Okay, now Eric Spratling’s ragging on Lord of the Rings is irritating the customers.

I’d like to make a comment about your sites recent content. Please don’t take this the wrong way, I love to read Monitor Duty and will continue to do so.

My comment pertains to the constant bashing of the Lord of the Rings films. I personally am not as huge a fan of them as many people around me seem to be so the reason for this message is not because you guys are hurting my feelings or anything. The problem is that it seems to be the same thing posted over and over with no new arguments made. Every few days there is a new post about how bad the movies are and they all read almost identically. I do realize that it is your site and you guys have the right to post all the opinions you want, it’s just that I don’t look forward to checking out the updates like I once did for fear of having to read through what seems like the same post pretty regularly.

Other than that, I love the site. I check for new posts at least once a day and really enjoy the variety of info you guys convey. We all seem to share some pretty common interests.

Thanks and Keep up the good work,
Joel Shults

Thanks for the e-mail, Joel. Just to be clear, Eric is the only one here with a hate on for LOTR…and his comments here are so tame compared to the venom he spits at it on his own blog…and even those are tamer than the LOTR-abusing sites he links to!

I actually loved it, though I think it’s got its overcranked flaws here and there and this was most evident in the Return of the King. Eliminate all the overemotional slow-motion and the film would have been a half hour shorter. But this is a minor complaint about a film that is an incredible achievement.

The Oscars were odd, though, in giving so many awards to Return of the King; Fellowship of the Ring was a far tighter and entertaining film, but the Academy decided to hold off because the ending wasn’t enough of an ending and so it seemed unfinished. It would have been better if LOTR could have been nominated as a complete epic…but that wasn’t the case, and so Return… reaped all of the awards. Rather like nominating Martin Scorcese for a directing award for the moderately good Gangs of New York just because he’d been denied it for his excellent movies.

It’s like giving Return of the Jedi “Best Picture” just because they didn’t give it to Star Wars in 1977.

But I think we’re done talking about LOTR for a while, and I can try to keep Eric in check. (Hopefully it’s clear that I’m goofing on Eric. We appreciate diverging opinions here at Monitor Duty, and LOTR is actually one of the few things we disagree upon.)