The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey

#119 at time of writing.

After the phenomenal success of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (and some legal wrangling with New Line cinema and the Tolkein estate), Peter Jackson gained enough trust from the studios and the fans to do whatever he liked with The Hobbit. Originally planned as a two-part film with Guillermo del Toro at the helm, Jackson took over and expanded Bilbo Baggins's tale with backstory from the Lord of the Rings books to end up with a behemoth three-parter.

And it shows. Part one, An Unexpected Journey, runs to nearly three hours (will the DVDs still have an extended edition?). It's certainly flabby and self-indulgent. But you know what? I was very happy to indulge it.

I sat enjoying the expansive story world, feeling at home as each scene lingered languidly. Like sitting by a fire with a glass of port on Christmas morning.

Much has been made of the fact that this is the first feature film to be shot and projected at 48 frames per second, twice as fast as the industry standard of 24 frames, the intention being to provide the smoother, more realistic motion, especially in 3D. Did it make much difference? Meh.

Interesting to note that the filmmakers did not have the requisite rights to use material from Silmarillion or Unfinished Tales - evident when Gandalf "forgets" the names of two of the five wizards, Alatar and Pallando, who only appear in the book Unfinished Tales. So, plenty of scope for yet more engorged trilogies in the future.

Highest rated films on Amazon

Today I asked myself, "I wonder what are the highest rated films on Amazon?"

Amazon sells more films than any other organisation ever, and collects more reviews. Hundreds, if not thousands, of people rate each film 1 to 5 stars. So which are the most consistently highly rated films of all time?

The answer is surprising.

In the UK, most of the top spots are taken by TV series box sets, with Firefly and Band of Brothers being the highest rated. I've discounted TV series and picked out the top ten films.

On Amazon.co.uk... (current IMDb rating in brackets)

1. The Lord of the Rings Trilogy (Extended Edition Box Set) (8.8, 8.7, 8.9)
2. Tangled (7.8) (!)
3. Spirited Away (8.6)
4. Downfall (8.3)
5. Threads (8.0)
6. Monsters, Inc. (8.0)
7. The Gruffalo (7.3)
8. Labyrinth (7.3)
9. My Neighbour Totoro (8.2)
10. Goodnight, Mister Tom (7.9)

In the USA, they love their HBO dramatisations!

On Amazon.com... (current IMDb rating in brackets)

1. Temple Grandin (TV film) (8.3)
2. Mean Girls (6.9)
3. Ben-Hur (8.2)
4. Something the Lord Made (TV film) (8.1)
5. The Road to Independence (straight to video) (9.0)
6. The Shawshank Redemption (9.2)
7. Taking Chance (TV film) (7.3)
8. Fat, Sick & Nearly Dead (documentary film) (7.7)
9. A Christmas Carol (1984) (TV film) (7.7)
10. The Ghost and Mrs. Muir (7.8)

Bizarre. Clearly the Amazon-rating audience are very different from the IMDb-rating audience.

Toy Story - The Best Film Trilogy?

I stumbled across a fascinating analysis that attempts to identify the best film trilogies according to both IMDb voters and professional critics.

The conclusion is that IMDb voters rank the following trilogies as the best of all time:

Lord of the Rings
Star Wars (original 3)
Godfather
Toy Story
Indiana Jones

The order changes if you only count the top 1000 voters, but those are still the top 5.

Astonishingly, but deservedly, professional critics (as collated by Rotten Tomatoes) rate none other than the Toy Story trilogy as the best of all time. Their top 5 includes most of the trilogies preferred by the plebs above, plus the Trois Couleurs trilogy.

It's a great article, with graphs and everything. Have a look!

Avatar

Unranked at time of writing.

James Cameron (or at least his marketeers) claimed that Avatar will change cinema forever. Having watched the preview in front row seats at IMAX last night, I finally understand what he means.

Avatar is a stunningly beautiful, comprehensively realised vision that absolutely must be experienced in a cinema. That’s the kicker – I doubt this film would have anywhere near the same impact on a TV screen. Two dimensions would not do this movie justice.

