Now Playing in Your Living Room: The Hobbit

Heavens to Bilbo, Peter Jackson does go on, doesn’t he? Ever since his masterful Heavenly Creatures (1994), he seems to resist the idea that brevity might be the soul of excitement. Take, for now, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (now available on DVD)

I like parts of many of Jackson’s movies more than their wholes: for example, the giant spider sequence in The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King was, to me, the best horror movie of 2003, all by itself; the initial arrival at Skull Island in his lumbering King Kong remake--after an unnecessarily long set up--was so atmospheric and exciting, I grumbled when we were strenuously force-marched into the jungle after Kong.

I went to see the full-frontal, IMAXxed, 3-D’d version The Hobbit on New Year’s Day with muffled expectations. Word of mouth had been gray and crumbly. If it hadn’t been for the fact that the brittle, mirthful heart of The New Yorker’s Anthony Lane was melted by The Hobbit, I would have insisted on an afternoon in front of the TV with Charles Starrett as The Durango Kid (cheap, short, and unpretentiously bad).

I read Tolkien’s The Hobbit many years ago while in college and recall liking it very much, though not enough to venture into The Lord of the Rings trilogy.

My wife was enchanted through the film’s 169 minutes. I, however, a troll, a goblin, a vicious naysayer who seeks only to cynically crush the hearts of wide-eyed fanboys everywhere under my spiked and bladed heel, felt less enchanted.

But I’m grateful to say I didn’t dislike it.

More than once, though, my butt fidgeted at me to get up and loosen my circulation; more than once I pawed at my pockets for my cell to check the time, only to remember I’d shut it off like a good patron. Before long, the caffeine in the cola started to wear off.

The Hobbit is often ponderous like a 1950s biblical epic, not a good path to follow for an adventure film. For all the rightful admiration Jackson and other fantasy filmmakers have expressed for the Ray Harryhausen, the Great and Legendary, not one of them have ever caught on to an essential quality of his films—they move fast, with great energy and dash, and never overstay their welcome.

(I also still mysteriously prefer Harryhausen’s stop-motion effects to today’s gleaming unblemished CG, but that’s a ramble down another path.)

The dialogue is often pointed and excellent, especially the scenes between Gandalf and Thorin, but the scenes themselves seemed stretched beyond the bounds of wisdom. Every scene seems to be given equal dramatic weight. The final action sequence is interminable, every possible bit of suspense squeezed out of it, until it becomes like over-chewed gum.

I also wondered how many viewers got the allusion to the Three Stooges. No one under 40, probably. Maybe it doesn’t matter. I load my own work with allusions no one will ever get and it’s fine with me that they don’t. I suspect writers and filmmakers slip them in mostly to keep themselves interested and make the work worth a second or third look. The only crime is when the allusions become the work itself, a post-modern grab bag of allusions to other and better films, with nothing underneath, not even a heart. Call it Geek Pretentiousness.

I really did love Martin Freeman as Bilbo Baggins, as much as I do his Dr. Watson on the Sherlock! series. (Though, I sadly confess, Benedict Cummerbatch’s performance-capture cameo slyly slipped right by me, as he would, the impish devil. Previews indicate he will be front and center in the upcoming Star Trek sequel, enough reason to go.) And of course, the appearance of Sir Christopher Lee (as Saruman) has brightened movies great and terrible for over fifty years and does so again here.

The Hobbit was filmed at a high frame rate of 48 frames per second. Some critics complained that this led to too much clarity—that making every bristle of Hobbit hair visible was distracting and cheapening. I even watched for this, but didn’t find it troublesome. The film is a visual feast throughout.

Diehard fans of the novel may find the lengthening of the story objectionable, but that seems to be Jackson’s way—to pile on as much as he can draw from his fertile imagination, even more than the material calls for. I simply sometimes wish he would clear away the dross to allow the bone, muscle and heart to show.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.

You Say "Go," I Say "Goch" (and So Does Van Gogh)

You may have recently heard that Edvard Munch’s masterpiece “The Scream” sold for a near-record $120 million. Shortly after, San Francisco Chronicle movie critic Mick LaSalle held a vote on his “Maximum Strength Mick” blog, asking readers which of 31 Old Master masterpieces would they like to own if could they afford it.

The selections ranged from the “Mona Lisa” (no no no, not the Bob Hoskins movie . . . aargh!) to Picasso’s “Guernica,” a painting that would only fit in Mitt Romney’s living room or the brick wall of the alley you live in, should you happen to be homeless.

I picked “Starry Night” for its dark turbulence; the stars like giant blossoms rolling across a turbulent blue sky on streams of energy. You can see the wind. It’s reality transformed, space seen as swirling with life.

I entered my selection, “Starry Night” by Vincent Van Gogh. Then, I added teasingly, “pronounced “Van Goch,” or maybe “Van Gich.”

