Sharpe was a fantastic series and that's the role I most associate with Sean Bean - which makes his line of dialogue in FOTR when he cuts himself on a shard of Narsil amusing. Whilst I agree having an interest in the period helps, I'd say it's that good that it could even make one interested in the history.

I don't see how that could possibly be a bad movie. Rob Schneider! Leslie Nielsen acting! An obnoxiously happy kid! Token Asian guy! Photoshopped Ninja swords! Goofy neon-coloured headbands! All on just the one surfboard!

To Demonoid I go.

As mentioned above I'd like to hear your thoughts in a commentary for something like Warrior or Bloodsport, where there's both an opportunity to discuss the principles of good and bad choreography as well as multiple martial art styles and how you personally feel about the training, discipline, philosophy and merits of each. Granted there's a bit of this already on the Crouching Monkey Hidden Crane and Karate Kid commentaries but more can't hurt, especially for arts such as panchak silat which you don't usually hear that much about.

Definitely choreography, as both you and Anthony agreed that Karate Kid didn't have very good choreography but I don't recall you elaborating very much on the specifics.

Personally speaking, the choreography I find the most appealling is combinations of blocks. Two dudes hitting each other is kinda boring. And one dude hitting another dude is really boring. But when you have two equally matched guys who are throwing all sorts of combinations at each other and nothing's going through, and it's getting faster and more elaborate and keeps going on and on, that just's cool. It's why some of the late 70s and 80s Kung fu films are so darn great, where you could have Jackie Chan and Sammo Hung in this complicated dance, sometimes up to 10 seconds of intense action before anyone actually gets hit. It's the highest form of 'movie fighting'. For the longest time, Western movies were the opposite. It wasn't so much about skill and speed but power, the hero need only have a single wide punch and their opponent would be down - which would very rarely be blocked or evaded.

Nope! I recognised Cobra immediately as well, love that movie (and the soundtrack too ).

Oh 80s, I miss you.

How fascinating. I can sort of see where he/she's coming from, a first-time listener might well come away with that same attitude if they hadn't only listened to some of the 'negative' commentaries. Arrogance seems one of those words that gets thrown around too easily nowadays, and seems woefully out of place here.

Probably a prequel fan.

Great video, I like Tyson more everytime I watch him speak.

It's a shame that the powers that be, whilst nodding the heads and agreeing with Tyson's impassioned arguments, will not actually do anything. Cuts to NASA will likely continue.

There are some shots in the ROTK that look so obviously graded it's a little grating; quite a few especially with lighting around the eyes. Along with the dodgy comp, it even makes me go eurgh.

So instead of a powerful reaction shot of Eowyn reacting to the fell beast swooping down upon her uncle, it's this awfully fake shot.

Except that sending two hobbits worked.

I don't think Gandalf knew exactly how they were going to do it, but I suppose the idea was to sneak in via some means. It was a stealth mission, as evidenced by the fact that Merry and Pippin were allowed to go rather than elven warriors. Further, Boromir and Aragorn were just letting them tag along until they got to Minas Tirith.

Remember too that in the context of Tolkien's world, a bunch of dwarves and a hobbit set off to get their gold back from a mighty dragon. Sometimes the heroes do just leave without a clear and feasible plan. The importance of the Council of Elrond was that something had to be done (not least because Sauron would have attacked that place soon).

The story's saying that you don't need to be a warrior to do something great, and that it's not so much your physical strength but mental fortitude that can get you to the finish line. Frodo, supported by his friend Sam, was the only hero capable of succeeding.

The best argument against using eagles to fly the ring to Mt. Doom is that Mordor has both an airforce (fell beasts) and anti-aircraft (about a million archers), it would have been an endeavour as susceptible to failure as invading Mordor with an army.

I'm so looking forward to this! I'll hoping to be in the chat for as long as humanly possible (though I suspect I'll miss ROTK).

Other topics:
- Use of magic in the films
- The shit that you don't see, i.e. prop and set designers going bananas on detail (Theoden's armour for instance has a pattern on the inside)
- Divergences from the books and whether they work or not
- What almost was (e.g. Arwen at Helm's Deep, Stuart Townsend as Aragorn)
- Was it right to cut Saruman's end from the theatrical versions of ROTK?
- Crew cameos
- Deleted scenes (Eoywn fighting orcs in the caves at Helm's Deep, epilogue scenes).
- The Hobbit adaptation

Oh heck, went to the supermarket after working out and now I can't remember what the hell I did!

So...I failed to complete my workout yesterday and am feeling shite about it this morning. About half way through doing walkout/inchworms I started feeling sick so I threw in the towel as I really didn't want to throw up. I had left 2.5 hours after eating before I began the workout, so either I need to allow for more time or I need to eat much less (it was a large plate of mostly vegetables) and also make sure to have more water before (but again, not too much!).

They were some tough compound exercises, with 30 secs to do as many as you can, and warm-up was probably a bit too intensive for me so maybe I bit off too much as well and peaked too early.  Slow and steady wins the race as they say...