So if Avatar changes cinema it will be by making it more like going to the theatre – you have to see it live. More likely, I think, is that this movie - which is James Cameron’s first outing since 1997’s record-smashing Titanic - will precipitate the advent of 3D in our living rooms (for one thing, they might have to sell a lot of DVDs to break even – the production is rumoured to have cost $300m and as much again is being spent on marketing).

3D films often feel fairly flat, apart from the occasional thing jumping out at you, but the 3D in Avatar has an incredible depth of field. The landscapes of the planet Pandora seem to stretch away for miles. Another bar raised is the CGI. The attention to detail is breathtaking.

Yes, the story uses every trick in the Hollywood book to hook you in, but – wow! – Mr Cameron is a master of those tricks. The pace and interest don’t flag for a moment in the 162 minutes running time. It’s truly epic; it feels like the three Lord of the Rings films rolled into one.

You might argue that the characters and the plotting are a little close to formula, but as an aesthetic and dramatic experience, Avatar is – without exaggeration – the film of the decade. Truly hypnotising.

District 9

#44 at time of writing.

Hollywood (specifically New Line Cinema) took a punt on Peter Jackson, entrusting $270 million to him to film Lord of the Rings despite the fact that the highlight of his CV until then was Heavenly Creatures. The investment paid off in spades, and now PJ has a blank slate to do whatever the hell he wants with Tinseltown's seemingly infinite money and influence.

So what does he do with it? Well, OK, first he finishes his project that had been shelved since about 1997 - King Kong - a cheesy and indulgent all-American movie, right up the Hollywood executives' alley.

But then he throws a curve ball. District 9 is a movie about aliens - so far so Hollywood. But it's set in Johannesberg, presented (mostly) like a documentary, it stars complete unknowns, and it's a cracking story bursting with originality and imagination. Anti-Hollywood on all four counts. Well done Mr Jackson, you are now my hero.

It's not a perfect film. Its metaphors are not subtle, and the storytelling has some hideous point-of-view violations, but the sheer wacky bravado of the endeavour means that all can be forgiven.

Movie Posters

Recently I got a big payrise at work. And I spent it all on film posters.

There are some great films with terribly mediocre posters. Either they just have mugshots of the top-billed actors on them, or they try and crowd too much stuff on. Or both (see Lord of the Rings).

And there are some excellent posters for awful films. For example...



I tried to find the happy medium, whilst avoiding the too-popular choices (Pulp Fiction) and avoiding posters that my wife would never let me put up (Phase IV).

So, several hundred pounds later (framing is expensive!), our lounge sports these:







Our hallway features:





The spare bedroom has:









And a Bilinsky in our bathroom:

Box office musings

I've just been browsing through IMDb's list of films that grossed the most money in worldwide box offices. It makes for interesting reading.

The big three are represented right at the top, as you would expect: Star Wars: Episode I comes in at number four with $922,379,000 of box office receipts. That in itself is incredible - it's 15 cents for every single person alive.

Harry Potter and the Philosopher's Stone enjoys the number three spot with $968,600,000 - which approaches the GDP of Belize. Number two goes to The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King with an astronomical $1,129,219,252. That's more than all three Indiana Jones films put together.

And guess how much the number one grossed. Nope, guess again. A little more... You're getting warmer...

Titanic stands alone with $1,835,300,000.

That's incredible. There are fewer than 40 films that have ever grossed more than half a billion, and then there's Titanic, which grossed nearly two billion. Look, I've put it on a graph so you can see how ridiculous it is:



A Titanic spike indeed.

Adjust for inflation, however, and there's a different story. Titanic drops to sixth, according to Box Office Mojo's list. The number one, thanks to 67 years of inflation and a re-release or two, is Gone with the Wind.

Interestingly, there is almost no correlation between the films with that grossed the highest at the box office and the films that were ranked as best by IMDb users. In other words, no correlation between popularity and quality: