Jet Lag Sucks. Also, My Thoughts on The Hobbit
Andrew slept until the ridiculous hour of 10am this morning. Which, had it been Sunday morning in most places, wouldn't have been that big of a deal, but it being the UL, the week runs on a Sunday-Thursday schedule, so today was a school day. School opens at 8.15.
On my end, it wasn't a total loss; I just kept writing until he woke up, and then he only ended up being in school for about two hours. The good thing is he woke up feeling pretty good, which is notable because he had a horrific cough yesterday - the sort that you wonder how long the kid's been smoking. (After some conversation with some of the other moms in the complex, it appears that most of the kids had the cough within days of returning from Christmas vacations, so I suspect it's just re-entry to the UL's lovely pollution.) It did mean he logged in a good fourteen hours of sleep, which he apparently needed. But now it's going on 4.30 in the afternoon, and he is the epitome of crabby, and I don't particularly want him to nap this late.
The upshot is I'm probably once again going to miss late afternoon playtime downstairs, which sucks, because I like hanging with the other moms. Plus it's the only chance I get for adult conversations most days. Argh.
I tell you, jet lag sucks. Especially when you're three.
I did get some writing done, though - both last night and then again this morning, and then once I dropped Andrew off at school I headed straight to Beano's and found my table (and it is totally my table, no one else ever sits there, I ought to just go ahead and carve my name in) and did some editing. I finished the Valentine's Mystrade fic for Tumblr and coded the next chapter of Power Play and I've been brainstorming the next movement of Mise. (Heart3 is remaining elusive for the moment; I've decided to let it. For now. As is the other Mystrade. I don't want to leave them too long, lest I never actually get to them at all...but Mise is sort of calling to me, and I'm kind of getting excited about finishing it.)
And I don't want to start anything new until I've finished what I've got started. I don't like having WIPs sitting on my hard drive, they sort of grate on me after a while. And I thought of another AU that I'd like to try writing - a few months ago, there was a post on Tumblr where someone took the movie poster to Ruby Sparks and turned it into a Sherlock thing, where John was the writer and Sherlock his creation who comes to life. Thing is, I saw the movie on one of the flights to the U.S., and I think Tumblr's got it wrong. I think it's the other way around: Sherlock is the writer, and John is his creation, and I think that would be very interesting to write.
(But because I doubt I could either do justice to the bunny, and because I'm not altogether sure I'd ever get to it, there.)
Anyway, since I appear to have a little bit of time at the moment...
Bill and I were able to convince his dad to watch Andrew for us while we went out for lunch and a movie. (Lunch was Chipotle, because Me/Guacamole is definitely one of my OTPs.) We ended up seeing The Hobbit, less because we both wanted to see it (well, I did) and more because the movies we both wanted to see weren't playing anywhere nearby anymore. (Argo and Skyfall, mostly. Bill wanted to see Zero Dark Thirty, which I had no desire to see. I told him he was welcome to go see that while I was watching The Hobbit, but he declined my offer.)
Bill: So are there Oompa Loompas in this movie?
Me: Uh, no.
Bill: But it's a movie about Hobbits. And Hobbits love food. And Oompa Loompas are short.
Me: Martin Freeman doesn't play an Oompa Loompa.
Bill: Can I root for the dragon?
Me: The dragon doesn't appear in this movie.
Bill: Can I root for Sauron?
Me: We don't see Sauron, either. I don't think.
Bill: So who am I supposed to root for?
Me: The iceburg.
Bill: Please tell me Leonardo isn't in this movie.
Me: Oh, come on, you LOVED Titanic! You rewrote the Celine Dion song!*
Bill: TO MAKE FUN OF HOW MUCH I HATED TITANIC.
* "Once more I opened the door / And I know that this film will go oooooooonnnnnnnnn." He also rewrote the Love Boat theme. "Titanic / She's never making another run / Titanic / Let's all go shoot Leo with a gun."
So, the movie. First let me say that I haven't read the book. That is, I tried to read the book when I was a kid, and I never really made it all that far in. (I thought it was boring. Very sorry if you're a Tolkein fan; I don't mean it personally.) But I like Martin Freeman, I loved the LOTR movies, and I knew it was going to be pretty. Plus, date with husband, movie theater popcorn, and nothing else good playing.
