You’ve won the mountain is that not enough?

Hi! I keep meaning to write about so many things! But i’m saving Doctor Who comments until the series has finished and i’ve finally seeing both versions of Frankenstein so i can get onto that soon! Also The Imitation Game comes out really soon so i’ll be all over that hopefully! But for now!

So many Hobbity treats!

First of all here it is, the final Tolkien movie trailer we’re getting (as far as we know….i can’t imagine Peter Jackson doing any more but we’ll see eh)

LINK HERE

I’m not going to go into crazy detail about each shot of the trailer or anything like that but i think it’s absolutely marvelous!

My feeling of overwhelming love for this franchise has even almost drilled out of my head any concerns about the Kili/Tauriel story i had when watching this trailer. As i probably mentioned in my post about Desolation of Smaug, up until the barrels and escaping Mirkwood i could quite happily go along with the sort of empathy for each other, even if it did involve forcing myself to overlook “i could have anything down my trousers” and “he’s quite tall for a dwarf”. Heh..okay. Cheesy lines but okay. I feel the whole “healing” things later was a bit weird personally, especially the whole delusional Kili speech. (What is pretty cool though actually in watching behind the scenes of the film i found out Tauriel’s elvish incantation she says when healing him is “what grace is given me, let it pass to him, let him be spared” which is the line Arwen uses in helping heal Frodo from his Morgul wound in Fellowship).

But anyway where i was going with that is that i hope their story-line doesn’t completely bombard the….important moments…with Kili..you know…that thing. If you know the story. Yeah. I don’t really want them to make it all about them, but by the looks of the trailer i may not get my wish haha!

Some gorgeous GORGEOUS parts of the trailer! Bilbo and the dwarves watching Laketown burning in the distance for one. Elrond is looking mighty fine in his armor i have to say!

One of my favourite parts of the trailer is actually Saruman. “Leave Sauron to me”. I mean, we all know that’s not going to go so well but we can entertain the possibility that just for a few seconds (though when it’s put into context of the film maybe not even that much) he’s on the good guy’s team for a while! Really excited to see more of The White Council especially fighting and going up against the Necromancer and things.

Even having read the book i realise how little i can predict the events of this film as i’m not overly familiar with the appendices of Return of the King or any of the sort of background story outside of the books. So sad it’s ending, but so excited.

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What i also wanted to do! I always tell myself i’m going to write posts about the Hobbit scores/soundtrack. I’m sure i’ve greatly celebrated Howard Shore here on my blog in the past and it’s no secret how much i adore the Lord of the Rings scores. Maybe once i have them all together i’ll force myself to write something. But for now!

We’ve just been given 30 second samples of the Hobbit score on ‘amazon’.

Now quite a lot of them are hard to judge right now since we only get 30 seconds of what are often a 5,6 or 7 minute track. But i just wanted to maybe list them here and comment on my initial reactions since i’ve only just heard them! (This may be a selfish exercise because i enjoy analysing these things so much but if you’re interested well..here we go!…i wont waffle i promise!)

P.s. I will likely be alluring to the events of the film throughout (judging by the book and other information that’s out there) this so if you’re worried about spoilers i’ll be gentle but they’ll be some!

