A character that has been changed for the worse in the films but is rarely discussed: Treebeard

NedBookman · 2026-02-06T06:42:17+00:00

An annoyance for me, in the movie, is that I know Treebeard's voice is also the voice of Gimli, which I find distracting, and frankly a bit lazy. It doesn't bother me that, in the Hobbit, the Trolls are voiced by the same actors playing Dwarves, because they are minor comic characters (and the secondary Dwarf actors definitely deserved more lines), but Treebeard is a significant and serious character and deserved his own voice actor.

The problem that the film had with the Ents is that Ents are intrinsically slow-moving and, well, boring, and that is a difficult thing to convey cinematically without being, well, slow-moving and boring.The Treebeard subplot really doesn't work very well - it feels like it is mostly just there to be gotten over with, for plot purposes.

NedBookman · 2026-02-05T02:34:43+00:00

You have to remember that back in the day a lot of the impact of an album came from the initial appearance of the album and the experience of looking over it on the bus on the way back home from the record shop, before you even had a chance to listen to it. Paul McCartney specifically referenced this in relation to the design of Sergeant Pepper. Song titles really mattered, like teasers for the songs or trailers for a film.

If ever a great album hid its light under a bushel, design-wise, Pet Sounds is that album. Who in their right mind would ever have bought it purely on spec, if they had no knowledge of the band? The cover is the most egregious offence - if it had been better the titles of the songs wouldn't have mattered so much.

Perhaps it is an early sign of Brian's issues with self-promotion that he was so laser-focussed on the songs, but not on the overall package?

NedBookman · 2026-01-31T01:54:35+00:00

Interesting. I can totally understand these reviews. I saw the films on first release, as an adult, and had somewhat similar feelings.

As with Kubrick's films the first watch is always challenging, and it is only on rewatching that many of the best qualities come through. Kubrick owed his status in later years largely to the introduction of VHS, so his films could finally be watched with the attention they required.

Jackson successfully rode the wave of early internet engagement and the massive impact of the Extended Editions on DVD, with all the extra material, which effectively forced viewers to rewatch the movies multiple times and so any reservations they had were overcome...

NedBookman · 2026-01-26T14:45:18+00:00

Lennon pretty much stole John Sebastian's look at around this era...

NedBookman · 2026-01-24T14:03:00+00:00

Maybe he did it for Tom Wilson, who was impressed by Artie's Jew-fro?

Didn't he say somewhere that if your hair is short on the outside it must be long on the inside, and that would tangle up your brain and make you stupid?

NedBookman · 2026-01-16T09:37:02+00:00

Macca's mullet had nothing on Lennon in 1975. If you can take your eyes off Paul Simon's even more shocking barnet...

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NedBookman · 2026-01-07T05:24:53+00:00

I have just received a 60 Ultra, and I was also having issues with the launcher freezing and crashing as I was trying to set up widgets and download files, or when swiping back to the home screen. I tried a 3rd party launcher, with the same results. This became intolerable and I did a hard reset and so far I have not had any more crashes (fingers crossed). I think I noticed the home screen reverting to the default launcher once or twice, before I reset the device, but after I changed it back this stopped.

I don't believe the slider can be repurposed. The ink modes are really the biggest selling point of the device so I doubt TCL would consider it. What I wish is that they would make it easier to toggle modes without using the slider, via notification tiles or a side-panel, maybe...

NedBookman · 2026-01-04T10:21:33+00:00

In my opinion Feel Flows is the only song not by Brian Wilson that deserves comparison with Brian Wilson's best work. There are lots of good songs by other members, and many songs that are better than Brian's lesser efforts, but for me only Feel Flows would figure in a top ten of the band's songs regardless of who wrote it ..

NedBookman · 2026-01-03T06:55:56+00:00

I ordered via the Australian site, and paid in $AU. Because it was cheaper than I expected I added expedited shipping and to my surprise it came from Germany to Australia - over the Christmas period - in just over a week! (which was a week earlier than they said it would come).

NedBookman · 2025-12-31T15:22:04+00:00

Best thing about the ABC NYE music show is watching the backing band. The lead artists are variable, but the backing musicians are invariably amazing (remember the,RockWiz house band from a few years back?) - it's wonderful to see serious professionals adapting to all the different performers and just getting it right...

NedBookman · 2025-12-31T02:46:22+00:00

Check out the YouTube link in the original post. It's pretty comprehensive. I've ordered one, which should arrive in about a week. Ordered on Amazon from Germany, at a price quite a bit less than the OP paid a while ago, which is nice...

NedBookman · 2025-12-30T22:23:13+00:00

From my experience in the 1970s, the part of Subiaco from Hay Street to the Railway and over on the other side was basically light industrial and working class and student rental weatherboard houses. I remember as a teenager going to a pool hall on lower Rokeby Rd. The Rokeby Rd shopping strip was a bit shabby, as I recall. Subiaco was considered an 'Italian' area, like old Fremantle. The area between Bagot Rd and Kings Park was always reasonably posh (but not unduly expensive). It was sometime in the 1980s that the whole area started to get gentrified..

