The Hobbit films, previously to be directed by Guillermo del Toro and now to be directed by Peter Jackson again.

jurassic park cgi was stellar tho.

feel like everybody needs to move back to 1:100 scale models lovingly painted and detailed and then set aflame

No idea why anyone would want the 48fps version. Haven't you ever seen that horrible motion smoothing setting on a TV?

I remember an interview with Ang Lee many years ago where he said his most successful use of CGI was in "Sense & Sensibility." That that anyone would have noticed, which I think was his point.

fuck this movie and fuck peter jackson, cheers

This defense (!) of 48fps is one of the harshest takedowns of the film I've read yet:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2012/12/the_hobbit_in_48_fps_why_i_liked_the_increased_frame_rate.html

if only the audience for this shit wasn't entirely made up of children and their parents reluctantly taking them to watch it

altho i hear at 48fps you can almost see Martin Freeman act

What parent-dragged kid will sit through 3 hours of this?

You know, Josh, for someone who isn't anticipating enjoying this, you do seem to be anticipating it a lot.

the naive reader of the hobbit doesn't know that it is The One Ring.

Nor the naive writer!

i kinda do want to see this now, since everyone's talking about how bad/weird it looks, but it's been so long since i've actually seen a movie in a theater that i'm worried i might not notice the difference.

I anticipate lots of people not enjoying it! I find that very enjoyable.

I'm basically planning on not enjoying the movie itself but I sure do enjoy sitting in movie theaters these days.

a hugely overextended fantasy version of Come Dine With Me

irish times not bothering to pull any punches then

i wd sit thru 6 Come Dine with Me's before i'd watch this fucker

which is p much the running time trade-off

http://www.theonion.com/articles/the-hobbit-to-feature-53minutelong-scene-of-bilbo,30727/

dying at that

this was actually pretty good...for the first hour or so. after that it goes into ridiculous nonstop action/CGI-overload mode (though the gollum riddle scene was well done). it's pretty exhausting.

The IMAX 3D screening I saw was supposedly 48fps but I didn't notice any real difference.

nah it stands for 'filler peter scenes' iirc

I hereby dedicate this review to be My Official Position on a film I'm not going to see:
http://www.wired.com/underwire/2012/12/hobbit-review/

really enjoyed it. sorry guys. carry on.

and i really hadn't expected to. and the 48fps looked fine.

Really funny piece in Slate, from two viewers who knew next to nothing about Tolkien:

http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/im/2012/12/the_hobbit_movie_reviewed_by_tolkien_virgins_does_the_peter_jackson_film.html

I laughed out loud at the solemn shot of the Elvish king gazing down on everyone from his moose.

that bit is hilarious

The moose bit cracked me up as advertised.

I thought the HFR looked pretty jarring in smaller spaces, but for the (endless) faraway pans of the group trekking across the wilderness it had an interesting quality. Sort of like tilt shift photography, maybe?

The idea that it looks bad because it looks like television is fair enough, but I don't hate how television looks. It felt like live television at times but for me it made it surreal rather than bad per se.

The Gollum section was terrific, and the goblin king was good fun.

But, again, have you specifically seen TV running the motion smoothing, aka soap opera, effect? It's jarring enough that people often return their sets before they realize they can turn it off. Is the HFR that bad?

FWIW, future Avatars will be 60fps, which is also what video games apparently run at.

I've watched soap operas before and have seen motion smoothing.

i hate motion smoothing more than anything in the entire world but i was hoping this fps stuff would be different and wouldn't have that weird bizarro effect cause it isn't interpolating frames or w/e

i'm worried

It WAS effective in showcasing some of the effects with increased clarity, but the motion-smoothing-like movement and game-cutscene feel of the more sweeping camera movements was a little distracting.

