Marval Movie

I have an Aunty, and her daughter in law (Bex) teaches a school in New Zealand. Naturally we don't see them a lot being that they live so far away.

One day my mother told me about a parents evening that Bex had once and she said that she sat down with this boy who's father didn't show up for the parents evening.  She wanted to know why and his mother said that he was very busy, later it was learned that his father was Peter Jackson...yes that Peter Jackson the modern day David Lean.  

This was so exiting that I knew someone who had a connection to one of the greatest film-makers of our era.  One time, a while ago she came over for a visit, she had other things to talk about but there was only one thing I wanted to ask her "you teach Peter Jackson's son, what's he like have you ever met Peter?".  She was very kind and told me the appropriate amount of information, apparently he's a good student who's very creative and apparently a good drawer, she even told me a few funny stories. One of them was when she was showing the class Saving Private Ryan and talking about Spielberg and so forth, but then she just turned to him and said "what can you tell us about Spielberg?" and according to her he casually said "he was over our house last month for dinner" at this point my mind had officially blown. All these stories about someone I actually cared about and so I left feeling very satisfied.  

But it wasn't until about a few weeks ago that my mother received a message that I would be sent a package from New Zealand, me and my mother looked at each-other and we both knew what it was related to but  we didn't know what it was.  

Today I received a package from New Zealand, so I opened it up and inside was a new hard-cover copy of The Hobbit, pretty cool, but we already own a copy of the Hobbit, maybe they didn't know but then we opened it up and inside the book, staring back at me was a personally signed signature from Peter Jackson himself that read. 

"HI JONATHAN BEST WISHES, PETER JACKSON" 

and on the other side was not only a signature but a little drawing of Gandalf, form...can you guess.  That's right Sir Ian Mckellen himself.  His simply read. 

"JONATHAN, IAN MCKELLEN"  

Brilliant and humble like the man himself.    

Along with all this wonderful gift that I don't know what I've done to deserve, there was also a card with three pictures of Sir Ian McKellen teaching a class of Mac-Beth, or Othello (there's a bit of confusion about that) but it doesn't matter.  There was also a card with a very sweet message inside it, but that's private.  

It was announced around two days ago that the two movies that would make up the film adaptation of The Hobbit would become three movies making this a three part movie saga.

Originally the first movie was to be called An Unexpected Journey and the sequel would be titled There and Back again (as keeping with the book).  So now that there is a whole new movie, what will the third be titled? or will the third title be squeezed into the middle? This raises many questions, one of the first is that it was announced that the first movies run time would be two and a half hours, does this mean that the first film will be trimmed down to say two hours and the rest will be spread out with the other two movies?

Jackson Is the man responsible for the original Lord of the Rings trilogy one of the best in movie history so he has every right to tell the original prequel.  But the Hobbit is A) significantly shorter that everyone of the
LOTR 's books. B) a more simple, humble grounded story and less big and fantastic than LOTR.

As of right now I am reading The Hobbit, its going good and I am enjoying it (I'm about half way through it).  I am looking forward to seeing the translation form book to screen but it doesn't seem like the kind of material that requires a whole trilogy the tell the tale.

What we know is that Jackson is adding the Necromancer (which is only mentioned in the book and never seen). What else will he do will he add whole new scenes that were never in the book? If he wants to flesh out some moments than that's fine, but if he is really going to to make a trilogy of of this book then he has no excuse in not including everything in the book (he has three frigging movies to do it for gods sake!).

Whatever Jackson decides to do I trust him enough to deliver a fine movie experience, but this latest news are sings for cation for me.  We can only hope that Jackson isn't becoming a Lucas, if he is then God help us all.

In a hole in the ground there lived a hobbit. not a nasty, dirty, wet hole, filled with the ends of worms and an oozy smell, nor yet a dry, bare, sandy hole with nothing in it to sit down on or eat: it was a hobbit-hole, and that means comfort.

