I'm with you on some of it, but I think presenting it as two separate stories would be a shudderingly bad idea. You'd lose any care and empathy for the first set of characters; plus, you'd have the Helm's Deep climax a third of the way into the movie.
After seeing the extra footage and talking about it a lot with llachglin, I am now OK with the Faramir debacle. Phillipa Boyens makes some really good points about whey they had to change his character to keep the story whooshing along. One of the few criticisms you can really make of Tolkien is that he isn't really much for character growth, apart from Frodo and Sam. Faramir ends up the way he is in the book, he just doesn't start out that way.
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After seeing the extra footage and talking about it a lot with