Martin Geisler Online

A little late, but still: I finally got to see Star Wars Episode III last friday — it was dark and it was good.

We finally get to see the fall of Anakin Skywalker to Darth Vader — which is driven by love and fear of loss. Even though one sees how he strugles with the choice between the Light and the Dark Side, then the outer transition was a little quick for my taste: at one moment Anikin is in dispair, and in the next he pledges his loyalty to the Dark Side.

Seeing the film was a bit strange, for even though there were some twists and turns in the plot that surprised me, it was somewhat constrained by the three following films — there was a lot of things that just had to happen. For example, you knew that Anikin Skywalker had to become Darth Vader, that Luke Skywalker and Princess Leia had to be born, and lots of other things, including the rise of the Empire towards the end when things go really bad.

I liked the style of the film, and I really enjoyed how the design of the space ships and the uniforms changed to become more like what we see in the fourth episode, “A New Hope”. It was a nice feeling of déjà vu. The other clues and small comments shattered throughout the film were also a nice touch.

All-in-all I will say that the seing the film is a must for anybody who has seen the other films. With it the final piece of the story has been filled in and the saga is complete.

Today was a rather long day with five hours of lectures from 10 in the morning to 15 in the afternoon — the longest day so far :-) When I got home I had two plays with Thomas Jacobsen (a nice guy from the fourth floor here at [Skejbygård][]) on our table soccer game. I won the first game and lost the second so that was okay.

Then here in the evening we saw IMDB:Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers, The (2002) on DVD. Really nice movie although I don’t like the way Gimli is portraied as the comic sidekick and how they’ve changed the story by dragging Frodo and Sam all the way to Osgiliath. I remember Faramir as much wiser from the book, but perhaps it’s because it’s been too long since I’ve read it.

It was also a pretty long movie: the DVD player showed two hours and 46 minutes when I stopped it. We have a movie club here at [Skejbygård][] where we rent and show a movie each Wednesday at 20 o’clock.

Tomorrow also looks like a busy day. I have a lecture on Complex Functions from 12 to 14 and then an appointment at the hairdresser at 14:15. At 18:30 Thomas Mølhave will be taking me with him to karate practice — I’ve never tried anything remotely like it so it will be interesting to see how it goes. We’ll be done at 20 and then head for [Skejbygård][] where we’ll be taking our new bar into use for the first time. I’ve invited a lot of people from my class to I’m sure that it will be a cool party. Luckily none of us have any lectures on Friday (except for RuneThorbek who does have a single lecture if I remember correctly…). So a long and exciting day awaits me tomorrow, I’ll go to sleep now.

I’ve now seen the second film in the Tolkien triology — it’s a great film just like the first. You’ll find a lot of information about all three film at http://www.lordoftherings.net/.

If you don’t know this already, then this second act of the triology tells the story about how friendly people of Mittle-earth discovers the union between the Two Towers: Orthanc where the once-good wizard Saruman lives and Barad-dûr, around which the Dark Lord concentrates all evil in Mittle-earth. It is also in this film, that you hear about the journey of Frodo and Sam into Mordor, followed by the strange creature Gollum whoes real name is Sméagol.

The film has to keep track of all these events, many of which take place many miles apart. It does this by cutting back and forth the different groups of the shattered Fellowship. In the book you follow each group for a long time, and then switches to the other group, but that would probably feel akward in a film, so the way it’s done is probably the best way.

But I couldn’t help being distracted by the fact, that there’s so much going on in this film. I’ve read the books twice, so I knew the characters, but it must have been strange for some of the others that were with me. You’re introduced to a number of characters in the film, but you only get a little glimpse of their history. This is the weakness of the film-media: it would have taken a film many times longer than the current (already very long) films to present all the material in the books. I’m not blaming the films for being to short (although I already long for the extended version of this movie), I’m more blaming the media. But I guess it will always be this way with books: there’s so much depth that you just cannot show in a film — you have to read it yourself.

The special effects were good, and I really liked the Ents and Gollum, both fully computer generated characters. I’ve always had trouble visualizing the Ents because they aren’t described in that much detail in the books. So I wasn’t sure what to expect of the film, but I think the result is very good. The Ents look like very old trees and they talk very slowly and with much care. They also walk slowly, taking their time with each step, but because they take big steps, they’re able to travel quickly from one end of Fangorn Forest to another. Gollum, or Sméagol as he was once called, is fully computer generated and looks stunning! His face has the possible most lifelike computer-generated eyes ever seen in a film, and they really help convay his feelings when he is having discussions with himself.

The trip started out as a small one with just me and Mikkel Krøigård, but when I talked with people at [Skejbygård][], then they were interested too. So we ended up being Christina Strøhl, Camilla, Torben Classen, Camilla Johnsen, Nina Ratenburg, and Helene. After the movie Mikkel and I went to Andreas Danielsen to have a Christmas Lunch with the others from DAIMI:dArkOS. We ended up getting a little lost, so we came terribly late, but we did get some of the nice food people had made for the lunch. So it was a long and good day… -Martin Geisler

What a long title, and what a long movie! I’ve just bought this wonderful movie on DVD in extended edition. I haven’t seen it yet, I’ve just had a sneakpeak to see some of the new scenes — what I’ve seen already looks very promising. This version is 30 minutes longer than the one shown in the movie theaters and comes on no less than four DVDs. The movie itself is split onto the first two disks and then there’s two disks with about six hours of documentary footage about the film, the books, the characters, etc…

I don’t know why they’ve devided the movie over two disks, from what I’ve read, then it should be possible to fit four hours of video onto a single-sided double-layered DVD. But perhaps it’s because of the four audio tracks… Anyways, it’s a good oppotunity to go to the bathroom when the disks are switched, just when the Fellowship is leaving Rivendell.

The extra scenes are beautiful! They add much more depth to the film, because you get to hear more details about the history and characters. The beginning of the film has been changed, so that you now hear Bilbo talking to himself as he writes the foreword (”Concerning Hobbits”) for his book ”There and Back Again”. This should make it easier for people who haven’t read The Hobbit or The Lord of the Rings to understand the Hobbits. You also see more to the friendship between Legolas and Gimli, you see the presents given to the Fellowship in Lothlorien. This was probably the weakest part of the original film, the scenes in Lothlorien were much to short.

All in all, I think they’ve done a great job with the extended version and I’ll recommend it to everybody who liked the film in it’s standard version.

Yesterday was Saturday night, so we had having a small party here at [Skejbygård][]. But it was only a small party: Christina Strøhl had gone to some sort of reunion party with the people from her highschool and Jesper Klintø was at a party in Aalborg. So we were just myself, Camilla Johnsen, and Torben Classen. But that was also enough!

We had rented both IMDB:Remembering the Titans (2000) and IMDB:Don’t Say a Word (2001) which were both good films. IMDB:Remembering the Titans (2000) was a particularly nice film, because it left you with a nice friendly fealing: it’s the story of how the black Herman Boone, played by Denzel Washington, becomes the head coach for a football team, replacing the white coach Bill Yoast, played by Will Patton. The local community isn’t pleased with this, and neither are the white players. But after a militaristic training camp everybody learns to accept each other, and things basically go from there to a happy end.

After that we saw IMDB:Don’t Say a Word (2001) which is surposed to be a thriller. I didn’t find it that scary, though. It was a fairly good movie, but nothing spectacular.