• Fire and Water – well this being at the beginning of the soundtrack and the title almost definitely suggests this will be during Smaug’s destruction of Laketown. Strong usage of Smaug’s theme in there too which i adore!
• Shores of the Long Lake & Beyond Sorrow and Grief – quite difficult to judge these with the small amount we have but i can imagine it being some kind of aftermath of the Laketown destruction etc.
• Guardians of the Three – I’m not sure what the title may be hinting at here? Any ideas? Maybe the 3 elvish rings? Not sure. But yes, straight in with the Lothlorien theme suggesting Galadriel and other slightly mystical “White Council” sounding tunes. That and the sort of Mordor/evil/Sauron etc. theme that starts up before it fades out. This suggests the Dol Goldur scenes to me that we see briefly in the trailer!
• The Ruins of Dale – Ohh i like this! Sounds like a bit of a new theme going on there! Sounds quite “time for battle”-y ….using the technical term. Interested to see what that’s linked to in the film!
• The Gathering of the Clouds – I wish i could say more about this one but it seems quite sort of…typical Hobbity background music in the 30 seconds we hear at least.
• Mithril – this 30 seconds doesn’t tell us a lot. The title suggests in involves Thorin giving Bilbo the Mithril vest..or at least discovering it. There’s some sort of creepy smaug/erebor music going on there so maybe it’s tied in to Thorin’s story-line of becoming obsessed (or trying not to) with the treasure like his father and grandfather.
• Bred for War – well we heard the similar line spoken by Legolas in the trailer above and there’s definitely a Mirkwood theme in there, it sounds like the evil theme is just about to start up before the preview fades out though.
• A Thief in the Night – Ohh! Bit of an adventurous mischievous glint to it. I can very much imagine this is when Bilbo decides to take things into his own hands, puts his sneaky qualities to good use! He means well Thorin please don’t be mad (he’s gonna be mad).
• The Cloud’s Burst, Battle for the Mountain, The Darkest Hour – I grouped all these because they all seem very battle-y (i’m full of the technical terms today). Can definitely feel the tone being shifted to match closer to that of Lord of the Rings, the battle music certainly has some similarities. Howard Shore you are a rather impressive fellow.
• Sons of Durin – well this is an emotional 30 seconds. Strong Thorin/line of Durin themes as is fairly obvious from the title. Sons of Durin here in case anyone is confused would include Thorin, Fili and Kili. And yeah. If you know the story.
• The Fallen – Ugh. Well this speaks for itself. Can’t have a battle without loss. Towards the end there we get the Thorin/Durin theme we just heard so powerfully in the previous track but much slower and sadder.
• Ravenhill – Ohh this sounds very dramatic. Wasn’t sure what Ravenhill was but Google tells me it’s a hill just be Erebor. Maybe there’ll be some kind of epic stand-off or battle moment there!
• To The Death – Well..more battle music!! Long track that one! Should be interesting.
• Courage and Wisdom – Hard to judge this one but i very much hope it’s a Bilbo moment personally.
• The Return Journey & There and Back Again – aww these are nice aren’t they! The second one especially is very Bilbo. No Shire type music in the previews but i certainly hope there’s some in there.
• The Last Goodbye – Well..this is Billy Boyd’s credits song…perfect choice of person to sing it…i can already feel my heart breaking. Can’t wait to hear the whole thing, there’s definitely some similarities with Into The West/Use Well The Days from Annie Lennox (Use Well The Days being a potential credits song for Return of the King at some point).
• Ironfoot – I. LOVE. THIS. I hear Ironfoot is the name given to Dain (another dwarf lord who we shall be seeing in this film..i believe Billy Connelly is playing him) as Oakenshield is given to Thorin. Ohh yes i love this one a lot. Very dwarvish music.
• Dragon-Sickness – Ohh yes some Smaug/Erebor themes going on there.
• Thrain – This is a bonus track from The Desolation of Smaug, which i imagine they put on this one since he is only revealed more in the extended edtion of the second film which has come on this week! Lovely!

Will you follow me, one last time?

Okay i’m a bit late with this but!

We FINALLY have a teaser trailer for the 3rd Hobbit movie (with probably another coming along in Oct/Nov) ‘The Battle of the Five Armies’ re-named from the much lovelier (in my personal opinion) ‘There and Back Again’. But i suppose if they ever put a 6 film box set together with both The Hobbit and LOTR as Peter Jackson has hinted at many a time maybe they’ll keep that tagline for that so i can understand the change in a way.

Here’s the trailer!

**Spoilers for the trailer and The Hobbit story itself coming below**

Now i’m really interested to see what they do with this one. As you’ll know if you’ve read the book the battle is pretty vague on the page, Bilbo gets knocked out for most of it and since we’re pretty much hearing the story from his point of view we as the reader miss out too. I personally hope they keep Bilbo up and about in this film!

I’ve had conversations about Thorin’s line that i’ve used for the title here. To be fair, yeah, if i was the elves, men and other dwarves i would certainly have reservations about just battling to help Thorin keep his gold and his mountain, especially when they’ve all tottled up there to get a share themselves. But in the end it’s bigger than that.

