Torque: The Movie!

Saturday I saw Return of the King for the 3rd time. Matt's 3rd, Des'ree's 2nd, and T.J.'s first. I'm not saying that it's the best of the three, but it does draw a tear every 10-15 minutes that a hobbit is on screen or the score returns to the "Into the West" theme. (if you've stayed for the credits you will know what I'm talking about. Man, that Annie Lennox is cool.) I'm closing in on a favorite shot, but it's not definite yet. My favorite shot from FOTR is near the end of the movie at Amon-Hen when a bunch of Uruk-Hai are running down hill to catch Frodo. The camera follows the small army all the way down a hill in a continuous shot, even through the trees. The reason it's my favorite is b/c when I saw it, I said "How did they do that? It's not a crane shot b/c the camera is going down a hill and through trees!" (the shot is acheived by a remote controlled camera on a wire.)
My favorite shot in TTT is when Saruman leads Wormtoungue out onto his balcony overlooking his monstrous army, and Wormtongue sheds a single tear. Great shot.
Because one of these shots is purely technical and one is purely emotional, it's hard to pick one for ROTK, simply b/c i don't have a basis for picking one. And sadly, nothing has 'stood out.' Well, a runner-up is a shot of Faramir's army as he heads to re-claim Osgiliaith on a suicide mission. As his father eats while Pippin sings, the army is leaving Minas Tirith. The shot is framed so that the army lines the entire widescreen, and Minas Tirith is perfectly framed in the background. Plus, the camera has that heat effect so it's all blurry like you look across a desert or down a stretch of road on a hot day. This is great, but I'm not so sure it's my favorite. Considerable mention for a great sequence is of course the lighting of the beacons.
So now the best thing to look forward to is the extended edition, so I can see the death of Saruman, maybe Frodo and Sam marching in line with the orcs, and the mouth of Sauron.

So we played a card game in both Hardees and Wendys called Fluxx. I would explain how to play it, but it's the game with ever-changing rules. When you play a card, it changes the rules! We had loads of fun.
We laughed at some guy who loudly burst forth with a great non-sequitur: As we were playing Fluxx in Hardees after the movie at 1 a.m., we heard "Unless you like Chinese people!" After about 2 seconds of silence, we all started laughing as loud as possible. I really hate acting like that toward other people, (especially b/c that describes almost everyday for me in high school--just being laughed at) but that was just funny. So we said goodbye to the night and all that was good with the world.

Oh, saw a shooting star, too.