redxavier, in Jackson's defense, he cites the breadth of the stories he's already telling in his statement about his decision to make it a trilogy:

Your mileage will vary considerably, of course.

Personally, I'm very interested by the fact that this decision is so last-minute, because it implies, to me, that Jackson and company were looking at the footage they had and thinking they had enough material to constitute three movies. I kind of like that idea, because it's been only recently that I've discovered what difference good editing can make in a film—contrast and compare the theatrical cut of Star Wars to the current DVD release, because that's what I did. 

But Jackson is in a unique position among the current trend of "let's split the film adaptation in half for no discernable reason!" because he has access to more story than he can possibly cram into a trilogy, even with just the appendices (whether or not he will use it, of course, remains to be seen). Ringer speculation before today's announcement was that a third film would be a "bridge" film, covering events between The Hobbit and The Lord of the Rings, and the production is pretty open about going beyond the story of the novel into the story of the universe. That sounds defensive, but I bring this up to differentiate this from the current slew of novel adaptations snapped in half: Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows, Breaking Dawn, and Mockingjay. The big question here is not whether or not this is a huge marketing gimmick (which is a totally valid point; if you're a completionist Potter collection, you had to triple dip for that last film), but are audiences becoming more willing to watch longer and longer films?

Which dovetails with your question, Doctor Submarine. Yes, I definitely think the fact that the Extended Editions are so popular was an influence on Jackson, because he knows his audience will happily park their butts for well over two and a half hours and want more story. I've marathoned the extended trilogy before, which was both butt-numbing (fidgeting on a sofa for twelve hours) and dehydrating (we popped in the second disc of The Return of the King and just started weeping), and I was looking forward to marathoning it with The Hobbit before today's announcement. (I don't know if I can do six films in a day; surely, there must be some Star Wars brethen who have done this, it can't be terribly difficult.)

Perhaps this trend, from full-fledged musical to films with one musical moment to films with soundtracks (a la Toy Story—I forgot how many songs where in that film until I rewatched it recently!), can be encapsulated by The Emperor's New Groove and its troubled production from epic Disney musical (complete with high profile musician) to what it is today. I haven't watched The Sweatbox all the way through yet, but I can imagine that this trend may have, in a very small way, influenced the negative reaction to its first cut as The Kingdom of the Sun.

Another casualty of being raised by wolves was any concept of music before 2002, but I've recently read The Rolling Stone Illustrated History of Rock and Roll, which resulted in both a list of music and a list of rockumentaries, such as this one. I've not seen this one yet, but I'm fascinated by the fact that Jeff Stein was essentially an ascended fanboy and the lengths he went to, as you describe.

Also: blistering is one the best adjectives to describe good rock music.

I think using popular music as soundtrack is a bit of a different impulse than creating a musical; to pluck an example from the veritable flood of nineties films with such soundtracks, A Knight's Tale (incidentally one of my favorite movies) does use popular music, but rarely, if ever, does it use the music as a musical would, to make subtext explicit.

Another factor in the decrease of movie musicals from the golden age of Singin' in the Rain is the fact that, when it comes to mainstream, live-action films aimed at adults, very few musicals are being written specifically for film nowadays, which compounds the problem Invid mentioned; studios willing to do a musical are forced to pull from stage musicals. I think Across the Universe is the only big movie musical in recent history that wasn't based on a stage musical.

In fact, Invid, that's interesting in the context of Rock of Ages, because it's extremely different than the stage musical to the tune of replacing characters and plots. Perhaps the production felt free to do so because the more different the film ended up being, the more word of mouth might be generated for the show?

Is there anything to say about filmed performances in this regard? They're not film, per se, as they're theater records (although I was surprised to see that the taped version of Danny Boyle's Frankenstein gets cinematic at times), but they still pose the same threat to the stage show. Hence RENT releasing one after closing and Legally Blonde only airing its taped performance once on MTV a few years back.

And I'd also just like to say that, as someone who constantly ponders the story potential of the music she listens to, that I love jukebox musicals.

The best part about Green Lantern… oh man, I wish it was on YouTube so I could link you, but I'll just describe it.

Our villain Hector Hammond, as played by Peter Sarsgaard, is a man you cannot help but feel sorry for. His father hates him, Ryan Reynolds has stolen every girl he's ever fancied (or so I concluded, that might be false), he has a receding hairline, some truly unfortunate facial hair, and the one time he gets to do anything cool and performs an alien autopsy, he gets infected with space goo. In short, he is a man Life itself has crapped upon.

Anyway, the space goo gives him powers, as I'm sure we're all familiar with, and he begins to develop telepathy and telekinesis. In the film, his powers first manifest themselves while teaching at what appears to be either a high school or a community college, where all of his students hate him for being pathetic.