The Hobbit by J.R.R. Tolkein is the book that started it all, there were of course other fantasy books and more that an abundance of stories and floklore but The Hobbit is the one that started it as big news and really brought together a whole group of people together, so technically you could say that this book started the Nerd culture.

The book starts with Bilbo Baggins living out his comfortable little life in the Shire under his Hobbit hole, every once in a while he has a party and often entertains quests, but most days he just sits outside and enjoys a warm peaceful breeze while smoking his pipe. Until one day when a mysterious figure arrives and offers Bilbo the chance to go on an adventure.  This is of coarse Gandalf "The Wondering Wizard", Bilbo is less than enthusiastic to go on an adventure but he still invites Gandalf to return for some supper later on.  When later on does come there is a knock on the door but on the other side it is not Gandalf but a pair of Dwarfs, and then another, then another, before there are thirteen Dwarfs in total.

While the Dwarfs and later when Gandalf finally appears it is learned that the Dwarfs need a burglar and Gandalf suggested Bilbo, because he new the Took side of his family (who were adventurers, and thinks that there may be some of that spirit left in Bilbo).  The journey must be taken across the land to the misty mountains to the great chambers where there was a great city of Dwarfs but now the Dragon Smaug has taken over and turned the entire mountain city into his personal nest, where he hordes the treasure all for himself. They need to sneak in and take a part of the treasure and if things go really well they'll find a way to kill the Dragon and reclaim the entire cities fortune.

The use of the thirteen Dwarfs seemed unnecessary to me, I think Tolkien really had about six dwarfs with personalities in mind, but he thought for the slaying of a Dragon they might be a bit shorthanded so he doubled their numbers by making every Dwarf a twin (There must be a sever case of nepotism running around the Dwarf kingdom).  You don't really feel that you know the Dwarfs, only by their stereotype, there's a fat one the young ones the tough one. You do, I suppose get a feel for the leader Thorin, a Dwarf descended from greatness and seeks to claim his birthright.

One of the most interesting notes to make about the book is the writing style, Tolkien was an English professor while he was writing the Hobbit so he was naturally an expert on the way things are written, but he is surprisingly defiant on the mainstream way in which most books are traditionally written.  There is actually very little description of the environments and the characters, when we meet Gollum the only description is that he has big round eyes, long fingers and raggedy thin hair, the rest is about the mood, obrolan and the scenario that the characters are in.

The Hobbit is not as big and as expansive as the Lord of the Rings and there's less an enfasis on the fights, although there are a few fight scenes, the Hobbit is more about relying on your wits than anything else so often Bilbo gets out of tricky situations and comes to the rescue by being smart and not just by being the better swordsman.

Tolkien spent virtually his whole life building up the world of Middle Earth, ever since he joined an English club in his teenage years where he first started developing the Elvish language he had been slowly but surely adding to the world and all its complexities. There are things about genres that are virtually requirements for them to work Science Fiction needs to be reasonably fees-able, Comedies need to make you laugh Fantasies need a world that seems like it could exist.  The whole point of Fantasies are to transport you to a whole new world that is not the one that we inhabit and it needs to have a function and a method of the way things work so that we except that they are real and we can become invested in them. Middle Earth is a place with a history and a layout that we become familiar with and we learn to know the people and can see parallels to our own world in them. The Elves are white collar, the Dwarfs are the working class and so on.

One thing that Tolkien injects into his work the most is off coarse himself, while reading you get a sense that Tolkien greatly enjoys a good warm meal, and a comfortable room heated a roaring fire and off coarse tobacco.

It is said that big things start small and that every adventure starts with that first step, Hobbits are very small and Bilbo hadn't taken many steps outside his own patio, but he went on to do great things and was the start of something much bigger than anyone could have guessed.  The Hobbit is a book that takes you places and gives experiences and makes you want to go places and see sights.

