30 days of babble, dec 26 - coffee, plus i saw the hobbit yesterday and have an opinion

[tsuki_no_bara]

yesterday i went over to my sister's house so we could order chinese and watch the hobbit #1, and then we hustled our asses out to get a good seat for the hobbit #2. i think i might possibly like #1 better. *ducks* but i liked #2! i really like martin freeman's bilbo and i like all the dwarves and i don't mind the addition of tauriel,

Comments

[justhuman]

I am the same way with coffee. I've taken a taste now and again and have rejected it. I had my first actual cup of coffee in Seattle. I told minim_calibre to order me the version that would be the closest thing to dessert.

[tsuki_no_bara]

my favorite coffee is coffee that tastes like dessert! i'm always so disappointed that regular coffee doesn't taste like it smells.

[bleedtoblue]

I haven't seen Hobbit #2, but I've read all about it and am eager to see it. I read all the spoilers, I don't think it's going to ruin the movie for me. I'm with you. I don't know how they are going to have enough book left to make a third movie!

[tsuki_no_bara]

my guess is peter jackson has a lot of stuff still to add. #2 is a good movie, don't get me wrong, just be warned that it really feels three hours long - altho mostly because stuff keeps happening and not because it really bogs down anywhere - and the love triangle is stupid.

(i tried not to read any spoilers, which is probably silly considering i actually read the book and i know what's going to happen. sort of.)

[idiosyncratic]

Well, there's the entire Battle of the Five Armies to deal with in the third movie, and that's got a lot of shifting alliances and so forth, especially once the Orcs show up. Me, personally, I'm really glad they made the decision to add a lot of the stuff from the Appendices. It helps flesh out a lot of what was going on off-camera (so to speak) in the book and, like your sister said, it helps to tie the two trilogies together for those who have never read the books. But yes, not totally thrilled at all with the love triangle (because really, we ALL called the Legolas/Tauriel crap back when the character was announced), but I did like Tauriel far more than I thought I would.

[tsuki_no_bara]

i totally forgot the battle of the five armies! i read the book so long ago i knew i forgot something important. i feel a little better now about there being enough story left to tell. and now that i've seen #1 and #2 i get why jackson pulled so much else in, and i think he did a good job with it. the extras make it a bigger story, which is absolutely not a bad thing.

the love triangle was stupid and lazy and unnecessary, but yeah, tauriel herself isn't bad at all. i just wish she'd gotten to do a little more fighting and killing and a little less mooning after kili. (i may or may not have seen a slight tinge of sibcest between him and fili, but possibly i just forgot to take the slash goggles off.)

[charisstoma]

Personally I didn't like the ending on Hobbit #2, too much like a serial e-fic and abrupt enough to give a reader/viewer the Nooooooes. It caused me to laugh out loud when they ended it there, the ending too unexpected and amateur in a movie of this stature. I didn't like the beginning's flipping back and forth on the timeline either.

[tsuki_no_bara]

i think middle stories in trilogies kind of suffer from cliffhangeritis in general. you have to cut them off somewhere. i didn't think it was that bad, but i kept waiting for the movie to end and it kept not ending, so i was mostly glad jackson finally found a stopping point. i didn't like the beginning flashback either, tho. i wasn't sure what purpose it served. i mean, do we really need to know that gandalf kind of prodded thorin into trying to get his kingdom back? and is it important that there's a price on the guy's head? (why is there a price on his head? did i miss it or do we just not really know?)

[charisstoma]

At the Prancing Pony Gandalf explains to Thorin the reason he can't read the message on that piece of parchment/hide that it's in Dark Speech which would lead to thinking that it was Azog who had put the price on his head. Then again being Gandalf he could have fabricated the whole thing to prod Thorin into action with the deadline for the prophecy approaching.

I read this many many many years ago and I don't remember the story well which, I am told, made it easier to not be put off by the license that Jackson took with it. Personally I liked the production of the musical play that the local High School did of it that lead to reading the book with my then 4 year old daughter. Think we saw the play 5 or 6 times but we missed the part where the pyrotechnics in the trees on stage caused a fire and the quick thinking puppeteer of Smaug's head turned the dragon on the flames and used the fire extinguisher of Smaug's flame to put the fire out. *grins* It helps to be on an Army base with all that know-how available.

[tsuki_no_bara]

>>At the Prancing Pony Gandalf explains to Thorin the reason he can't read the message on that piece of parchment/hide that it's in Dark Speech which would lead to thinking that it was Azog who had put the price on his head.<<

ok, that makes sense. i didn't quite make the connection between dark speech and azog, but it's super clear that azog wants thorin's head. but i still don't think that scene was necessary - we know azog is after thorin because the rest of the movie (and movie #1) tells us so.

props to that puppeteer! i didn't know the hobbit was ever a play. how cool!

[wendy]

I think that is the ultimate dilemma of coffee -- love the smell, cover the taste.

♥

[tsuki_no_bara]

it smells SO GOOD. why doesn't it taste the same way it smells?? but at least it lends itself well to being disguised with chocolate. yum.

...now i want a little slice of mocha cake with frosting. or an espresso brownie.