The Desolation of Smaug

Right around Christmas and the turning of the year, a good friend asked me to post my review of "The Time of the Doctor" and The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug. I said I would, and would throw inCatching Fire for free.

Even at the time I knew they would be less review than response, because what I want to say about them is filled with tangents, and layers, and caveats, and that's not a review.

So let's start with the Peter Jackson.

I don't like The Hobbit. Never have. I've bought a new copy to read, in hopes that 40 years on my reaction will change (on my list, not done yet). Yes. It has been over 40 years since I read The Hobbit. I am that old. The photo in the pageant book makes that devastatingly clear. But even with those intervening decades I knew that turningThe Hobbit into three films was...ludicrous. Two, maybe, because there is a great deal of action in the book, and lots of locales, and to include them all, and have the story be clear...okay, I'll buy in for two. But three? *sigh* My head keeps screaming at me that it's all driven by profit and ego, and it makes me cranky, so I walk into the films cranky. It colors how I see the films, how I respond. Cranky. But the section covered in the second film, the Mirkwood scenes and introduction of Bard of Lake Town, is the only part of the book I recall with pleasure, so I was hopeful.

There are some good things, I think. 

• Martin Freeman is well-cast as the younger Bilbo. There is enough talent in his performance, and attention to some Ian Holmish turns, that you can believe he grows into Frodo's uncle. Oh, he isn't the Bilbo from my head (which is good, because I really, really didn't like him at all), but he works in the fictive world that is the Lord of the Rings filmic universe. 
• Sir Ian McKellen is, again, not my Gandalf, but in these films he is the wizard "quick to anger," and I missed that from the first films (of course his annoyance at the process in this project probably helped him be bad tempered--he probably wasn't always acting that part). 
• My favorite dwarf (Balin) is still my favorite, though I think they've made him too old for me to believe he tried to re-establish the Kingdom of Moria (for those not obsessed with all things Middle Earth, Balin's is the tomb where Gimli mourns in The Fellowship of the Ring). 
• The version of Thorin Oakenshield is...seductive in this film (younger and more charismatic than I recall from the book), and may be the best bit in the trilogy of films, because Richard Armitage really seems to me to be portraying all the best and worst of Dwarvenkind. I have to give the screenwriters some credit for that as well. By the end of the second film you can see how the Dwarven kings fell to the 7 rings, but also how that never worked in Sauron's favor. That thematic development requires time, and may be the only thing that doing three films benefits. 
• The voice acting and CGI for Smaug were, I thought, some of the best of their type I have seen recently.
• Thranduil. I was not impressed with the stills I saw of the character, nor the brief glimpse in Unexpected Journey. But in this film Lee Pace brings the darkness of elven longevity, and the arrogance of elves, firmly to the fore, while still preserving the strength and elegance of the race. Thranduil is...frightening, and he should be. He is not "bad" or "evil," but he should be feared, and avoided. If he cannot be avoided, he must be appeased. Those are the only options.
• Bard. Beautifully cast, strongly performed. Showing the strength of men, while also showing how they have fallen. (I may be influenced by the fact that he looks much more like the Strider in my head than Viggo Mortensen ever could.)

There are, however, some horrors in the film, and I don't mean the spiders, goblins, and Necromancer.

• Every. single. thing. Jackson dragged in. I'll stay with this film and not discuss elements that were in the first film but not brought into this one. The biggest offenders are Legolas and Tauriel. Really interesting fan fiction. They don't belong in the movie. They don't help the plot, and the scenes between her and Kili are...an embarrassment. Yes, they allow the Mirkwood section to go on longer, which is necessary since there are THREE films (see note above), but otherwise they are pandering to fangirls and political correctness (there aren't a lot of women in Tolkien's stories--deal with it: the ones that ARE in the stories are strong, matter, and are respected: I'll take that).
• The blatant pandering to videogame action sequences. Rather than action that looks and feels real the shots and events are clearly "and in the game this is where the PoV character will...." Hate it.
• The ridiculousness of Sylvester McCoy's portrayal of Radegast the Brown. I am sure McCoy is doing exactly what he was asked to do. Radegast is NOT comic relief, and I really resent how he is being used in these films.
• The horrible quality of the goblins, orcs, and wargs in these films drags me right out of Middle-Earth and smack into my theatre seat every time I see them. I thought maybe it was that I was so "accustomed to them" that I was being hypercritical. Then I rewatched HD versions of The Fellowship of the Ring and The Return of the King on my 32" 720dpi screen, and then watched my HD version of Unexpected Journey. Nope. The LotR orcs and wargs were better. MUCH better. The goblins, orcs, and wargs in The Hobbit films are more animation than anything else, where in the LotR films they were clearly live-action combined with CGI. They were "real," fully dimensional both visually and in motion. Watching the orcs and wargs in The Hobbit films almost makes me long for the Rankin-Bass version.
• The Master of Laketown. I adore Stephen Fry. I follow him on Twitter, I love A Bit of Fry and Laurie, I've watched his dramatic turns (on BBC mysteries or on Bones), and I delight in his character from the Black Adder series. But his Master is...horribly, horribly wrong. The Master is ridiculous, but that should be terrifying because of his incompetence and venality: he is not a buffoon, and yet that is how Fry plays him, because that is how it is apparently written in the screenplay. 

