Just for the fun of it

Sometimes things are crazy, and right now some weird flu like but not quite flu virus has ravaged our household.  Yeah, I know.  We were bored and nothing else big was happening, so we shouldn't complain about a minor setback.  Anyway, despite it all, there's plenty of good things to be had, not the least of which is watching the two youngest roughhousing and having a ball.  There were plenty of great images from a wonderful birthday gift to my wife and I courtesy of the family, but this was hands down the best. Don't know what's going on in their minds, but it sure looks fun (at least I hope fun).

Note to miss the last super-date for a while

It's 12: 12 12-12-12

What I'm reading: 1066

For no particular reason, thought I'd throw this out.  I'm actually reading many things, as I typically have a dozen books I read at the same time.  Among these are my annual jaunt through one of the books of The Lord of the Rings (this time, following a run through The Hobbit, now reading it again aloud with the family), as well as a new translation of The Canterbury Tales,  Moby Dick, James Fenimore Cooper's Last of the Mohicans, and Walter Scott's Ivanhoe.  I've been brushing up on my Hegel recently, as well as reading up on some 17th century history to help my oldest in AP European History. This in addition to starting to read through the Catechism and study up on Vatican II, since I've been given the possible chance to do a lecture series on that next September. Plus it's my 12 year old's turn to read with me through To Kill a Mockingbird.

I focus on David Howarth's 1066: The Year of Conquest, however, because I'm going through a hardcover version, since I lost the original version some time ago.  So I thought I'd run through it.  What strikes me about this book is its accessibility.  You don't have to be a scholar of the 11th century to get what he's saying.  He walks the reader through the year 1066, focusing on how the various parties involved in the fateful battle at Hastings came together.  He writes well,  is engaging, and lays out the basic facts that are known to most who study that period.

What is fascinating about Howarth, however, is the flagrant bias he brings to the table.  He's an Englishman, and a proud son of the Saxon race.  You don't have to read long to see his sympathies are with the English people that October morning.  The irony here is how he frequently points out the recurring meme of modern history that we can't trust much of the source material because it was written by the winners.  In this case, it's those rascally Norman chroniclers whose versions are suspect.  It's ironic  because Howarth himself brings such a loaded bias to the table when he recounts the bold and wonderful and perfectly hip modern flavored Harold against the 11th century manifestation of the Galactic Emperor himself: William the Bastard (a.k.a. William the Conqueror).

To his credit, he admits as much.  He lets us know, like any child of his generation  he has basic contempt for Edward the Confessor and his religious ways, seems to have admiration mixed with pity for King Harold, and is scared out of his pants of William.  That this is seen in every paragraph in every chapter makes this a welcome admission.  But all too often, modern history approaches events and individuals with equally slanted takes and biased interpretations.  All too often,  however, they refuse to admit what is so flagrantly obvious.  Which is why it is easy to imagine that chroniclers of the past may have been biased  too.  Almost as biased as the historians and scholars of the modern era.

Looks like the economy is sluggish

At least it's sluggish enough to keep the homeless problem from improving. Just thought I'd throw that out there, since up to about a month ago, all we heard was how much better things were and how bright the future looked.  Just saying.

Sounds like FX's "The Asylum" is about as fair and balanced as Triumph of the Will

When it comes to its portrayal of the Catholic Church. Really?  There's a shock.  It's like being surprised that you might find racist publications in the South c. 1920.  Personally, I can't speak to whether this means cable companies should change policies or billing or whatever.  We can't afford most cable channels anyway.  I just find it odd how bigotry laced programming is now prevalent at the hand of the very movement that once decried the horror of such bigotry laced propaganda in the form of Father Knows Best or Ozzie and Harriet.

For that tough to buy for person on your Christmas list

Vatican Radio is releasing a CD of Christmas music performed by the Swiss Guard entitled "Christmas with the Pontifical Swiss Guard."  I love it when the Church can outdo the best SNL routines.  And yet, when you peal back the layers and read the story, I can't help but admit it actually looks quite interesting.

