Merry Christmas, dear readers! I hope everyone had a wonderful apocalypse. For those who made it, I offer you some light reading to help you pass time in your underground bunker. Below is my review of the new Hobbit movie, as well as the first of my semi-popular end-of-year lists--The Most Memorable Moments of 2012. If you aren't interested in the list, enjoy the review. If you aren't interested in The Hobbit, we need to talk.
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
I never thought the sight of a door could move me so. Yet there I was, my throat welling up at the mere sight of the entrance to Bag End. Oh, to be reunited with that that sturdy, circular object! Oh, to gaze oncemore upon that doorknob, placed squarely and indelibly in the middle! Such is the power of Middle-Earth as imagined by Peter Jackson. Because his Lord of The Rings trilogy was such a cultural paradigm, such a monolithic, generation-defining event, every familiar face or object or strain of music that pops up in this long-awaited prequel pulsates with nostalgic emotion, charged with the kind of meaning we attribute to our own lived experiences. We know this universe. We love this universe. Thus, one of the joys of The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey, which tells the story of Frodo's Uncle Bilbo, is seeing that universe both preserved and extended--returning to the radiant elf haven of Rivendell while being introduced to the the rough-hewn dwarf stronghold of Erebor, reacquainting ourselves with the slyly ebullient grin of Ian McKellen's Gandalf while encountering for the first time the moody, mysterious scowl of Richard Armitrage's Thorin Oakenshield.
Indeed, both preservation and extension are at the heart of the director's vision for The Hobbit, which attempts to reclaim the epic grandeur of the Rings movies while also staying true to the playful tone of the source material, which Tolkien wrote as a bedtime story for his kid. By inflating his adaptation of a 300-page novel into a trilogy, and borrowing liberally from Tolkien's insanely detailed appendices, Jackson aims to tell a simple, sprightly tale of a hobbit and some dwarves on a quest, while also chronicling the darker, more complex events that conspired to make Frodo's walk to Mount Doom a terrifying necessity. Simply put, the movie wants to have its tonal cake and eat it too. Do Jackson and his Kiwi Crew get away with it? Yes and no. Taken individually, both the heavy material and the lighter stuff work. Chronicling the great battles and contentious councils of Middle Earth's storied past allows Jackson to remind us that he can still shoot a charging army or a mountain trek like no one else alive. It also gives him the opportunity to bring back a few welcome faces, including Cate Blanchett's luminous Galadriel, whose dialogue with Gandalf is one of the film's most poignant and memorable moments. By contrast, telling the story of Bilbo's quest (he's out to help the dwarves slay a nasty dragon) allows him to showcase his heretofore untapped knack for genuinely clever physical comedy. Fans of the novel's famed troll scene will not be disappointed, and nor will lovers of the Gollum chapter, which is brought to the screen with just the right touch of morbid wit.
However, knitting such disparate narrative threads together into one movie does have a significant and already much-criticized drawback; all that extra backstory, fascinating as it may be, impedes the momentum of the central narrative. At the film's end, we're only six chapters into The Hobbit, and consequently the film's ending gives us the impression that, for all the sound and fury of the preceding three hours, we haven't really gotten all that far. The film's other major problem is perhaps an innate one; the twelve (twelve!) dwarves Bilbo travels with just aren't as interesting or easy to empathize with as Frodo's fellowship. Still, surely Jackson could've used action or dialogue to somehow get us emotionally invested in these characters. By the end of Fellowship, almost every individual had a story and a personality. By the end of An Unexpected Journey, only Thorin has a story. Another disappointing aspect of the picture (I can't believe I'm saying this), is the score, which is bombastic and repetitive where the LOTR trilogy's was nuanced and multifarious. Quick, name more than one memorable motif from this picture. Go crazy.
