Lavonardo

Richard Linklater’s Dazed And Confused is one of my very favorite films.

The tale of one busy afternoon and evening in a small town in Texas, on the last day of school in 1976 struck me on a chance encounter in Utah, and I’ve been a shameless fanboy of the director ever since.

The cast is filled with new kids in Hollywood. Some of them made it big (Matthew McConaughey, Ben Affleck, Milla Jovovich and Rory Cochrane to name a few), while others never made it to the top again. For example, Jason London was stuck in B-movie land forever after being featured on Aerosmith’s Amazing video.

The plot is indeed just half of a day, a hazing-filled afternoon followed by random wanderings through the dusky town and finally capped in a keg-party at the Moontower. But the day is seen through the eyes of many characters. The viewpoints of jocks, stoners, bitches, cheerleaders, nerds and many others are seamlessly sewn together to a believable canvas of a vastly simpler era. The plot is matched with an effortless rendition of the language of the era – the dialogue never grates, and contains occasional gems worth using thirty-five years later.

The soundtrack is nothing short of awesome (and long enough to be featured on two separately released cds). It includes the expected (Alice Cooper, Kiss, Lynyrd Skynyrd, Sweet) to the era-appropriate-but-forgotten (Peter Frampton, Foghat). However, one key band is sadly omitted – Led Zeppelin who gave the film its name (ultimately Robert Plant refused to allow the song from their first album to be included). Aerosmith’s Sweet Emotion plays during the introduction, but is not featured on the

I was a bit afraid that Two Towers would have turned out to be the proverbial middle volume in a trilogy – a boring romp between the introduction and the climax.

Happily enough that’s not the case. Peter Jackson and his team have managed to create an improved experience for the viewers. The warg-attack (and potential loss of Aragorn) feels tacked on, but most of the alterations fit in better. Some of them have implications beyond this installment, for example Frodo and Sam do not enter Mordor until the third film.

The Two Towers interleaves three main plotlines – Frodo and Sam dragging Gollum towards the east, Merry and Pippin accompanying the slowest moving allies in the realms and the rest of the fellowship in Rohan, first exorcising Saruman’s influence and then putting up a defensive battle against the massing Uruk-Hai from Isengard. The film indeed cuts to a close in the long battle – the forces of the white wizard use technology in many forms, and almost prevail against the traditional weapons employed by the riders of Rohan.

The original cast continues to shine, and the new actors added in this part work alongside seamlessly. Highlights include Brad Dourif as Wormtongue who is Saruman’s voice in the court of Rohan, Bernard Hill as king Theoden who rises to meet the threat, and finally Miranda Otto as Eowyn, his niece forced into duty. Andy Serkis as Gollum has a lot of screentime, and his mo-cap character exceeds the acting chops of most Hollywood talent.

The scenery, full of open vistas of the grasslands and the forest of Fangorn somehow feels a bit disappointing after the variety of grounds visited in Fellowship of the Ring. But that’s hardly a complaint, just a note that not all of New Zealand masquerading as Middle-Earth has been built equal.

Effects retain their greatness. Weta has indeed animated a magnificent Gollum, and their ents or Nazgul on flying beasts are not shabby either. However, the huge hordes of Uruk-Hai are an even greater technical accomplishment. The milling humanoids do not seem like an army of animated clones – the crowd behaves believably and copy&pasting of movements is not at all apparent.

The first movie of the franchise had several deeply emotional highlights – the deaths of Boromir and Gandalf being the top elements. Sadly, there are none such in Two Towers, the battle of Helm’s Deep comes close, but ultimately the mass combat occurs between two mostly faceless armies, the casualties do not include members of the fellowship.

There’s some more included modernisms, the sorest spot being Legolas’ snowboarding down a railing on a shield while dispatching multiple orcs with his bow.

The Two Towers had been significantly improved between its theatrical release and the extended version on dvd. There were plenty of additional and expanded scenes, and even new characters introduced in the disc-version. And as with the release of Fellowship, the easter egg (as scene number n+1 on the first disc) is from MTV movie awards, and done with best possible taste.

The scene has been set for the grand finale, and the trilogy draws to a close in a film of three hours and change in Return of the King.