The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug

I keep promising myself that I am going to stop going to midnight screenings and spare myself the pain of the following day. I also keep breaking that promise and justifying it to myself with all kinds of excuses. Last nights excuse was simple, both of my daughters wanted to go to the double feature of The two Hobbit films and the second premiered at midnight. At 27 and 25, they still have their Dad wrapped around their fingers. When they were small kids and we lived in an apartment in Alhambra, I would read them a chapter of the Hobbit as a bedtime story every night. We must have read the whole book three or four times and it remains one of those proud achievements of fatherhood that I introduced them to that form of literature  when they were only four or five years old. Even though they were not as enthusiastic about the first movie "An Unexpected Journey" as they had been about the Lord of the Rings trilogy, they still want the movies to work and there are still scenes in our heads that we want to see depicted on screen, forty feet high and seventy feet wide. We also craved hearing a voice that we had nightmares over when they were young; the dragon Smaug. This new chapter in the Hobbit series suffers from the same bloat that it's predecessor did, it takes a long time for some events to happen, some events that are not needed intrude on the story and sequences of action often go on longer than needed. That having been said, we all had a marvelous time and I at least enjoyed the film immensely in spite of the story excesses. I was happy to be in a theater, and I was there for over six hours with two of my favorite three people in the world. The film kept me awake and involved, even though I had been up since 4:30 in the morning on Thursday. If it can keep me awake when all my senses would normally be screaming to shut down, the film must do some things right.

To start on a positive note, let's focus on the key scene in the movie. The one piece that everyone is anticipating and needs to work for the film to have any chance. Last year, the riddle game with Gollum was the scene that everyone loved and allowed them to embrace the film even though it has flaws. This year the conversation is more dangerous and erudite. Bilbo Baggins, novice burglar, confronts "Smaug", the dragon responsible for wiping out the dwarf kingdom of Erebor as well as Dale, the nearby town of men that now lays in ruin at the foot of The Lonely Mountain.  Many of us remember the Rankin/Bass animated version of The Hobbit from the 1970s. The dragon was voiced by one of the great pieces of voice casting ever, Richard Boone. His sonorous and gravelly voice fit the serpent like qualities of the character perfectly. His self aggrandizing tone matched the ego of the beast and revealed his weakness. Boone is long gone and when the films were finally announced we played a game; name the actor who would best voice Smaug. At our house we were three for three, all of us picked one voice that we thought would be perfect, and it is not the one that was cast. Imagine our disappointment when we saw that Benedict Cumberbatch would voice the dragon and not our unanimously agreed upon Peter O'Toole. Of course at that point we were not familiar with Mr. Cumberbatch and his vocal talents. I still have not seen his Holmes, but he was excellent in "Star Trek: Into Darkness" and so I had high hopes. He manages to live up to those hopes very well. He brings menace and temperment to the right boil to make Smaug more than a monster but a real character as well. Check out the last thiry seconds of the trailer below to get a preview.


In addition to being well played vocally, the dragon is vividly realized in a visual medium. He moves convincingly and looks very realistic. In one of the many departures from the book, there is a long confrontation sequence and chace between Smaug and the troop of dwarfs seeking his destruction. Like several  other sequences in the film, it goes on a little long and is not entirely needed but it is cleverly put together and entertaining to watch.

A second example of the weakness of the film is the long chase of the dwarfs as they escape from imprisonment in a elf kingdom by riding in barrels. What was whimsical and somewhat comic in the children's book that I read to my kids, becomes an elaborate set piece featuring a violent battle scene at a water gate and then an extended hunt and chase battle along the path of the river by which the barrels are returned to Laketown. The sequence is well staged and has some amazing stunts and visual tricks to show us but it goes on much too long and it could easily be taken out of the film since it does nothing to advance the narrative and only exits to make this an action film on the same level as the movies from ten years ago. Conversely, the interlude at the beginning of this chapter of the trilogy, features the character "Beorn" and it goes by much too quickly. It was a good change of pace moment in the book but it does not get a chance to allow us to reacquaint with the band of adventurers before they are quickly pursued into Mirkwood. The pace of the film is constantly moving quickly, which is surprising since the story is so padded. For a nearly three hour film, it never seems to slow down enough to take in the events or personalities that we encounter. They are interludes between the long fight sequnces that have been interjected in a half dozen places in the story.

