Chris declares THEY SHALL NOT GROW OLD to be the best film of 2018... and DEMANDS that it get a wider release!

Well, that's a pretty bold assessment to make considering that 2018 has been a year that I haven't seen many movies during initial release in a cinema.  And where something like Solo: A Star Wars Story and Avengers: Infinity War are usually films that I'd see multiple times during their theatrical run, I only caught those once each.  And lately my schedule has become packed with a lot of activity: various projects and whatnot.

That being said, two months ago the sense hit that They Shall Not Grow Old was going to be an experience unlike any other in recent memory.  And that sense was proven just.  Only two movies before had ever left me feeling so impacted and affected as the credits rolled: 1993's Schindler's List and then The Passion Of The Christ eleven years later.

But as emotionally overwhelming as those two films are, neither can boast a cast of those who really were there, as they lived through it.  And in that respect, They Shall Not Grow Old will linger just as unshakable in the minds of many for the rest of their lives.

Let's have the trailer for the U.S. limited release speak for itself:

In time for the centennial of the armistice that ended World War I, Peter Jackson (The Lord Of The Rings trilogy, 2005's King Kong, and many other films) was given the opportunity to assemble a work honoring the British soldiers who volunteered to take to the trenches of France and Belgium.  To that end, Jackson and his crew were given access to more than a hundred hours of footage from a full century ago, along with more than 600 hours of audio interviews made in the Sixties and Seventies with veterans of the Great War.

But Peter Jackson decided early on that they were going to go further... much further... than any historical documentary had before or was even possible to achieve previously.

For 99 minutes, They Shall Not Grow Old follows the young men (officially 19 to 35, but some only 14 and 15) of Britain who rallied to enlist even as the sky had just begun to darken over the distant Balkans.  When the disastrous chain of events brings England and Germany into a declared state of war, the ranks of the army swell.  Some are moved by sense of duty, others out of having to avoid the shame of refraining from the cause.  And still others simply out of sense of adventure.  And for the first 15 minutes or so, it's much the classic black and white footage that we have become accustomed to for most of the past century.

It's when the British cross the Channel and into Western Europe that we are suddenly jarred into the war as never beheld until this year.

Using digital photo and video technology - much of which had to be invented along the way - Jackson and his team took that very old footage and cleaned it up, brought it to the standard 24 frames per second, and bestowed vivid color.  The visual result: a documentary about World War One that looks as if it could have been filmed just yesterday.  The clarity and sharpness between the processed footage and modern video is nigh on indistinguishable.  And just as uncompromising: dead soldiers pile up on the battlefield, maggots squirm in the carcasses of horses obliterated by machine gun fire, fatted rats infest the network of trenches.  Most will recoil in disgust at the photos of cases of gangrenous trench foot, common among the soldiers forced to work while standing in waste-filled water.

And still, it's not enough.  Jackson's crew went all out to bring audio to their work.  Professional lip readers were hired to make out words spoken on the silent footage, with voice actors providing audible dialogue.  An officer's otherwise uncertain reading to his soldiers compelled Jackson to seek out the official announcements of that particular day the footage was shot, then recording on his iPhone a reading one of the notices... and discovering that they had found the match.  The Foley effects are as thorough as they are profound, even using modern New Zealand field artillery to provide sounds for the German cannons.

The result is a plunge into the reality of war that will haunt, that will evoke laughter, that will make you smile.  And then will break your heart as you realize that many if not most of these fine young men are soon to be butchered, blown to bits or blistered by poison gas in the war that was supposed to end all wars.

They Shall Not Grow Old is by great leagues the most powerful motion picture that I have seen in a very long time while in a theater.  And last night, December 17th, was the first of two nationwide screenings in the United States.  And at the show I caught, that auditorium was packed with an audience as varied as any I have witnessed for a film.  They were of all ages, of multiple ethnicities.  A nine-year old boy was there with his father and grandfather.  One man had his two daughters with him.  There were high school and college students and retirees and men and women and... for a film that has such a limited release and scarce marketing stateside, the audience size defied expectations.  And there we were, together and across a century sharing in the laughter and tragedy of those British soldiers.  One hundred years and just as many minutes, we were all united in respect and admiration toward those who went before.

And They Shall Not Grow Old is one motion picture that absolutely merits a wide release.  Much wider.  It will be sought and appreciated by many, many others, especially those who otherwise may not have given much thought to the history of World War One and how its consequences affect us still today.  If that doesn't happen, They Shall Not Grow Old will prove to be the film that sends a lot of people over the top and into upgrading their home entertainment to 4K sets and ultra high-def Blu.  It certainly is the one movie I most want to have in my library in as beautiful a depth as currently available.