Where have all the good times gone?

It looks like a couple college students are facing potential criminal prosecution for lacing a batch of brownies with cannabis (that's pot to you and me).  I remember, back in the day of the 1970s and 1980s Utopian vision of a liberal society, such pranks were the domain of really cool kids who knew how worthless the whole button-down hypocrisy really was.  This is the stuff that Boon and Otter could pull off that would have audiences rolling in the aisles, and inspiring a boat load of imitators   Truth be told, I heard dozens of such stories when I was in high school and college of kids drugging other kids for fun. Perhaps they were exaggerations.   Kids will do that sometimes.  Maybe  they didn't even happen.  But it certainly was the stuff we thought that being in a post-hypocrisy nation was all about.  Just like slipping the microphone under Frank and Hot Lips' cot.  Funny how all those things that kids were told would be just sooooooooo cool will now get you arrested and charged to the fullest extent of the law, by the very forces that once promised us such a rousing and laugh-filled future.

Atheists cry a river

The International Humanist and Ethical Union has completed a study suggesting atheists and non-believers suffer greatly in this present darkness. I have no doubt they are persecuted.  Just like many of the countries mentioned that will persecute atheists will persecute religious believers of other traditions.  Oh yeah.  The study doesn't seem to mention that.   Likewise absent is the country with the largest population of atheists in the world: China.  Some atheists, who are often quick to absorb any manner of non-traditional belief system into the fold of 'atheism', suddenly point out that many Chinese are actually agnostic, and that only the government officially endorses atheism.  Whatever difference it makes to those persecuted because of their religious beliefs, I don't know. All in all, the typical word drool of modern atheism, where nothing is real, and no facts are worth getting hung about.  For a perspective of sweat and innocent atheists who only want to give peace a chance, Mark Shea has an amusing - and quite accurate - rebuttal.

I enjoy reading Tomas McDonald's God and the Machine

Because he has interesting and well thought out takes on a variety of subjects.  For instance, he had a wonderfully insightful, yet approachable, series on Bread and Wine in the Scriptures.  It starts here, with an overview of Bread and Wine throughout the Scriptures.  Then he looks at Bread in the Old Testament, then what the Gospel of John has to say about Bread.  Next he dives in and examines the use of Wine in the Old Testament, and again in John's Gospel. Very informative and worth the read.  So you have my permission to leave my wonderful contributions to world literature and actually learn something at God and the Machine.

The Walking Dead Redux

Otherwise known as 'The Rolling Stones 50th Anniversary Tour'.  Whew.  I mean, can they really dig people up to go just to go on a rock tour?  I remember when Frank Sinatra was doing is final tour, and many complained that he was, well, embarrassing himself.  We saw him in 1990, he was 75 years old.  Truth be told, he wasn't at the top of his game, but he wasn't bad either.  Still I remember the ribbing, the jabs, the jokes, and quite frankly, the heads hanging in embarrassment for this once dynamic entertainer brought low by the ravages of age.  And now?  I mean, all Frank did was walk about and sing, with the occasional joke here or there.  The Stones still get out there and act like they think they're in their 20s.  And to me, it's a million times more embarrassing.  Just like it's embarrassing that the entire Baby Boomer generation seems to refuse to grow up.  FWIW, when my boys see them perform, they think the same thing.  Will the Baby Boomers never learn?

Does PSY hate homosexuals?

Probably not. Why do I think that?  Because he's still performing for the President at the annual "Christmas in Washington", and the President is going to attend, that's why.  As it is, he only rapped some lyrics back in 2004 along the lines of ' "Kill those f****ng Yankees who have been torturing Iraqi captives. Kill those f****ng Yankees who ordered them to torture. Kill their daughters, mothers, daughters-in-law and fathers. Kill them all slowly and painfully."  Nothing worth getting our underwear in a knot over.  He even apologized.  Sort of: 

"While I'm grateful for the freedom to express one's self, I've learned there are limits to what language is appropriate and I'm deeply sorry for how these lyrics could be interpreted," the rapper said in a statement. I will forever be sorry for any pain I have caused by those words." 

