LOTR 3.

Monday's announcement by the New York Film Critics Circle that "the nation's leading critics organization" (indieWIRE) was naming The Lord of the Rings: Return of the King best picture of the year shook things up as far as the one race everyone always has on their mind goes (and let's not pretend the Oscars don't matter). As Peter Jackson says in the interview we posted today, "There is a stigma in Hollywood against fantasy films, so it's always going to be a bit hard to overcome that." (He, too, of course, is pretending not to get too worked up about the Oscars, but the word "overcome" is a dead giveaway.)

What the NYFCC has done, inadvertantly or not, is send a signal to Academy members: It's ok to vote for this one. Granted for a while there, everyone was talking as if Rings were a shoe-in for Best Picture. But then the lists and awards started coming in and Rings wasn't coming out on top anywhere. One wonders if there was a sense of alarm at all, and if so, what color the alert was over at New Line when, early on, the National Board of Review not only passed Rings over for Best Film but didn't even include it in its top ten. Had they given conventional wisdom a nudge that would snowball into serious momentum away from Rings?

But here comes the NYFCC, a capital-S serious body from the serious side of the country that has not elected an action hero to public office, and they go with the fantasy flick. In my mind, this makes the race interesting again. From here until the nominations shake things up again, it seems to boil down to Rings or Something Else. And Something Else is going to be split four ways.

But what do I know. For more in-the-know analysis, follow Movie City News, where they're tracking the awards and lists more closely than we are (though we'll continue to highlight the ones that really grab our attention) and where David Poland picks apart the argument that Rings does not stand a chance.

In the meantime, the movie itself. Ed Champion has sent along what may be, oddly, the most notable review, David Elliott's in the San Diego Union-Tribune. Notable because it's one of the few dissenting opinions out there, a pan, but not a thoughtless one: "It was my awareness of what Coppola, Lean, Gance, Kobayashi and other creators of epics have done that helped prompt questions in my head, as the latest film rolled along. Call them snarky, but they may be pertinent..." And he lists those questions, and yes, they are a little on the snarky side, and yes, I personally disagree with his overall assessment, at least with regard to the first two films, which I have seen, but I'm also glad to be prodded. (He then lists and blurbs other film trilogies for comparison.)

Of course, dumping on Rings at this point is sort of like dumping on Christmas. There may be - alright, there are - plenty of things to despise about Christmas, even if you think it's overall a good thing to do once a year. But then, when you've got that one Christmas that comes along when the whole family and all your friends can finally make it to one place all at once, you want to say to the Scrooge in your midst, "Hey, buddy, there's a time and a place." And then you want to slap yourself for being such a softy and stomp off to go find your lost rebel spirit.

I'm not there yet, though. My daughter and half a dozen friends camped out at our place last night, having come in at nearly 4 am after "Die lange Nacht der Herr der Ringe," and the mood was good. Very good. So until I get to catch it myself in the next few days, I'm basking in the gooey holiday glow, dammit:

David Edelstein in Slate: "The threads are awesome, but it's the weave - of the epic and the intimate, the airy and the visceral, the lofty and the blood-curdling - that's spellbinding."

Elvis Mitchell in the New York Times: "It's an epic about the price of triumph, a subversive victory itself in a large-scale pop action film."

Andrew O'Hehir in Salon: "A prodigiously exciting film entertainment, a redemption of the spirit of popular spectacle that has seemed so cheapened, corrupted and bastardized in recent years."

J. Hoberman in the Voice: "In short, this Krakatoa is at once exhausting and riveting. It's a technological marvel, and for those not with the program, a bit of a bore." Fair enough, coming from "a deprogrammed, once-upon-a-time Tolkien cultist." It's like an ex-smoker admitting that, while cigarettes'll kill you, you do look great holding one.

Matt Zoller Seitz in the New York Press: "It ends well."

Posted by dwhudson at December 17, 2003 2:20 PM