When you look at my two lists they look fairly even. For this film, to be fair, they may be. I like this one much more than An Unexpected Journey overall, but the things I hate about it I hate with more passion and disdain than the first film, which I found...occasionally annoying but mostly innocuous. More than the first Hobbit movie, this film reminds me of how good Jackson, Boyens, and Walsh can be at really "getting" Tolkien's world and characters and adapting those to the medium of film. But the bloat in this one is horrific, and the juxtaposition of the moments of sheer "Yes!" with the "You've got to be kidding me." leaves a sour taste in my mouth when all is said and done, and that ultimately ruins the experience.

(originally published in the author's private blog)
 

The Balcony is Closed

Yesterday, while we were having dinner, my best friend looked over at me and said, "Who was the film guy who died today?"

I looked up from my plate, and said "Roger" and then my throat closed up, and my eyes filled, and I rasped out "Ebert."

Her eyes got big and round, and she started to apologize for asking. "I didn't know it would make you...oh, I'm sorry."

How could she have known?

I don't generally go to pieces when a celebrity dies. Oh, there is a sense of loss--of books that will never be written, performances I'll never see, music I'll never hear. And I fully expect to be a watery mess when the last of the Gibb brothers dies, though I got through the first three with barely a sniffle. So why the pain, the tears, because a pudgy, opinionated critic from Chicago lost with dignity the fight for life he'd waged with courage and openness over the last decade? How could she have known.

I didn't.

But when I saw on my Twitter feed yesterday that he was gone, I could barely move. When friends posted something totally clueless as a comment on my FB post about it I had to stifle the urge to ban them from my feed. My reaction was visceral and passionate.

So, why?

Because he is why I do what I do.

Growing up, we were, not to put too fine a point on it, poor. Even with Daddy's job at General Electric, and the very generous medical benefits package all the union guys got, my mother and brother's health issues kept us with income below the poverty line. Add to that my father's alcoholism, and both parents' nicotine addictions, and money was very tight. Plus we lived out in the middle of the country, only Daddy drove, and once he'd made the hour commute home the last thing he wanted was to take anyone anywhere except maybe a grocery store to get something for dinner (which is why dinner usually went on the table sometime around 8:30 at night). Going to the movies didn't happen.

But we watched movies on television a lot. Back in those days the networks usually had a big movie night once a week. And the local stations usually filled up the weekends with movies. And I watched them all. Everything from the B westerns and sci-fi (Oh, I still love Them!) and cheesy Steve Reeves Hercules movies with the bad dubbing to really good films, like Laura and How Green Was My Valley and The Shape of Things to Come and The Best Years of Our Lives. At night we'd watch the "big" films, like A Lion in Winter, and The Group, and Lawrence of Arabia and Anne of a Thousand Days. In black and white. With commercials. The handful of movies I saw in a theatre before the age of 16 doesn't even take two hands to count. But I loved movies. So did my parents, I think, but the surprising one was my dad.

There were some movies he wouldn't watch because of his PTSD from World War II. Anything set in the European Theatre of action was off limits. And he wasn't wild about romantic comedies (I inherited that one). Otherwise, he'd watch. But his taste was excellent. He never forgave the Academy for giving the Oscar for Best Picture to Around the World in 80 Days rather than to Picnic. He was totally blown away by Duel when it premiered on the ABC Tuesday Night Movie (the series which made me believe that "made for television" films could be every bit as good as a theatrical release), and decided he'd keep track of the then-unknown director to see what else he could do. Some kid named Spielberg. Because of that, when I was in college he and my mother went to the movies (something I'd never known them to do in my entire live) to see Close Encounters of the Third Kind--and he never got over how wonderful he thought it was. He took me to see Blazing Saddles because "Mel Brooks is a genius." For my very straight-laced father, sitting next to his daughter through of the Madeline Khan scenes was not comfortable, but we survived. And it's still one of my favorite memories.


So what does any of this have to do with Roger Ebert?
 
I was a consumer of films. Good films, bad films, with a little nudging from my dad to respect the really fine ones. And then along came Sneak Previews and my world changed. My then lover and I would lay in bed on Sunday mornings, drinking coffee, eating bagels, reading comic books, and watching the local PBS station. First came Dr. Who, which was lovely, if surreal to wake up to, and then Sneak Previews came on. Ed loved movies, so we would watch, and argue with the television, and make mental notes to see, or not see, something they'd reviewed. Then we'd get up and head to the campus to grade papers, or go to the library, because, well, that's what one does in grad school. But the show always stuck with me during the day.