Now maybe it's me, but I'm not sure how one can interpret lyrics that call for the death of US soldiers (this is reaction to Iraqis who tortured a Korean missionary, for some reason turned into our soldiers doing the deed), and further calls for the murder of women and their daughters.  But eh, again, it isn't like he said there was something wrong with gay marriage or something. If that were the case, I have this gut feeling he would already have been pulled from the performance, and if not, there would be massive walk outs and cancellations in protest.  Welcome to the new era or new priorities. 

It's always nice when intelligent people admit that water is wet

It looks like Dr. Tim Stanley, a historian specializing in the United States (he's British, after all), has noticed what should be patently clear to anyone with a brain.  The Mainstream Media has it in for the Catholic Church, at least regarding certain issues (those which the Church runs afoul of progressive dogma).  Wow.  Really?  As a Protestant pastor, I used to joke that I was thankful for the Catholic Church, since it gave people something they could still proudly hate.  That took Christianity in general out of the cross hairs   Sometimes I wonder if Catholics across the blogosphere realize this.  No matter how many times they try to insist the sins of the world are because of those rascally Protestants, and the Catholics Church is really, really super swell and never did the really bad things, the non-Christian world isn't buying it.  As a non-Christian myself, I initially bought into the whole 'religion bad/not religion good' song and dance, and along with most folks I knew, saw the Catholic Church as the epitome of everything that was bad in religion rolled into one.  It would be better for Catholics to stop hammering Protestantism  and realize when they do, it only hurts the Christian witness to a non-Christian world, and it doesn't do a damn thing to change the idea that if religion sucks, and Christianity really sucks, there is nothing that sucks more than the Catholic Church. Read the article.  It's a nice bit of 'water is wet' journalism, but it is something that would strike others as strange and far fetched.  Such is the depths to which the modern prejudice has sunk.

Well done Pope Benedict

Looks like Pope Benedict has called BS what it is.  One of the lamest modern narratives, vigorously endorsed by so many modern atheists, is that religion is the primary cause of evil in history, that most evil can be traced to religion, and that atheists never, ever do bad things in the name of atheism (which some insist doesn't even really exist as a thing - but we'll laugh at that some other time).  That Bill Maher can use this in his regular bilge is one thing.  I expect someone like Maher to say that if atheists did something bad in the name of secularism, it must be because they treated their secularism like religion.  That's Bill Maher.  It's also the bedrock of any bigotry.  Since Black men are obviously always violent, so the rationale went, the absence of evidence had no bearing on his obvious guilt.  It is a time honored way of maintaining prejudice in the face of ugly realities; realities such as the deplorable track record of post-Christian and secular philosophies over the last hundred years or so.

So it's nice to see the Pope step up to the plate and call it what it is.  I would have liked him to comment on the fact that the acceptance of this in our esteemed institutions of higher learning teaches us 1) that bigotry is alive and well and endorsed by the best and brilliant in our society today, and 2) it may just go to show that all that racism, sexism, bigotry and discrimination of old wasn't always at the hands of ignorant religious yokels, but may well have been advocated in the halls of academia then, just as it is today.

We've lost one from the pro Protestant Clergy Conversion to Catholicism team

Prayers would be appreciated.  These last two days have been a whirlwind of troubles.  At this point, we've been holding our lives together with string and tape, and it's beginning to show.  Our house needs several significant repairs that we are unable to afford.  Yesterday, our hot water heater began to make sounds it's never made before.  We just got our van taken care of relative to getting its transmission fixed when lo and behold, now our car is making strange and frightening noises.  Added to this, it must have been the week for jobs to send out rejection letters to all those who have applied, for we've been hit mercilessly with one letter after another.  Our problem is very simple.  Our age and salary requirements while lacking recent technical skills for a workplace increasingly impatient with those who lack particular technical skills.  And because we lost so much of our nest egg coming into the Catholic Church to begin with, we've been just ahead of the boulder in a host of things.  Today marks the one year anniversary when my wife's position, as well as hundreds of others, was cut by a computer program in the corporate offices in New York City.  Today, she found out, another round of firings and lay offs was divide out to the offices, including two friends she had who survived last year's round.  It must be the modern substitute for the old Christmas bonus.

