Hello World!

In an hour I am going to see That Movie again. I don't need to explain which Movie, do I? I saw it Wednesday morning, the first non-midnight showing, but my children have not seen it yet and now that school and Hebrew school are finished, we can take them.

It's hard to say anything at all about The Return of the King without giving something away. But things I feel that I can safely say without spoilers:

Sean Astin made me cry about four times. And I'm not even a hobbit girl -- it's the Men of Gondor and Rohan upon whom I fixate. But Astin's performance in this movie is astonishing, and Sam was the real hero of the movie for me.

Bernard Hill's Theoden and David Wenham's Faramir, too, were by turns brilliant and devastating. The vast majority of the press in this country seems to fixate on Elijah Wood's Frodo, Viggo Mortensen's Aragorn and Orlando Bloom's Legolas, yet in this film in particular the rest of the ensemble really shines. I can't remember the last time I loathed a character as much as I hated John Noble's Denethor (which is not a criticism of his performance - quite the opposite, he plays a despicable man quite despicably) and Billy Boyd's Pippin broke my heart twice.

I wish Arwen were less passive; I wish the entire trilogy had featured more of Warrior Princess Arwen from The Fellowship of the Ring. That said, I really like Liv Tyler and I still think the character is an improvement on the one from the books, who's involved so little that she never seemed real to me.

The pacing of the movie is superb, though there were many cuts made in the story of a certain character which really frustrated me because this person has become one of my two favorites in the trilogy. But I have to stop and remind myself that I did not like this character in the books, and it is only the movie version who really got me interested in the story. So really I have no complaints!

Trek BBS Today

Below are some of the topics currently being discussed at the Trek BBS:

-What the heck is Starfleet?

-Enterprise needs a monkey!

-Is it worth getting all of Voyager on DVD or just certain seasons?

More topics can be found at the Trek BBS!

Trek Two Years Ago

These were some of the major news items from December 2001:

• Bakula Happy To Play A Kirk-Like Captain
  Scott Bakula said that the vision of Jonathan Archer as a bold, brash, emotional captain helped to entice him to play the lead in Enterprise: "I liked the notion of him being more like Captain Kirk."

• Berman Updates Fans On 'Enterprise' & 'Nemesis'
  "When the people from the network and the studio call me elated about the numbers, I know that we're doing something right," Rick Berman said, promising as well that Star Trek: Nemesis would have "the biggest and most exciting adventure sequence that we've ever done."

• Bryan Fuller Producing 'Dead Girl' For Showtime
  Showtime announced it had ordered a two-hour pilot from former Voyager writer-producer Bryan Fuller entitled Dead Girl, the adventures of an underachieving 18-year-old killed in a freak accident who returns to Earth as a grim reaper.

More news can be found in the archives.

Poll Results

Below are the results of the most recent TrekToday poll:

What Types of Books Do You Normally Read? Science Fiction 28.8% - (203 Votes) Star Trek novels 23.5% - (166 Votes) Contemporary Fiction 10.9% - (77 Votes) Fantasy 8.9% - (63 Votes) Literature/Classics 8.2% - (58 Votes) Other 7.9% - (56 Votes) Contemporary Non-Fiction 7.6% - (54 Votes) Graphic Novels 2.5% - (18 Votes) Horror 1.2% - (9 Votes) Total Votes: 704

Please vote in our new poll about the 'Lord of the Rings' franchise!

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