Can you spare a diamond?
Doug Martsch penned the line. Not really profound, but it happened to be playing on my discman just as I was typing the title of this bloggerific blog.

Phil and I braved the cold and the crowds Tuesday at midnight and caught the latest and last Lord of the Rings installment. OK, I don't want to snark too much, but I didn't think it was as good as parts one or two. It was a good flick -- don't get me wrong -- but it was about 45 minutes too long. Had they abbreviated some of the way-too-long lingering closeups of the now-billionaire actors, they could have shorn off a good half hour. And then some of the dialogue was just over-the-top cheesy (Gandalf really thinks the afterlife is an empty beach?). Not to mention the arguably offensive racial/cultural parallels drawn between the West, the South, etc., and good and bad. I won't get into it here. You can do some research on your own about the blonde-haired, blue-eyed men saving Middle Earth from dark-skinned savages.

Again, though, it was a nice good vs. evil film with awesome special effects. We left the theater at 3:45 a.m. Wednesday morning, blitz-bombed by the spectacle. My dad and I have a date to go see it as soon as I visit. We saw the last one last Christmas and it was a fun time.