Hobbit 3 / Lord of the Rings -1: Battle of 4 2/2 Armies

Known in America as "These Motherfuckers Again: Plus Other Motherfuckers Again"

When we last left The Hobbit, Smaug was getting himself emotionally pumped for a busy night of burninating both the countryside, the villagers, and the thatched roof cottages of Lake Town. Because I've started playing Skyrim since this all started, my usual line-by-line commentary has been alloyed by my perspective as the Dovahkiin.

*Smaug burns down the village as the villagers scream.* "But it's a literally a Lake Town. Just...jump into the water villagers." "Fish shit in there!" screams one villager. "'e shits in there!" screams another, gesturing at the first. 

They burn to death and I cast heal with both hands as I walk through the fire, but not before looting their bodies to gain two bone meal.

I can see Tauriel looking up at Smaug as he strafes the village with fire again. His ability to both move and use a breath weapon makes him terrifying, especially for an archer. None the less, I can already see the finishing move where she surfs him into the bottom of the lake.

I can only assume it's called "Lake Town Lake," because that's how things are named here apparently.

Hobbit 2: Desolation of Smaug

I saw Hobbit 2 a few weeks back and as I often do, I took notes during it. You might remember that I wasn't a big fan of Hobbit 1. It wasn't awful, it was crammed with forgettable leads who were impossible to root for and categorized as either "white dudes" or "mutants." I'll make a more detailed post about how Hobbit 2 beat some of those things and fell prey to others, but for now, here's the notes.

Previews

So, Walk with Dinosaurs, your tagline is "...action this big, screen this small." Are you a real movie or another theater commercial?

Anchorman 2 with a movie-specific trailer/commercial...for Lord of the Rings? Because you're talking about Lord of the Rings, not The Hobbit.

That's Woody Harrelson, right? What has Nolan been up to? He needs watching after Man of Steel. Oh. It's called XXXXXXXXXXXX. Well, that's so vague and distant I might as well not even be aware of it.

Captain America 2: The new suit is still very flattering. Does that helicarrier have repulsor tech?

Keanu Reeves is...a white slave and a great white savior? Another movie to feed the inexplicable persecution/superiority complex of white America.

47 Ronin. Not compelling. Too ambitious It has Keanu instead of an Asian lead, so it's traded me for the type of people who watch Keanu Reeves.

<I've since heard from reliable sources that 47 Ronin is not most of these things. It is, according to those sources, not awful after all.>

Amazing Spider-Man 2. Electricity does not work that way.

Walter Mitty: It's trying so hard and for a feature film based on a shorty story I read in junior high, it looks okay.

And everyone, let's have a round of applause for Ben Stiller finally doing his serious comedian thing.

Jupiter Ascending. Boring, boring, boring, boring, "industry"?, boring boring

Edge of Tomorrow. Hey, Tom Cruise is still alive. Y'know, he does some ballsy-ass sci-fi. Vanilla Sky, Minority Report, this high-concept stuff. Speaking as someone who's done zero research on this, I think he might actually us his A-list cachet to make big screen, crazy-ass sci-fi movies happen. Perhaps even more amazingly, he emerges from them with his career unscathed.

Hobbit 2
When we last left off, despite all of the unfounded optimistic hopes of the dwarves, the dragon wasn't dead. And now... (Spoilers)

Why There Should Have Been a Black Dwarf

There should have been a black dwarf in The Hobbit.

This came to me when I noticed the dwarves' noses. Not that it was the first thing about them I noticed; that was their rude assholishness. Their ridiculous noses were the second thing to jump out at me. "Why the fuck did Tolkien make them like that?" I wondered. Certainly, some of them would have a strange nose or hair-beard-braids: that's fair, but jesus-fuck! At least six of them have obvious prosthetics that place me in the theater, wondering why dwarves are the holders of The Seven Rings and the keepers of Middle Earth's greatest diversity of nasal genetic material.