Yeah, read the lot. Jury is still out on how the film will be, but it's certainly got the look...
The major problem with doing the films as far as I can see, is they have to do the third, Return of th King. Now don't get me wrong, it's a great (if not entirely unsurprising) end to the story... but then it keeps going. Far too long.
That was LOTR's only failing (aside from the slow start that puts off the casual reader); old Tolkien just didn't know when to stop.
It just keeps going, and going, and going... actually, it probably won't be a problem. If you did a literal conversion of book to film, each film would be some 6 hours long. They have to hack large bits out as it is; so probably the entire last half of ROTK will be a five minute epilogue anyway. For once, film-making necessity proves to be a bonus...