Hey, Hey, LBJ....

I've been around a while and I've seen hateful politicians come and go.

They arrive, they block out the light, they depart.

The first American President I really hated was LBJ.

"Hey, hey, LBJ
How many kids have you killed today?"

Actually Johnson wasn't all bad. He pushed through civil rights legislation. Sometimes the biggest monsters do the most surprising things.

Like it was Nixon who went to China. And maybe (as the old Vulcan proverb says) he was the only one who could.

Then there was Margaret Thatcher. I hated her with a passion. And she just seemed to go on and on and on. But she's stepped down now- and I find it hard to remember what all the fuss was about.

Politicians are less important than they/we think they are. Who was in charge in the 1890s? Which American Presidents? Which British Prime Ministers? I don't know. I'd have to go look it up. But everybody's heard of Oscar Wilde.

Random Thoughts On Lord Of The Rings

We spent election day watching Lord of the Rings. The rental company had sent us disc one of TFOTH and disc one of TTT, but, happily, the whole of TROTK. We watched the whole thing minus those two chunks, but- hey- we knew the story anyway.

The simple mythical story suits our times. The bad guys are ever so bad and the good guys are ever so good. Actually, "mythical" is the wrong word. True myth has nothing to do with good and evil. LOTR isn't a myth it's a morality play.

I don't think it's possible for a morality play to be great art- and LOTR certainly isn't, neither the book nor the film.

Tolkien stole Gollum from Dickens. He's part Fagin, part Uriah Heep.

God, but aren't the Riders of Rohan boring!

The scenes I like best in the book go for little in the film. The Mines of Moria and the Dead Marshes. Jackson's Dead Marshes are particularly feeble. He doesn't do spooky at all well.

Talking about spooky- the silliest thing in the story is the bit where Aragorn rides to the rescue at the head of an army of deaders. Tolkien rather skates over it (as well he might) but the film exposes the full absurdity of the idea. An army of monsters is swept away by an army of ghosts- all green and glowy like halloween novelties- oh please!

The battles scenes are OK, but they're not the greatest ever filmed.

The greatest battle scene ever filmed is in Orson Welles' Chimes at Midnight.
The second and third are the opening and closing sequences of Saving Private Ryan. The battles in Kurosawa's Ran are pretty amazing too.

So why didn't they just get one of those eagles to carry the ring-bearer? No-one ever sees them coming. Frodo could have dropped the ring into Mt Doom from a great height and- bingo- the whole mission would have been done and dusted in half an hour.