make sites about those because I had already learned how to build web pages. Now I’m planning on using Ender’s Game to learn more skills like PHP, military strategy and political science, so what? It’s just education and charity. No one can be faulted for that. Books are just doorways for me. I read a book, I get excited about one of its componants, and I use it as a path to further knowledge. That’s all.
Holy crap, there I go again! I’m not angry, I’m just babbling. My feet got nailed to a soapbox and I can’t get down! 🙂 I think I’d better get to sleep before this turns into another humongous blog entry. Good night.