If and when that Blu-ray streets, I sincerely hope it includes the making-of featurette that follows the credits at the nationwide screening events.  Peter Jackson elaborates quite a lot on the various procedures used to enhance the ancient footage and to enhance it with sound.  He also notes that They Shall Not Grow Old focuses on the British soldiers who were involved in the war.  Meanwhile, there also exists hundreds of hours of footage from the perspectives of the American forces, those of the French and Germans, and others.  Nearly every faction and ethnicity involved in the Great War wound up with some representation recorded on celluloid.  Footage from the streets of Paris and the decks of German U-boats.  Given that They Shall Not Grow Old is as groundbreaking a technical achievement as Avatar and Jurassic Park, perhaps those other perspectives will be given similar treatment.  Were it to be so, then Peter Jackson will have given us and our posterity a priceless lesson in human nature at its worst... and at its best.

Rating movies on a scale isn't something I usually do, but They Shall Not Grow Old gets a solid 10 out of 10 from me.  There is one more nationwide screening currently scheduled for December 27th.  If at all possible, it's well worth taking the time to see on the big screen.

Just one last thing though.  Dear Peter Jackson, if you are reading this: buy some shoes, man.  You're an Academy Award-winning filmmaker.  You don't have to prove anything anymore about becoming a real hobbit.  Time to get yourself properly shod!

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Chris sees THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY. On a regular screen. In ol'-fashioned 24 FPS. And 2D.

And I STILL loved every freakin' awesome minute of it!!

I also must say from the getgo that if Peter Jackson and his fellow scribes on this movie's screenplay keep up their vibe, that they will have no problem whatsoever filling out the next two films of the trilogy with a healthy balance of action and Tolkien-ish fluff. Maybe we should lobby Jackson to prepare for work on a three-part adaptation of The Silmarillion as his next project. Then we can have nine movies about the history of Middle-Earth sitting on the Blu-ray shelf. But I digress...

M'lady Kristen and I caught The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey yesterday afternoon, on a normal-sized screen (there's no proper IMAX screen in the immediate vicinity) and in time-honored 2D. And not in that newfangled 48 FPS either (I'm getting reports from all over the place that the higher framerate really can and does induce severe headaches, but that in IMAX 3D it's supposed to be better somehow). In other words, I experienced An Unexpected Journey in much the same way as I did The Lord of the Rings trilogy on the big screen a decade ago. I note this in case the reader might wonder how I think The Hobbit so far is jibing with those three movies.

The short and sweet of it is: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is how a prequel should be produced. This movie blends and meshes so seamlessly with The Lord of the Rings that one might easily think Peter Jackson shot all of these movies simultaneously. The only thing that obviously sticks out is Martin Freeman as the younger Bilbo Baggins. Ian Holm for a number of reasons did not return to play Bilbo for the bulk of the story. But it is sweet delight to see Holm come back as Bilbo on the eve of his 111th birthday party along with Elijah Wood as Frodo. Those two look so unaged at all that one wonders if they have had the One Ring all along.

But Martin Freeman as Bilbo sixty years before The Lord of the Rings: I totally bought into his portrayal of the hobbit who notoriously goes running off (to the chagrin of his sensible neighbors) after Gandalf and the dwarves for an adventure beyond the borders of Bag End.

The narrative proper begins with Bilbo recounting the story of Erebor: the Lonely Mountain on the far side of Mirkwood Forest, over the forbidding peaks of the Misty Mountains. The greatest of the dwarven kingdoms of Middle-Earth (so renowned in fact that Men and Elves alike paid homage to King Thror), Erebor produces both fabulous riches and unsurpassed craftsmanship. But it's not to last. The wealth of the Kingdom Under the Mountain draws the lustful eye of the dragon Smaug, who devastates Erebor and the nearby city of Dale. Keen eyes will spot, among the Dwarven refugees fleeing Erebor, the first-ever Dwarf women to be depicted at all in any work inspired by J.R.R. Tolkien's mythology. A detail with no direct bearing on the story, but an altogether brash and bold one all the same. And we don't get a good look at Smaug just yet: at this point in the trilogy he's more like an indomitable force of nature: a tip of wing here and end of tail there is the only glimpse of the living beast turning Erebor and Dale into a smoking ruin.

