Adapting Lord of the Rings

made perfect sense in this case.

Coppicing! I knew it would come back to me eventually! Thats what its called when you get a tree like the one Boromir is slumped against. The forestry and farmers do it quite a lot round here, no idea why, maybe Dave knows and can give us some insight.

Coppicing isn't something that's much done over here. It's a way of managing a forest for maximum volume of firewood. You let the ancient old root system grow bigger and stronger underground while harvesting all the limbs each fall and winter for firewood.

It's not relevant to the lumber industry, and with almost unlimited forests in North America there was no need for those kind of intensive farming practices. However if you were having to heat a northern medieval town or city winter after winter for centuries without having to go for more than a day's travel from town, it was probably a pretty important forestry practice.

We have a lot of coppicing done down here in the south east where I live also. Looks nice as boundary hedging.

Dave darling, I could have sworn you had 3 bears on your sig ?? Where's it gone ? off for porridge ?

Amon Hen was not full of coppicers. it was wild and only used in passage by people using boats. Who was doing the coppicing? answer no one. its anachronistic.

Anna who ?

{{{ sorry, couldnt resist }}}

Who was doing the coppicing? answer no one. its anachronistic.- Figg

So is nearly all of Pj's dialogue construction, and it for me is even more painful than viking Boromir- Id take it any day over the appalling modernisation of Tolkien's dialogue PJ subjects us to.

azriel wrote:Dave darling, I could have sworn you had 3 bears on your sig ?? Where's it gone ? off for porridge ?

I don't know, Az. They still seem to be lurking below me here as far as I can tell.
Maybe they're just hiding from you. You never can tell with Bears...

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Who was doing the coppicing? answer no one. its anachronistic.- Figg

So is nearly all of Pj's dialogue construction, and it for me is even more painful than viking Boromir- Id take it any day over the appalling modernisation of Tolkien's dialogue PJ subjects us to.

well I think 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999% of people prefer Sean Bean's Boromir death scene to Bakshis version, as its one of the most moving and genuine scenes of the films. It was quite painful to see a ridiculous horned Viking slumped under a freshly coppiced tree.

Perhaps Dave's dial-up is a couple weeks behind the rest of the internet and doesn't realize that the third bear is gone.

As for that statistic, I don't think there even are 1,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 individual viewers in the world who could have seen the movie, but I might be wrong.

I actually kind of liked Boromir's death scene a little bit. It's one of the few scenes that works well in the movie, I believe.
I mean, I've never seen anything but the Bakshi Dub, but I think I caught some of a clip showing Aragorn's expression as he looks up from the dying Boromir to look at the other two. It is a moving bit of film-making.

Mrs Figg wrote:

Pettytyrant101 wrote:Who was doing the coppicing? answer no one. its anachronistic.- Figg

So is nearly all of Pj's dialogue construction, and it for me is even more painful than viking Boromir- Id take it any day over the appalling modernisation of Tolkien's dialogue PJ subjects us to.

well I think 99.9999999999999999999999999999999999999% of people prefer Sean Bean's Boromir death scene to Bakshis version, as its one of the most moving and genuine scenes of the films. It was quite painful to see a ridiculous horned Viking slumped under a freshly coppiced tree.

PJ and crew got the emotion the scene needed. Did a better job here than any of the stuff on Mount Doom.

I liked Sean's Boromir death but as much as it was a choker & heroic it was also dumb-arse as well. How many arrows were sticking out of his undercover riot vest ?? he was as pippin said "pierced by many", yet, he swung his sword around with quite a bit of vigour . Now, call me an old cynic ( ha ha ha ) but I dont think he'd really be up to that in the real world ? But, the final gasp was sad, I forgave him all his sins there. Viggo looked honestly heart wrenched & the tears felt true.

Three arrows. But really where do you draw the line there until it starts to look comical?

I was puzzled by how considerate the orcs were to let Boromir take a breather after being shot by each arrow.

Turns out trees that have been coppiced or whatever the right word for it is will continue to grow that way ever after until they die- so the one Boromir is slumped against is not anachronistic as the tree could be old and therefore had that done to it when Parth Galen was still in use as part of the trade route down the Anduin- not that I think its important myself, as with the rest of the Bakshi choices its more concerned with the mood it creates than the fidelity to physical descriptions.

I like the yell Boromir gives in the Bakshi version and all the orcs back off in a panic before realising he s no longer a threat and dealing the final arrow- that one gesture where they act like a pack captured something about orcs for me PJ's never did about them.

