Box Office Hobbits

And so it appears that Peter Jackson will not be directing the movie adaptation of The Hobbit, after all. I am somewhat disappointed by this, as a live-action version of The Hobbit would be a spectacle, indeed. I’d be really interested to see a CGI Smaug in action.

I’ve been a fan of Peter Jackson’s for a long, long time, well before he was thrust into the limelight by his adaptation of LotR. Bad Taste was the first movie of his that I’d seen. While Dead Alive (titled Brain Dead everywhere but the USA, AFAIK) wasn’t really my cup of tea, I enjoyed both The Frighteners and Heavenly Creatures. Still haven’t seen Meet the Feebles, and King Kong, while pretty to look at, was somewhat long IMO.

I guess I appreciate his low-budget work more than his high-budget films. Don’t get me wrong, I respect his attempts to bring Tolkien’s world to life. He got a lot of it dead to rights, but I also feel that he got an awful lot wrong. I don’t want to go into specifics: this entry isn’t intended as an item-by-item critique of Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy. We’ll save that for another time.

There’s been a serious lack of good live-action fantasy flicks. I can name but a handful that are, in my estimation, worthy: Conan the Barbarian, Krull, the Harry Potter films, Ladyhawke, Beastmaster, and Excalibur are but a few of my favorites. There are even some movies, such as The Sword and the Sorcerer, that I absolutely adore, but which are admittedly horrible when taken on their own.

Back to the topic of The Hobbit: I guess that New Line will recruit another director for the movie. I wonder who it will be? Will the fact that Jackson isn’t directing it detract from its success? Only time will tell.

On my to-do list: see Casino Royale. I’ve heard a lot of good things about the latest Bond flick, and I’d really like to get to the theater within the next few days and see it.

Oh, by the way, I did get to have breakfast with my friend Dave, and we talked a good deal about many things, especially Cyberpunk. Talking about it with him made me want to play it, dammit. I yearn for the old days. We had some good games back then, I tell you. I don’t know if they’d be good by today’s standards, but they definitely served a purpose, and they continue to live on in my memory.

So, yeah…we have to get Cyberpunk rolling, and soon.