Hey folks, Harry here... I'm currently pouring over THE TWO TOWERS Expanded Edition dvd which just arrived on my doorstep. About 3 hours ago I finished watching the film itself which... just as with the FOTR EE, somehow feels shorter, even though it's 45 minutes longer. It's just... it flows better. Feels more like a proper story being told in the time it takes to tell the story. Just right from the beginning... it feels more complete... Sam and Frodo's opening sequence feels like they're in the middle of a LONG JOURNEY -- getting a much better feeling of the passage of time. Also, Gollum's monologue as he's scouting ahead of them right after "making the deal" is fantastic. You'll see soon enough and after I watch the billion hours of extras I'll log my review, hopefully. Here ya go...

Hey Harry,

I was lucky enough to get to see 20 min. of Return Of The King with an audience of 12 in a small theater in Midtown on Monday night. I was surprised to not see you there but I was told you were at the freaks and geeks double feature. In the 20 minutes they showed 6 different sequences that all had fully completed special effects, sound and score. Security was pretty tight as they expressed concern about the new cell phones that can capture video. It is hard to be too critical on either side of the spectrum when only seeing such a small amount of a film but from what I saw, the tone this film has gotten significantly darker. (I know that this has been written about already so I will try and include some things that were left out)

The first sequence was a continuation of the Smeagol/Gollum schizo scene of him talking to his refection in Two Towers. There is not much new here in terms of footage because much of it was shown in the trailer (Although it was interesting to see the cuts on his head when Sam hits him.) I am still amazed at the performances Jackson has gotten out of actors when they are acting against something that is not there when filming as Sean Austin does with Gollum. (I will not mention the countless recent films that have failed with this and other 'green screen debacles')

By far the most special of the scenes was a beautifully edited and paced sequence of Denethor confessing that he would rather have had Boromir live to lead the attack than his brother Faramir. David Wenham is one of the strongest actors to appear late in the series. The emotional sequence continues with Denethor grotesquely shoveling food in his mouth and demanding that Pippin sing for him as red drool pour down his chin. Pippin gives a powerful monologue about the state of the world and not knowing what he should sing at a time like this. Never the less, he begins to sing a haunting song (I was curious if it was really Boyd's voice, but I doubt it.) The singing is inter-cut with Faramir leading an attack into a hail of goblin arrows. From a technical stand point this is the most powerful scene I have seen in the trilogy so far.

The next scene shows Aragorn surprised to find Elrond in a tent. He produces the repaired sword and talks about Arwen and her suffering. There is a genuinely creepy sequence of what looked like a ring wraith creature in a cave when Elrond suggests that there are more men that can be brought to fight. The wind blowing through the tent was a little much though.

Now on to Shelob. This is one of the best CG creatures I have ever seen on film and I really feel like it has pushed the effects team much further in terms of having to create a much more realistic creature than have appeared in the previous films. I have been waiting to see how they would treat this in terms of judging how PJ will go about creating King Kong. One problem here though, (for those who have not read the books.) To have seen the Fellowship Exended you would know about the Phial of Light that Galadriel had given Frodo but it left me wondering how they will explain it to audiences who have not seen Galadriel's gift giving scene that was cut out. All that they had was a voice over of Galadriel's voice. It seems strange that Frodo will suddenly just have this weapon.

Seeing the scale of Pelennor Fields battle was truly impressive, but I felt that they could have tried to do something stylistically new (as they did in the FOTR prologue) to distinct it from the tons of large scale battle sequences that have been made available through CG in recent films.

I am more than confident that ROTK will successfully round out this fantastic set of FILMS. In regards to all the quibbling about the keeping to the closeness to the book I will leave you with a quote from Cronenberg (I'm sure he is not the only one to have said this):

"In order to faithfully adapt a book, you first must throw it away."

-ABG