So, with no money coming in, losing money by the thousands, almost nothing left in savings, a dilapidated home in need of repairs and a car now that is starting to make noise  it's easy to see where some could begin to question certain life decisions.  Up until now, the vote has been in the majority that becoming Catholic was the right thing to do.  In the wake of this, however, I lost an ally as yet another family member has now begun to question the logic and wisdom.  It didn't help that I sent a very personal appeal to the diocesan offices and the office for human resources, explaining our position and plight, and seeking some sort of direction or help in getting our life down the right path, only to get a response telling us, in so many words, sorry about our luck.

Of course, I try to explain and remind folks that it isn't like Protestant ministry was without its problems or stresses or difficulties.  But the response is 'yes, it was tough, stressful, difficult, time consuming, and all of those thousand things.  But it was also fulfilling, purposeful,  meaningful, and above else, a steady paycheck with benefits and retirement.'  That is tough to overcome.  I'm still holding out hope that something - anything - turns around.  I've been applying for baggage handlers and mail clerks   My work history and income needs, however, continue to be a problem, if for no other reason than they see what I made in the past, and (rightly) figure I will jump at the first chance for something else, especially with our oldest poised to go to a college we are hell and gone from helping with.

So if there are any rich Catholics out there, feel free.  But seriously, more than just getting fish from folks, all we really want is a chance to fish ourselves.  We'll do the fishing, the gutting, the cleaning.  Heck, we'll provide the boat.  We just want something to help stabilize our family so that those young ones don't see our conversion to Catholicism as the moment our life went to hell, and so that those outside who were skeptical about the Catholic Church and our conversion to it don't feel vindicated that it is just a giant bureaucracy after all.  We so appreciate those loving Christ-filled Catholics who have stepped up to the plate and generously kept us alive thus far, but it can't continue, and likely won't.  We really need someone to step up and give my wife, or I, a chance to get started in a career, even if it takes some added education and training in the meantime.  Homelessness, after all, is a bad evangelistic witness.

Today is the anniversary of the attack on Pearl Harbor

For what it's worth.  I posted on the attack here and here, and perhaps even here.  I dunno.  I just can't bring up another huge post since it's barely mentioned at this point in America's life.  Maybe things just fade into memory, and then beyond memory, no matter how big you think the event happens to be.  I've seen a smattering of articles or stories reflecting on that day so long ago, like this one.  Mostly we've just moved on.  Growing up, I always considered this the breaking point between the old world and the new.  It was the dividing line.  Up until that morning of December 7, the world was still old.  Things were the way they were and always had been.  A person born in 1920 lived in a world, despite industrialization and modernization, closer to the world of Jesus than a person born in 1950.  But when the US came into the conflict, it propelled everything forward.  The arms race was on.  The rush to out advance the other side was on.  Everyone who was anyone was scrambling for new technologies, new weapons, new logistics.  By the time the ashes settled on Nagasaki, the world that emerged was, for better or worse, the one in which we now live.

Anyway, a hat tip and a prayer to those who died that day, and to those who rose up to fight the evils of that particular darkness.  Thank you boys. We've lost that spirit and that grit.  Perhaps America is no longer worth defending.  Maybe the critics are right, and the only reason there are problems in the world is because America has always caused them.  But on that day, people thought America was worth defending.  And on that day, Japan thought America was worth disabling.  It's ironic in some ways, that the America forgetting this day, the America no longer able to rally together for a common cause, is exactly what Japan thought it was up against.  In some ways, post-9/11 America is everything Japan had hoped we would be.

As the first bombs fall, the close of an historical era as the world lurches into modernity

I am not a Charles Thomas!

