I managed to get a rental car approved and take my car to the body shop yesterday morning. They were supposed to call me today with an estimate, but I didn’t hear from them. I’ll call tomorrow. I ended up with a Dodge Stratus from Enterprise. The damn thing has a tape player. What is this? 1985?
I got to attend a lecture by Bjarne Stroustrup, the father of C++ at lunch and then headed to the Alamo Village for ROTK. The Stroustup lecture was a little underwhelming, but I think it was because the people who were hosting the lecture didn’t give him input on what to include in his one hour talk. All I can say about ROTK is WOW. I must say that I was disappointed with the new ending, but otherwise I was pretty impressed. The battles were totally amazing. I hope Andy Serkis gets a nomination for Supporting Actor this year. I’m sure there’ll be lots of Oscar nods for this installment with speculation running high that it’ll win Best Director or Best Picture. I’d tend to go with director. How cool would it be to be able to refer to the man responsible for Dead Alive as Oscar-winning? Poor Elijah Wood continued to spend most of his time either looking worried or falling in slow motion. I must say that even though I can’t STAND Sean Astin, he did a good job. Shelob was really cool as were the Nazgul. The set design continued to impress, especially the dark and evil places. I was struck by how a lot of the stuff in Heavenly Creatures hinted at the same style that’s seen in ROTK.