Still, don't get me wrong; The Hobbit is no Phantom Menace. It's not the kind of runaway success that the previous Middle-Earth movies were, but it does succeed, and for the same reasons those movies succeeded--it employs special effects in the service of a good story, it dodges manipulative cliche for honest emotion, and it makes good use of a dream team of committed actors--especially Martin Freeman, in whose capable hands Bilbo becomes a more dynamic and flat-out likeable character than Frodo ever was. If The Lord of The Rings was as looming and magisterial as Gandalf the White, this first part of The Hobbit is Gandalf the Grey--a bit messy and a hare less impressive, but more often than not a good deal of fun to spend time with. B.
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Most Memorable Moments of 2012
Personal
(You've already read enough about Barbra, so I'll leave her out. You're welcome.)
A Happening In Zilker Park--When I look back on 2012, I'll remember it as my concert year, the one where I was lucky enough to see one of my favorite bands (Coldplay) as well as my all-time favorite artist (I'm confident you can figure this one out). Sandwiched between those two indelible performances was my very first trip to a music festival. In mid-October, I journeyed to the state's capital with some of my very favorite people to attend the three day concert series/hipster convention known as Austin City Limits. On the day I attended, the madly talented, female-dominated lineup played music that miraculously mirrored the changing weather; Swedish folkies First Aid Kit strummed sweet, lyrical serenades that matched up with the gentle warmth of the day's early hours, alt-rock goddess LP and soul-jazz starlet Esperanza Spalding played with a white-hot emotional intensity that nearly outshone the blistering afternoon sun, and the ever-entrancing Florence Welch used "Cosmic Love" as an otherwordly lullaby, singing the day to sleep as that same sun set over thousands of blissed-out concertgoers. I suppose I should also mention that this was also the place where I first purchased and consumed something known as "boxed water".
Booked for the Summer--I spent a hefty chunk of my summer as Barnes and Nobles' official music cashier and de facto receptionist. It was my first time working for someone not directly related to me--and it was a doozy. It had its ups (debating Woody Allen's oeuvre with a retired movie buff) and downs (cleaning up after a customer whose liberal attitude towards bodily fluids would've made the Farrelly Brothers blush), but it was rarely boring and often entertaining. Did I mention the employee discount?
Public
The Year of The Shooting--I wrote about the Aurora shooting. I considered writing about the Wisconsin shooting, but I was still too wrung out from writing about the Aurora shooting. I felt the need to write about the Connecticut shooting, but what was left to say after the Aurora shootings and the Wisconsin shootings and the Oregon shootings? In 2012, we lost more than mothers and fathers, sons and daughters. We lost our sense of security, our feeling that certain places--shopping malls, movie theaters, first grade classrooms--were somehow sacred, somehow inviolable. Let's hope that 2013 is the year we regain that sense of security. Let's hope it's the year I don't have to write about a single mass shooting.
Karl Rove's Meltdown--- I was tempted to choose Obama's victory speech, but I feel it's more appropriate to include this already-immortal moment in cable-news history, one that taught me the true meaning of schadenfreude. As GOP strategist Karl Rove offered an interpretation of the election results that eschewed math, statistics, and common sense, his Fox news flunkies did something incredible; they stood up and shut him down. This year, Republicans ran on a platform that, like Rove's, spat in the face of logic--one that feared gay marriage, preached knee-jerk austerity, and insisted that covering a few paltry tax reforms and haphazard cuts to health and safety were the best way to reduce our deficit. Like Rove, this year's GOP offered bad ideas. Like those Fox News hosts, the American people said "Thanks, but no thanks." As a result, my guy was re-elected, and, perhaps more importantly, many in the Republican Party are returning to Planet Earth. People like Jeb Bush and Bobby Jindal are trying to steer the party back to the center, focusing on conservative solutions instead of far-right obstructionism. Obama's win is a big deal, but the way in which the other party responds to its loss may very well be just as historic.
The Olympics--As I watched Michael Phelps swim, I cheered his victories--and the fact that I'd finally found a sport worthy of my short attention span. As I watched Usain Bolt sprint into legend, I remembered that our love of a great success story is one that transcends national and cultural boundaries. And, as I watched the opening ceremony, I finally learned what happens when you combine a flash rave, a history lesson, and a fairy tale on qualuudes.
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