I just thought of something. I recall a shard of suspicion when watching the LOTR battle scenes....cut like an MTV video. 'Perhaps he cuts like this because he knows that with any lingering, the animation (although high up on the curve of state-of-the-art) will not convince.' In other words...since this is live action with inserted CG, the audience will not 'forgive' in the same way that an audience does in a purely animated sequence. Now in Mulan...those scenes of hordes pouring over the mountain...the director is 'okay' with mass-generated armies that are not perfectly photo-realistic, becuase the film is pure animation. And this: an example of a very long (WAY over 30 seconds) single take animated shot, even though inserted into live action movie: James Cameron's fly-over of the Titanic near the beginning of the voyage. It was not perfect. You can tell the characters walking the deck are computer generated. But Cameron was not afraid to let that scene linger, in slow motion. A few hundred million people have forgiven that shot, and love it. ::::: Opera :::::