peter jackson

Chris Knight's avatar

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
...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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…...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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

...
Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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, ...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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 🙂...

Read more

Chris Knight's avatar

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 ...

Read more