Truth to be told, I always "liked" Gene more. I found Roger harsh, argumentative, and not very "nice." But the way he, even more than Gene, talked about movies made a world open up to me that I'd never known existed. He dug into films with passion (because he loved them) and intellect. He could break them down into their pieces to see how they all came together, but more how the pieces worked on those of us in the seats, and how the choices the filmmakers made could triumph or wreck havoc. He treated films with great seriousness, but was never stuffy, but more, he and Gene treated those of us who watch films as important, and deserving of a good experience, and smart. I started to ask of movies the same questions I was supposed to be asking about the books I was studying as an English Lit grad student--and found the answers as complex, and the texts as rewarding. When I started work on my Ph.D. I found a way to make movies as important in my projects and papers as the written literature, and my dissertation proposal was about how texts metamorphose in adaptation, with the intention of digging into the philosophical questions of the role of medium and story and whether even an entirely faithful adaptation is in fact the same story since our aesthetic response is so very different depending on the medium through which we receive it. Heady stuff. And in the film classes I took, from truly good professors, and the critics I read (all the big ones, and then some), the voice I heard in my head was Roger Ebert's. Pushing me to dig deeper, ask harder questions, because I loved movies, and they were worth all that time and energy.

So now, I teach film. Because of him I tell my students with confidence that it's alright to love a popcorn film. To not enjoy an "important" film. But that they have to know why they are reacting the way they are. They have to respect the work that went into even the worst movie, and that, ultimately, movies are for us. Because of Roger Ebert.


Roger Ebert died yesterday. I never sent him a fan letter. Never told him he was the mentor of who I became as a thinker about this wonderful art of the moving image. But he is. I lost someone important to my life yesterday. I'm going to miss him.

In the Woods

In the Woods by Tana French

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


I'm torn on this book. In many respects I thought it was very good. I like the way French strings words together. She is also very good at developing clear, complex, totally believable human beings. I found that when I was away from the book I was wondering what was coming next, how things were going to resolve, and that's usually the hallmark of a good book.

That said, I had some significant problems with the it. Betrayal and desolation pervade the book--they are ubiquitous and unrelenting. And even the one note of happiness at the end seems...illusory. Perhaps I wasn't in the mood for more Irish despair (after Christine Falls), or perhaps she does have an ability to create a nearly Donaldsonian level of despair. Whichever the case, it was so depressing I felt I needed medication after some sections. And I felt that the resolution of one of the central mysteries was too pat (I honestly knew "whodunit" as soon as I met the character, with only the slightest doubt at any point), and the irresolution of the second mystery (a phrase that will only make sense once you've read the book) was completely unsatisfying and not entirely convincing.

Because I very much like how French uses words, I may well go on and read volumes 2-5 in the Dublin Murder Squad series. But I think I'll wait until I've overdosed on happy optimism, cute kittens, and frolicking puppies. At that point bleak hopelessness might be just what the doctor ordered.



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Everyone has a list

Now that Christmas is over, the "lists" have started to pop up. "Worst Books of 2012," "Best Books of 2012," "Best 10 Movies of the Twenty-first Century," etc. I'm suspicious of those. For instance the "Best Science Fiction and Fantasy of All Time" has Lord of the Rings at number 1, and Game of Thrones at number 2. And then people start asking why the 3 volume Ring is first, but GoT is addressed per volume. Which beggars a number of questions. For instance, why is it that George R.R. Martin is apparently ignorant that LotR was written as a single book (given what he posted in his Not a Blog on LiveJournal) because the publisher balked at publishing it that way so instead insisted its three parts be published separately? And more importantly,  it totally skips the question of how one of the top two spots did not go to Bradbury, or Asimov, or Verne, or Wells, or Clarke? I'm an "early adopter" of GoT, and even I think that placement isn't justified. I began to get grumpy.

So, in a form of mental self-defense I started making my own list in my head. Because I'm shallow , especially during Christmas break, it's episodic television episodes, and because of what was in front of my eyes at the time it's not "best" or "pivotal"--it's the episodes that have stuck in my head, years after I saw them, with more than the usual clarity. In no particular order, here they are, without commentary.

Star Trek: "For the World is Hollow and I Have Touched the Sky"
Supernatural: "Swan Song"
M*A*S*H*: "Old Soldiers"
Star Trek: The Next Generation: "Yesterday's Enterprise"
Twilight Zone: "The After Hours"
The Big Valley: "Into the Widow's Web"
Hawaii Five-O: "Once Upon a Time"
Magnum, PI: "Home from the Sea"
Babylon Five: "The Geometry of Shadows"
The West Wing: "Posse Comitatus"
Maude: "Maude's Dilemma"
WKRP in Cincinnati: "In Concert"
The Big Bang Theory: "The Codpiece Topology"