> > 3) Did anybody else come out of that movie feeling a strange compulsion, on behalf of almost every single character in it, to get a haircut?
>
> I certainly felt this way while watching the first movie. Gandalf, Boromir and Aragorn are the worst - they always had these little strands of hair in front of their faces. While watching the movie for the first time I wished I could enter it, a la Buster Keaton, and tell them "Guys, neatness, please! Were you raised in the wilderness or something? Oh, sorry, Aragorn. Hee".

Well, when it comes to hair, the second movie is the first movie times ten. (Gandalf, however, went and got himself some no-tangles conditioner and a beard trim as a reward for beating the Balrog.)

I think the main reason I felt that way is that, about half way through the battle of Helm's Deep, the whole Everybody In Middle-Earth Except Elves Has Untidy Tangled Wild Hair thing occurred to me, and I was partway through laughing at that thought, when it further occurred to me that so do I. I mean, in the *movie* they all look OK. I just realised that in *real life*, of the two looks, I seem to have inadvertently picked the wrong one.

Brunnen-"it obviously takes 3000 years of trial and error to get your hair looking like an elf's"G