Yesterday I might have found the time and energy to do a blog post had I not been out of the house for 13 hours straight. By the time I got home all I wanted to do was have a quick look at the bathroom progress and fall into bed, which was more or less what I did.
I spent the day at Uni keeping away from the noise and the dirt and the general inconvenience of having no running water for most of the day. At 5 o'clock the OH picked me up an we had a meal out (not a very nice one as it happens, so I'll refrain from identifying the place concerned. We were rather startled when we arrived to find it very very quiet indeed, because at this time of year and that time of day it used to be a joint that jumped, but two mistakes with our orders, some unpleasant tasting fries and some not very nice desserts later we realised why it was no longer packed out.) And after that we went to see The Hobbit Part 2, aka The Desolation of Smaug.
Now as I've previously mentioned I try to take a relaxed view of novel adaptations for film and TV. Sometimes I can't bear them but when that happens I usually blame myself for being far too fastidious and precious. This was not the case with the BBC version of Gaskell's North and South. That wasn't me being fastidious, that was the BBC determined to produce a travesty. But mostly I'm quite laid back.By the time I had sat through almost 3 hours of Jackson's latest ludicrously self indulgent film making fest however my relaxed attitude had been quite challenged. In fact I seriously doubt whether I'll make a trip to the cinema to see the third instalment; I'll just wait for one of the boys to buy the DVD and watch it on that.
Perhaps you're wondering if you should go and see the film. If so, just check out the next paragraph and see how many categories you belong to.
This is not a film for a) people who aren't fans of fantasy b) people who have any sort of attachment to the source material c) people who like scripts without glaring non-sequiturs or sudden and inexplicable emotional responses from characters that have no lead or follow up d) people who don't like spiders e) people who get bored with large dark set pieces on camera where you can't make out what's happening beyond a lot of noise f) people who are fans of Hugo Weaving and expecting to see him; because he's not in it, whatever the IMDB says.
I fall into four of the six and if you do too, save yourself some time and money and stay home to wrap Christmas presents.
It's the cynicism that annoys me more than anything; The Hobbit is a short sharp tale and could have been done nicely in one 2 hour film, preferably before Jackson embarked on LOTR. That would not of course have made anything like as much money as nine overblown hours in three instalments. But it would have been a much much better film.
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