The Two Towers, Abridg'd

[bunsen_h]

Gimli: 'I don't wish to meet that old man at unawares without an argument ready to hand, that's all.  Let's go!'

Does that look wrong?  Or more precisely, sound wrong?

I enjoyed the audio book version of The Fellowship of the Ring quite a lot.  Reader Rob Inglis has a reasonable range of voices -- nowhere near Luke Daniels, who reads Kevin Hearne

Comments

[batyatoon]

"Jackson has no sense with regard to sacrificing plot in favour of ludicrous action sequences" -- I liked the Jackson adaptations, but you're not wrong. I remember I couldn't figure out why some of his sequences were so lacking in subtlety when I thought he'd done such a good job with others, and then I realized that he's actually lacking in subtlety throughout; it's just that he's very good with fine detail, which can fool you into thinking that he knows how to be subtle.

[bunsen_h]

I recently read As You Wish, Cary Elwes's recounting of the making of the movie The Princess Bride. It's a charming book; I recommend it.

A large portion of the book is about Elwes and Mandy Patinkin's preparation for the fencing fight between Inigo Montoya and "The Man in Black". They started with a couple of solid months of training before filming started, and then every time either of them wasn't actually needed for filming, even for a few minutes, they'd be back to training. That fight scene was left to the very end of the filming so the actors would have as much time as possible to become the best swordsmen they could be. At the end of that, they were good enough to go through the entire carefully-choreographed sequence in a single take. The choreography let good swordsmen appear to do "the Greatest Sword Fight in Modern Times". It looked real because in large part, it was real