CH: I agree that d20 is a fine vehicle to translate the setting. The CODA system itself was an already existing system that was coopted to do it (as the BRP was coopted to do CoC, and that system was fairly widely regarded as being quite appropriate for that setting.) For my money, with d20 CoC, the Wheel of Time, Star Wars, Spycraft, etc. I've become convinced that d20 with some modifications can handle any genre as well as any other system. However, d20 and D&D are not the same thing. If you can wrap your mind around it, you can make D&D classes seem Middle-earthy enough, but as the classes were not designed with that model in mind, it's a bit of a leap. Personally, I think the classes need at the very least a new spell list, but preferably they turn into something more similar to the Sovereign Stone magic classes, or even the Star Wars Force Adept class, or something like that.
LV: I agree that Fellowship of the Ring was the premier fantasy movie of 2001, and has a claim, at least, on being the premier fantasy movie to date. However, that doesn't mean that every single aspect of it should be translated to a D&D game. Personally, I thought the combat scenes were among the more poorly done aspects of LOTR, as the camera angles and such were not conducive to the viewer even seeing what was going on half the time. I mean, don't get me wrong, it's a fine question to ask and all that, but I'm a bit surprised to hear you say you want to adapt LOTR combat into your game. I sure wouldn't want to do that. As much as I like LOTR (and those who's seen me post on this board for a while now know that I really like Tolkien discussions of any kind) I'm not trying to retell it, even when I'm playing in Middle-earth as my camaign setting.