Hey guys, greetings from St. Louis. I've taken 4 days off of work for a little vacationing time, and I'm here near the arch.

Movie reviews:

PAYCHECK: Be ready for the "can they erase his memory of GIGLI" jokes as Ben Affleck plays an engineer who takes part in memory-extraction experiments, and is, of course, put into a tough situation that he must figure out. Directed by John Woo, who has yet to make a film in America close to his Hong Kong classics (and that may be more of a statement about America than anything), this is decent. There is one great action scene in here. Where the movie sort of, kind of fails is that the fun is in the clues he leaves himself, and they are sort of wasted away here and there. But a fairly fun movie.

LOTR: THE RETURN OF THE KING: Guys, if you didn't like the first two, then I don't know what a glowing review of this does for you. I've read all three books, plus THE HOBBIT, and have not been disappointed with any of the changes (usually the changes are stuff that has been cut out), mainly because I realize you can't possibly film everything and expect people to sit through it. I'm sure if New Line knew a few years ago that the first movie would not only make back the budget of the entire trilogy, but make serious bank afterwards (the first two movies made 1.8 BILLION combined), and then enjoy nothing but extraordinary profits from then on, then maybe they would have allowed 4+ hours a film. THE RETURN OF THE KING is the best of the trilogy, with just amazing battles and incredible camerawork, a film that I will forever rank with THE GODFATHER or GONE WITH THE WIND or name any epic piece of filmmaking and it makes its mark. To many people, this will be a movie about a guy trying to destroy a ring and a war that surrounds it. To me, the series contains many messages including the evils of industrialization, unchecked scientific progress, addiction, greed, selfishness, friendship, love, power, bravery, and so on and so forth, and the battles that surround these themes are all the more impactful because of it, these events mean something. And in ROTK, there are major cuts made to the Tolkien source material, mainly involving the complete lack of Saruman and his eventual takeover of the Shire that the four battle-hardened hobbits now must take back. This section in the book was always a little iffy to me, and before I knew it was to be cut out of the film I had my doubts about it, so I shed no tears that it was gone. The only tears shed is that we now don't get to see Christopher Lee, and that's a shame. That section is fine to be in the book, but I don't think the movie needed it. As far as Tom Bombadil goes, there's a little homage to him in the extended TWO TOWERS DVD, by Treebeard the Ent (the lack of Bombadil did nothing to FELLOWSHIP, either, as much as you may have wanted to see it, it had little to do with the overall). See this movie for a GREAT, GREAT scene where the city of Minas Tirith sets off a beacon calling to the Riders of Rohan for help, the incredible Battle of Pellenor Fields which BLOWS AWAY the Hoth scene in EMPIRE STRIKES BACK, the journey of Aragorn calling on the Dead to fulfill their promise to the King of Gondor, and just so much more. I can't convince you, maybe the final film will, that this is unbelievable filmmaking.