If your favorite parts of the "Lord of the Rings" films were the battle at Helms Deep or the War at the gates of Gondor, than this film will be perfect for you. Orcs and Goblins crawl through forests and towns and attack at nearly every opportunity. There are flashback sequences and parallel story lines and there is even a romantic subplot thrust into this film. I can say that even though the tie in to the later stories is not needed here, it was actually assembled very well. Strings of connection have been forged where none existed before but they are not so much grafted on as weaved into the story. The scale of the movie is much larger than the original book required, and it dilutes the product even though it is prepared well and cooked expertly. Gandalf is a much more central figure in this version of "The Hobbit" and sometimes that means that Bilbo gets a little lost. The actors are all playing their parts with great fervor and some of the dwarfs are finally stepping out of the crowd and establishing a little more personality distinction. The scenes in the Kingdom of the Mirkwood elves do feel like the drama is being ratcheted up rather than building naturally. On the other hand, the sequence in Laketown, except for the orc attack, feels much more like a story that is telling itself rather than being forced on us.  Bard as a character is perfectly cast and his somber demeanor fits with the story. I did think his imprisonment made very little sense and there are a couple of similar glitches in other places as well.

This time I splurged and we saw this in 3D IMAX with the 48fps speed film. I understand the criticism that it got last year and there were several spots in which the high speed shooting makes the picture less cinematic and more obviously set based. Some elements look much better with the high speed film but others look almost videotaped rather than filmed. There did not seem to be any consistent reason that this was true. It was not as if all of the action scenes worked but the exposition scenes looked off. Both types of sequences worked and failed at different points and I am hard pressed to say why although I can say I noticed it. For a story that has been building to a confrontation with a dragon, it ends a bit abruptly. This will certainly make the start of the next and final chapter more memorable but it left the audience a little short this morning. The critical praise from the Lord of the Rings films was deserved, it was an intricate story that was massively complex and stitched together in an effective way. The reason the Hobbit films have not had the same kind of support is not a lack of talent, vision or skill. The reason these movies are not as revered as the other series comes down to the fact that this simple story is being reverse engineered. As Peter Drucker said:

“There is nothing quite so useless, as doing with great efficiency, something that should not be done at all.” 

JAWS Diorama

Post by Bruce's Scale Modeling Domain.

Final Cut 2013 - A Cinema Tribute

Movies I Want Everyone to See: The Court Jester 1955

Time marches on and history sometimes fades into vague memory and then is forgotten. If I asked anyone in my classes if they know who Danny Kaye was, my guess is that a couple of hands would go in the air and the other twenty-five would look at me blankly. This is no fault of their own, there are so many good films to catch up on, and if you are a fan of the Golden age of Hollywood, you probably want to absorb some film noir, or catch up on classic westerns that you have missed. Heck, maybe you would even want to see some of the socially relevant classics of that time period; films like "On the Waterfront", "Gentleman's Agreement", or "The Best Years of our Lives". Who could fault you with so many wonderful choices? I don't ever want this continuing column to be about scolding people for the films they have not yet found. My purpose is always to bring attention to a movie that I want others to share and enjoy. While Danny Kaye starred in dozens of movies and did television up till his death in 1987, it is this movie that makes me most love him. It is time for me to share the love.

Homefront

A video review for a pretty standard Action film. Hope you enjoy. Also on KAMAD.
Not much to write about, but if you are interested I have a view things to say.

Frozen

Twenty years ago, I would have taken my small daughters to see this movie on a chilly day after Thanksgiving and they would have loved it. It has music and funny characters and two princesses. They would probably fight for the rest of the year over which princess they got to be when they played together.  I have no doubt that there will be 1000s of little girls and their parents enjoying the same kind of enchantment I might have enjoyed then. The problem however is my kids are grown, and while I did take my youngest with me (she is 25 now) we have grown more critical in our willingness to embrace a movie on mere concept. Execution matters. There is a lot to appreciate in this Walt Disney Pictures Release, but it falls far short of being a classic that you will want to return to time after time.

I love musicals, so when I say this film falls a little flat on the musical side, know that it is not because I object to the format. I have noticed that many musical films, especially children's films, start heavy in the first half and then as the narrative gets denser and more convoluted, abandons the musical sequences. Except for the Umpa Loompa song in Willie Wonka, once they go through the tunnel, the only distinct song is the "I Want it Now" Veruca Salt number. In "The Wizard of Oz", after they meet the Wizard the first time, there is only the guard song and it hardly counts as a song at all. This film has a dozen musical sequences in the first half and none in the second. When all those songs are stacked on top of one another in the first part of the movie, none of them gets to stand out. They are also pretty much the same style and sung by women's voices that are strong but not particularly distinct from one another. The Disney films of the early nineties knew that you needed a show stopper, not just a character piece. All the songs in this film feel like showcases for the singers but not for the story or the song. None of them advances the story or reveals anything surprising about the characters. They sound very "Broadway" with a little bit of contemporary teen pop to make them radio friendly. We need a "Prince Ali" or a "Be Our Guest" to make the show distinctive.

