After the world's cutest fish went to bed, I hung around at home for half an hour or so, then I went down the road to get a pie and chips for dinner. The pie was very, very hot. My mouth is still feeling rather burned. Dinner over, I stood outside "Shakespeare's Pies" (heartily recommended), and decided that I was going to satisfy my peripatetic urge from earlier in the day, and go for a walk.
Walking is a tricky art. There are four main ways to do it. You can travel in a circle, which means you've decided before you start how long you'll walk. You can walk in a straight line until you guess that you are halfway done, and then walk back. You can wander, such that you travel a lot of distance, but never really stray incredibly far from your starting point. Or you can do what I did, which is just keep walking until you realise that if you go just a bit further, you can catch the train home.
In my case "just a bit further" was Town Hall station, in the middle of the city, after an hour of putting one foot in front of the other. It was refreshing, relaxing, and got all sorts of cobwebs out of my system. I should do the same thing tomorrow, in the opposite direction. Or maybe wander up Erskineville road and see where it takes me - not having a car means I rarely travel away from train lines.
Town Hall station is next door to the big movie complex in the city. I couldn't decide what movie to go see - I ended up with Lord of the Rings again, because nothing else grabbed my attention. I almost walked home afterwards, but my shoes (very old and falling apart) were very uncomfortable.
Fellowship of the Ring Peeve
Early in the movie, there's a bit where Gandalf is talking to Bilbo, and Gandalf (who up til now has been this harmless, chuckling old guy) gives a hint that he's really pretty tough. In the movie, this is done with a camera trick that makes it look like he's growing on the spot, and a major lighting change. The relevant passage from the book is: He took a step towards the hobbit, and he seemed to grow tall and manacing; his shadow filled the little room.
Later in the movie, Galadriel (Oooh! Cate Blanchett with pointy ears!) does something similar when Frodo offers her the Ring. This time her voice gets distorted, and she's shown in negative with rushing wind around her. Once again, the book:
She lifted up her hand and from the ring that she wore there issued a great light that illuminated her alone and left all else dark. She stood before Frodo seeming now tall beyond measurement, and beatiful beyond enduring, terrible and worshipful.
Both these effects annoyed the living crap out of me. I know Jackson was just following the book, but things that sound neat on the printed page can come across really overdone when put on the big screen. Both of the actors involved are particularly talented, and to me, the scenes would have had far more impact on me if the director had left it up to them to portray the menace, and left the FX shots out.
