Camster

I think there was picture of Tyre Nichols in hospital on the BBC at what I can only presume was the family conference. His face was absolutely battered. Officials have said the bodycam footage is horrific.

Just watched the 3rd Episode, enjoyed it. Elendil being a standout, Halbrand clearly ending up as one of the Nazgul. That Warg design though...deary me...looked like Bluey on meth.

Watched both episodes yesterday. In short, not a complete disaster as alot of people were predicting, but also not the greatest show on earth the Amazon exes were probably hoping for. There are always going to be a different cross section of folk watching this show. I'm a die hard Tolkien fan, read all the books, so I'll be watching the series good or bad (hopefully good), if only just to see on screen things I've read about for the last 25 years and only tried to imagine in my head. I can certain see how the episodes could come across as boring to some, I'm just delighted to see representations of Moria, Lindon etc so I was engaged throughout. Things I liked, acting of Galadriel and Celebrimbor, how it looks, the score, representation of the Orcs and (surprisingly!!) the Harfoots, infact most of the made up elements, Arondir etc I thought were actually pretty good. Small bits that lore fans would pick up on such as Dwarves mentioning Aule, Feanors hammer, mentioning of two previous relationships between humans and elves etc. Things I struggled with, the dialogue from the the Elves which as had been mentioned is completely overblown, I especially cringed at the Gil-Galad speech telling the Elf company they could go back to Valinor, not 100% sold on Elrond yet, the Prologue was very much condensed, I would have liked to have seen the Valar or at least mention them, obviously they haven't got rights to the Silmarillion so they have had to change/condense that which grates on me, that's something I'll have to get over though. There was alot of explanation/exposition. Hopefully that was down to scene setting and the rest of series picks up. Still got Numenor to come, I assume in the next episode. I think there's a really great series in there, just got a few things holding it back at the moment from stopping it cut loose.

I went to the game on Sunday with my wife, daughter and son. All wearing their England tops apart from me in my Scoland top. I'll be honest I had a good time. I couldn't bring myself to "support" England but for the benefit of my young daughter especially I at least kept my thoughts to myself and just showed my appreciation for the occasion. Wife has been playing football since she was little, she had to play for the men's University team as there was no women team at the time, she was only allowed to train and play friendlies not in the league which was "male only", this was only 14 years ago. She coaches our sons team. Two players left when they found out that she was taking over coaching, it wasn't said to her face but the parents of the two kids told another parent that they didn't think there would be a benefit for their sons being coached by a female and wanted them to be coached by a male. She played for the local women's team, she would wait until the Friday night to see what the weather was like, if it was chucking it down and pitches waterlogged, hard frosted surfaces in winter she would watch the youth teams, mens and veterans teams all play before the ladies were told that their games couldn't go ahead due to "unplayable surfaces". To say that she was in tearful on Sunday would be an understatement. She sees it hopefully as a seminal moment in women's football where it is taken seriously and as equals at a grassroots level, if not at a professional level, for the development of a game she's loved as much as any boy since she was a wee girl, and also for our daughters sake. The game won't be for everyone, someone said that the fans sounded like they were at a pop concert which I would say it is accurate, it didn't have that charged atmosphere that men's games too, but it also as result it lost that toxicity, I was nervous about wearing my top, so much so I took another t-shirt to change into unless I got grief, didn't need to worry as nobody batted an eyelid. Just a good family friendly affair, no trouble. All in all I'm not ashamed to say I had a good time, more importantly my daughter loved it. Just wish it was Scotland I was watching. Hopefully then powers at be in the Scottish game don't miss this opportunity, we have some good players, Weir, Cuthbert etc, we need to develop the game so that we don't get left behind. If I get the chance I'll definitely make more of an effort to go and take in a Scottish lassies game/follow them, take my little girl too, see if I can turn her away from the dark side!!

I read that one of Tolkiens many letters he wrote he was keen for stories to continue to be told about the world he created when he was gone. I'll admit the series has a "clean" look to it but the world has similar in look to it as Jacksons films as well. I'm not a massive fan if including Hobbits in it either. But the new trailer has just come out which looks decent. Marketing hasn't been great for this series but they have scored a couple of hits recent for me, look of the Orcs and Gil-Galad being two of them. Hopefully the full trailer has some action and dialogue which will also show which direction its going in.

The Orcs look superb, absolutely nailed it as far as I'm concerned. I'm cautiously optimistic as well. The time condensing is my biggest concern in how that will work, seems like they will get a few characters separated by thousands of years in the book cross over in the series. Also seems like Finrod will be getting more screen time than say Feanor and Fingolfin. I appreciate that they don't have the rights to the Silmarillion/unfinished tales, but I felt like they (Feanor and Fingolfin) both had a bigger part to play than Finrod despite his heroics in Beren and Luthien, always seemed like a small part, looks like the showrunners are gearing him up for a bigger part due to being Galadriels brother.

Brasseye. I know it was very satirical and parodied the media and Chris Morris is an intelligent guy who knew what he was doing, but I wonder if any network would be brave enough to air something like that now. I've not come across anything like that program since...

I'm also a Tolkien nerd, Silmarillion, unfinished tales, read them all. When I first saw the 1st released pic of Valinor and the two trees I was really excited, then the teaser for the show name, the vanity fair images were fairly underwhelming so was looking forward to the see the trailer and things in motion. All in all I liked it. I've read alot of comments that it doesn't feel like Lord of the Rings. I'd disagree, the first shot of Numenor has the same architecture as Minas Tirith, Dwarves look the same, the image of Gil-Galad looks nearly the same as the cut role of Gil-galad in the films, the Elven council(?), looks the same as the council of Elrond, sweeping vista's. Even the CGI I didn't think looked that bad, still got another 7 months to iron it out. Still think that an adaption of Beren and Luthien would have been the better, dip a toe in to gauge public reaction in a fleshed out self contained story. I'll wait and see, I'm not totally writing it off completely at this stage!