I don't know why, but the name on my blog is showing up as one Charles Thomas, esquire.  I'm not Charles Thomas, nor do I play one on TV.  I can't figure for the life of me why it's showing up like that, or where it came from.  Until I do, know that my unsolicited nom de plume is CT, until I get it fixed.  This probably goes hand in hand with the sudden wave of spam comments that are making it past the filter.  Oh well.  Charles Thomas, at your service (a little Hobbit talk there).

On my Birthday

I have places to go and people to see, or at least I get to spend an evening tuning out the troubling world and focusing on my so cool family.  In addition to a couple nice gifts (including an old video game Sonic, that I used to play all those years ago when we was fab), a homemade card, and a specially wrapped pencil courtesy of my youngest, my boys also pulled together and got me a small, leather bound pocket copy of The Hobbit.  Including artwork by Tolkien himself.  How cool was that?  After homemade cherry pie by request, my 8th grader suggested we read The Hobbit together as a family   Since we have enough copies of the book, each of us will have a copy, and parts have been divvied out.  The lack of female parts relegated my wife to the sort of character parts that Scout would understand.  I get to be the narrator and Gandalf (naturally), plus a later appearance as Bard.  The boys will divide everything else, with my wife handling the poems and songs. So after watching the classic How the Grinch Stole Christmas with our youngest, once he's in bed, we're going to dive into our own family rendition of The Hobbit, in anticipation of the upcoming Jackson films.

FWIW, if you're ever itching to dine on appropriate hobbit fare, you might want to try this little gem of a website.  It contains references to the foods mentioned in The Hobbit, as well as appropriate recipes.  Yum. And now, it's there and back again and as I bid all a goodnight.  TTFN.

A conversion story complements of St. Augustine

Thomas McDonald is kicking around St. Augustine.  The first post is here.  But this one caught my eye.  It's a tale of his journey back to Catholicism.  Me?  I was brought up in a pseudo-religious household.  But the surroundings were very much American-Protestant.  By the time I left, I embraced agnosticism only to give some intellectual muscle to my unbelief  which was really unbelief for convenience sake.  My own journey to the Faith was a hodgepodge of intellectual reflection, study, a few common sense hunches, a couple experiences, the witness of a few believers  and just general distastes for the modern secularism that I tried so hard to fit in with.  In the process, I came to a few conclusions, and I can't help but notice how often converts to the Faith, particularly that expressed through the Catholic Church, share certain experiences.  I was particularly thinking of this:

"Submission of the will and intellect is what the Church calls for on its central elements of dogma. Modern ears hear that as simple tyranny, because, of course, in our few decades of life experience we know far better than the inherited wisdom of ages as guided by the Third Person of the Holy Trinity working through the Church. You don’t really know much until you grasp the enormity of all you do not–indeed, all you cannot–know as one mortal living a circumscribed and brief life. That’s the great lie of the modern world: I am my own man! I am self-invented! I can figure it all out! I took a class!" (emphasis mine)

I realized that, too.  And to this day, I have the strong belief that we are a generation far less educated than we would care to admit.  We took Western Civ. 101, so we believe we know everything about European history.  We had to take Biology Intro 100, so naturally we are experts at the entire discipline of biological sciences.  Added to the fact that Google can make anyone sound smarter than they are, and I wonder how many decisions on what to believe are based on sound reasoning and research, and how many are based on the idea that somewhere, at some point, in some place in time, I took a class.

Goodbye Enterprise

You and the America you represented so well will be missed.  Sad to see it going that way.

Six Tolkien Scenes that others did better than Peter Jackson

With Jackson's upcoming The Hobbit, everyone is rushing about wondering what Jackson will do with Tolkien's original Middle Earth saga.  If the The Hobbit is like Jackson's first go round, there will be much hashing and trashing of any previous attempts to bring Tolkien's delightful children's book to the big screen.  That means, mostly, it will be a hash fest of the Rankin/Bass cartoon special from 1977.

