The AFI has nominated FOTR for 4 awards, including Best Picture!

B-movies no longer, the fantasy genre hits its high water mark with spectacular ‘Rings’ adaptation

Zealously dedicated director Peter Jackson (“Heavenly Creatures,” “The Frighteners”) has brought the monumental ambience, the distinctive characters and the indelible spirit of “Lord of the Rings: Fellowship of the Ring” to life so tangibly that it took my breath away…
For once, here’s a gigantic-budget movie that wears its outsized grandiosity well and lives up to its hype and ambition. More importantly, the characters are perfectly cast (can you think of any actresses more elfin than Blanchett and Tyler?) and properly, reverentially steeped in Tolkien’s elaborate mythology.

Coming in at a whopping $450M, it’s the most expensive movie production in history.

I believe I have just had the most perfect film experience in my life. The one that I struggle so hard to have has happened effortlessly.

Me, I’ve had a very personal reaction. It is the realization of everything that IÍve said I was hoping this would be. It is an uncompromisingly perfect telling of a fantasy tale aimed directly at the intended audience with 0% pandering, told by a team of artists helmed by a director of singular vision inspired by the God’s of old.

This film makes Harry Potter and the Philosopher’s Stone seem like Jackanory on a low budget.

I was going to devote today’s extended column inches to a comparative think-piece about

Lord of the Rings versus Harry Potter. But there is no comparison. Potter was made by a committee

masquerading as a director. Rings is made by a genius masquerading as a normal human being.

Director Peter Jackson has created an oxymoron, an instant classic.

This has been a dismal year for film-making. Only the other day I was lamenting the fate of the Academy when it comes to making their end-of-year choices for the Oscars….
Fortunately, their problems have been solved. All they need to do is give Lord of the Rings every Oscar for which it is eligible and save ourselves a lot of guesswork next March….
This is the most audacious, exciting, spectacular, breathtaking, imaginative and flat-out entertaining film I have seen in quite some time.

Moriarty from AICN reviews Fellowship

So this morning I saw New Line’s highly-anticipated LORD OF THE RINGS: FELLOWSHIP OF THE RING, right?

I cannot stress this strongly enough: do not see this movie.

If you do, it will ruin you for everything else.

Films you’ve seen before, films you’re waiting to see, films you have on DVD… it doesn’t matter. All will pale by comparison after you

finally lay eyes on Peter Jackson’s visionary masterpiece.

Several members of the AICN team chime in on Fellowship.

This is really good news!

Here is the important thing: The Story is not changed. It is not exactly the

same, but it is the same story. That has in no way been lost, or weakened or

polluted. I have finally arrived at a way of describing the difference between

the book and the film: Imagine the book as a valuable weaving. Take the exact

fabric and re weave it…tighter. Snip off a few barely noticeable threads,

move a little of the fiber around to strengthen the integrity of the whole,

and you have the same weaving…sturdier, renewed, ready for new use, but the

same…Thats the key here. As a result, once the script is streamlined like this, it

MOVES. Tolkien’s prose, as much as we love it, is a little leisurely, but with

just a little tuneup, connecting the same existing material in slightly

different ways, you travel the same ground in breathless, headlong fashion.

Ireland is working hard to prepare for the worldcup next year.

They’ve scheduled quite a few difficult international friendly (yeah right 🙂 matches in the hopes that it will harden their team. Will it help?