I went to see the first showing of the Lord of the Rings last night at midnight. My friend Stew Katz showed up at 9:30 to get a place in line; I showed up at 10:30 to find him in a group of, maybe 20 people waiting to get in. There were only two costumes in the line — a generic princess and a generic velvet-doubleted SCA guy. I guess Tolkien geeks are mellower than Star Wars geeks.

The movie itself, though, was friggin’ fantastic, if you like big adventure epics. Which I do, so I loved it. Like Harry Potter, its faithfulness to the book (all three hours of it) is both its greatest success and its greatest weakness. I hope it does really well in the theater, so New Line will spend lots of money for post production on the next two movies.