Mostly, I thought the movie was okay. Martin Freeman was excellent, the movie was indeed very pretty, and the popcorn was delicious. That said:
--It took way too long to get out of the Shire. Now, this is twofold: the first half of what is undoubtedly a bookend with Old!Bilbo and Frodo, and the introduction of the Dwarves & Bilbo's contract. On the first point, I don't know that the bookend was truly necessary. Or at least so much of it. I mean, I liked the inference that it's shortly before Bilbo's birthday party (even the day of, since Frodo is off with his book to meet Gandalf on the road), but it took so long to actually set all this up, to talk about the habits of Hobbits, and yeah, it was pretty, but...how many people are actually watching this movie who did not see LOTR? Maybe Peter Jackson was thinking more long-term, that there will be future generations who do really start out with this movie, and may not have seen LOTR, and therefore do need this extended intro. But me, I breathed a sigh of relief when Ian Holm exhaled and Martin was the one who inhaled.
The Dwarves, thogh - I liked the Dwarves, I loved how they gave us the whole backstory to the mountain and Smaug, and how they kept showing up one after the other and disrupting Bilbo's evening. That is, I think this part probably dragged a little bit, but it was fun, and I understand why it was somewhat necessary, to give the Dwarves some sort of individual status, instead of just a bunch of random Dwarves.
And I have to say, I flat out loved the Misty Mountain song. So, so beautiful. I'm glad that one was there (I probably could have done without the rest).
--There didn't seem to be much of a cohesive plot, not in the same way that a movie ought to have. When you look at most three- (or more-) movie series, you can see a pattern. The first movie usually works really well as a stand-alone picture. Star Wars,
Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman, Batman (the recent ones), Toy Story, Shrek, Fellowship of the Ring even. (You can probably think of more.) Part of this is because the first movie is usually made without an absolute intention to make additional movies unless the first does well, so the movie is presented as a complete unit. And that's fine. But the thing is, Peter Jackson can pretty much do whatever the heck he likes, so he's taken a single book and chopped it into three, and thus what was one story is now three different parts. I feel a little bit like we didn't just watch a movie - we watched a two-hour prologue in which we spent a great deal setting up events, and the story hasn't even started yet.
(After all, that's what we did. Bilbo found the ring and was given the as-of-yet unnamed Sting, which sets up the LOTR series. (Oh, and we showed him the way to Rivendale.) We had the Brown Wizard set up the whole Necromancer storyline (which goes absolutely nowhere as of yet, though it did give cause to stick Benedict Cumberbatch's name in the credits). We had a bit of what is surely to be an ongoing battle between the White Orc and Thorin Oakenshield, and then we had the Famous Last Words from Bilbo Baggins, who has surely never seen a horror film in his entire life or he would have known better to say them, "I think the worst is past us now." OMG, BILBO. Why don't you just answer the phone in the empty house on a rainy night when there's a serial killer on the loose while you're at it???)
So, yeah. No plot, except to get Twelve Dwarves, One Hobbit, and One Often-Disappearing-At-Key-Moments Wizard from Point A to...um...well, somewhere between Point A and Point B, if you assume that Point B is the Misty Mountain, and judging from where the Eagles dumped them, they're at least a two-week walk away (sans ponies, remember those fellows scarpered a while back).
(And that's another thing: why not just use the Eagles to fly from the Shire to the Mountain in the first place? I assume that there's a reason, and it probably isn't because it would mean a much shorter movie.)
(And why does Gandalf always disappear at key moments? "Hi, Dwarves, you're going into dangerous territory, take care of the Hobbit, BYE.")
--Because this does sound like I didn't like the movie - which isn't precisely true, I liked it, just not as much as I liked the LOTR movies - here is a list of things I did really enjoy:
The Costumes. Like you didn't see this coming. I loved the layered look of the Dwarves. Their hair and beards were fantastic - the wigs department must have had a blast. I loved Bilbo's costumes (though I probably spent way too long thinking about the mechanics of his buttons popping off when he was escaping from Gollum).
And frankly, Elrond's coat? The blue (purple?) brocade, with the diagonol hem, and I can't find a decent picture of it online. Yeah, I love that coat. If I'm going to obsess over any costume in the movie, it's going to be that one.
