Yes, I’ve been busy this week. Which isn’t an excuse, it’s…well, yeah, it’s an excuse. To make matters worse, I’m also a dollar short, as it were, because I didn’t write the column that I was meaning to write because it’s taking more effort than one of my typical fist-shaking rants, and, frankly, that’s such a surprise to me that it threw off my schedule.

Now, the busy stuff mostly has to do with my company, and although it’s stuff that I’m not involved in, it still affects me, in a "do I need to update my resume because we’ll all lose our jobs in January" sort of way. Fortunately, it looks like the answer is "No."

So, in a completely unrelated chain of events which involved a vacation day that had to be taken or lost, I went to see The Two Towers yesterday.

So, this is a review, right? Hardly. First of all, many of you have probably seen it already. The rest are going to see it no matter what I say.

Wait, does that mean you didn’t like it? (sound of torches being prepared)

No, not at all. But, honestly, if I did hate it, would that stop you? Of course not. Is it true to the books? Er, probably in general, but I read the books sometime around fifteen years ago. Maybe more, but only a year or two. I only remembered that there was a big ‘ol battle, and that the walking trees showed up at some point. Really, that was it: Novel Number Two: Big Battle. Oh, and that Gollum shows up.

So, is Two Towers like the Empire Strikes Back of the trilogy? Not really, although it’s stupid of me to pose a question that requires at least a bit of thought, and I know I’m not able to spend the time on it now. Sneaky, treacherous self. But for one thing, there’s no Yoda character. Well, except that Gollum and Yoda share some physical characteristics.

Now, did I like it? Yes. Mostly. I did enjoy it, but something isn’t letting me say “Oh, it was wonderful! My life is forever changed!” For a three-hour-long movie, it didn’t feel like I was sitting around for three full hours. I was most definitely entertained. It was definitely most sweeping and epic. The action was very actionlicious. So what’s the problem? I’m not sure, but I think it has to do with it being number two of three. So it’s the middle, there’s no clear conclusion, and you’re just waiting for The Return of the King (originally to be titled "The Revenge of the King").

What I realized last night while drafting this column(1) is that what I thought Tolkien did best was write descriptions. Forest or fortress, the guy wrote wonderful descriptions of settings. In the films, Peter Jackson manages to translate those into images, and understands that he damn well needs the film to be sweeping and epic in order to live up to those descriptions. Like Kurosawa, Jackson understands that, hey, film is big, and can fill the screen while keeping things interesting instead of confusing. Well, no more confusing than it’s supposed to be, as I’m thinking about large battles in both cases (in this movie and in Ran).

It’s pretty obvious why I’m not quitting my day job and looking for work as a movie critic.

1) If I had a good way to transcribe my thoughts, I’d have a huge surplus of columns. I rattle these things off in my head, but when it comes time to typing, the spring dries up. Hell, I had a column about grandparents, of all things, and it was pretty decent, but trying to commit it to the page just left a stalled and clunky mess. I’d be well served by a cranial harddrive.