We know Peter Jackson is somewhat bridging the Hobbit and Lord of the Rings trilogies and we’ve seen a nice tease of the Necromancer/Sauron so far in his quest to return to power (i believe there’s a fair bit more of him to come but i’m not sure as he of course isn’t in the original book but possibly the LOTR appendices which i’m not as familiar with).

In the end, it’s not just a big battle for the gold now Smaug’s gone (pretty much obliterating Laketown in the process). If Sauron’s forces are part of the battle then he’s trying to take this opportunity to wipe out a good chunk of the good guys while he can. He doesn’t have a dragon stopping him and they’re not exactly all on the best of terms. It’s the fight for good over evil, not for gold.

I thought the trailer was lovely! Using Pippin’s song from Return of the King was a very emotional surprise and certainly brings the tone closer to that of LOTR. I hope there’s more Bilbo this time.

And i suppose if we compare this to ROTK, they are both big defining moments and battles in Middle Earth history. Okay, by ROTK Sauron has much more going for him, he’s just starting to build things up again for The Hobbit, but the song very much fits.

I’ll be interested to see what they do actually because it’s not as if they will defeat Sauron st this point. I don’t even know if the Necromancer will be part of the battle (i’m hearing Galadriel may go up against him to rescue Gandalf from Dol Goldur which would be AWESOME), but certainly Azog and Bolg etc. show up as we see in the trailer so we know his forces are there.

Also (BIG SPOILERS COMING UP) it’s looking a lot more hopeful that there will be significance and emotional to the deaths we experience in this film. Fili and Kili get a sentence to acknowledge their death in the book and Thorin has a pretty swift goodbye. I think it’s fair to say it’s looking to be emotional.

It’ll be extremely surreal to say goodbye to Middle Earth. What a journey.

One day i’ll remember, remember everything that happened. The good, the bad, those who survived and those that did not….

“I don’t wanna survive…i wanna live”

12 Years A Slave

TRAILER – For those who for some reason haven’t heard of this

***Spoilers likely but i won’t be going into much detail***

So, you’ve probably at least heard of this film. It seems to be a front runner for a lot of big awards and i don’t think i’ve seen a bad word against it. Directed by Steve McQueen and with an absolutely fantastic cast…I saw this film yesterday.

Well…gosh. It’s quite hard to talk about this film as i would normally because it feels utterly wrong to use phrases like “well that bit was really good” or “i really enjoyed that bit” because that really wouldn’t sit well.

The film is a good film! It really is…if you re-evaluate the term “good” in your head to fit the situation. It’s not nice and entertaining i wouldn’t say you sit through it and enjoy it…but i can certainly appreciate that as a film it is fantastic. It’s certainly a heavy watch…as you would expect with this subject, it’s a brutal and honest account and at between 2 and 2 and a half hours there really isn’t much relief from the mood. I mean…as scenarios you can think of for the end of this film goes…we probably get the best one. But i certainly found myself thinking, “well..that’s a…happy? ending…but i can’t appreciate it at all”.

There were points where i physically had to turn away and it had me crying by the end.

I’ve not really painted a nice picture of this film have i? haha! It is..as you expect, a horrific subject and difficult to watch…but you should..it is an experience!

As i mentioned earlier..what a cast! Really really brilliant all round!

Chiwetel Ejiofor…WOW! He plays Solomon Northup who’s story we follow and he is in pretty much every scene i think, but boy he certainly carries this film and carries it brilliantly! I think this film will do wonderful things for him. He’s been in quite a few films/tv shows if you check out his IMDB page ….but i must admit the only thing i’d really known him for was “that guy who Keira Knightley gets married to in Love Actually but no one pays that much attention to him because that other guy’s in love with her” haha!!

Michael Fassbender and Lupita Nyong’o especially (who it seems is very new to the acting scene! I hope she gets a lot of work in the future she is truly fantastic!) are amazing.

