It's only eleventy days until Hollywood's High Holy Night. If you aren't familiar with "eleventy" think back to The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001).
That whole Oscar winning trilogy kicks off with the celebration of Bilbo Baggins eleventy-firth birthday or 111th birthday in human years. Eleventy can refer to 110 or numbers much larger; one stops counting after awhile...
And speaking of the end of counting, Amazon has spent nearly $250 million for the rights to The Lord of the Rings as a TV series with a multi-season commitment up front. That's $250 before a single dime has been spent on coming up with a concept, writing a script, or hiring actors or anything. Are Amazon's coffers bottomless? Isn't this insanity with 6 lengthy movies already in the can.
Isn't it absolutely crazy that The Fellowship of the Ring and Moulin Rouge!, both of which you still hear people talk about regularly, lost the Oscar to A Beautiful Mind? What a travesty! (The other nominees were In the Bedroom and Gosford Park, both fine films though less frequently referenced).
The first installment of Peter Jackson's game-changing trilogy won four Oscars: cinematography, score, makeup and visual effects. It basically split the tech category spoils with Baz Luhrmann's Moulin Rouge! and Ridley Scott's Black Hawk Down.
What's your strongest memory of that Oscar year? How many statues do you think Middle Earth should have won that year?