Several decades later we find Bilbo smoking his pipeweed and bidding a "Good morning" to Gandalf (Ian McKellen), in the scene straight out of novel. It was exactly how I imagined it more than twenty years ago when I first read The Hobbit. But that's just the appetizer for an even grander spectacle: the thirteen Dwarves who arrive for an unexpected party that night at Bilbo's home. I bet little kids watching this movie will be hideously tempted to throw dinnerware, dishes and bowls around the kitchen (parents, take note!).

Well, if you've read The Hobbit, you'll know pretty much what to expect story-wise from here on out. But that's not all there is to The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey: Jackson and his team of writers (Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens, and contributions from Guillermo del Toro) also filled out the story with a considerable amount of lore from across the width and breadth of Tolkien's legendarium. Gandalf at one point mentions how there are five wizards in all, even mentioning the infamously-mysterious Blue Wizards (though Gandalf remarks that he can't remember their names). We get to see Radagast the Brown (wonderfully played by Sylvester McCoy, AKA the Seventh Doctor from Doctor Who): a fellow wizard who has "gone nature boy", roaming across Wilderland in a sleigh pulled by rabbits a'la Mad Santa. When the party arrives at Rivendell we are once again presented with Elrond and Galadriel (Hugo Weaving and Cate Blanchett, respectively, from the previous trilogy). And though I knew he was in there somewhere, it nevertheless was an honest shock to behold Christopher Lee once more as Saruman. Again I ask: HOW do all these people look like they've not gotten any older in ten years' time?? Great makeup I know, but still...

Ian McKellen as Gandalf is the most welcome reprisal from the earlier trilogy. And I thought that this time around, McKellen brought notably more humor and action prowess to a role already rich with the burdens of wisdom and gravitas. Indeed, at times McKellen's Gandalf the Grey comes across as more eager and able to fight in battle than does the reborn Gandalf the White from The Two Towers and The Return of the King.

Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and his gang of homeless but hearty Dwarves are fun to watch, regardless of their circumstance. I think my favorite of the bunch is Bofur (James Nesbitt): not just an honest and up-front Dwarf, but also the one wearing the coolest-looking hat. I want one of those!

And then there is Andy Serkis as Gollum. Serkis (who also gets a Second Unit Direction credit in this film) has lost nothing and in fact seems to have gotten even better at playing the fallen hobbit-kin. More than anything else in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, Serkis' Gollum is the "flip-side" of the same coin that we'll see again in The Lord of the Rings. If Gollum was wretched and loathsome in that trilogy, he is no less here... but ridden throughout with a tragic and even saddened nature. There is little wonder why Bilbo ultimately shows pity and stays his hand from slaying Gollum. But even knowing that well beforehand, I was almost giddy about seeing Bilbo taking the quick and easy path. "It would have saved everyone a lot of trouble", Kristen said later. But then, Gollum would not have played - as Gandalf believed he would - the role he did in The Lord of the Rings. This is also the most convincing by far that we've seen Gollum: as much as we were persuaded of his on-screen appearance in The Two Towers and The Return of the King, WETA's crack effects team has made him even more persuasive for The Hobbit.

Some are saying that The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey could use with "some fat trimmed off". I'll have to say that I agree somewhat with that. The scene with the mountain trolls (who first "appeared" in The Fellowship of the Ring seems especially longer than necessary. There are other sequences that I wish had been more elaborated upon. A shot in the first trailer for The Hobbit of Bilbo looking at the shattered pieces of Narsil, the sword that cut the ring from Sauron's hand at the end of the Second Age, has tantalized me for a year but for whatever reason wasn't included in the theatrical cut. That would have been a terrific way to tie The Hobbit's intimate tale with the grander epic spanning the eons of Middle-Earth history. Maybe that'll make the extended version Peter Jackson has promised will get released on Blu-ray.

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey is considerably brighter than The Lord of the Rings, in terms of both cinematography and story. The Shire even looks more hopeful and optimistic than it does when we first see it in The Lord of the Rings. Tolkien's The Hobbit was primarily a children's story, and to that Jackson and his team hold true. It is certainly a fitting segue into The Lord of the Rings, but it's also one that is far more conscionable about its intended audience (though the adults will no doubt love it too!).

It would not have been a proper Middle-Earth saga helmed by Peter Jackson without the compositional talents of Howard Shore. I bought the soundtrack CD three days before the movie was released and already had been listening to it like crazy ("Song of the Lonely Mountain" especially) but hearing his score accentuating the film on the big screen was an even richer experience. The "Erebor" theme fits in well with the others Shore had already composed, many of which return from The Lord of the Rings. The "Concerning Hobbits" bit plays throughout, but also listen for the "One Ring" motif. Especially juxtaposed with the goings-on at Dol Guldur.