Gandalf/Galadriel Okay, so maybe I missed the shippy overtones in the LOTR movies, but egad, I caught them here. I would say that I probably wear shippier goggles now, but I didn't really see the Bagginshield or whatever it's called, so I don't think that's it.
But I liked it. The wizard in love with an Elf, who will remain young while he grows ever older. It's not quite as poignant as an Elf in love with a Man, but I do like it. (I suspect someone who knows more about the Tolkein world could expand on the pairing, but that person wouldn't be me.)
This Song. I mentioned it earlier, but it deserves repetition.
The landscapes, which is to say, New Zealand. Seriously, the best thing to ever happen to New Zealand's Tourism Authority was probably these movies. Peter Jackson ought to be on their payroll. Because now I really want to go, it looks lovely. Maybe I can get Bill to bid for Wellington next, though I suspect he'd be bored out of his mind.
The Characters (and a subset of this, The Actors. Because I liked them all, even if they were ridiculous. Especially if they were ridiculous. Even if I thought their scenes went on too long or were pointless. Especially, because even afterwards, I still liked them. The Brown Wizard, to me, was somewhat pointless except as a plot device, but he was adorable, caring for the hedgehog and keeping the animals safe under his hat. The Dwarves were so staunchly individual that there was no chance of mistaking one personality for the other (even if I couldn't remember their names). The White Orc...I've seen footage, courtesy of Tumblr, comparing the animation to the actor, and OMG. Heck, I even liked the trolls, who were awful, but still funny.
And I think the reason I liked all the characters was because the actors themselves did such good jobs portraying them. That wasn't Martin Freeman giving the speech about home at the end - that was Bilbo Baggins. Martin Freeman? Never heard of the guy.
Things Tumblr/SNL Ruined for Me: Gandalf counting the Dwarves like a teacher on a school field trip. The last scene where we see Smaug's eye open? I was disappointed that it wasn't actually Benedict Cumberbatch's eye. When Bilbo forgot his handkerchief and wanted to turn back. I kept trying to see Bagginshield, and while I see why some might think it's there, I just didn't see it myself.
So, in short: liked the movie. Hated the (lack of) story. Desperately want that coat of Elrond's.
(And in case you're wondering, Bill did root for the dragon.)
On my end, it wasn't a total loss; I just kept writing until he woke up, and then he only ended up being in school for about two hours. The good thing is he woke up feeling pretty good, which is notable because he had a horrific cough yesterday - the sort that you wonder how long the kid's been smoking. (After some conversation with some of the other moms in the complex, it appears that most of the kids had the cough within days of returning from Christmas vacations, so I suspect it's just re-entry to the UL's lovely pollution.) It did mean he logged in a good fourteen hours of sleep, which he apparently needed. But now it's going on 4.30 in the afternoon, and he is the epitome of crabby, and I don't particularly want him to nap this late.
The upshot is I'm probably once again going to miss late afternoon playtime downstairs, which sucks, because I like hanging with the other moms. Plus it's the only chance I get for adult conversations most days. Argh.
I tell you, jet lag sucks. Especially when you're three.
I did get some writing done, though - both last night and then again this morning, and then once I dropped Andrew off at school I headed straight to Beano's and found my table (and it is totally my table, no one else ever sits there, I ought to just go ahead and carve my name in) and did some editing. I finished the Valentine's Mystrade fic for Tumblr and coded the next chapter of Power Play and I've been brainstorming the next movement of Mise. (Heart3 is remaining elusive for the moment; I've decided to let it. For now. As is the other Mystrade. I don't want to leave them too long, lest I never actually get to them at all...but Mise is sort of calling to me, and I'm kind of getting excited about finishing it.)
And I don't want to start anything new until I've finished what I've got started. I don't like having WIPs sitting on my hard drive, they sort of grate on me after a while. And I thought of another AU that I'd like to try writing - a few months ago, there was a post on Tumblr where someone took the movie poster to Ruby Sparks and turned it into a Sherlock thing, where John was the writer and Sherlock his creation who comes to life. Thing is, I saw the movie on one of the flights to the U.S., and I think Tumblr's got it wrong. I think it's the other way around: Sherlock is the writer, and John is his creation, and I think that would be very interesting to write.
