And in the darkness bind them - to their seats.

Mark December 16 on your calendars, Lord of the Rings buffs. You'll be able to spend all day in the theater, watching the LOTR movies back-to-back-to-back. And the first two movies will be prints of the extended versions, previously found only on the DVDs. Fellowship of the Ring was 208 minutes, The Two Towers will be 214 minutes when it's released on DVD in November, and The Return of the King will be over 3 hours in its regular release (opening Dec. 17, or for this special showing, starting at 11 pm on Dec. 16).

I think it's good that the extended versions are getting a theatrical release, and I think it's a good marketing strategy to get the films back in the theaters (FOTR starts on Dec. 5, Two Towers on Dec. 12) to rev up people's interest in the film trilogy. (I might have released them with more than one week between the episodes, but that's a minor quibble.)

But 10+ hours of Lord of the Rings in 11 hours (the distributor's guidelines tell theater owners to start FOTR at 3 pm, TTT at 7 pm, and ROTK at 11 pm, ending around 2 am) strikes me as a bit too much of a good thing. I'm sure it'll make for good local TV coverage, with shots of people in costume in line, waiting for the marathon to begin.

And I'm sure that when the ROTK extended-version DVD finally comes out (I'm guessing Nov. 2004 - after the next presidential election, when we'll all want to escape to a fantasy land), I'll have my own, in-home Lord of the Rings marathon. But it will probably be a Friday-Saturday-Sunday, one movie per day, event.

Star Wars aside # 1: When Star Wars Episode 2 came out a year ago, I saw it on its first day of release (of course). I went to the second showing of the day at the sole theater in Durham showing the movie, and was disappointed that no one at either showing was in costume, and that near as I could tell, I was the only person even wearing a Star Wars T-shirt. Such a long way from people camping out to see Episode 1.

Star Wars aside # 2: Okay, I confess: I've been to a back-to-back-to-back marathon of the classic Star Wars movies. Mid-80's, as I recall, at the AFI theater at the Kennedy Center. It was great fun, but it made for a very long day - and it was only about 7 hours of movie to sit through. That'll be about the equivalent of only the first two movies of the Lord of the Rings cycle.

And one final aside: Can you imagine a back-to-back-to-back showing of the Matrix movies? Perhaps the constitutional prohibition against cruel and unusual punishment comes into play here.