"everyone fights everyone else for an hour or more" doesn't really do much for me as a plot.
Fun fact - this entire 2.5 hour movie takes up about 4 minutes of screentime in the old animated Hobbit.
I enjoyed it enough to see it twice in theaters (for free, though), but it was pretty terrible as a standalone movie. (And as the end of a trilogy, it's too long.)
That said, I thought the ad for the Hobbit BOFA videogame White Council fight scene with Sauron was pretty fun to watch. The Thorin/Azog fight on the ice kicked all kinds of ridiculous badly plotted ass. Every moment Lee Pace and his war elk were onscreen was pure comedy GOLD. (If PJ wants to make his next project a web series spinoff about the adventures of young Thranduil and his pal the elk...I would watch it.)
Martin Freeman was great, as he is in everything he does, ever.
I'm almost at the end of reading the book out loud to Dylan (Bilbo just stole the golden cup from Smaug) so I've been in the mood to rewatch the whole trilogy now that I have the original fresh in my mind again.
I really enjoyed Martin Freeman's performance, and liked Bilbo much better than Frodo (as was true with the books). So I'm somewhat bummed that Thorin and Bard somehow became the main characters of his story.
That said, I thought the ad for the Hobbit BOFA videogame White Council fight scene with Sauron was pretty fun to watch.
Seriously, that bit with Sauron arranging the ringwraiths around him looked just like a videogame selection menu to me. Could they have brought it over directly from the game?
New trailer for Avengers: Age of Ultron: [link]
Oscar noms are out: [link]
It's a bit of a white-dude-apalooza.
Well, apparently the only category with women in it is Costume Design, surprise, surprise. I haven't seen them all, but I really think Snowpiercer deserved something- the design was phenomenal.
All those white dudes, and still no room for Ralph Fiennes, because great comic performances will never get the shiny statues. (Tony Revolori earned but didn't get a nomination, too, which would have offset the white dudeitude at least just a little bit (Good God, he's only Emmett's age; he's just a zygote)).
Snowpiercer was incredible.
I would've loved to have seen GOTG nominated for best adapted screenplay (co-authored by a woman, who also came up with the idea and wrote the original draft), and even though I haven't read or seen it all the writerly people I know who have are severely pissed that Gillian Flynn and
Gone Girl
were passed over.
I would have loved to see Snowpiercer nominated for anything, but most of all for directing. It had such a loopy, distinctive voice and tone.
I, too, loved Ralph Fiennes in Grand Budapest Hotel. I'm kinda puzzled to see Robert Duvall nominated for The Judge. I thought that film was critically panned (didn't see it myself.)
Gone Girl
was an excellent adaptation, I thought. Managed to streamline pretty well.
