2140 Force of Hobbit

Whenever anyone says, "'tis the holiday season," my brain automatically jumps to, "'tis the Hobbity season."

Because thanks to Peter Jackson's periodic releases of movies, and DVDs, and extended director's cuts of DVD's, we can just about always count on the Christmas holiday being the Christmas Hobbit day as well. 2013 saw the release of the second in the Hobbit trilogy, The Desolation of Smaug, and many critics were happy. Happy because it was a pretty good movie. 

I know, that sounds so un-critic like. But what a good Smaug did was free them up to finally say what they wanted to say about the first movie, An Unexpectedly Bad Journey, but were afraid to when it debuted. They hated the first movie.  It was too long. It was boring for the first hour. Peter Jackson had lost his ability to make an exciting movie. He was being Hobbit self-indulgent.   

But the new movie was exciting, mesmerizing. Stunning video.  Smaug blew in like a breath of fresh air. 

I'm looking forward to that stunning video on my old, non-big,  non-flat panel, non-HD TV next year. I hope the voices on the audio come through on its tiny speakers too.

As it's the Hobbity season, I traditionally re-watched the old Lord of the Rings trilogy. And finally got frustrated enough by not being able to pick out the speech that I turned on the hearing-impaired function. Pretty cool. Now I could read what they said. 

Unfortunately, I discovered some things weren't meant to be heard. There was a group scene where I'd nearly worn out the DVD in the past replaying the groove to hear what was being said, as it was followed by a violent clash. The close caption said, "muttering in Elvish." 

It made me mutter something in French. 

America, ya gotta love it.