JELEINEN

Here's a wild and wacky suggestion: why not watch some shows/play some games and get the soundtracks from the ones you like?

A-ko is awesome. Also, for a bit of fun, I recommend finding Fast Food Freedom Fighters. It's a parody dub of A-ko some fans made a few years back.

Yamato

Best way to get rid of pop ups is upgrading to a real browser, ditch IE for Opera or Mozilla and kiss pop-ups good bye. From home, no problem, since I have Mozilla here. From work, where I usually visit this site, I'd get in big trouble for trying to install a new browser. Personally, I think the best way to get rid of pop-ups is for the site's owner to not be such a cheap-ass and spend the $20.00 a month for real web space.

I saw promos for Alexander (original title) a few years ago when it came out in Japan and the character designs destroyed any desire I have of ever seeing this series.

Looks like a nice site, but visiting it is wading into pop-up hell.

But the theme hasn't left. Movies are as luddite as they ever were. Hiroshima may be a convenient excuse for films of the fifties, but why does the frankenstein theme persist? I'm lead to believe that it's a deeply rooted ideology in the film community, but I have no clue as to why. I do find it ironic considering the industry's dependence on technology for it's very existence.

I hope they don't put the death scene in. What they had in the theatrical release (them leaving Saruman locked up in his tower) is what happened in the book.

That's why I differentiated between literary science fiction (SF) and media science fiction (skiffy). While the Frankenstein theme does show up in SF from time to time, it's not predominate in any way. On the other hand, you're absolutely right that Hollywood has a very strong luddite streak, but it's nothing new. How many fifties movies had the "don't mess with things man was not meant to know" message?

I liked the ending. It goes a long way towards generating the same feeling of loss and ending that the book has. Even if I don't like what he did to some of the characters, Jackson's willingness to do the ending like that (very non-Hollywood) in order to try and emulate the emotional state of the book says a lot for him.

Alien Von Neuman machines are cool and pretty rare in skiffy (much less so in real SF). Stories using the Frankenstein theme are a dime a dozen.

King Minos. Yeah, he designed the Labrynth and was imprisoned to make sure it was kept secret.

Is the part with them drinking the Ent draught in the extended edition? If it's not, then the reason for them to be taller wasn't in the movies.

Your loss Maybe it just didn't translate as well from print to film. Hard to say because I'd read the book and knew it was going to happen. I do know that it's one of my favorite scenes in the book and it really showed off Tolkien being in touch with mythology.

I played the original with a fighter/cleric. I'm playing the first expansion with a straight up wizard (having both a familiar and being able to summon makes for almost a full party when you add in the henchman you get). I'll have to get a new PC if I want to play the second one though, it appears.

Bad manners seem to be the norm in theaters. I wish morons would learn to turn off their cell phones and pagers before the film starts. Oh, and leave the kids at home, please.

You'd need a lot more than that. Four hours might cover Beren and Luthien or Turin Turambor. Actually, if it were me, I wouldn't do the whole Sil. I'd just do Beren and Luthien with a prologue telling of the events that precede that story to bring the audience up to speed.

From the Silmarillion:

Saw it at 12:01 this morning as well. As with the other two, most of the visuals are just amazing. The CGI monsters/characters still look like Harryhausen rejects. Here's the thing I don't get: did nobody in the entire time they were filming and editing all three films notice the bad dye jobs on the elves? Their eyebrows not matching the hair on their heads and the natural hair color showing at the roots just looks stupid.

I've played it. I'd be interested in trying the DM'd type games with it, but don't know people who do that and I don't have the computer savy to try it myself.

Sounds interesting.... where would one learn more about him/her? Ungoliant was Shelob's mother. She helped Morgoth (the guy Sauron used to work for) take out the two trees in Valinor. She's in the Silmarillion.

Bah. Shelob was nothing compared to Ungoliant.

This is true.

I'm doing the same. It's going to be a very long day...

I think you mean articulation. Not bad. It looks like you based it mostly off of Gla Gla's frame, which is a good place to start. The robot mode is good, if a bit thin. The vehicle mode looks sparse and somewhat contrived, IMHO.