Ewoks. With blaster rifles.
For the good of the galaxy, let us hope the triumphant Rebels never allow them to leave Endor.
If you're caught up on The Walking Dead, you still won't be ready for the abundawundawesomeness of Jonathan Wong's video. He's masterfully edited together clips from The Walking Dead and set it to Adele's hit song "Skyfall", the theme from the latest James Bond movie.
If you only watch one YouTube video this week, watch this one. If you only watch ten, watch this one ten times!
AMC oughtta hire Jonathan, this vid is so dang cool!!
And of all the wonder that is to be found in Terrence Malick's The Tree of Life, this is the scene that has most entranced and enchanted me.
As I wrote after watching it then, this is a movie that dares to ask God "Why?", before providing the same reply that God gave to Job.
Now that the thought occurs to me, I might even suggest watching The Tree of Life after studying the Book of Job from the Old Testament. Yeah: read everything from the beginning, on through Job losing all but his life and then to the monologues by his friends (some help they were!) and exactly before hitting the point where God comes in to answer Job, go to this scene in The Tree of Life and let that paraphrase what God says.
What God has said to Job and to every one of us who has demanded of Him, "Answer me."
The music is "Lacrimosa" by composer Zbigniew Preisner. And as soon as I find the CD of it I am absolutely putting it on my iPod.
Just felt like posting something beautiful at this late hour...
So I can't help but think: a magazine isn't much more than a metal box with a spring. Come to think of it, that's all a magazine is. I could very easily manufacture a rough but working magazine - holding as much ammo as I wish - in a machine shop. Apart from the spring, EVERYTHING that I'd need to produce a magazine in an hour or so's time is within ready reach of me.
Hey, I've made knives. Making parts for guns would be the next logical step. And there are many with far greater skills who could produce not just the magazines but full-working guns, and possibly mass-produce them at that.
Not to mention that rapid-prototyping - AKA "3D printing" - is already allowing for production of magazines and other gun parts on your desktop. Before very long if you want a gun, you'll be able to download one from the Internet. Literally.
I'm guessing that if government restrictions are placed on firearms and magazines, that there will be a vast underground market for those produced in home shops etc. And every one of them will be unregistered and untraceable.
I'm just sayin', is all...
And the Doctor will be waiting for them. Not just in new threads but a whole new control room for the TARDIS...
The Doctor Who Christmas specials have been very hit-or-miss for me. One one hand we've had "The Next Doctor", "The Doctor, The Widow and the Wardrobe" and the beautiful tale that was "A Christmas Carol"... and then there have been turkeys like "Voyage of the Damned" (right up there with "Love & Monsters" as one of the all-time low points of Doctor Who history). But I've a ridiculously good feeling about "The Snowmen".
Anyhoo, the more I look at this redesign of the TARDIS console/control room, the more I'm digging it. And apparently that really IS a whole new costume for the Eleventh Doctor! Matt Smith describes it as "a bit Artful Dodger meets the Doctor." Some pics have him wearing a top hat with the new ensemble. And he's still wearing the bow tie. Bow ties are cool.
(What? Y'all think I wouldn't find a way to work that in? :-P )
"The Snowmen" premieres on Christmas Day: on BBC One for our Brittish brethren across the pond and on BBC America for us colonists.
But I've also long believed that in spite of those and many more qualms about the man, Robert Bork truly - as best he understood - adhered to the highest principles in respect to law and the Constitution.
And claims from petty politicians (like Ted Kennedy) aside, it must be agreed by all: Bork was a brilliant jurist in every sense.
Judge Robert H. Bork passed away this morning at the age of 85.
Thoughts and prayers going out to his family.
And I have to wonder today - as I have many times over the years - what the United States Supreme Court would have been like if Bork had been on the bench.
Then this afternoon they release what they're claiming is the actual first trailer for it.
Confused? Yeah me too kinda.
But I think most will agree: this could be, so far, the most intense and poignant trailer for a Star Trek movie ever:
You're gonna have to watch it in Quicktime if you wanna see it 'cuz at the moment the Paramount lawyers are having it wiped like crazy from YouTube. Besides, you REALLY want to watch this in full beautiful Quicktime anyway. Trust me :-)
Still no word on whether or not Benedict Cumberbatch will be playing Khan. But right now the confidence is pretty high that Alice Eve's character will be Carol Marcus. And then there's that final shot from this trailer that will remind everyone of a certain famous scene from Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan...
Gotta love a good mystery!
She was killed during Friday's massacre after hiding her students in a closet, then using her body to shield them against the bullets.
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!
