The Hobbit films, previously to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and now to be directed by Peter Jackson again.

before Bilbo stumbles upon the ring, we see it slip from Gollum’s safekeeping

Ugh. If I'm ever tempted to see this I should just remind myself what Jackson did to Treebeard in LOTR. (Yeah yeah I'm a tolkienerd.)

- the argt that this is an adaptation of a 250 page kids book not a 1,400 page grownups book is kind of moot, this is a film for people who already like lord of the rings! bilbo finding the ring in the hobbit (encountered naively) is just yo found a ring dood; the naive reader of the hobbit doesn't know that it is The One Ring. number of naive viewers of this film = perishingly small.
- though i'm sure the above scene could be executed awfully, still.
- something as heavy with incident as the hobbit could be this long in film without feeling too bloated, i think; text has powers of summary and condensation that film doesn't, and to complain that "the battle raged for three days" can't be executed in a proportionate length of film-time to one sentence of 250 pages is to miss the point
- though again i don't want to defend it too prophylactically - i'm sure it could still feel awful, padded, bloated etc

-think there's probably an interesting piece to be written about how advances in digital cinematography (i.e. 4K being the new aspirational standard, with 8K and upwards being thought about??) have far outpaced what CGI rendering is capable of rendering realistically

but CGI has always been crap. Apart from Jurassic Park

feel like there was a period during the film era when you could count on CGI to look pretty good since the transfer to film would 'smudge' it enough to make it look passable

but now everything looks so extremely plasticky

but CGI has always been crap. Apart from Jurassic Park

Crazy talk. Most people don't even notice 90% of CGI in movies.

yeah there was a whole bunch in skyfall i didn't notice (don't know if it was digital projection or not). but i think when it's fantasy orc dragon dinosaur nonsense that you know isn't real it's easier to see the flaws.

jurassic park cgi was stellar tho.

feel like everybody needs to move back to 1:100 scale models lovingly painted and detailed and then set aflame

No idea why anyone would want the 48fps version. Haven't you ever seen that horrible motion smoothing setting on a TV?

I remember an interview with Ang Lee many years ago where he said his most successful use of CGI was in "Sense & Sensibility." That that anyone would have noticed, which I think was his point.

fuck this movie and fuck peter jackson, cheers

This defense (!) of 48fps is one of the harshest takedowns of the film I've read yet:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/12/the_hobbit_in_48_fps_why_i_liked_the_increased_frame_rate.html

if only the audience for this shit wasn't entirely made up of children and their parents reluctantly taking them to watch it

altho i hear at 48fps you can almost see Martin Freeman act

What parent-dragged kid will sit through 3 hours of this?

You know, Josh, for someone who isn't anticipating enjoying this, you do seem to be anticipating it a lot.

the naive reader of the hobbit doesn't know that it is The One Ring.

Nor the naive writer!

i kinda do want to see this now, since everyone's talking about how bad/weird it looks, but it's been so long since i've actually seen a movie in a theater that i'm worried i might not notice the difference.

I anticipate lots of people not enjoying it! I find that very enjoyable.

I'm basically planning on not enjoying the movie itself but I sure do enjoy sitting in movie theaters these days.

a hugely overextended fantasy version of Come Dine With Me

irish times not bothering to pull any punches then

i wd sit thru 6 Come Dine with Me's before i'd watch this fucker

which is p much the running time trade-off

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-hobbit-to-feature-53minutelong-scene-of-bilbo,30727/

dying at that

this was actually pretty good...for the first hour or so. after that it goes into ridiculous nonstop action/CGI-overload mode (though the gollum riddle scene was well done). it's pretty exhausting.

The IMAX 3D screening I saw was supposedly 48fps but I didn't notice any real difference.

nah it stands for 'filler peter scenes' iirc

I hereby dedicate this review to be My Official Position on a film I'm not going to see:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/hobbit-review/

really enjoyed it. sorry guys. carry on.

and i really hadn't expected to. and the 48fps looked fine.

Really funny piece in Slate, from two viewers who knew next to nothing about Tolkien:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/im/2012/12/the_hobbit_movie_reviewed_by_tolkien_virgins_does_the_peter_jackson_film.html

I laughed out loud at the solemn shot of the Elvish king gazing down on everyone from his moose.

that bit is hilarious

The moose bit cracked me up as advertised.

I thought the HFR looked pretty jarring in smaller spaces, but for the (endless) faraway pans of the group trekking across the wilderness it had an interesting quality. Sort of like tilt shift photography, maybe?

The idea that it looks bad because it looks like television is fair enough, but I don't hate how television looks. It felt like live television at times but for me it made it surreal rather than bad per se.

The Gollum section was terrific, and the goblin king was good fun.

But, again, have you specifically seen TV running the motion smoothing, aka soap opera, effect? It's jarring enough that people often return their sets before they realize they can turn it off. Is the HFR that bad?

FWIW, future Avatars will be 60fps, which is also what video games apparently run at.

I've watched soap operas before and have seen motion smoothing.

i hate motion smoothing more than anything in the entire world but i was hoping this fps stuff would be different and wouldn't have that weird bizarro effect cause it isn't interpolating frames or w/e

i'm worried

It WAS effective in showcasing some of the effects with increased clarity, but the motion-smoothing-like movement and game-cutscene feel of the more sweeping camera movements was a little distracting.

Oh, and also, this was 80 minutes of movie stretched to over twice that length.

i hate the faux science nerdy attitude people are taking about it (incl jackson and cameron) the whole "adjust your eyes sheeple this is the future!" like just cause photography exists it doesn't make paint obsolete, just cause you can do something you couldn't do before doesn't make it better, etc

This film was great If you like 3 hours of dudes with big noses sitting around a campfire stroking their beards

My Dinner With Thorin

P much

The most animated the crowd at my showing got was when IMAX guy told everyone the First 9 minutes of Star Trek wouldn't be shown as advertised, then started The Hobbit entirely out of focus while the entire audience rubbed their eyes thinking it was just them.

Feared for my life, was only armed with commemorative posters for self-defense...

Man the HFR made this look, by turns, a bad Britcom, a video game cutscene, and a better movie than this one unburdened by human actors.

Ballsack goblin was straight up the best part of the movie. Art direction & character design had del Toro's fingerprints on it.

The first ten minutes are just unconscionably bad. Show up late.

Okay that was seriously one of THE most over the top ridiculously indulgent films I have ever seen in my entire life. I'm mildly terrified it even exists and even more about what the extended version must be like. Of course, I loved it, but Jesus H.

Yeah, the idea that there's 25 mins on the cutting room floor, and two more three-hour flicks to come...

thought this was fun, but I went with a Tolkien superfan aka the missus aka do not speak ill of this franchise ever, so I might be biased
48 fps is way more jarring than 3d, forgot I was even thatching 3d most of the time

thatching, ho ho, autocorrect
watching, obv

the only time i noticed the HFR was during big panning shots, where it started to look and feel like a magic eye picture

Seems the screening I saw wasn't actually HFR. So disregard my comments upthread on the matter.

there's plenty to like about this. definitely not the disaster i was expecting, though it is way overstuffed.