“Ohhhh, stop being a show-off,” I’ve been told. Everyone—and that means E-VERY-ONE—pronounces it “Van Go” and who am I, some big-browed ponce who’s read “Gravity’s Rainbow” twice, to stand against the customs of lemmings? I’m only showing off my erudition like Michael Sheen parading his mouthy brain through the Louvre in “Midnight In Paris,” annoying the innocent-and-down-to-earth Owen Wilsons of the world (though, Owen's character, it must be said, is every millimeter the snob).

Arguments like this always give the impression of people looking up their noses at me.

If were a rude person, I’d be tempted to say a hearty “intercourse yourself” and continue glottal-stopping my way through the art gallery of life. However, my nose-thumb at the Indomitable Hive is not the point. My argument is based strictly and strongly on simple courtesy. Or what I also call the John Wayne Argument: “Ya call a fella how he likes to be called, pil-grim. Dead or alive.”

The “Van Go” said nowadays is the French pronunciation, and if Van Gogh were French, he would have pronounced it that way, too. But Van Gogh wasn’t French. He was born in the town of Zundert, which, as much as Wikipedia might sometimes have it otherwise, is not in France, but in the Netherlands.

Van Gogh was Dutch. He spoke Dutch and would have given his name a Dutch pronunciation (though, intriguingly, he may have been somewhat mispronouncing it himself: It’s also seems to be pronounced “Van Gich,” as discussed here.

Exactly how his name took on French coloration I haven’t found out, but, what’s really important is that Van Gogh apparently really really did not like the “Van Go” pronunciation. Van Gogh was already known as a difficult house guest and roommate (“almost unbearable” as even his loyal and loving brother Theo put it), and misstating his name made him even a bigger pill.

But whether Van Gogh was a Minnesota Nice Guy or not, what counts is courtesy. If you really love Van Gogh—or just love his art—it seems simply rude and tone deaf to address him any way but the right way--his way--even if he’s tracking mud all over your carpet while squeezing your last franc out of you and stealing the cheese off the sideboard.

Call him whatever else you want, but never call him “Van Go.”

(And if my argument really bothers you, look at it as one more way for freedom-loving Americans to annoy freedom-hating French persons.)

For myself, I imagine my own fierce displeasure at returning from the Beyond 150 years from now to find out that everyone is pronouncing my name “Boorch-veelt” simply because it took a German academic to make me world famous. Posthumous fame is nice, but please remember to address my ghost as “Burtch-feeld” (tongue tip on the hard plate, “f” as in “field”). Or else, I’ll steal your cheese, all your scotch and scare the feces out of you as I melt away into perfect gloom.

To extend my argument further--if irrelevantly--consider the case of Vladimir Putin and George W. Bush (former assistant to former President Richard B. Cheney). Sadly, we all recall Bush II’s joy in towel snapping nicknames on whoever happened to be standing around. On Putin, President of the Russian Federation (and whose soul was visible to Bush II, but no one else), Bush bestowed the nickname “Pootie-poot.”

Now, I know nicknames are not the same as given names, but imagine if, somehow, “President Vladimir Pootie-poot” had gone totally viral and had become customary usage to everyone in the world (yes, I’m looking at you, Henry Kissinger!) except for . . .  well, a dictator of immense power whose desk drawer contains a big red button with which he could launch World War 3.2. Tyrants are never good sports and “But everyone says it like that” is not a useful, or moral, argument, even in regard to a Vladimir Putin. I daresay, President Obama and Secretary of State Clinton would be inclined to agree.

At least, I hope they are.

 

Come Holmes fans come! The game is afoot!

A quick note encouraging all of you to stop your lives this Sunday night to watch the second season of “Sherlock!" on PBS Mystery (check your local listings). I loved the first three episodes broadcast last year; to my eyes, they blew the dust off without losing the spirit of the Conan Doyle originals.

The reviews for this season promise more ripping adventure starring Benedict Cumberbatch as the 21^st-Century Holmes (the best Holmes since Basil Rathbone, full of  bounding energy and infuriating self-regard), Martin Freeman as a sweetly exasperated but always game Watson, and co-creators Stephen Moffat and Mark Gatiss.

So many mystery series these days seemed weighted with humorless self-importance (AMC’s “The Killing” for one) that “Sherlock!” looks as fresh and cheerful as a daisy. I wouldn’t miss it for the world.

Copyright 2012 by Thomas Burchfield

Thomas Burchfield has recently completed his 1920s gangster thriller Butchertown. He can be friended on Facebook, followed on Twitter, and read at Goodreads. You can also join his e-mail list via tbdeluxe [at] sbcglobal [dot] net. He lives in Northern California with his wife, Elizabeth.