The set up of the dilemma with the two little princesses is nicely done but the reason for Ilsa having special powers is not explained and is taken as a given before we know it. There is a crisis that immediately follows our discovery of this gift and it is resolved by another unexplained phenomena, a village of rock trolls. The magic seems arbitrary and the explanations are rapidly zipped through. The loving parents are made to vanish for no particular reason and in a manner that seems to belie the circumstances in which they live. The whole first part of the movie skips over the relationship between the sisters after the opening incident. Since that relationship seemed so intense in the start of the story, it feels sadly underdone after that. The appearance of a love interest and the ease with which he is accepted by all but the new queen is another oddly undeveloped point. I also felt that the animation style, computer generated images, sometimes seemed to be used for display of ideas rather than telling the story. The best part of the artwork is not the magic of the frost covering the land, but the characters faces and the charm of the non-human characters.

As in most Disney films, the hero has a horse (or in this case a Reindeer) who has personality plus and steals the scene from under the lead. The nice touch in this story is that the hero provides a conversational voice for the animal and then carries on dialogue with himself as if the Reindeer were answering. Most of you with pets know what I am talking about. I liked the fact that this forces the hero Kristoff, to make decisions for himself but blame it on his reindeer Sven. The relationship between Kristoff and Princess Anna develops nicely through the adventure they travel through together. The introduction of the Snowman Olaf is a little less effective. As a character he provides comic relief and a narrator perspective on things, but he also seems to be obviously shoehorned into the story for just that purpose. There is also a villainous Duke from a neighboring kingdom who meddles in the affairs of Arendelle, the kingdom of the new queen and her princess sister. There is a sudden turn in the way the story plays out that is a bit of a mean cheat for the kids following along. It also feels like a convenient plot device rather than an organic twist in the narrative.

OK, enough with the grousing, the movie is perfectly fine family fare. I don't think it stand up next to "Tangled" or "Bolt", two other recent Disney brand films that have more going for them, but is is servicable for the holidays. I wanted to like the film more than i did, and I was inclined to because I was surrounded by parents with their small children who did seem to love it. The film was packed and there were lines for the next showing, so it will clearly be a hit with the audience it is made for. It just won't be as big a hit with those who have reached a different stage in their life. Enjoy it but don't expect to feel a need to revisit it. It is a clockwork piece of entertainment that has too many rough edges.
 

Thor: The Dark World

The God of Thunder returns in a film that features his own world for most of the story. Everyone will discuss how much the movie needs more Loki, and they will be right but it has a variety of other surprises as well. I am a couple of weeks late in getting here but it is an entertaining film and I don't think there are big secrets out in the webs that would spoil it for anyone.

Four films in one day and I'm too tired and it is too late to complete all the reviews. I will fill in all of them this week.

Now I am finally catching up with the films from last weekend. I am planning on seeing some new things today and I don't want to be behind.  This is the simplest of the four films to review. If you liked "Thor", you should like this film. It keeps all the original elements in place and  lets the actors carry on with the parts that they have established. The only exception being Stellan Skarsgård, who's Erik Selvig gets turned into a figure for comic relief and as a consequence, is undermined when the weapon he has devised is brought into play. 

There was more Anthony Hopkins and Renee Russo in this film and that is an improvement from my point of view. Russo as Thor and Loki's mother gets a good dramatic story line and appears to fuel the temporary alliance of our two demi-god brothers.  It is not clear what the resolution for Odin's character means, it was not very clearly explained but that will probably be the basis of the next stand alone Thor movie. It looks for all intents and purposes as if Marvel has managed to succeed in making the films work as part of a collective universe but also maintain their stand alone story lines. I did not feel impressed with the "Dark Elf" antagonists in the film. They were satisfactory but largely cardboard cutouts. Loki remains the key ingredient in making this story of conflicted Prince of Asgard Thor work. 

The movie is much grander than the original film. It features more action in Asgard and other spots in the Universe, as well as more interesting locations on Earth than the desert town found in the first movie. I actually found Natalie Portman to be less annoying in this film as well. She seems to have lightened up a bit about working in a comic book story and that makes the film feel less like it is reaching for grandness and more like it is trying to entertain us.  Tom Hiddleston steals the movie as everybody expected to happen. He plays Loki just right, so at times we can believe him and then at just the right moment, his voice changes, his eyes gleem and we know that we have been suckered in by a trickster. There is a fleeting cameo that got a big laugh in the film and it worked completely for me because it features a character that I like better than almost all the other characters in this Universe. 

So, the movie is big and loud. It has some spectacular set pieces and there are a number of good laughs. None of the material will surprise you or elevate the movie above it's comic book roots but it will please fans and entertain those who have enough patience with some simplistic story telling. There is plenty of eye candy for the female fans, both Chris Helmsworth and his chiseled look and Tom Hiddleston and his dark eyes will make many fans want a return to the land of the gods in the nine realms. Go and have fun, there will be a new comic book movie in the spring, this one will tide you over until then.