The Hobbit, an unexpected evening...
Last Friday our son went to stay the night at his gran's and so the missus and myself had an evening off for some wild going out to town! Well that means we ate out in our favourite restaurant and went to the film-theatre.
The film we watched was The Hobbit, Peter Jackson's last instalment in his commendable effort to bring Middle Earth to life on the white screen. I had seen loads of footage on and behind the scenes and a fair amount of reviews already and was a bit apprehensive before seeing it. While the Lord of the Rings trilogy came incredibly close to the picture of the story I had in my mind since I first read the book ages ago, I was totally annoyed by some of the scenes Jackson and his crew put in there needlessly.
The Hobbit has a lot of those scenes as well, mind you it's bound to, because making 3 films of 170 minutes each from just one book a quarter of the length of the LotR, is no mean feat and needs embellishment. Yet here I had no problems with them at all. They still appeared to be naturally forthcoming out of the plot and enhanced the story for newbies, while being entertaining for old veterans. One thing I mightily feared beforehand were the songs. The Hobbit being a book for kids, not really small ones, granted; but kids nevertheless, they contain some great songs which enliven the whole greatly. Now some of these are instrumental to the proceedings of the plot and can't be left out. I was really worried they would make for a The Hobbit the Musical experience, yet this did not happen: fortunately!
All in all it's a great film, which leaves you wanting for the sequel. As it is now, I will not be buying any of the GW miniatures made after the film though, excepting perhaps the scenery kit for the Goblintown since that's great for use with Skaven, Dwarves and Night Gobbo's :-)
One last remark: pretty cheap soundtrack ;-)
Cheers Sander
07-15-2012
The World of Poo,
The "World of Poo" by Terry Pratchett, is the latest book I've finished reading. I will write more on Pratchett here some other time, but he's about my number 1 writer. "The World of Poo" is a Discworld spin-off. The book is supposed to be a children's book, mentioned in the latest part in the series called Snuff. The book deals with a little boy, Geoffrey, who's sent to his grandmothers' in the city of Ankh Morpork and due to some funny circumstances starts a Poo collection for his musuem of ...well...erm... Poo obviously. Great stuff, the book not the poo of course.
In the same tradition as "Where's my Cow?" this is a tremendously fun book for children of all ages, well let's say from 8 and older. Just a word of advice: unlike Where's my Cow, I would not advise reading this to young children who do not understand certain things are well left alone, lying on the board-walk or somewhere else...
Cheers Sander
05-22-2012
At the moment I'm reading Jack Sheldon's "The German army at Ypres 1914" ad it's a great read. It's filled to the brim with eye-witness accounts from the German side of the early 1914 offensives and gives a totally different picture then the usual Allied perspective. It shows the unpreparedness of much of the German formations and tells us that most of the fighting in Belgium was actually done by Reserve regiments which were ill-trained and - supplied. I thoroughly recommend it.
Cheers Sander
Hoi,
Just a space to discuss themes I like but are not necessarily hobby related!
Cheers Sander
