I caught part of Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring on TV last night. I know there are some who liked the books better, some who liked the The Two Towers better, and some who didn't appreciate it at all. I don't understand any of them. Like a lot of people, I read the books as a kid. I don't remember my first reaction to them, but I know they didn't hold up well over time. At one point in my life I read a lot of fantasy and the LOTR trilogy (and related books) were never amongst my favourites. I can clearly remember skipping whole sections of the books one of the times I re-read them and when I re-read Fellowship again recently I couldn't bring myself to read all the poems and songs cluttering up the book.

As for the second movie, it is a good movie, but that's about all. In starting in the middle of the action, something was definitely lost. By the time the action started in the first movie, the audience had gotten to know the characters enough to care about them somewhat. This is lost in the The Two Towers to some extent. It had to depend on people remembering that they cared for these characters, and the intensity is reduced thereby. It also suffered somewhat from more external shots, spectacular as they were. The variety in the first film as the characters entered the mines and spent time underground, was missing. Also, the exteriors seemed more of a single piece, focusing as it did on a single kingdom, versus having the mix of the Shire, Rivendell and mountains from Fellowship.

As for not liking the movie at all, I think you can tell by know that I wouldn't agree with that opinion. As I mentioned above, at one point in my life I read a fair amount of fantasy and up until the release of LOTR, the record of fantasy movies has been pretty dismal. Cases in point include Krull, The Sword and The Sorcerer, Conan and The Dark Crystal. Dreck, all. Off the top of my head, I can only think of one excellent fantasy related movie, The Princess Bride. On the other hand. Fellowship does almost everything right. The story has been streamlined for the screen, but not over-simplified, with emphasis added in all the right places. The writing is clean and clear, with enough done to establish and develop the large cast of characters without bogging down -- a cardinal virtue when there is this much plot to get through. The acting and direction both serve the story, rather than the other way around and the production values are astounding. Howard Shore's score adds emphasis at all the right moments and was one of the best scores I have heard in years.

I think that if the third movie follows in the footsteps of the first two, this trilogy will be seen in years to come as one of the best pieces of cinema of the new century,as well as the best fantasy movies ever made. And unless The Return of The King surpasses my expectations, The Fellowship of the Ring will be seen as the crown jewel of the trilogy.

Well, it looks like I'm not going to be posting too often to this page. The problem right now is that I don't want to be doing a lot of posting from work and in the evening during the week I've usually got enough other stuff to do (i.e. read, practice my guitar, guitar classes) that I don't have time for it. Also, since I spend most of my day sitting in front of a computer, I'm not usually interested in using my computer at home. I'll try to make it a bit more frequent, just in case there is anyone at all reading this, but no promises.

Last night was another concert. This one was jazz/ R & B. We went to see Diane Reeves at Zellerbach Hall in Berkeley. Since I live/work in the south bay area, this is quite a trek - particularly on a work day when you have to fight the commute traffic. And of course it turned out there was a Cal (that's University of California at Berkeley in case you were wondering) basketball game going on, which means the already scarce parking near the campus will be basically non-existant. We ended up parking about 10 blocks away and walking in.

The show was quite good. I'm not really a fan of the kind of vocal work Dianne Reeves does, but given that, I enjoyed the show. Her backing band was excellent and most of the songs had plenty of room for them to stretch out and show their chops, whether it was on piano, bass or drums The first half had some nice standards in it and Dianne Reeves does have an excellent voice when she is sticking to the melody. Her vocal acrobatics are in style but as I said above, not quite to my taste. For some reason I have a lot more tolerance for an instrumentalist indulging that way than I do for the same activity in a vocalist. For example, scat-singing usually just sound silly to me, even when done by those usually judged as expert at it.

The second half of the show was more R&B oriented and I liked it a little less. Again, the backing music by her band was the saving grace. They had some very nice funk grooves going with interesting improvisations mixed in.

In other news, a scary article on Opinion Journal today about the percentage of black students that graduate high school/pass basic testing. I'm originally from Canada and I always thought our schools were lousy, but when I compare them to things like this or to the stories my girlfriend tells about going to school in Pinole, they come out looking a lot better. I had to deal with dull teachers, incompetent staff and misguided curriculums, but I not only learned to read, I also learned the basics of math and science. That's not saying much given what schools should be teaching, but I guess in the education lottery, I came out OK.

That's it for tonight. Tomorrow I have to choose between climbing and guitar workshop during the day. Paul Mehling of the Hot Club of San Francisco is giving a clinic at Gryphon Stringed Instruments where I take a lot of my other classes. But going to that means no climbing, since I can't play worth a damn for about 8 hours after I climb. Decisions, decisions.

First art post (and some personal history too) - I've been playing bluegrass the last couple of years, so a lot of the music related posts on this site will have to do with bluegrass rather than other types of music. That's not to say I don't like your jazz/metal/classic/rock music, just that a lot of what I listen to these days is bluegrass or bluegrass related.


Case in point is the concert I saw last night. Peter Rowan played in Mountain View under the sponsorship of the Redwood Bluegrass Associates (). The interesting story I heard about the show was that since the last time he played for the RBA it was only loosely related to bluegrass, he was offered a specific bonus if he played bluegrass this time. A number of people I know were staying away from the show mainly because of the last show (Hint: Nepalese flute players aren't always completely welcome at your average bluegrass show). And I think it was their loss.


The show was definitely bluegrass, and it was great. The band was Peter on guitar, East Bay banjo whiz Avram Siegel, Peter's brothers Lorin (Mandolin) and Chris (guitar, but mainly there for harmony), a fiddler, and a bassist (whose names I didn't catch). They did 2 sets. The first was all bluegrass with Avram Siegel showcased on the banjo. Lorin's ability on the mandolin was a surprise. Out of all the performers, his breaks got the most applause afterwords. The second set was a little looser and longer. In addition to a number of bluegrass pieces, Peter and his brothers did a couple of songs with his brothers from their latest album, one featuring Chris and one featuring Lorin. This last song, Crazy People was a great swing tune.



Some of the highlights of the show for me were Midnight on the Stormy Deep and Walls of Time, in addition to hearing Peter take a number of great guitar breaks. Hopefully, Peter earned his bonus since it was a great bluegrass show.

Well now. I guess I've taken the next step in making this an actual page. I was stymied for a while since when I accidentally created this page I was using Netscape, and Netscape had a problem displaying the snapshots of the templates. So I picked "Robot". If you want a laugh, go into the templates section and look at "Robot". Of course,some of my friends would probably think it oddly appropriate. And then I couldn't figure out how to change the template without learning html. That is, until one of my friends ( the ever useful and informative Colby Cosh. ) pointed out the "Choose a new Template" button.

So I might make a go of this. If it continues, if will mostly be links to things I find amusing, posts about art of one kind or another, and some random musings.