Wednesday, December 18, 2002

The Day I've Been Dreading.... Well, it's finally happened.  I knew this day would come.  As soon as it was certain that we were making the move to Tunisia, I started anticipating, fearing, dreading this.  In the past year, I've spent a lot of time trying to imagine how I would feel when it arrived.  It may seem like a trivial thing, but it's actually quite painful.  Even sorrowful.  I ache to my core.  The Lord of The Rings: The Two Towers hit U.S. theaters today. The Fellowship of the Ring was probably the greatest movie experience of my life.  Not the best movie I've ever seen, but the one I've enjoyed the most.  I have an abiding love of Tolkien's work, and it came to life in a way I hadn't imagined possible with the first film in the trilogy.  But now we're in Tunisia.  It will be some time before I get to see Towers.  Tunisian theaters seem to run just a tad bit behind in showing major American releases--one local theater here is presently showing Liar, Liar, a Jim Carrey masterpiece that was released initially in 1997.  I'm not kidding. It seems silly to say so, but missing the release of the second (and third) installments of The Lord of the Rings is one of the single biggest sacrifices about living here.  I spent a significant chunk of the morning reading something like 20 reviews of the movie.  They were all unabashedly positive, ranging from "Better than the first" to "The greatest action sequences ever filmed" to "I don't care if Gollum is a CG character--he deserves an Oscar." At least I know the plot like the back of my hand, so I don't have any questions about what happens next--it's not a cliffhanger, strictly speaking.  But this is a sad day here in Tunisia.  2:45:44 PM    Let's hear it. []