There's a lot of hoopla these days over Peter Jackson's recent adaption of Tolkein's classic
Rings saga. Frankly, I find the new installments to be long, overdrawn, overdramatic piles of overrated crap. Yes, the special effects are amazing. Yes, some of those actors really look like hobbits, but the films aren't that great. They really aren't. All the critics hate this original animated version from the late 1970s, but it has good pacing, great animation for its time (and it's not bad by today's standards). Better yet, it captures a certain degree of subtlety that the new
Rings misses out on. For example, you see the extent of Bilbo's obsession with having the ring in his gestures and stutterings, not in some freakish Jekyll/Hyde appearance of monster Bilbo. Give this one a chance, really.
--A.Y.