LOTR

[Dr Stevil]

Worst film ever... "Eraserhead" WTF!!!! So bad I couldn't believe it and have watched it twice just to make sure it really was that bad!

Give me "Plan 9 from Outer Space" anyday...

[Skeletor]

I'm still waiting for the full US version to hit the shelves.  Its the one where we find out that it wasn't actually a hobit that saved Middle earth, but Tom Cruise.

[Dominic]

No, no - Frodo was really President Bush, aided by Tony "Samwise" Blair, who destroyed the One Ring as it was clearly a Weapon of Mass Destruction.

[Lou]

BIg Read......as Kate said, the top 3 or 4 had all had film adaptations.  Now i am all for films making people read more, so if the folk who voted had then gone and read the book and loved it, that is great.  But how the hell did Harry Potter make it up there?  Liked the book, but top 3??  
Books will be filmed if they have a story that can be shown, and interpreted onto the big screen.  Some just can't due to narrative style etc, or are clumsy if you try, but are cracking good reads.  Some films come from poor books in a literary sense but have a romping good yarn to them.  Just because a book has been filmed doesn't automatically make it good.  

Maybe LOTR was voted top before I was born, but then that'd make it smack in the hippy era and I reckon wacky baccy could explain alot about the fascination with Middle Earth!  

BTW, couldn't pick my fave out of the ones I had read in the Big Read (which was only about half of them - must get some of the others) but i would have to put Catch 22 up there.  That was a sh*t film too!

Lou

[louigi]

<font color='#FF0000'>Oh dear never mind, just take it for what it is a couple of hours of freedom from the mundane. Pure escapeisum for the mind and not to be taken to seriously.

[Ian B]

<font color='#0000FF'>Lord of the Rings 3 - find a cinema near the sea or a quarry, go into the film surface code G, come out code C, get back into the water. No one will notice your strange attire amongst all those orcs and hobbits

[malcolm smith]

Woah there Steve, I nearly fell off my chair--not drunk either when you mentioned James Joyce--------have you tried to read his stuff???--------it's downright impenetratable.
Now if you like childrens stories, how about the The Lion Witch and the Wardrobe series by C S Lewis, or if you are really old, Just William books. Dune are a good read too
It was just wrong expectation with LOTR, I had always thought it was a lofty bit of writing, a bit like Joyce really!!
Anyone diving?---------
Cheers, Malcolm.

[Dr Stevil]

TBH I don't think I've ever met anyone who has actually read James Joyce, we all know it's classic literature because some arts bod tells us so, but yes, I've 'looked' at some pages and went WTF!!! I just put him in because most people have heard of him. In contrast I've found classics by Solzhnitzen (Ivan Denisovitch) Camus (The Outsider) and Kafka (The Castle) to be refreshingly straightforward, though I don't think I've ever try to tackle another Nabokov epic.

[dlegros]

Originally Posted by [b

Quote[/b] (JohnH @ Dec. 18 2003,16:48)]I'm still waiting for the full US version to hit the shelves.  Its the one where we find out that it wasn't actually a hobit that saved Middle earth, but Tom Cruise.

Are you saying Tom Cruise isn't a hobbit?

Dom

[Gavin Yates]

<font color='#000F22'>I'll disagree about Joyce - a writer of great poetic ability .. think of it more like poetry rather than prose.

a couple of quotes, firstly from Portrait of an Artist as a Young Man that still resonates today.

&quot;It is a curious thing, do you know&quot;, Cranly said dispassionately, &quot;how your mind is supersaturated with the religion in which you say you disbelieve.&quot;

and my favourite maratime quote from Ulysses:-

&quot;The snotgreen sea. The scrotumtightening sea.&quot;

I'm off to LOTR on Sunday - I liked the first two - great adventure films, beautifully shot, genuinely climactic without resorting to typical action movie cliche.

Also, I like the fact that it's made by a Kiwi director with a mainly non-US cast and it's hopefully gonna pish the Oscars next year ...

I met this Kiwi last night and asked him what he was doing in the UK when he could be in beautiful NZ.

I quote: &quot;Gav, I'm from Auckland, you've seen Lord of the Rings? Well all the women in Auckland look like f*ckin' Orcs.&quot;