I'm still listening to it on tape while I commute. I'm halfway through the second "book" now. Thankfully, there is much less singing and Tom Bombadill has not made a encore appearance. Nontheless, I still don't see why this stuff has the rabid cult following that it does. [b]If[/b] I go see the movie it will be either at a matinee or a 2nd run theater. Too much of the story is just about the characters in transit from one event to the next, or descriptions of the characters at one feast or another, or characters talking portentiously about Sauron or Saruman (bad choice, btw, to give the villains such similar names). Actual events themselves tend to occur offstage or are described only in general terms. Gandalf's battle with the balrog, for example, or any of the clashes with orcs so far. I guess I am more of a fan of action than of atmosphere. Tolkein did do a great deal of work developing the whole world, complete with a history and languages, but the story he tells us in it is pretty flat. I'll take Robert E. Howard or Edgar Rice Buroughs over Tolkein any day. The worlds that Conan, Bran Mak Morn, Tarzan, and John Carter inhabit may not be so completely imagined as that of Dildo Bugger (yes, I've read "Bored of the Rings")but the stories move along more briskly and are completely Bombadill-free.