There and Back Again, Day 3: The Return of the King

31 Comments

And so it ends. Having journeyed through The Fellowship of the Ring and The Two Towers, almost always conscious and (for legal purposes) resoundingly sober, we now arrive at the final -- and most epic -- chapter, The Return of the King. Will the extended edition yield another four-hundred endings? Has Gollum's lost boogaloo on the cliffs of Mount Doom been restored to the film? To Mordor we go...

There and Back Again, Day 2: The Two Towers

17 Comments

Yesterday we joined the Fellowship of the Ring on the first part of our quest to plow through Peter Jackson's extended Lord of the Rings movies, with everyone agreeing -- to various degrees -- that the extra dimensions worked well for what was already a solid opening chapter. Today, as the fellowship splits and Gollum leads his unsuspecting charges toward Mordor, we take on The Two Towers. How does it play?

There and Back Again, Day 1: The Fellowship of the Ring

13 Comments

At last it arrives. Part one of Peter Jackson's epic Middle-earth prelude The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey opens in theaters this week, and so, in preparation, we're taking the journey back through the movies that made the phenomenon. And lo, we're sitting through all three in their 12-hour extended edition glory. Yes, it's a hard job sitting around getting paid to watch movies. So pack some lembas bread, pour yourself some ent-draught, blaze up the halfling weed and join Ryan "36th Chamber of Rivendell" Fujitani, Luke "One of my trolls is named Teacup" Goodsell and Tim "Son of Tim" Ryan in their hole below ground as they embark upon the first chapter, The Fellowship of the Ring.

Five Favorite Films with Alan Cumming

22 Comments

An accomplished performer on both stage and screen, Alan Cumming has played an impressive array of parts in his career -- from roles in blockbusters like X-2 and GoldenEye to independent films to projects as diverse as Stanley Kubrick's Eyes Wide Shut and Robert Rodriguez's Spy Kids. It's testament to Cumming's enduring talent that he's earning some of the best notices of his career for his latest turn, in this week's Any Day Now, a moving drama about a gay couple in '70s Hollywood fighting a biased legal system to keep their adopted son.

With the movie opening theatrically this week, we got the chance to speak with Cumming about his five favorite movies.

Visual History: Here Be Dragons

0 Comments

Celebrate the arrival of The Hobbit -- and Smaug the Magnificent -- with our gallery of cinema's most famous fire-breathers.