I'm just realizing that this is the first time on this blog that I've reviewed a Peter Jackson movie set in Middle-Earth. I wrote a review of The Fellowship of the Ring for another site the day that movie came out in 2001. A lot has happened since that time, both in the world beyond my own door (sadly, not a round one) and in my personal life. Watching The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey left me feeling the most optimistic, upbeat and cheerful about adventures yet to come than any movie I can recall watching in the past few years.

And it's just getting started...

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey gets this blogger's most abundawonderfully HIGHEST possible recommendation! However you see it (and I might check it out in IMAX 3D 48 FPS at some point), do not miss its theatrical run. This really is a movie to enjoy at least once with a proper audience.

Come back next year for a review of The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug!

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Trailer for THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY

And high-def Quicktime versions of the trailer are up at trailers.apple.com. We wants it my Precious, yesssss...

I made Kristen promise me something late last year: that we will see The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey together at its midnight premiere, Lord willing, no matter what. Seeing this trailer has stoked my longing for this movie that much more. December 14th cannot get here fast enough! Okay yeah it can, but you know what I mean...

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Peter Jackson's THE HOBBIT duology... is officially gonna be a trilogy!

When there were first rumors about this I dismissed them almost without a thought. I mean, The Hobbit is a pretty small novel. I first read the whole thing during an afternoon and evening (it was the day of the Super Bowl in 1991). It's easy to see its film adaptation spread across two films... but not three.

But then director Peter Jackson announced thusly on his Facebook page a few hours ago:

It is only at the end of a shoot that you finally get the chance to sit down and have a look at the film you have made. Recently Fran, Phil and I did just this when we watched for the first time an early cut of the first movie - and a large chunk of the second. We were really pleased with the way the story was coming together, in particular, the strength of the characters and the cast who have brought them to life. All of which gave rise to a simple question: do we take this chance to tell more of the tale? And the answer from our perspective as the filmmakers, and as fans, was an unreserved ‘yes.'

We know how much of the story of Bilbo Baggins, the Wizard Gandalf, the Dwarves of Erebor, the rise of the Necromancer, and the Battle of Dol Guldur will remain untold if we do not take this chance. The richness of the story of The Hobbit, as well as some of the related material in the appendices of The Lord of the Rings, allows us to tell the full story of the adventures of Bilbo Baggins and the part he played in the sometimes dangerous, but at all times exciting, history of Middle-earth.

So, without further ado and on behalf of New Line Cinema, Warner Bros. Pictures, Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer, Wingnut Films, and the entire cast and crew of “The Hobbit” films, I’d like to announce that two films will become three.

It has been an unexpected journey indeed, and in the words of Professor Tolkien himself, "a tale that grew in the telling."

Cheers,

Peter J

Okay, I'll trust Jackson on this. If nothing else this gives me an extra midnight premiere to take my girlfriend Kristen to! She's already agreed to go with me to the one for The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey in December.

And who knows. Maybe eventually Jackson will give us an adaptation of The Silmarillion. Then we'll have J.R.R. Tolkien's entire legendarium sitting on my Blu-Ray shelf!! :-)

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Looks at the first THE HOBBIT trailer, my Precious!

It was ten years ago this week that The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring came out and last night on the way out of town for the evening I had that movie's score soundtrack playin' good and epicly loud from my car's stereo... and I found myself thinking then "I wonder when we'll see that first trailer for The Hobbit?".

Lookee what was already several hours online when I got home a few hours ago!

Ohmigoshohmigoshohmigosh...!!!!!!!!!!!!

That. Is. One. Hell. Of. A. Toad-strangler. Of. A. Trailer.

Heck, it is insanely better looking than anything I had expected of The Hobbit movie, now a decade after Peter Jackson and his crew delivered The Lord of the Rings trilogy. Yeah I didn't know if The Hobbit was gonna work at all...

Color me persuaded with extra portions of giddy!

The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey comes out next Christmas season, with Part 2 of the story following in 2013.

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THE HOBBIT will be THREE movies... and in 3-D!?

Is it 1998 again? 'Cuz I'm getting the same feeling now that I did when word first broke all those many moons ago that Peter Jackson would be making a film trilogy of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Lord of the Rings.