Rating: 4 stars out of 4

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is the first part of this now curiously unexpected trilogy (as I talked about in an earlier post) it has ambition that also comes with all new technology that intends to change the way 3D movies are seen. However I am reminded of the old saying that the bigger they are the harder they fall and while The Hobbit does not crash and die a horrible failure it does topple, just a bit.

Naturally the film stats with Bilbo Baggins as a young Hobbit played by Martin Freeman. When Gandalf (Ian Mckellen) comes by offering Bilbo an adventure, of coarse to a simple Hobbit an adventure is the last thing he wants but Gandalf invites himself for supper. Later Bilbo gets a visitor from an estranged Dwarf and then another and then another and another. Eventually we have thirteen Dwarfs and Gandalf and it seems that Gandalf has selected Bilbo as the groups burglar.

The group needs a burglar because an ancient Dwarf kingdom has been taken over by Smaug the Dragon who now coverts the great treasure that the Dwarfs have accumulated. Also there is word of a Necromancer, a wizard that can bring back the dead. Both Smaug and the Necromancer will be played by Benedict Cumberbatch, we never get to actually see or hear him in these parts, they merely act to wet our appetites for I suspect, the next movie and as a big Cumberbatch fan I wait with anticipation for the next movie.

Martin Freeman is a perfect Bilbo, he is clearly an every man, or every Hobbit that has spent his whole life in the Shire and lived a simple life and is clearly a fish out of water with these swashbuckling, adventurous Dwarfs. The Dwarfs themselves are fun enough, there are thirteen and only did I get a scenes of a few of them Bombur annoyed me the most because his character was literally "the fat one" that's it there's nothing else to his character he's fat, he likes food a lot. From what I got of the Dwarfs I liked the and they seem fun enough and maybe they could find room in the next two movies to develop the others but I feel worried that there charm may ware thin in the next four hours that I will have to endure of them.

One of the best things about watching The Hobbit is the feeling of being back, it is wonderful to again be back at the Shire, to see our favorite characters again. Phi Lamar said about being back on Futurama that "its like you  win the lottery and then eight years later they tell you there's more" and that is what this feels like, The Lord of the Rings had great characters and casting and you feel very lucky to be seeing them again. As I'm sure everyone already knows Andy Serkis is back as Gollum and it is easily one of the best moments of the film as well as the CGI never looking better, this is just scarily great CGI.

The main attraction for the Hobbit is that Peter Jackson shot the movie in forty eight frames a second, this was done so that the 3D would look more smooth and deliver a sharper picture. For the previews of the movie the critics who saw it came out saying that it looked like a TV movie and cheap. I decided that since it was in the planning stages from the beginning I would see The Hobbit in 3D (which I usually avoid) and with the higher frame rate. This new way of shooting a movie doesn't work, the images look flat and poorly lit as well as that the 3D is severely lackluster it looks like The Lion King in 3D where the character floats closer to the audience and the background is in the back. Perhaps they just need time to adapt to the new equipment or they needed to spent more time in post production but what we have is a multimillion dollar movie that looks pretty cheep.

Naturally because the three hundred page book has now been turned into a three part movie they have had to either stretch out or add things to the original material. What Jackson and his collaborators have mainly done is explain where Gandalf continually disappears off to during the coarse of the book, now we follow him and we learn what was so important that he had to leave poor out of place Bilbo by himself. This I am fine with because these parts are put in by Tolkien himself from his other works. Other things like adding an estranged Brown Wizard and a big bad white Orc I care for much less.

The first part of this trilogy is enjoyable enough, there are some lighthearted comedy relief that maybe the younger viewers would enjoy but there are some seriously dark scary moments that I would not recommend for younger viewers. What we have is a very mixed to uneven package, but gets much more right than it does wrong and maybe when all three movies are released we will appreciate the Hobbit as a whole more than the some of its parts. Either way if you do decide to see it do not go to see it in 3D with the extra frame rate.

Rating: 3 stars out of 4