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1/10
Bald Lies and Half Truths
27 May 2006
You are being taken folks. The only rational explanation I can see for this movie is exploitation of people's passions over gas prices. The EV1 was a large car with modest actual cargo capacity; it's range was poor, and the electric technology did not eliminate fossil fuel consumption at all—it merely offload the burn from the internal combustion engine to the power plant. Yes folks, most of our electricity comes from coal or oil, and most of our power distribution systems are terribly inefficient, so there's little chance that electric cars would even match carbon output of gasoline cars, much less reduce it. As an added bonus the heavy (and toxic) lead acid batteries meant that more power was required to propel the same amount of people/cargo as a IC auto.

Electric vehicles were never a viable nor desirable alternative; and without nationwide clean, efficient power plants give little environmental value if any. The legislation which forced American automakers to devote R&D efforts into developing solely electric vehicles, in fact, set the American Automakers a good 5 years behind the Japanese in the much more viable and beneficial hybrid vehicles, a market Toyota effectively dominates at this point. Where is the outcry over clean burning diesel that Europe and other areas have had for long enough that most European automakers had to stop importing their new diesel engines? Our diesel has so much sulfur in it that the direct inject engines corrode.

This is a shell game folks, and this movie is the misdirection to keep people angry over red herrings, and make a buck at it while they're at it. Don't let them make money off of ignorance, make the effort, learn about these technologies on your own.
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8/10
Lost Tolkien's vision
13 September 2005
Warning: Spoilers
Probably the best put together of the three, and certainly the most interesting, visually. The important plot points are all there, and I can't fault the script writers for any omissions, but just as with The Two Towers, I take strong objection to some of the changes.

Tolkien seems to have been strongly influenced by his experiences in World War I, the realities of trench warfare, tanks and machine guns on the battlefield, and planes overhead. His books carry a strong underlying current about the changes in society due to industrialization, and obviously not just in warfare, but the changes it brought to life in cities as well. This background gives nearly as much to his books as the exceedingly rich fantasy world he created around the books and the richness of his writing.

How then can the movie makers completely trivialize these points? How can the Ents, shepherds of the forest and oldest creatures in Middle Earth be completely ignorant of their flock and lacking in wisdom? Were the scriptwriters so lacking in the confidence in their ability to weave in subtle references to Tolkien's metaphor and Peter's ability to communicate that on screen that they had to reduce all mention to trite preaching? Or do they feel their audience wasn't intelligent enough to make the connection and felt they should beat us over the head with it?

If I didn't admire the stories and the monumental lengths everyone made towards getting these movies made well in nearly all other aspects, then these niggling bits wouldn't bother me, but as it stands, I'm sorely disappointed.
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6/10
Not at all what I expected, on two counts.
13 September 2005
Warning: Spoilers
This second installment, from a production standpoint, was far ahead of Fellowship of the Rings visually. The effects had a much more tangible, polished feel to them. The story also carried less "pomp" to it, less feeling of faked excitement—the "look at us we're excited and pumped and you should be too… no, really" effect. That being said, I could not escape the injury done to Faramir, whose character had a solid nobility that lent so much to the Faramir/Boromir and father storyline. Without it, nearly a sixth of the storyline loses its solidity of purpose, and is an excellent example of how to cheapen the power of powerful stories.

I could live with splitting the books at different moments (though it meant I felt like I was gypped at the end), and I could even see the appeal of diverting Frodo's quest, but cheapening Faramir's character for a conveniently timed "emotional moment" between Sam and Frodo just left me feeling like I'd been used like a cheap date.
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