One thing i will touch on is the fact it is based on a true story. Personally, i tend to struggle to truly see the reality of huge terrible events..whether they be part of history or even now. I have small moments of realisation when the horror truly hits me but i’ve noticed this as i’ve learnt more about myself growing up i find it hard to hold onto that. The film draws to a conclusion by bringing up some small facts about Solomon’s future…how he took those responsible for his treatment to trial..even his kidnappers. Cases which he lost. These facts appearing at the end was something that really drilled it home for me. It’s almost easier to disassociate yourself from the reality of these things when you’re watching a film but you suddenly think “wow..what i just witnessed actually happened” and that’s quite a thought.

I’ll wrap it up by mentioning the score for the film. I’m going to have to look into it more but i saw in the credits it was by Hans Zimmer. No wonder it was beautiful. The music was a part of the film i really noticed and thought i will have to listen to separately…even despite everything else that was going on!

So, as i say….see the film! You should! It’s a marvelous piece! It really does stay with you..i’ve thought about it a lot today!

Truly, the tales and songs fall utterly short of your enormity oh Smaug the stupendous…

Well HELLO new trailer for the Desolation of Smaug!

Warnings! There will be spoilery discussion of the trailer below (though also..the trailer so…watch that first! 😉 ), i shall try and stay fairly clear of the details of the story line but in all fairness it is a book (which i massively recommend) and also some comments on the book/film differences of Lord of the Rings if you’ve any desire to keep those a surprise to yourself :)!

HERE is the trailer!

Also there was some lovely short introductions to the trailer! From Martin Freeman, Richard Armitage and Stephen Fry

(I hope clicking on these pics will make them bigger!)

I. LOVED. THIS. TRAILER!

I’m glad we got a bit more Bilbo than last time!! Still quite a lot of elf love (who am i to complain..my gorgeous Legolas was part of it) but they’re clearly a bigger part of the movie than the book! Which is a good thing!! In the book they’re hardly a big deal, yes they go through Mirkwood but oh no the Dwarves have been captured Bilbo helps them out. Sorted! So i’m chuffed to pieces that there’s more of them!

Bard certainly got a good cut in this trailer! To be fair, he deserves a mention…the film is called the Desolation of Smaug after all….*twirls mustache*

Looks like Thorin might be getting a bit of a strop on again (to use the technical term) but hey, he’s a stubborn guy, plus Bilbo has Balin there to defend him it seems. I love Balin. Seeing him in The Hobbit has only made The Fellowship of the Ring that much sadder.

What else was there? OH YES!! Spider scene!!

Apart from maybe the Smaug and Bilbo scenes, this is the one i am looking forward to the most! Reading this chapter was amazing! I hate spiders, but man am i looking forward to this! Bilbo really comes into his own and you really start to think “yes, you darn well belong on this adventure Bilbo and they need you!”

Look at Bilbo’s face in the second one there! Martin Freeman is just brilliant. I can’t decide if that facial expression is “ohh yeah the ring, do i put it on?” or “oh thank god i thought i’d lost it”. I’m a bit more persuaded by the second one but i’d be happy to hear thoughts? If it is that then i always say that “ring-happy” Bilbo makes me sad because he’s so innocent and lovely and i don’t want him corrupted! Haha! But we all know in the end he’s okay anyway! But it’s like the extended edition of FOTR has him thinking he’s lost the ring and freaking out big time, and when he lashes out at Frodo, they make me sad.

Then again he might just be worried he lost it because it’s been getting him out of a hell of a lot of trouble!!

One face i feel we have lacked in our trailers is Gandalf. I love Gandalf. I just want to be friends with him.

In fairness, in the book he pretty much gallops off exclaiming “i have more important things to attend to!” then reappears later..i expect we’ll see some scenes of where he actually goes off to which is more than the book provides..so i guess for this middle film, we can’t expect hours of him!

And i can’t not mention…our first snippet of the voice of Smaug!!! Smaug we know is voiced and motion-captured by Benedict Cumberbatch (as is the necromancer). If you heard him as The Angel Islington in the radio play of ‘Neverwhere’ by Neil Gaimon (also has Christopher Lee, James McAvoy..lots of others..it’s good i recommend it) you’ll know he can certainly roar and have a ridiculously deep voice when he wants to (no effects added during the radio play it’s staggering) but i think this time his voice is slightly twiddled with for sure! I think it’s likely 90% him and that’s cool with me! His last few words at the end of the trailer sort of hint that to me, they sound a bit more digital in my opinion.

