jessica,

good point, but I only need to make sure sound gets to the phone, so I don't really need to point it at the tv at home. I can use Into Now if the tv is loud enough.

you'd probably need to turn the phone's screen brightness down though.

He really needed to do something small and speedy after LOTR and so far he hasn't.

Why? What does this do?

And yes, runpee does what Steph says--vibrate goes on (there are still viewers who will be disturbed by this--I got a guy pretty angry when I saw a movie while on call) and then you can read what happened before you come back to your seat.

IMO (and this is only my opinion) it would be a good antidote against bloat and pretension.

Is there a pattern of that?

I have never seen Phantom, because my hatred of Sarah Brightman poisoned the show. Also, I am not sure it was a very good show.

Scooby Doo (and Shaggy) do not belong solving mysteries. They are dumb and annoying. I was a very serious child, and I loved mysteries, and I really could not understand why Velma and Daphne and Fred hung

I thought King Kong was wayyyy too long, though I enjoyed a lot of it. Everything I heard about the Lovely Bones sounded like it was a failed prestige literary adaptation. And now the expansion of Hobbit to three three hour plus movies has me worried this is a pattern, not a coincidence. It's like he's releasing his extended editions as first run.

I was a very serious child, and I loved mysteries, and I really could not understand why Velma and Daphne and Fred hung

Shaggy was their dealer?

But Frank, that sounds like you want him to do short movies, not that doing a short movie right afterwards would cure him of the Oscar infection. After seeing LotR, I don't think that has anything to do with awards--after the box office and general reaction, I bet he could do anything he wanted, especially in genre. And he likes big fancy effect-laden movies. A lot.

I just skimmed the IGN review, and I think this is pretty much 100% Jackson and what I was expecting:

Once the quest proper begins, though, The Hobbit, like the book, becomes a relentless series of chase scenes and action episodes

So far it feels like the extended Fellowship pacing, and I'm good with that. I get that he errs on the side of shoving more material in, but based on the Ring movies I don't think he'll drag it out thinly--just that he's likely to stuff in a lot of stuff that's not exciting before we get to where he starts stuffing in the fun bits,

See I'd love him to do another Forgotten Silver or Heavenly Creatures as well as the big effects movies. Not that I won't see the Hobbit films - I can't wait until Smaug turns up (though I wish it wasn't all the way until the third movie, which I'm guessing is how it will go). I'd just like to him to get back to his roots occasionally.

I don't know if they're roots so much as all he could get away with at the time.