I was introduced to Tolkien through that special, and later when I read the book, I was amazed at how faithful the little TV cartoon actually was to the source material .  At no point did I have to wonder where the book went wrong.  Sure, things were missing.  But notably, nothing had been added.  Except for some strange animation choices due to the animation work at the Japanese studios, I've always held the animated special in high regards, and still consider it the most faithful adaptation of all Tolkien's works, Jackson's attempt included.  Oh, and I adore the songs, and consider the recited version of the Dwarve's lamentation over the fall of the Lonely Mountain to Smaug, narrated by the great John Huston and Hans Conried, to be one of the artistic high points of any filmed version of any of Tolkien's works.

Still, the modern Internet tendency of 'everything before 1992 sucked, isn't everything since 1992 so cool?' will no doubt play up the comparisons with the release of Jackson's The Hobbit in a couple days.  This is in keeping with that post-Jackson fashionable trend to trash and hash every previous attempt at bringing Tolkien's works to life.  I can't help but notice, however, that the critics who weep over Rankin/Bass's removal of Beorn or the Arkenstone, seem to overlook the myriad additions, plot holes, post-modernizing of the characters and general dumbing down of Jackson's versions.  Oh, there was plenty that was good and watchable, especially at the beginning (dismissing Arwen, Warrior Elf Princess), but for every profound Tolkien dialogue or cinimatic wonder of Jackson's trilogy, we were beset with surfing elves and belching dwarves.

So in thinking of what the upcoming three part movie series based on The Hobbit will be like, I'm reminded that each and every attempt to adapt Tolkien's works has had some hits and misses. And in all due respect to Jackson fans, those hits were sometimes well beyond anything that Jackson, with all his superficial over-directing of CGI battles scenes, was able to overcome.  Naturally I can't speak to upcoming The Hobbit, but based on his first three Tolkien films, the following are scenes that he filmed, but were done much better by previous attempts, at least IMHO.

The Flight to the Ford: The appeal to feminist sensitivities by adding Arwen, Warrior Princess to the mix was one of the glaring assaults on the story.  No movie has to stay in line with the book, and some of the greatest movies of all time are hell and gone from the original source material.  But the changes have to be for the better.  The imposition of Arwen created a story line that was later reworked, leaving gaps and portions of the movies that seemed to be lacking at best.  In Fellowship, Arwen shows up to flex her feminist muscles, outshining a bumbling Aragorn, and proudly boasting that she, herself, has no fear of those pesky Black Riders (prompting my boys to ask why she wasn't included in the Fellowship if she's the only person in Middle Earth they don't seem to scare).  Jackson's slice-and-dice editing of the chase, with the cumbersome Ringwraiths-as-living-tanks, left me wondering what was happening, only hoping the scene ended soon before any more embarrassing interpolations.  Next to this, while Bakshi suffers from the famous psychedelic sequences of vanishing landscapes, once those fade, the chase itself is far more exhilarating than the sliced up version of Jackson.  And having Arwen, Warrior Princess make the bold stand for an out-cold Frodo, simply added to the ongoing question of just who has what qualities in the story worth celebrating?  Frodo, in Bakshi and the books, has a resiliency that will bear him through many ordeals in the coming months.  Here, he never even makes it, and wouldn't have had it not been for a person able to overcome all odds who was, strangely, not so much as invited to come along with the Fellowship (yes, I know Jackson had other heroic plans for her, and their thankful omission only makes her role in Fellowship seem that much more awkward).

