"If you were entrusting $270 million to someone making three movies, you wouldn't choose me," quipped New Zealand director, writer, and sometimes actor, Peter Jackson, to Melissa J. Perenson on Scifi.com. But that is exactly what New Line Cinema did when it chose Jackson to direct its lavish production of J. R. R. Tolkien's Lord of the Rings, a seven-hour marathon that is divided into three separate movies released a year apart. Jackson, known as a specialist in what he calls "splatstick"--the comic horror film--was hardly known for flights of Tolkien-like fantasy up to that time. His debut feature, Bad Taste, was a sci-fi comedy about aliens who harvest Earth folk for fast-food dining, and was "awash with vomit and blood," according to a reporter for BBC News. That cult classic attracted viewers to his next films, a gory zombie comedy, Braindead, and an off-the-wall horror parody...