Oh, and also, this was 80 minutes of movie stretched to over twice that length.

i hate the faux science nerdy attitude people are taking about it (incl jackson and cameron) the whole "adjust your eyes sheeple this is the future!" like just cause photography exists it doesn't make paint obsolete, just cause you can do something you couldn't do before doesn't make it better, etc

This film was great If you like 3 hours of dudes with big noses sitting around a campfire stroking their beards

My Dinner With Thorin

P much

The most animated the crowd at my showing got was when IMAX guy told everyone the First 9 minutes of Star Trek wouldn't be shown as advertised, then started The Hobbit entirely out of focus while the entire audience rubbed their eyes thinking it was just them.

Feared for my life, was only armed with commemorative posters for self-defense...

Man the HFR made this look, by turns, a bad Britcom, a video game cutscene, and a better movie than this one unburdened by human actors.

Ballsack goblin was straight up the best part of the movie. Art direction & character design had del Toro's fingerprints on it.

The first ten minutes are just unconscionably bad. Show up late.

Okay that was seriously one of THE most over the top ridiculously indulgent films I have ever seen in my entire life. I'm mildly terrified it even exists and even more about what the extended version must be like. Of course, I loved it, but Jesus H.

Yeah, the idea that there's 25 mins on the cutting room floor, and two more three-hour flicks to come...

thought this was fun, but I went with a Tolkien superfan aka the missus aka do not speak ill of this franchise ever, so I might be biased
48 fps is way more jarring than 3d, forgot I was even thatching 3d most of the time

thatching, ho ho, autocorrect
watching, obv

the only time i noticed the HFR was during big panning shots, where it started to look and feel like a magic eye picture

Seems the screening I saw wasn't actually HFR. So disregard my comments upthread on the matter.

there's plenty to like about this. definitely not the disaster i was expecting, though it is way overstuffed.

I expected much, much worse than this. all of the issues and quirks that I was concerned with going in ended up somehow fitting into the world and larger aesthetic just enough.

and have to say, I didn't feel like it was padded at all... I think hardcore Tolkien fans probably want to see enough travel shots and attention given to scenes like the Unexpected Party, although I can totally understand how a lot of critics wouldn't like that

all in all, LOTR had a more universal/classic appeal, whereas this is definitely much more of a pure fantasy Genre Film for fantasy nerds, but I felt it worked in that sense

well, okay, I mean the Azog stuff was padding, and some of the battle/chase scenes, but all the book stuff left in were details I would rather be in there

didn't really mind Radagast, and the White Council stuff was fine, I thought

the Battle of Azanulbizar flashback had a kind of awesome, bleak beauty to it - though it looked like a Warhammer game brought to life

Rewatched "Fellowship" last night. Damn it's pretty amazing how fast this movie moves, at least in the first half. One thing that struck me was how cheesy and bad some of the special effects setpieces are. Like the bit where Frodo and Aragorn are on the broken stairway and everything is crashing around them and they can't make the jump, so they 'ride' the stairs as it slides down. You have a shot with some of the most glaring blue-screen i have ever seen ever. Also there's an over-reliance on that choppy framed 'slow motion' effect that i really really hate.

These didn't take me out of the experience, tho. Cos O SHIT THERE ARE TWO WIZARDS FIGHTING... I'm still looking forward to the Hobbit.

Like the bit where Frodo and Aragorn are on the broken stairway and everything is crashing around them and they can't make the jump, so they 'ride' the stairs as it slides down.

Maybe a bit fake looking, but it's still the most exciting heart-in-mouth moment in the movie.

Clearly what Jackson needs to to do is go back and re-do the effects.

Will stan unreservedly for the original LotR films, so went in feeling jitters given the mixed reviews, and 48fps related guff, but viewed in "proper" IMAX HFR 3D (screen in Manchester is 2nd biggest in UK iirc) and figured might as well give into PJ's directorial vision. Loved it from start to finish. Running time not even close to being an issue, all the backstory and diversions just felt like more fun to me. Cast pretty uniformly ace, esp the dwarves, but Freeman made a very decent fist of it. Won't spoilerise anything, but the final sequence filled me with the kind of heart-thumping joy I get from the lighting of the beacons in RotK. Def want to see again.