Things I like a lot in this version- the above mentioned yell and orc reaction, Merry and Pippin defending themselves as they do in the book and Merry chopping off an orcs hand as he does in the book, much better than all that stone chucking nonsense - like chucking a stone at a Uruk is going to drop it!
The look of pain on Aragorn's face when he turns to Legolas and Gimli is another thing I love here.
I also like that his death comes out of nowhere- in PJ's its signposted by every emotional tugging technique in the book, form dropping the sounds out and upping the emotional music to the slow-mo- you know he is going to die before it happens.
In this version he just runs right into it, bang, bang, bang in quick succession and that's it you know he is a goner as no one can survive that. I think the speed and shock of it is very effective, and makes his desperate attempts to stay alive and standing long enough to save the hobbits all the more emotional, his yell just sums it up as does his dying cry.

Forest Shepherd wrote:Perhaps Dave's dial-up is a couple weeks behind the rest of the internet and doesn't realize that the third bear is gone.

Could be.
I still see three bears-- a droopy brown bear on the left, a submerged polar bear in the middle, and a brown bear scowling into the camera on the right.
Who's gone missing?

Mmmm, now that is weird. I meant to comment previously when folk were saying they could only see two that I could still see three.
But now I only see two. The polar bear under the ice and the grizzly staring right at camera.
But if I refresh the page it does come up with three boxes for a brief instant, but then it only shows two pictures.
Peculiar indeed. Especially if you still see three.

Hmmm...It seems I copied the link to that image from a fairly small site that may be having problems or going down. I can't get to the main site anymore but I'm still picking up the image itself at
http://kimberliah.com/wp-content/uploads/2011/09/sad-bear1.jpg

Maybe I'm seeing cyberghostbears that are still haunting a few dark corners of the interweb....

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

Things I like a lot in this version- the above mentioned yell and orc reaction, Merry and Pippin defending themselves as they do in the book and Merry chopping off an orcs hand as he does in the book, much better than all that stone chucking nonsense - like chucking a stone at a Uruk is going to drop it!
The look of pain on Aragorn's face when he turns to Legolas and Gimli is another thing I love here.
I also like that his death comes out of nowhere- in PJ's its signposted by every emotional tugging technique in the book, form dropping the sounds out and upping the emotional music to the slow-mo- you know he is going to die before it happens.
In this version he just runs right into it, bang, bang, bang in quick succession and that's it you know he is a goner as no one can survive that. I think the speed and shock of it is very effective, and makes his desperate attempts to stay alive and standing long enough to save the hobbits all the more emotional, his yell just sums it up as does his dying cry.

that's hilarious, love the 'up the skirt' shot!

Yeah, the flash of underpants was an eye opener but, it was actually a decent scene. more believable & less Romantic heroism. Walking into the arrows could still have been done in peejers film then we could have seen Lurtz after, reveling in his glory not realizing Aragorn & Leggy are moments away.

Baksis version made me giggle and I don't think that's was intended.

It doesn't make me giggle.
Yes there is stuff Im not keen on, the orc fangs are a bit much and hard to do and get them not to look stuck on. But the direction is good, the 'performances' are good, the rotoscoping on Boromir is very well done, and the look on Aragorns face is a very nice bit of animation indeed.
I also actually in general prefer the orcs here, they are more animalistic, more threatening, and I like how they are almost a dark mass of bodies rather than individual orcs, but when you do see individual ones they come in different shapes and sizes. Also hair. They have hairy backs and arms, and longer apish arms. Tolkien mention the arm thing, and the hair when Pippin has his face pressed into it when being carried. Better than those waxed pretenders of PJ's!

Pettytyrant101 wrote:

Things I like a lot in this version- the above mentioned yell and orc reaction, Merry and Pippin defending themselves as they do in the book and Merry chopping off an orcs hand as he does in the book, much better than all that stone chucking nonsense - like chucking a stone at a Uruk is going to drop it!
The look of pain on Aragorn's face when he turns to Legolas and Gimli is another thing I love here.
I also like that his death comes out of nowhere- in PJ's its signposted by every emotional tugging technique in the book, form dropping the sounds out and upping the emotional music to the slow-mo- you know he is going to die before it happens.
In this version he just runs right into it, bang, bang, bang in quick succession and that's it you know he is a goner as no one can survive that. I think the speed and shock of it is very effective, and makes his desperate attempts to stay alive and standing long enough to save the hobbits all the more emotional, his yell just sums it up as does his dying cry.

Fist-sized rocks are the Uruk's one weakness...along with everything else.