The Inn at Bree: Like so much of Jackson's work, he seems almost bothered with having to worry about dialogue, and wants everything to involve some form of physical altercation, fighting, tumbling, belching, or something.  Bakshi shined here more than most of the rest of his animated movie.  Again, excepting the strange rotoscope technology, the interactions in the tavern, Frodo's song and dance, the introduction and interplay with Butterbur, the introduction of Strider - all of these brought forth the spirit and heart of the books, and gave great introductions to the character of Aragorn.  Jackson, on the other hand, can't help but rely on quick cut and paste editing, fast paced scene shifting, rushed dialogue, and the usual 'nobody speaks that they aren't threatening someone' tendency of his films.  While some parts hint of potential quality (I'm thinking of the eerie closeup of Strider as he smokes his pipe and observes the hobbits), the later parts all melt into convoluted imagery, with a very strange appearance by the Black Riders, rushing by a bedridden Butterbur.  In Bakshi, the scenes are similarly ordered, but the menace of the Black Riders is greater, the tension thicker, and the wisdom and intensity of Strider is better established because Bakshi is willing to let the dialogue do the heavy lifting.  It's not for no reason that when I read The Fellowship of the Ring, my mind conjures the Indianesque nature-ranger of Bakshi, and not the brooding, leather and mail draped Mortenson.  On a side note, Aragorn's smack down of Butterburr as nothing other than a 'fat innkeeper who only knows his name because people shout it at him all day', which demonstrates the urgency of the mission, was again sorely missing from Jackson's film, which preferred Jackson's own contributions, such as the ever-famous 'let's hunt some orc!'

The suffering of Theoden: Nowhere was Jackson's lack of depth as a story teller more apparent than his dealing with Theoden's mental enslavement to the wiles of Grima Wormtongue.  Not that the actors were to blame, they did what they could with the material at hand.  But to anyone who has read the books, it's clear that Theoden is not captured by some satanic possession spell, but by the sweet deceptions of Saramon through his agent Wormtongue.  Just how to show this?  For the briefness of the scene, Bakshi shows it could be done as it was intended: psychological abuse and exploitation of an old man feeling the crushing weight of a world spinning wildly out of control.  Instead, what we get with Jackson is a look of demonic possession so ripe with The Exorcist ripoffs that I was waiting for Bernard Hill to spit pea soup.  Like his battle of the two wizards in Fellowship, the over-the-top drama of Gandalf cleansing him made Max Von Sydow that much more appreciated.  A perfect example of Jackson being a mile wide and an inch deep when it comes to unpacking profound insights.

Gandalf and the Witch King: Rankin/Bass wins this one easily. Once again, a scene filled with drama and intensity by virtue of masterful storytelling is compromised by Jackson's belief that if there isn't physical brawling involved with heavy CGI effects, it must be dull.  The final confrontation between the Witch King and Gandalf at the gates of Minas Tirith is one of great dramatic high points in Tolkien's works.  After the mega-ram Grond decimates that which had never been broken, all men of sound mind and common sense flee for their lives, as a being of the supernatural, who is reputed to be invulnerable,  marches triumphantly to seize his prize.  Pippin witnesses the event, and notices how small and bent Gandalf appears before the terror of the Nazgul Lord.  With mockery, the Witch King challenges Gandalf, and Gandalf, taken aback by the otherworldly appearance of his opponent, looks to be making peace with his maker when, all of a sudden, a cock crows.  Invoking images of another rooster whose crowing shamed the a delinquent apostle, this noise breaks the dread of the darkness, and causes the Witch King to realize that a new threat to his victory has just arrived.  Jackson, however, feels it must all boil down to a physical duking it out by the two parties, leaving us missing what could have been, especially after a previous scene where Jackson does shine by allowing Gandalf to comfort Pippin about what lies beyond this life.

Eowyn and the Witch King: If Rankin/Bass outdid Jackson with their version of Gandalf's encounter with the Witch King, they obliterated Jackson when it came to the the passing of the Witch King at the hands of Eoywn.  Already Tolkien has established that the Witch King is nigh on unbeatable, and R/B did a nice job of reinforcing this with an introduction to the character in its earlier battle scenes, making sure each kid watching understands that this being is invulnerable, and that no living man can hurt it in any way.  This is one of the truly great scenes in LoTR, and when I first read it ages ago, it knocked my shoes off.  This is also a great slam against moderns and post-moderns who accuse Tolkien's works of being sexists for not beating men down and elevating the superiority of women.  There she is, neglected Eowyn, relegated to the kitchen by her uncle-king, but sneaking into battle to prove her worth.  In the book, her identity is hidden - though careful readers may guess something is amiss with the sudden introduction of the character Dernhelm.  In Rankin/Bass, she is plopped before the viewers with little fanfare, but a brief explanation of her identity courtesy of Merry.   Jackson has plenty of time to introduce the struggling warrior wannabe, but in typical Jackson form, he concludes his audience won't get it unless he clubs them over the head and reveals her identity from the get go.  So it's no surprise who she is at the point of the battle.