Holy moly he has one beautiful voice though! He’s going to do such an amazing job of this (as he does everything) and i can’t wait to see him in full! We’ve seen and heard bits here and there of Smaug now and i’ve not minded that he wasn’t 100% a secret, i think we’ve had small teases enough to make us excited but we still don’t REALLY know what he’s going to be like in the film, especially thinking about the motion capture side of things! That’ll be awesome to see!

Don’t get me wrong, i adore Benedict (as you probably know) and am chuffed to pieces he is in this film and that people are excited to see him..I’M excited to see him, but i find myself feeling a bit defensive of the rest of the film or trailer when it seems to go completely unnoticed in comparison. I guess i have been a LOTR fan since i was 10 and i will always be a Tolkien fan above all else. I’d never tell people not to be excited and i know this is film in particular is quite Smaug-centric (Bilbo and Smaug chat is my FAVOURITE sequence in the book so hot dayum am i looking forward to it) but…it’s not just his film.

Sorry this is getting long isn’t it! I’m almost done!

I’ve seen one or two (rarely but) little concerns about what the films will be like in relation to the new things that have been added and things that might have been changed a bit. But personally, i trust Peter Jackson completely with these films. Especially after seeing the changes that were made from the Lord of the Rings books to film. The book version of things was amazing obviously, but i think PJ certainly kept the right things in mind when trying to make the film just a bit more interesting.

You can’t just have fairly plain sailing for the majority of a 3-4 hour film, you need bits of trouble on the way without just the big piece of trouble at the end. Return of the King especially, Sam was never seen home by Frodo before entering Shelob’s cave, he hardly had any noticeable trouble with the ring until he was in Mordor, Faramir wasn’t bothered about having the ring, Denethor wasn’t that bad a guy, Merry didn’t go to the battle at the Black Gate! To name a few!

But anyway, i’ve waffled on enough i do apologise…The Hobbit and Lord of the Rings does bring this out of me!

“I will not risk this quest for the life of one burglar”

“His name, is Bilbo!”

How could he refuse when he owes the man his life?

Okay, so this may not be overly familiar to those outside the Cumbersphere (by that i mean…those who may not closely follow the work of Benedict Cumberbatch) (i can’t believe i just used that word with 0% irony) but hence..why i’m blogging about it!

“Little Favour” is a short film that was created back in about June of this year (well..the post production is on-going of course!). It was similar to that of a kickstarter, where donations fund the project, and started when it was put out to twitter by one of the lovely producers with a goal of….i think about £25,000. There were perks to inspire motivation too – where those who donate a certain amount are given something in return, such as being given certain credits on the film or becoming an extra – which certainly helped move the bigger donations along.

Safe to say the goal was reached pretty easily! I can never remember the exact number but i think with the 12-14 days given to reach the goal of 25K somewhere between 80K and 90K was reached! Which is…bloomin’ incredible. Cast and crew (most of whom are on twitter and are extremely lovely) then told us this would mean a lot for the production of the film, like extra days could be added and more work could go into the final product!

Including a lovely VIDEO MESSAGE from Mr Cumberbatch back in May, when the funding was going on, expressing thanks!

Here’s the recently released poster! =)

Here’s the Facebook page of the production company behind the film (and source of the above picture) Sunny March 

And the IMDB Page giving this summary:

A short film starring Benedict Cumberbatch, Colin Salmon and Nick Moran. LITTLE FAVOUR follows the story of WALLACE (Benedict Cumberbatch) when he is contacted by a former colleague to help him out with a deal gone wrong. ‘Its been 7 years since he left Her Majesty’s service and 10 years since the American Counter part who became his friend, saved his life on a joint mission in Iraq. He’s migrated his skill set into a lucrative business while managing to keep his secret battle with PTSD under wraps. One day, while finally deciding to try his hand at a functional relationship, his old friend JAMES cashes in his chip and asks a LITTLE FAVOUR. How could he refuse when he owes the man his life?

