RotK

I saw Return of the King twice today. This is amazingly dorky of me, I know. But it was fun. A lot of fun. I very much liked this movie.

The visual effects were really nothing short of amazing. The Battle of Pelennor Fields was... wow. just wow.

The Dead were very, very well done. Doesn't Orlando Bloom ever get tired of being in movies where he sails on a ship crewed by the damned? Oh, and Shelob is very cool.

The plot follows the books fairly well. They add a few things, none of which were terribly offensive. They left out the Scouring of the Shire. This annoys me, as the Scouring of the Shire expresses Tolkien's belief that isolationism isn't a viable policy for international relations. They modified the Pyre of Denathor a little, but I like the change they made. The palantiri aren't really mentioned much at all. The romance between Faramir and Eowyn was glossed over. Oh, but other than that :-)

Did I mention wow?

Elegant Universe

Earlier this year, I read Brian Greene's The Elegant Universe, which I really enjoyed. I'm a sucker for pop-physics books, you see. Much to my delight, PBS made a series based on that book. I actually marked my calendar (ok, I wrote it in my PDA) for it. How dorky of me. But I missed it. Sadness.

Luckily, they've released it in Quick Time and Real-Video formats, so anybody with a broadband connection (or a slower one and a lot of patience) can watch the
PBS Elegant Universe miniseries. The miniseries doesn't go quite into the depth that the book did. Also, the miniseries brought up a few other issues. One that stuck out in my mind: if gravitons can leave the Brane, wouldn't that violate mass/energy conservation?

I probably just need to read more string theory.