'Frodo, Pippin and Sam made their way back to the parlor. There was no light...'

First off, let me comment on casting. I love all the casting to date, I am truly worried about Sean Astin, but if PJ believes him to be 'Sam' then I'm with him all the way.

Now just imagine this chapter. This entire scene consists of confirmed cast members! I think that's kinda neat.

So we have a major introduction of Strider here (no Sean Bean, boo hoo :( ) this is another one of those expository chapters where the characters move little, but the story moves along tremendously.

We learn here, in this little room in Bree, that the Enemy is on the move. Riders have been seen in the area and that Gandalf has gone missing. This is terrible news for our Hobbits, but a letter from Gandalf and the appearance of the mysterious Strider offering his help does ease the load....

I've never done this before, but I want to answer an email question a Ringer sent in to me. I wouldn't normally do this here, but it ties in with this section of my rant.

The question I want the answer ... deals with the ordering of the scenes in the movie. Is PJ going to keep it like the books or splice them together? ... Well, in the movie are they going to keep it like that, or are they going to change from scene to scene, keeping up with both stories at the same time?

So, we have a letter from Gandalf and a story from Strider saying that Gandalf has gone missing. We also have a small background on where Gandalf has been. Should PJ show this as a scene in itself? The real question is, should there be 2 shorelines at any given time? My answer is yes. But not this time, this is Strider's scene and should remain so.

We all remain hopeful that Townsend can pull off this performance. And until I see him in one of his films, I will be as doubtful as the rest of you.

And then we have that neat little scene with Merry and the Dark Breath. That's fairly cool. We can cut to that whole scene just after Strider and Frodo leave the Prancing Pony Tavern. That would be a rather cool scene, the dark of night, the chill in the air, Merry walking in the dark, and suddenly feels the cold grip of darkness, I'd love to see allot of fog coming from the actor mouth, to make the scene look really cold. He turns to look over his shoulder, (storyboards coming soon! I promise!) He sees a Rider, slipping into the shadows...Ah! What a great scene! I'd love to see heavy blues to make the scene very dark and icy, you'd almost want to scream. Get out of there Merry!

As for Frodo et all, the decision to make Strider come along must be included in the film, and not just 'assumed'. It must be dealt with the very same manner as the books because all the doom and gloom that Gandalf spoke of, all the trouble these Hobbits have gone through, and they're suddenly going to trust this stranger? It won't come across on film that easily; it'll have to be included.

This is the hard part about turning books into movies. I wrote something like that to a fan that asked me about book to movie projects. It's a little harder, because a movie plot has to be 3d, things you see for the first time will be remembered, whereas a book you can write something in the beginning and only later on refer back to it. Films are like a 3d box, all the spaces need to be filled, and constantly refereed to. Backwards, forewords and in between. We certainly don't want people watching the film and saying 'why did they do that?' or 'oh sure, yeah like you're going to trust him'. All this comes across in the books very well thanks to Tolkiens writing we do not question the fact that Frodo trusts Strider, and we shouldn't have to in the movie either.