And also listing the cast members Benedict Cumberbatch (don’t really feel the need to elaborate on his career here as he is slowly making his way toward world domination…) Colin Salmon (check him out! I really recognised his face when i saw him, i went through to his IMDB page and i’m not surprised..he’s been in LOADS of things!!) and Nick Moran (now he’s been in a fair amount too but maybe not as prominent as Colin Salmon..you may mostly know him as Scabior in the final 2 Harry Potter films. Erm…if the name doesn’t find a bell..i think he’s one of the snatchers they come across who takes them to the Malfoys’…got a bit of a Russel Brand thing going on…)

There was also a trailer released recently! Not sure of the exact length of time the film will be…about 20 minutes i think (imdb says 22 minutes but goodness knows wit that site sometimes), so understandably the trailer isn’t a big feature length 2 minute deal xD! It is a marvelous 26 seconds though!

Do be advised if you’re not a fan of fair amounts of blood and/or quite strong hints at torture scenes..this may not be your cup of tea!

TRAILER HERE

So there you go! I don’t think we have a release date quite yet but i’m really looking forward to it! And extremely chuffed to be even a tiny small part of it!

P.S. If you’re interested, here’s another short film starting Benedict Cumberbatch. INSEPARABLE on YouTube. It’s about 11 minutes long and stars just Benedict (for the most part…there are a couple of others) as twins. Not much dialogue, rather sad, but definitely worth a watch!!

Man is least himself when he talks in his own person. But if you give him a mask, he will tell you the truth.

Well, here we go! Whether we’re at the height of knowledge or in almost complete ignorance (which is pretty much where i stand i wont lie) we’ve all heard of Wikileaks!

“The Fifth Estate” is a film coming out October 18th (this might be the American release date..UK still not certain..) and tell you what rather than me attempting to waffle about it, i’ll give you the synopsis from Dreamworks….

“THE FIFTH ESTATE reveals the quest to expose the deceptions and corruptions of power that turned an Internet upstart into the 21st century’s most fiercely debated organization. The story begins as WikiLeaks founder Julian Assange (Benedict Cumberbatch) and his colleague Daniel Domscheit-Berg (Daniel Brühl) team up to become underground watchdogs of the privileged and powerful. On a shoestring, they create a platform that allows whistleblowers to anonymously leak covert data, shining a light on the dark recesses of government secrets and corporate crimes. Soon, they are breaking more hard news than the world’s most legendary media organizations combined. But when Assange and Berg gain access to the biggest trove of confidential intelligence documents in U.S. history, they battle each other and a defining question of our time: what are the costs of keeping secrets in a free society—and what are the costs of exposing them?”
Source

The trailer was out last night/this morning and can be seen

HERE

Wow, okay! I can see this turning into quite a big deal! Quite a controversial man is Assange. Benedict Cumberbatch has obviously been the lead in things before, but there’s often been other big actors or characters surrounding him or the film/tv show (possibly with the exception of Sherlock, though Martin Freeman of course is equally as wonderful and popular in that)  has not been on this sort of level. There’s something about big films about real life figures that seems to get out there and gets a lot of attention, everyone’s interested in how the film will turn out and what take they will have on the events!

Assange himself was very much not a fan of the film being made, but that wasn’t too likely was it.

In this LINK the director of the film, Bill Condon, explains the trailer and the role of the film in general, it’s not long it’s a good read!

Other awesome cast members, Stanley Tucci, Laura Linney, David Thewlis among others. Daniel Brühl has particularly nostalgic memories for me, as he’s the star of German film “Goodbye Lenin!” which i studied at A Level (it’s a really great film i recommend it! funny!…there’s subtitles..i did German but i’m not that fluent!)

There’s a lot of reviews of the trailer circling around already!! There’s nothing overly detailed or dramatic about things yet of course, that will all be saved for the film i’m sure! One thing they all seem to agree on though is Mr Cumberbatch has got Assange spot on! There’s some comments out there on the internet about his odd accent but those who have seen Julian Assange actually speak say his Australian accent is not overly typical and Benedict has nailed it on the head! He’s an extraordinary actor, completely becomes a different person in each role. I can’t wait to see how this is received! Some articles below:

flickfilosopher | wegotthiscovered.com |  thejournalist.ie | mashable.com

This will certainly be an interesting one!