Well, ever since the third and final installment The Return of the King came out more than a half-decade ago, there've been whispers on the wind about Jackson adapting The Hobbit as well, as a prequel film. And for those of us who've been paying attention, it's been a very crazy ride toward no assurance that this would be happening at all (conflicts with the Tolkien estate, Jackson's dispute with New Line, etc.)... which makes me hope all the more that it's gonna go down this way.

GeekTyrant reported last week that The Hobbit will be THREE movies, with Guillermo del Toro directing the first two chapters and Peter Jackson helming the third. In and of itself that's hella kewl... though I have to wonder how there could possibly be enough material from The Hobbit novel to justify three films (and it might be stretching it too much across two, but in Jackson and del Toro will I trust).

And now GeekTyrant is also passing along word that all three movies will be shot in stereoscopic 3-D.

Whoa.

Smaug the Dragon. In 3-D.

That fries my retinas just thinking about how utterly insanely overwhelmingly spectacular that might be.If the report is true, dare we also hope for IMAX?

(Nah, that would be way too much more crazy eye candy than we possibly deserve.)

Throw in Howard Shore returning to score this, and this might be the definitive movie trilogy of the next decade, just as The Lord of the Rings has been for this one. Now all we need is for Peter Jackson to do a six-film movie adaptation of The Silmarillion and the trifecta will be complete! :-)

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Guillermo del Toro to helm THE HOBBIT?

It's being reported this morning in industry trades (and I first heard about it from Ain't It Cool News) that Guillermo del Toro is the likely choice to direct the upcoming film duology of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. The series is already being produced by Peter Jackson, as a prequel to Jackson's earlier mega-successful The Lord of the Rings movie trilogy.

I'll admit some disappointment here, because I was sure that del Toro was also in the running to direct Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows (which is also said to be a two-part production). But that aside: del Toro is a superb choice to bring The Hobbit to life on the big screen. I'm a huge fan of his Hellboy movie (and am looking forward to seeing Hellboy 2: The Golden Army) and I thought that Pan's Labyrinth, although I didn't quite "get" it, I still gotta love del Toro's signature visual style. Now imagine that same imagination getting to work on Mirkwood Forest, the spiders' lair, the elves' hall, Esgaroth on the Long Lake, the Lonely Mountain, the Battle of Five Armies... and of course, Smaug (maybe he'll be voiced by Ron Perlman? :-P).

If this story is true, then I am really, really looking forward to seeing The Hobbit when it comes to theaters. Especially with Lisa, since this is one of her favorite books :-)

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Smaug Alert: Peter Jackson and New Line are making THE HOBBIT (and a sequel)!

It's true! Peter Jackson and New Line Cinema have made nice and are producing a big-screen feature of The Hobbit, just as Jackson did with The Lord of the Rings several years ago.

But that's not all: the deal also includes a sequel that will "bridge" the events of The Hobbit with The Lord of the Rings that took place sixty years later. If you've ever read some of Tolkien's other works, you know that there was a lot more going on in that period that the books just hinted at.

Ain't It Cool News has more, including an official press release and some mention about how Howard Shore may already be working on the music for the new movies.

The Hobbit will hit theaters in 2010.

(Okay Lisa, you can stop worrying now: they are making this finally :-)

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Peter Jackson "film festival" in our house this weekend

We watched two movies on DVD over the weekend and oddly enough both were made by Peter Jackson.

The first was one that I'd heard of for awhile but had never seen before: Heavenly Creatures, which came courtesy of Netflix. This 1994 movie stars Melanie Lynskey and Kate Winslet (in her first-ever film role) as Pauline Rieper and Juliet Hulme, the central figures in the Parker-Hulme murder case that rocked New Zealand in 1954. It's a fairly disturbing movie, but quite a fascinating one as well. I wound up spending a good part of the night after the movie reading about the real-life events involving these two young friends and how it went so bizarrely, totally wrong. But I don't know how long it could be before I could watch Heavenly Creatures again. This is a movie rife with those kinds of things that once you see, you can't "unsee" if you know what I mean.

And then this afternoon Lisa and I watched The Lord of the Rings: The Fellowship of the Ring. Has it really been almost six years since this movie came out? Hard to believe. Well, for whatever reason we watched it and for that I am glad because it left me feeling refreshed and inspired again. That line that Gandalf says at one point: "All you have to decide is what to do with the time that is given to you", is so true. We don't have to believe that we can fight and win all of the battles. And we shouldn't even try to believe it, either. We just have to deal with what God has set before us, as best we can and knowing that whatever happens it does serve His will, even if we can't understand how it can do that from where we are.

Maybe tomorrow I'll put on The Frighteners and make it three Peter Jackson movies in a row :-)

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