(But because I doubt I could either do justice to the bunny, and because I'm not altogether sure I'd ever get to it, there.)
Anyway, since I appear to have a little bit of time at the moment...
Bill and I were able to convince his dad to watch Andrew for us while we went out for lunch and a movie. (Lunch was Chipotle, because Me/Guacamole is definitely one of my OTPs.) We ended up seeing The Hobbit, less because we both wanted to see it (well, I did) and more because the movies we both wanted to see weren't playing anywhere nearby anymore. (Argo and Skyfall, mostly. Bill wanted to see Zero Dark Thirty, which I had no desire to see. I told him he was welcome to go see that while I was watching The Hobbit, but he declined my offer.)
Bill: So are there Oompa Loompas in this movie?
Me: Uh, no.
Bill: But it's a movie about Hobbits. And Hobbits love food. And Oompa Loompas are short.
Me: Martin Freeman doesn't play an Oompa Loompa.
Bill: Can I root for the dragon?
Me: The dragon doesn't appear in this movie.
Bill: Can I root for Sauron?
Me: We don't see Sauron, either. I don't think.
Bill: So who am I supposed to root for?
Me: The iceburg.
Bill: Please tell me Leonardo isn't in this movie.
Me: Oh, come on, you LOVED Titanic! You rewrote the Celine Dion song!*
Bill: TO MAKE FUN OF HOW MUCH I HATED TITANIC.
* "Once more I opened the door / And I know that this film will go oooooooonnnnnnnnn." He also rewrote the Love Boat theme. "Titanic / She's never making another run / Titanic / Let's all go shoot Leo with a gun."
So, the movie. First let me say that I haven't read the book. That is, I tried to read the book when I was a kid, and I never really made it all that far in. (I thought it was boring. Very sorry if you're a Tolkein fan; I don't mean it personally.) But I like Martin Freeman, I loved the LOTR movies, and I knew it was going to be pretty. Plus, date with husband, movie theater popcorn, and nothing else good playing.
Mostly, I thought the movie was okay. Martin Freeman was excellent, the movie was indeed very pretty, and the popcorn was delicious. That said:
--It took way too long to get out of the Shire. Now, this is twofold: the first half of what is undoubtedly a bookend with Old!Bilbo and Frodo, and the introduction of the Dwarves & Bilbo's contract. On the first point, I don't know that the bookend was truly necessary. Or at least so much of it. I mean, I liked the inference that it's shortly before Bilbo's birthday party (even the day of, since Frodo is off with his book to meet Gandalf on the road), but it took so long to actually set all this up, to talk about the habits of Hobbits, and yeah, it was pretty, but...how many people are actually watching this movie who did not see LOTR? Maybe Peter Jackson was thinking more long-term, that there will be future generations who do really start out with this movie, and may not have seen LOTR, and therefore do need this extended intro. But me, I breathed a sigh of relief when Ian Holm exhaled and Martin was the one who inhaled.
The Dwarves, thogh - I liked the Dwarves, I loved how they gave us the whole backstory to the mountain and Smaug, and how they kept showing up one after the other and disrupting Bilbo's evening. That is, I think this part probably dragged a little bit, but it was fun, and I understand why it was somewhat necessary, to give the Dwarves some sort of individual status, instead of just a bunch of random Dwarves.
And I have to say, I flat out loved the Misty Mountain song. So, so beautiful. I'm glad that one was there (I probably could have done without the rest).
--There didn't seem to be much of a cohesive plot, not in the same way that a movie ought to have. When you look at most three- (or more-) movie series, you can see a pattern. The first movie usually works really well as a stand-alone picture. Star Wars,
Back to the Future, Indiana Jones, Pirates of the Caribbean, Spiderman, Batman (the recent ones), Toy Story, Shrek, Fellowship of the Ring even. (You can probably think of more.) Part of this is because the first movie is usually made without an absolute intention to make additional movies unless the first does well, so the movie is presented as a complete unit. And that's fine. But the thing is, Peter Jackson can pretty much do whatever the heck he likes, so he's taken a single book and chopped it into three, and thus what was one story is now three different parts. I feel a little bit like we didn't just watch a movie - we watched a two-hour prologue in which we spent a great deal setting up events, and the story hasn't even started yet.