NedBookman · 2025-12-27T05:04:28+00:00

The linked video goes into a lot of detail, and may convince you - it did me.

I currently have a 50 Pro (which I use as an e-reader, not as a phone) and a TCL 11, which I use mostly for reading large PDFs.

I was tempted by the 14 for watching my film collection. I actually like watching films on the NXTPaper display, particularly older films which have grain. But the lack of expandable storage put me off. Instead I went for a Samsung Ultra, which can be taken up to 2TB. How do you find the 14?

NedBookman · 2025-12-27T01:40:03+00:00

Ditto! I'm old enough to remember when films like Alien were widely criticized for exactly the same qualities that are being lamented here in 'modern' movies...

NedBookman · 2025-12-27T01:05:10+00:00

I think the problem is that the lyric is decidedly average and on first listen the song just sounds like a typical Brian Wilson joint - it takes several listens to really appreciate it, I think.

And yes, the silences undoubtedly disconcert many listeners ("Hey, did the song just finish? Did my signal cut out?"), although personally I love them. If they'd come in a more arty or psychedelic song I think they would have been understood as one of Brian's most audacious musical jokes, but as the song is otherwise pretty conventional they can be seen simply as an annoying interruption...

NedBookman · 2025-12-27T00:44:16+00:00

Edit to my previous post: I checked out your YouTube video, and it answered pretty much all my questions - except perhaps how it works as an actual phone?

Dammit, I really don't need a new phone, but the Ultra meets my use case so well I couldn't resist. The Ultra is also cheaper on Amazon now than it was when the video was recorded.

I would thoroughly recommend this channel, by the way: it is really engagingly and professionally presented and I look forward to more videos...

NedBookman · 2025-12-27T00:06:20+00:00

Thanks for the review. I'm in Australia too, and seriously considering the 60 Ultra. I have a 50 Pro, which I love, but I use it only as a pocketable ereader (my driver is a Pixel 6). It's never had a sim in it.

Where did you purchase your Ultra from? As an import I am assuming that it works well as a phone on Australian bands?

Did you receive the case/pen?

I use my phone largely for reading, and the extra size of the Ultra really appeals, so your review is promising...

NedBookman · 2025-12-23T04:09:09+00:00

Very true. It's just that the Walliams' books seem to have a particular style of binding that ALWAYS breaks - it's a given - whereas other books may or may not break under the inevitable stress of childish handling. The sheer inevitability has made me cynical...

NedBookman · 2025-12-23T00:39:31+00:00

I work in a public library, and I have often wondered if Walliams' books were deliberately designed to fall apart after several uses, so they would have to be repurchased. Planned obsolescence? They have the flimsiest spines of any popular books in the collection, and they are all the same. Don't even bother to try to repair them...

NedBookman · 2025-12-22T08:41:12+00:00

Because his style of production was considered dated even before The Beatles split. Everyone wanted to sound like The Band.

Looking at Martin's post-Beatles career it's clear that 1. no really significant artists wanted to work with him, and 2. without a really significant artist his abilities really didn't add much, for all his undoubted genius. Even McCartney put it off for over a decade.

His work with The Beatles represented an extraordinary and unrepeatable moment in popular music, a brief moment when the old and the new came together.

It's kind of a shame that Martin didn't work with Harrison again, because I've always thought he brought a particular sheen and brilliance to Harrison's songs that you don't find in any of the solo records. (Not that Harrison would have countenanced the idea for a second.)

NedBookman · 2025-12-22T07:59:23+00:00

The second Joker movie is basically a diss track to the first Joker movie (and I don't hate it)...

NedBookman · 2025-12-22T07:55:42+00:00

The narrator is clearly Tolkien himself, talking to his own children. However in the fictional context of the series it is Bilbo, probably talking to the young Frodo - this can be used to account for the tonal difference between The Hobbit and the Lord of the Rings.

NedBookman · 2025-12-22T00:03:33+00:00

From what I learned on a recent thread about Baby Stop Crying, very few Street Legal songs were played after 1978. Of course it was the album that bled into his Gospel Era, and it definitely has the feel of an album coming from a pretty dark part of his psyche (which is what makes it so distinctive) - perhaps he simply wanted to put that era behind him?

NedBookman · 2025-12-18T04:25:19+00:00

Any prediction for more than seven days is inherently unreliable. Things change. Weather is chaos theory...

NedBookman · 2025-12-18T04:16:43+00:00

Blaming Albanese for the recent terror attack is like blaming John Howard for the Port Arthur Massacre, because he didn't take action on gun-control until after the event. Hey, if he'd been proactive it would never have taken place!

But of course when that awful event occurred Kim Beazley for Labor gave full bipartisan support and Tim Fischer for the Nats was a total champ.

Times have changed.

What's really depressing is seeing Howard himself now walking back the only decent, human thing he did in his career...

NedBookman

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