We’ve talked about Rankin and Bass’s version of The Hobbit, and you can’t talk about The Hobbit without also talking about The Lord of the Rings. Yeah, I know, it’s been three years since that earlier post, but I don’t like to be rushed. So, today we’re going to talk about about Rankin/Bass’s follow-up, The Return of the King.
“Now hold on,” you may be thinking. “That’s the third Lord of the Rings volume.
A while back I wrote about Ralph Bakshi’s animated adaptation of The Lord of the Rings. I seem to be one of the brave few who actually did enjoy the movie, but mostly because of the few things it got right. Overall, the best I can say about it is that it’s not as bad as people say, but when that’s the best defense of a film one can offer, well, it’s probably not a good movie.
As far as reading goes, the big event of the past couple months is that I have a Kindle Fire HD now. I owned and had mixed feelings about the Kindle 2, but since this one is basically a tablet I’ve been getting more use out of it. I’m still not a fan of e-books, but it is a decent way to conveniently get things that would be difficult otherwise (like French-language books), or things available for free online but that are too long to read comfortably at a computer, like the Vatican’s online library of papal encyclicals.