lining up for Two Towers

So I saw Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers yesterday! Don't worry, no spoilers in this Blatherings entry. If you've seen the movie and want to discuss it, please do visit this Two Towers thread (be prepared for spoilers!) that Allison's set up on the Tolkien boards.

As I've mentioned before, I opted for the first day showing instead of the midnight showing because I wanted to stay conscious through the movie, and I generally go to bed around 10 or 10:30 pm; I am definitely more of a morning than night person. Jeff and I had also been up much of the night before, waiting in the hospital for the birth of my new nephew.

Jeff, Parki, DavidB and I met in front of the Paramount theatre around 8 a.m. yesterday morning to line up for the 11:40 a.m. showing. No one was lined up yet, so we went for breakfast at Shopsy's, came back to find three people in line.





One of the main reasons I enjoy seeing a movie with an opening day crowd is the whole lining up experience. Let me clarify: normally I hate lines. Lining up for hours for a much-anticipated event on opening day is different. There's a frenzied excitement in the air, a knowledge that we're all there suffering (it was pretty cold!) for a common cause, and that cause is a movie we've been looking forward to for an entire year. The guy at the front of the line told me he had been looking forward to it since he was five. :-)





Within a few minutes of breaking out our camp chairs and settling in line, we found ourselves chatting to the people ahead of us as if we had already met. Here are the two guys who were at the front of the line:





The fellow on the left knew a LOT about Tolkien, maybe even as much as or more than our friend DavidB. He had a cool t-shirt which he had hand-screened himself, with something written in Elvish or another Tolkien language (sorry, I forget which one). I immediately challenged his cool shirt with MY cool Weta Eye of Sauron t-shirt, of course!





While we were waiting, a familiar-looking fellow visited with us (he was waiting further back in line). He was someone we had chatted with LAST year while we were waiting in line for Fellowship of the Ring! Here's a photo I took in last year's line; Ben's the one in the middle, with the cloak. You can see a photo taken yesterday at the top of today's Blathering.

"You're the Waiting For Frodo people, aren't you?" he asked. He asked if we had brought a compilation of the Waiting For Frodo comic strips again, which we had passed around in line last year. Unfortunately I didn't.

JBR (Jeff's dad) and Lindsay joined us around 9:30 a.m. Around 10 a.m., the media started trolling the line for interviews. I was interviewed by CFRB radio, but opted out of a CITY-TV interview because I was feeling shy. They interviewed Ben and also the guy with the hand-screened Tolkien t-shirt, as well as others in line. The guy doing the interviewing looked nothing like CITY-TV's Windy Wendy in my comic strip.

"Are you skipping school to be here?" I heard the CITY-TV guy asking Ben (he's a high school student). I didn't hear his answer. :-)





The theatre let us in about fifteen minutes before official box office opening time. Unfortunately because of an e-mail mix-up, Lindsay hadn't bought his ticket yet and found out that the showing was sold out. :-( He did get into the 12:20 showing, however.

There was a mad rush for seats, but we managed to get great ones near the centre of the theatre. How I wish we had a more civilized movie seating system, like the one in Britain where you can buy specific seats instead of general admission. But then we'd miss out on the opening day line-up, wouldn't we? ScottM and his girlfriend's two daughters arrived after we found our seats.





I don't usually sit through the ending credits of movies unless I've especially enjoy the movie. I've sat through the end credits in the theatre pretty much every time I've seen a Lord of the Rings movie (I saw the first movie seven times in the theatre). Partly because I want to cheer for Shane, but also because I figure it's the least I can do in appreciation of all the hard work that those involved in the project put into a movie that I got so much pleasure out of.

For those interested, I've set up a list of people who have e-mailed to let me know they've stayed through to the end of the movie to cheer for Shane McEwan, whose credit as Systems Manager appears in the left-hand column under Weta Digital. Great to see all the different geographic locations, including Sweden, Finland, England, New Zealand, and Norway. Only three from Canada so far: my group yesterday, a couple from Quebec who saw it in French, and a couple in Yellowknife. Some say they cheer for Evan Fraser as well (a coworker of Shane's who recently appeared in Rosie's travel photos), some say they've practically been the only one in the theatre after everyone else has left, some say they've had to explain to the others in the crowd why they're clapping at that particular spot in the credits.

As I mentioned at the beginning, I'm not going to discuss The Two Towers here for fear of giving away spoilers, but I will say that I LOVED this movie. I've already made plans to see it twice more over the holidays, and probably at least several times after that.

Anything to shorten the wait until Return of the King next December. :-)





Links/News:

One year ago, I was in line to see Fellowship of the Ring! (also photos)

Figwit Lives: a pretty funny site about a non-speaking character that appears in the first Lord of the Rings movie. Must work this into my Waiting For Frodo strip somehow. Thanks to Robin (ElectricLandlady) for letting me know about this link.

The Toronto Paramount line party had fun last night, according to one of its organizers. Toronto Star article about them here.

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Today's Blatherpics:

	Me and Ben.
	The line-up at 9 a.m.
	The two guys at the front of the line. The guy on the right said he hadn't read Lord of the Rings yet.
	Line-up at the Paramount about an hour and a half before the movie.
	JBR (Jeff's dad), Lindsay, Parki.
	DavidB.
	Jeff, playing with Parki's Christmas present.
	Movie line-up shortly before they let us into the theatre.