I have amazing friends.

Things have been really, really tough lately. Last night, to cheer us up, our upstairs neighbours came down laden with nibblies, Kaluha, and a copy of the special extended edition of The Fellowship of the Ring� and left it behind, an early Yule gift.

I was stunned, and grateful, and thrilled. If I hadn�t been so tired, I probably would have expressed it better. As it was, I had just sat through three and a half hours of very good film, and it was eleven-thirty at night, so I�m fairly certain that I managed to convey mildly stunned, but that�s about it.

General reaction to the extended edition? Valuable character development was cut out for the theatrical release (but as I�m on of the few who thinks character development is important, I�m not surprised); the fight scenes were trimmed (which means that die-hard fans get to watch more sword-swinging and arrow action and axe-whacking than before� and all with such finesse!); and some landscape shots were taken out. The latter two sort of cuts I understand, but there were some serious character bits removed that filled out events and gave them more grounding. All in all, I�d say that this is my preferred version. The pace is slower, yes, but it allows the film to breathe a bit, and a viewer can appreciate the sense of time passing in a way that the theatrical release did (could!) not.

We all found that the restored scenes seemed so natural that at times we couldn�t remember if they were indeed new or not. The other change that really stood out was the enhanced voice of the One Ring, turning it into an active, manipulative presence as opposed to the more passive role it plays (mainly as a foreboding visual focal point) in the theatrical release.

Then there�s all those extra discs that we haven�t even thought about looking at, yet. The four commentary tracks alone make up fourteen hours of viewing. And then there’s all those doumentaries on development, storyboards, costuming, sets…

All this has served to heighten my awareness that The Two Towers is being released in four days. Oh, the suspense!

So many, many thank-yous. You three are terrific.