JM wrote on Dec 26, 2012, 21:19:

Saying "Happy Holidays" just shows consideration for others who don't believe as you do and levels the field for everyone.

Merry Christmas!

I could really care less...until people start getting religious about it.

The movie was good but not great. I really liked the intro where Thorin's back story is told. HFR is pretty cool, yes it looks like super hidef video, but 24FPS always annoys the crap out of me with its jerky motion in panning and action shots. So I kind of liked that. The 3D was glorious, as was the CG. Gollum's CG was especially impressive, as was the goblin king. And the dinner scene was perhaps a bit too long, but still quite enjoyable. And the music was great of course, both songs and score.

The movie isn't without issues. I didn't think that the white orc worked. It just felt stuffed in and superfluous. And the way the goblin king died just seemed too easy and unearned. Nor did I like his perfect Shakespearean English accent. That should have been different. And the way the dwarves "lost" the troll battle was just stupid. I didn't like the changes to that except where Gandalf splits the boulder to freeze the trolls. That was cool. But the action in the goblin city was a bit too cartoonish. Similar scenes in Fellowship have weight and peril, whereas in The Hobbit things flip around in such perfect harmony as to defy belief.

Still it was a fun romp, but I fear Jackson is coming down with Lucas Disease: he's become so powerful, that no one dares tell him no, and bombastic and unnecessary scenes that would have been cut or rewritten are making it into his movies. Jackson is capable of making good (Kong) and great (LotR) movies as part of a larger team, but when he has more power, he can make terrible movies (see Lovely Bones).

Saying "Happy Holidays" just shows consideration for others who don't believe as you do and levels the field for everyone.

Merry Christmas!

By the way, just noticed this deal over at GOG.com:

http://www.gog.com/promo/dungeons___dragons_deal

All the classic Bioware D&D RPGs for a great price. If you don't have them already (shame on you!), this would be a great time!

nin wrote on Dec 26, 2012, 18:56:

Thanks for the well wishes on my mom. Still in the hospital, doing better, had a bit of a scare of potentially being diabetic.

Glad things are going better. Hope it continues!

Same here. Hope she improves!


As regards the LotR movies, I always felt hobbits should only feature in scenes where they were being stuffed and roasted. Kind of like an orcish Luau, really.

That being said, I'm really looking forward to seeing The Hobbit - especially the dinner scene. Just need to wait for our spanish-speaking guests to head home - not really fair to expect them to come see a 3hr movie in english with no subtitles.

Thanks for the well wishes on my mom. Still in the hospital, doing better, had a bit of a scare of potentially being diabetic.

Glad things are going better. Hope it continues!

My ultimate question is beyond this. If there be a deity, what deity allows Newtown to happen? My mind cannot comprehend this.

Christmas has nothing to do with Christ beyond the church trying to co-opt a pagan holiday - Saturnalia. Which actually precedes the Romans by way of Sumeria amongst other ancient cultures that celebrated it as a winter festival. Believe whatever you like but when you try and foist your beliefs on others then we have a problem. Saying "Happy Holidays" just shows consideration for others who don't believe as you do and levels the field for everyone. Monotheism is nothing more than just another passing phase in mankind's history - just ask the polytheists, animists, totemists, et al. - and we'll all be better off when its behind us as well.

Lord of the Rings. Fabulous. Only thing left out of the movie was Tom Bombadil--who I never thought fit the story in the first place. I doubt Jackson will ever surpass the LoR trilogy. I've thought many times that there's no possible way the story could have been condensed to a single movie and done justice. Jackson managed to capture the soul of Tolkien's epic. What a masterpiece.

Merry Christmas to all! And may I point out how refreshing it is to see a website say "Merry Christmas!" The phrase "Happy Holidays" is fine in conjunction, but to use it in place of "Merry Christmas" seems a blasphemy of the Christmas Spirit(s), and to miss the whole point...;)

If LOTR ended up being 6 movies, or 3 6 hour movies I'd be there till my bladder blew up.

Thanks for the well wishes on my mom. Still in the hospital, doing better, had a bit of a scare of potentially being diabetic. Was going to go visit her today and take care of her pets but we have the equivalent of ice rain, that turned into snow, that is turning into brown slurpee on the roads which makes driving a mess.

Thank's to whoever engineered anti-lock breaks.

nin wrote on Dec 26, 2012, 13:35:
People complaining about it running too long, I wonder if they complained about Bilbo's b-day party at the beginning of Fellowship?

I think Bilbo's bday party at the beginning of the theatrical version of Fellowship was only like 6-7 minutes. They added a ton of stuff in the extended version on DVD.

And even then it's not the 50+ minutes I've heard of Bilbo being at home with the dwarves showing up, but hey, if you want to make 9 hours of movie out of a 200 page book, you gotta pad that time SOMEHOW.

Creston

Hey nin, how was the The Hobbit anyway? How was the 48fps thing?

I saw it at the actual IMAX here (and not a liemax - IE regular screen with imax projector) but I don't believe it was 48FPS (or if it was, it wasn't advertised as such, and I didn't notice a difference). (And for some fucked up reason, they didn't show the 9 minutes of Trek footage in front of it, instead showing it at the liemax across town.)

The movie itself was good. If the LOTR series was 5 star, I'd call Hobbit a 4. I think a lot of the lower reviews scores you see are going in with expectations too high. Part of that is a mostly new cast (so you're not yet attached to them like you are the LOTR characters), and part of it is the circumstances aren't nearly as dire. If they fail, the dwarfs don't get their home/gold back, but that's it - compared to LOTR where, if they failed, the world was going to consumed by pure evil.

I've been meaning to see it again, and prob will next weekend. But I enjoyed it. People complaining about it running too long, I wonder if they complained about Bilbo's b-day party at the beginning of Fellowship?

Hey nin, how was the The Hobbit anyway? How was the 48fps thing?

I was out for a bit today and the never ending shortage of assholes in the world never ceases to amaze me. A huge lineup to get into the Apple store....AND NOTHING IS ON SALE!!! Seriously? You're going to wait in line for an hour or two when you can show up any other time and pay the same money?! Just more proof that Apple users are assholes.

And the fucking mouth-breathers out there breeding has to end. One white trash couple were walking through with an infant...a fucking infant that couldn't have been more tha 6 months old tops and they had her in makeup and her ears pierced already! I wanted to kill them on general principle. The species is doomed! Doomed no matter what!

A Christmas Story: The cast members then and now.

Wow, director and his son died together in a car crash. That's sad. At least the rest of the folks seem to have done ok.

Thanks for the link Blue!

For everyone looking at it, that snowman was made 5 days ago by our 7 years old twins. The next day I decided to make him stand out in the night, so I bought a light spot with a narrow beam.

See how proud he looks: http://t.co/gRbWB69V

Then the next day I thought of streaming him online for a few days, I added a small note next to him saying it's online at http://bit.ly/bonhomme.

I'm happy you can look at him smiling... some of you don't even have snow, some of you may be lonely, and some of you may have children who may like looking at him a few minutes.

Snow somehow missed us. Not complaining. Hope everyone stays warm!