Fellowship of the Ring - Extended Edition

Because my book club is reading The Lord of the Rings for book club over the first few months of 2009, we're discussing the book and then watching the corresponding movie (extended edition). Before reading the books, this was my favorite movie of the trilogy. It's beautiful and an exciting beginning of a quest. Having now read the book slowly and retained a lot of what I read, I'm surprised by how much Peter Jackson changed - I can understand why he made a lot of the changes though. Merry and Pippin became lighter entertainment rather than the intelligent characters they are in the book, etc. It makes it easier to sit down and watch for a few hours, and there are plenty of quotable lines. Overall, I still really like the movie. However, I'm far more interested in finding out how I see the other two movies after reading the books.

Reservation Road

This came on after The Golden Compass and the only attraction at first was that Joaquin Phoenix was in it. I got into it once I knew that it was about dealing with the aftermath of a fatal hit and run. We see a husband and wife grieve for their son, and the killer work through his guilt. I probably would have turned it off since I'm not a huge fan of grieving stories, but I'm currently participating in a group writing exercise and my character is grieving. I haven't lost too many people exceptionally close to me, so I decided to keep watching in case I could learn anything. Boy am I glad that I decided to keep watching. Little moments made me cry and I really appreciated the dialog between the parents of the kid.

I wasn't thrilled with the end of the movie. I actually yelled at the TV that I didn't understand the progression to the climax. The movie seemed to skip certain things that I believe needed to be there to push someone that much.

The Golden Compass

I've had The Golden Compass on my To Be Read list for a while now. I wasn't planning to watch the movie first but I stumbled into it on HBO in the hotel this past week. I had heard a lot of mixed reviews of both, but I enjoyed this one. The cast line up was pretty awesome (I'm only listing the people I already knew): Nicole Kidman, Daniel Craig, Ian McKellen, and Christopher Lee. While it took me a while to get into the movie because I didn't really know what was going on, I did come to really appreciate the characters. I absolutely adored the armored bear Iorek too. I did get blind-sided by the end. They obviously aren't finished with the story and I knew it was a trilogy, but I was not expecting it to end where it did. Overall, it was enjoyable, but if I had a do-over, I'd read the book first.