Middle Earth 31-Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition: Lord of the Rings/The Hobbit [4K UHD/Blu-Ray/Digital]

If you missed the last edition of the “Lord of the Rings” movies, or the Edition before that, or the Edition before that, well then, Warner has you covered. This year, Warner has unleashed the “Middle Earth” 31 Disc Ultimate Collector’s Edition which brings together the epic “Lord of the Rings” trilogy in both Theatrical and Extended editions. And there’s also those “Hobbit” movies with the same deal, but you can just read the book and call it a day, if we’re going to be honest.

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Five Favorite “The Lord of the Rings” Characters

This week Amazon released their first image for the upcoming “Lord of the Rings” series. In what I assume they hope will fill the hole “Game of Thrones” left in its wake, the new series is promising to be epic in scale and (hopefully) continue the stories of J.R.R Tolkien’s Middle Earth, as well as re-invigorate the property for fans (I saw all three films when they debuted in theaters) that were left disappointed by “The Hobbit” prequels.

In celebration, I listed my five favorite characters from the Peter Jackson “Lord of the Rings” trilogy.

If you have your own choices, feel free to let me know in the comments!

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The Paradox of Cool

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One thing that’s immediately noticeable is that no one says anything is “cool” anymore. I understand that you will hear people say “that’s cool,” which would appear to contradict what I just said in the previous sentence, but you’re paying attention now and that’s good.

Coolness is a complex and elusive concept. People are commonly aware of the designations of “cool” versus “uncool,” but are not always certain how exactly to apply these distinctions. Is Justin Bieber cool? Lots of girls want to bang him; he drives flashy, expensive cars (and gets pulled over for speeding!); he vandalizes public and private property; and he’s overtly disrespectful to authority figures. He meets several qualifications for coolness, but saying Justin Bieber is cool is kind of like saying McDonald’s salads are healthy.

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Based on Billions of True Stories: The Long, Slow Death of a Twenty-Something

We’ve known Larry Longstreth for a long time as a person and as a filmmaker. It’s no big surprise that we here at Cinema Crazed are big fans of Longstreth and his work in the fan film and internet arena. Longstreth is one of the finest filmmakers working in independent film today and our friendship with him is no bearing on the man as a filmmaker. We discovered Longstreth years ago when he sent us his screener for a short film about a zombie musical and we were instantly hooked on whatever he sent our way.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King (2003)

It’s been a turbulent and bittersweet three years with the good vs. evil “Lord of the Rings” trilogy making its way into theaters and creating a phenomenal and historic legacy. Director Peter Jackson has so skillfully created a trilogy that has been flawlessly taken from the pages of the legendary JRR Tolkien books and put it on the big screen for all to glimpse at the magic of Middle Earth. “The Return of the King” manages to come out of the first two with much individuality but fits into the first two films tightly coming together as an incredible whole. As individual movies, these are jaw-dropping stunners, and as a whole they’re truly an accomplishment only Peter Jackson could have constructed.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Two Towers (2002)

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The sequel to the 2001 blockbuster begins where the first one last left off as the hobbits Merry and Pippin have been taken hostage by an army of Orcs, Frodo and Samwise are on the track to Mount Doom to destroy the ring and the three warriors Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimley are tracking the orcs hoping to save the two captured hobbits. Frodo and Samwise are not alone, though. They have captured a fiend that has been tracking them for days; a fiend named Gollum; an ex-hobbit who became a creature from his obsession with the ring.

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The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring (2001)

Okay, I’ll admit it. I’ve never read the entire Lord of the Rings series, but I am a casual fan. I’m in the midst of reading “The Hobbit”, which is of course the prequel to “The Lord of the Rings” Series, and I’ve seen the Ralph Bakshi Cartoon version of the series which is good, but not all great. But when I saw this, I was in for some ride. The movie begins by telling the story of Bilbo Baggins, who went on a journey to retrieve the ring and returns to Hobbiton, then it tells the story of the nine rings and how they came to get under the possession of the elf kings, humans, and dwarves. But then we hear about the evil tyrant, Sauron who created his own ring on “Mount Doom”. A ring more powerful then them all. A ring so powerful that it could corrupt even the most purest of souls.

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