(After all, that's what we did. Bilbo found the ring and was given the as-of-yet unnamed Sting, which sets up the LOTR series. (Oh, and we showed him the way to Rivendale.) We had the Brown Wizard set up the whole Necromancer storyline (which goes absolutely nowhere as of yet, though it did give cause to stick Benedict Cumberbatch's name in the credits). We had a bit of what is surely to be an ongoing battle between the White Orc and Thorin Oakenshield, and then we had the Famous Last Words from Bilbo Baggins, who has surely never seen a horror film in his entire life or he would have known better to say them, "I think the worst is past us now." OMG, BILBO. Why don't you just answer the phone in the empty house on a rainy night when there's a serial killer on the loose while you're at it???)
So, yeah. No plot, except to get Twelve Dwarves, One Hobbit, and One Often-Disappearing-At-Key-Moments Wizard from Point A to...um...well, somewhere between Point A and Point B, if you assume that Point B is the Misty Mountain, and judging from where the Eagles dumped them, they're at least a two-week walk away (sans ponies, remember those fellows scarpered a while back).
(And that's another thing: why not just use the Eagles to fly from the Shire to the Mountain in the first place? I assume that there's a reason, and it probably isn't because it would mean a much shorter movie.)
(And why does Gandalf always disappear at key moments? "Hi, Dwarves, you're going into dangerous territory, take care of the Hobbit, BYE.")
--Because this does sound like I didn't like the movie - which isn't precisely true, I liked it, just not as much as I liked the LOTR movies - here is a list of things I did really enjoy:
The Costumes. Like you didn't see this coming. I loved the layered look of the Dwarves. Their hair and beards were fantastic - the wigs department must have had a blast. I loved Bilbo's costumes (though I probably spent way too long thinking about the mechanics of his buttons popping off when he was escaping from Gollum).
And frankly, Elrond's coat? The blue (purple?) brocade, with the diagonol hem, and I can't find a decent picture of it online. Yeah, I love that coat. If I'm going to obsess over any costume in the movie, it's going to be that one.
Gandalf/Galadriel Okay, so maybe I missed the shippy overtones in the LOTR movies, but egad, I caught them here. I would say that I probably wear shippier goggles now, but I didn't really see the Bagginshield or whatever it's called, so I don't think that's it.
But I liked it. The wizard in love with an Elf, who will remain young while he grows ever older. It's not quite as poignant as an Elf in love with a Man, but I do like it. (I suspect someone who knows more about the Tolkein world could expand on the pairing, but that person wouldn't be me.)
This Song. I mentioned it earlier, but it deserves repetition.
Click to viewThe landscapes, which is to say, New Zealand. Seriously, the best thing to ever happen to New Zealand's Tourism Authority was probably these movies. Peter Jackson ought to be on their payroll. Because now I really want to go, it looks lovely. Maybe I can get Bill to bid for Wellington next, though I suspect he'd be bored out of his mind.
The Characters (and a subset of this, The Actors. Because I liked them all, even if they were ridiculous. Especially if they were ridiculous. Even if I thought their scenes went on too long or were pointless. Especially, because even afterwards, I still liked them. The Brown Wizard, to me, was somewhat pointless except as a plot device, but he was adorable, caring for the hedgehog and keeping the animals safe under his hat. The Dwarves were so staunchly individual that there was no chance of mistaking one personality for the other (even if I couldn't remember their names). The White Orc...I've seen footage, courtesy of Tumblr, comparing the animation to the actor, and OMG. Heck, I even liked the trolls, who were awful, but still funny.
And I think the reason I liked all the characters was because the actors themselves did such good jobs portraying them. That wasn't Martin Freeman giving the speech about home at the end - that was Bilbo Baggins. Martin Freeman? Never heard of the guy.
Things Tumblr/SNL Ruined for Me: Gandalf counting the Dwarves like a teacher on a school field trip. The last scene where we see Smaug's eye open? I was disappointed that it wasn't actually Benedict Cumberbatch's eye. When Bilbo forgot his handkerchief and wanted to turn back. I kept trying to see Bagginshield, and while I see why some might think it's there, I just didn't see it myself.
So, in short: liked the movie. Hated the (lack of) story. Desperately want that coat of Elrond's.
(And in case you're wondering, Bill did root for the dragon.)