FILMS: Peter Jackson To NOT Direct "The Hobbit."

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Hi Guys,

You might have recently read that Peter Jackson (PJ), the film director who recently made the highly successful Lord of the Rings (LOTR) films based on J.R.R. Tolkien's novels will NOT be doing a "Hobbit" movie. I'm not too interested in the details, but the rumor is that there is some legal shenaniganry going on between PJ and Newline Cinema. This doesn't break my heart.

I'm probably in a minority of folks that thought the PJ LOTR films started out with great promise and went downhill after that. I loved the first film and was steadily disappointed after that. What PJ did with Shelob (the giant spider) really annoyed me. And the final film Return of the King (ROTK) really shrunk down some of the best scenes and the book and made a horrible "Hobbit-palooza"... I was ready to barf after some of the stonky "goodie-two-shoes" "hobbit lovefest" scenes in ROTK. What a terrible way to ruin a perfectly good book.

I haven't read "The Hobbit" for many years and definitely not as an adult over the age of 18... ...but, I have fond memories of it and remembered thinking that it did an awful lot for such a little book. I also recall feeling that it did as much with one little book as LOTR did with three. Of course, I was much younger then...

Still, I liked it.

It sure kicked butt on the really boring Simarillion, which reads like pharmaceutical packaging (I did finally labor through it... the Simarillion not the packaging)... the mythos of Simarillion were good, but the writing was awful. We can't really blame Tolkien for that though... he had left it hidden away in unfinished manuscript form until his family reincarnated it. Thanks, Chris (Tolkien's son).

And speaking of PJ, King Kong didn't do much for me either despite its visual splendor. My nephew and I almost fell asleep during that dinosaur... err, overgrown monkey. Lots of style, little content... or maybe too much content. One of my first comments about King Kong was that it was a three-and-a-half hour (Was it four?) movie that would have made a good one-and-a-half hour long movie. Oh, the perils of editing...

I'm not upset that PJ isn't going to do it... "The Hobbit."

He could probably ruin that too.

And I probably ought to give PJ his due since my other hand is giving him the axe; his LOTR films are absolutely the best live-action ones done to date. They beat the hack... umm, heck out everything that came before although I still like the old Bakshi Hobbit cartoon AKA animated film. I hear it's better with a little herbal encouragement... haven't tried that though... sort of wish I had though.

OK... RANT MODE OFF.

Happy Thanksgiving to all who celebrate the holiday!

Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.

P.S.
It doesn't help that I can't stand that namby-pamby, sissy boy, O-Bloom, they had play the elf... he's the worst thing since Leonardo Duhcrapio... I liked Legolas in the book. Sigh.

P.S.S.
Here's a gratuitous babe shot to help make it all better... LOL

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