In this scene, he has his back to his class when a jock thinks something particularly mean—I forget—and he asks him to repeat it. The jock refuses until, frustrated, Hammond uses his telekinesis to throw him across the room.

Now, this can be done to be honestly terrifying. However, the execution the filmmakers chose to go with was "cartoon ejector seat". It feels like they had to digitally remove the spring and the sound effect, it is that silly.

And that's the only good part of Green Lantern.

Saw Rock of Ages on Friday, and loved it. Of course, eighties + overproduced + musical + big names = litomnivore kryptonite, so I'm wildly biased. It was a lot of stupid fun.

That's brilliant. After all, David is the one that saves Holloway and Shaw when they get caught in the storm, so to see him torch Holloway in order to pursue the exact same goal of "protect the crew so they can continue the mission". But it would also show that David is willing to clean up after himself (although why he infected Holloway is, uh… missing), and give Shaw and David more conflict, because they're the main characters.

Yeesh.

I mean, ultimately, I'm reminded of Pixar's storytelling rules: combine characters. Vickers felt like one or two character ideas trying to pass as a whole character.

I saw it yesterday—it felt like Act One of a movie I actually want to see (the adventures of Shaw and David's head in search for the true origin of life, with lots of philosophical discussion on the idea of "who made us?"). You guys have already covered a lot of the logic problems, but for me, I could have taken some of those had we been more engaged with the characters. Prometheus thinks it's an ensemble film, but it's really not—it's Shaw's story, with David as a secondary character. But since we don't spend enough time with Shaw (I think we actually spend the most time with David; fair enough, considering Fassbender's fantastically creeptastic performance), we don't engage with her. I watched the last thirty minutes wishing I liked her character more.

Vickers, as a character, was utterly wasted, and I never really got David's motivation. (I could parse one out, but I just wanted a hint more logic.)

Still, very pretty. I loved the design of the Engineers.

The Lost City of Z, David Grann. Engaging nonfiction about the author researching the life of Percy Fawcett, a Victorian explorer who ultimately vanished in the Amazon, and ended up looking for information about the guy's fate himself.

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle. Holmes is a classic for a reason, and the short stories are a lot of fun and easy to swallow. (There aren't any particularly bad collections of short stories, but if you want a Holmes novel, only The Hound of the Baskervilles is really worth it.)

The Sundering, Jacqueline Carey. Carey is more known for her Kushiel novels, which are all about geopolitical intrigue, romance, and sadists. They're great, but The Sundering—composed of Banewreaker and Godslayer—is much more accessible. It's a deconstruction of The Lord of the Rings which works by taking a similar situation making it morally complex.

The Magicians, Lev Grossman. Along the lines of the above, although this is a particularly brutal deconstruction of Harry Potter and The Chronicles of Narnia. It's also a trilogy, with the third book still in production.

The Unwritten. Ongoing Vertigo comic that's being pretty thoroughly collected. It starts as a deconstruction of Harry Potter (guess what I like to read!) and has become a meditation of how we interact with stories and they interact with us. In three years of reading it, there's only been one issue that stumbled for me, and that was recently.

A Fire Upon the Deep, Vernor Vinge. Brilliant classic sci-fi. To tell you anything more would be a disservice, but it flirts with the epic. There's a sequel, The Children of the Sky.

The Secret History, Donna Tartt. A novel about classics students committing a murder. The first half can be slow, but the second half is so amazing it barely matters.

Tigana, Guy Gavriel Kay. The novel that marks Kay leaving his Tolkien riffing behind and striking out on his own; it's about the efforts of a band of rebels to save their country, whose very name has been erased by the two dictators that vie for control of their continent.

Good Omens, Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett. A buddy comedy about the apocalypse. If you've not read it, you've probably heard of it.

Wicked, Gregory Maguire. While the other novels in the series don't match it, this is a very interesting character study, and I really like Maguire's Oz. (Which I say as if I even know about the original one.)

Zombie Spaceship Wasteland, Patton Oswalt. This is pretty evenly split between some brutal comedy that didn't work for me on the page and a darkly brilliant memoir. It's worth it for the memoir portions.

The Magician's Book, Laura Miller. Nonfiction about how stories influence us and the power of story by way of examining the author's relationship with The Chronicles of Narnia, as well as examining the life of C. S. Lewis.

Manhood for Amateurs, Michael Chabon. Pretty much everything he writes is worth it, but this is a nice collection of essays ranging from dealing with his children to a love letter to Big Barda.

That's just a random sprinkling. If you (or anyone else!) is interested in exploring on your own, librarian Nancy Pearl has two books—Book Lust and More Book Lust—that offer a lot of recommendations grouped by theme or topic. It's how my own towering reading list (now 500+!) got started.