I am NOT trying to hijack this thread, but I am a big Tolkien buff. To the best of my knowledge, there is not another female character in LOTR with whom Arwen was combined. There is a _male_ character part of whose role she takes in FOTR (and she steals his horse, Asfaloth), though he appears as himself in the movie as well - Glorfindel. He appears as one of Elrond's advisers in Rivendell.

I am fond of Wagner too, though I prefer to read the story and listen to the instrumental music (except for Tanhauser). Wagner had a knack for driving down into the archetypes of a story and making it a legend.

I like your Bush Shakespeare story. Ha.

Tolkien set out to make a corpus of legends that rivaled the Arthurian but which did not derive from the French tradition. It is amazing...but he succeeded. The power of words.

Jan

point for 'well executed'

Oh, I see. Well, I'll reserve judgment until I have a chance to see the film for myself.

My wife named her son Wyatt after Ellis :)

Rand spellings were Dagny and Rearden... That's awesome. :)

First and middle...with alterations to the spelling. Rand did not put those two together; but, I sure wanted them together for 3/4ths of the book. She certainly lives up to it too...

Your daughter's name is Dagney Reardon?

Is there a link to a recording of John talking about himself and Ayn Rand?

Yes, and it's why not only the torture device but Galt was not "well-executed".

I didn't downvote it, but: The review was intended to be favorable but "with friends like this ...":

"Galt... has been recruiting the top minds of the United States for a place known as Mulligan's Valley (a/k/a Atlantis or Galt's Gulch). It is a place unencumbered by government red tape allowing people to produce what they like based on their own ideas and abilities. In Part II, these 'producers' went on strike from an oppressive crony-based government in favor of a purely capitalistic society." Recruiting only for members in a place that is a different economic society? What happened to recruiting on behalf of the mind on strike against the traditional anti-reason ethics of looters against producers? Most of those who quit in the novel were not recruited and did not go to the valley at all. Most of those who did were there 1 month out of the year.

"As with most government programs in real life, we find the unintended consequences of otherwise well-meaning agencies, turn into fiefdoms of power, bureaucracy and wasted taxpayer money. " Unintended? Well-meaning agencies?

"The movie's theme is about getting government out of the way of the producers to benefit society..." Benefit society? What happened to the moral right of the individual to his own life? And maybe the actual theme of the role of the mind in man's existence is a little more than "getting the government out of the way"?

Has the movie contributed to these conservative rewrites of Atlas Shrugged?

What is the link to that one? (The review not the disgusting 'comments'.)

I think he means the comments under the ios9 review.

+1 for a belly laugh. I'm going to read that.

Not physically. Two of the female characters from the book were made into one for the movie by merging their story lines. Arwen the elf was one of them. For another retold Ring, if you read the various "Nibelungen" stories from the Middle Ages and then contrast them with the most famous modern version from Wagner, you see characters recast, dropped, brought in. The modern (or post modern) _300_ about the Spartans at Thermopylae was another example of a myth retold. Elements changed to fit the telling.

Another example I know is "Shakespeare in the Bush" by Laura Bohannon. She tries to tell the story of Hamlet to some African men, but they cannot accept the unreal elements. "Everyone knows there are no such things as ghosts," they protest. "But, of course, everyone has seen a zombi, so Hamlet's father must have been a zombi."

Jeff Atwater is the continuation of a Republican Party of Florida that exemplifies what is wrong with the Republican Party of the US. All about cronyism.

Is that the complaint? That the torture device was not well-executed? Well, as rockymountainpirate says: you cannot expect such a device to look like something well-put-together when a bunch of incompetent boobs are all you have running things.

The irony to me was that the movie exuded the fervor of a "faith-based" film (as the media and critics like to call them). I credit the combination of producers etc. with a great combined effort that yielded a product enjoyable primarily to people already familiar with Rand and the book...(much like the audience for a "faith-based"film). However, I hope the real mission of the film is to pique the interest of those who have not read the book to read it. As in the majority of cases, the movie is inferior to the book...no surprise...the book can be life-altering to those who would look through the window at the tv monitors following Galt's interruption of Thompson's speech and chant "We want John Galt!". As Galt said himself, we each have our own choice to make. I do not believe one would see the three films and make their choice; but, I do believe they would read the book. I instructed my fifteen year-old daughter (Dagney Reardon (last name)) not to watch the movies until she finished reading the book...ironically, she already lives up to her name without having finished it.

Probably

There are 0 comments showing. Were they purged?

io9 has a 'pleasant' barbed review of AS3...made me think that I had tumbled head-first into a rose bush. At least they agreed (*sarcasm alert*) that John Galt's hair was great.

Jan

I like the review, except for the 'kicking at other supporters of the movie' part. We have to stop doing that.

Jan

Two females become one in LOTR?

Jan

It was a rare treat to hear Aglialoro talk about himself and A.R. I was able to listen to an objectivist speak of himself and his accomplishment. And, as with every production of every nature, Movie, Concert, Ballet, Play, or Revue, I don't care much what so-called critics will say, I'll judge for myself.

Same here.

What comments? I just read the review and underneath it said "0 comments".