When the confrontation finally arrives, you have some of the best writing that came from Tolkien's pen.  Theoden is left for dead, all the bravest warriors fleeing the terror of the Nazgul - except Eowyn.  As she stands between the creature and her kin, she is mocked then threatened by the otherworldly menace.   But she holds her ground.  And Rankin/Bass allows the scene to unfold as Tolkien wrote it, including some of the actual verbiage of the parties.  "Foul Dwimmerlaik" she calls him (that awesome phrase is kept in Rankin/Bass's version), and defies his threats.  He then finally explains why opposition is futile, for no living man can harm him.  At that point she reveals her identity and her gender.  And in a fabulous moment in the book, shown well in the cartoon, the Nazgul Lord, nightmare of humanity, second in command of all evil, pauses 'as if in sudden doubt.'  Just the idea that this ancient force of darkness is left befuddled by a sudden spin on an accepted prophecy - wow!  And yet Jackson cannot allow a good battle scene to be broken by boring dialogue.  His audience already knows who she is, and when the Witch King is finally brought to his knees (literally), Eowyn only informs him of her gender as if to rub it in - she'd already won. It accomplishes nothing but a flicking of a middle finger before finishing the job.  Plus, with the directing and attitude, you could imagine her adding some modern day colloquialism just to add punch in the great tradition of 'Let's hunt some orc'.

In all, not necessarily the worst job Jackson did, it's just that Rankin/Bass did it so much better.

The Council of Elrond: The presence of Bakshi's Elrond, a someone nondescript figure, pours a bit of water on what is otherwise a good presentation of the all important Council of Elrond.  The dialogue is crisp, and contains all that is needed in order to help the audience grasp what is happening, who is in the Fellowship, and why.  Jackson's Council is not so much lacking as it is filled with too much.  Once again, Jackson makes it clear that he is uncomfortable allowing the talent of the actors to carry a scene.  He feels he must add action, Action, ACTION!  Even a council, where leaders of the various free peoples of Middle Earth have gathered to discuss the fate of the world, is not immune to the need to inject physical action, fights and brawls, and confusing editing and camera work.  The audience still knows what is going on, it's just that Bakshi showed that Jackson could have accomplished the same thing better, even if it involved actors delivering their lines, and nothing more.

Sometimes the scenes Jackson filmed were six of one, half dozen of the other.  Both journeys portrayed by Jackson and Bakshi had their merits, though Bakshi did better keeping things within the characters, while Jackson's tendency to portray the young as hip to things and the old as losing it, has Gandalf less the bold leader as often as the grumbling geezer who has to wait for others to solve his problems (see the puzzle at the entrance to the Mines of Moria).

To be sure, there were some places Jackson shined when he altered the material, most noticeably the destruction of the ring sequence, showing the sudden realization of the Fellowship regarding Frodo and Sam's plight in the midst of the destruction, immediately before the movie switches to two little figures shown running for their lives through a collapsing Mount Doom.  And this isn't to say the Rankin/Bass or Bakshi versions didn't have their own problems.  Sure they did.  But again, if you dismiss those problems, as fans of Jackson are so quick to dismiss his, then they were great films, too.  The point is, no attempt to bring Tolkien to the screen hasn't been without its problems. A plight not exactly confined to Tolkien's books either. There is going to be something that has to go.  The best version so far, Rankin/Bass's 1977 animated The Hobbit, is good at keeping with the heart of the story, keeping basic elements of Tolkien-fare within the production, and not adding things that become cringe worthy after the first viewings.  We'll see how Jackson does in a few days.