Remember those LORDS OF RINGS movies and books they used to have, about the magic ring that a bunch of little people had to throw into a volcano because it was so powerful it would warp the mind of even a good man, and dessicate him into a freaky, fish-munching Gollum? I always thought that story was supposed to be about the arms race, but it turns out the ring was actually a metaphor for The Lord of the Rings itself. The power of this thing has turned director Peter Jackson skinny and made him jones for his precious so bad that he’s adapted the first third of J.R.R. Tolkein’s 320 page children’s book The Hobbit into a 169 minute part 1-of-3 that’s somehow gonna have an additional 20-25 minutes added for video, meaning the full movie will likely end up being around 9 1/2 hours by the time the third blu-ray comes out around Christmas 2015. See, Jackson found a bunch of appendixes and supplemental materials, some recipes, golf score cards and a doodle of boobs that Tolkien drew on the back of an Arby’s menu, and he felt it was important to include all that. And in order to pack even more in he developed new technology to shoot at double the standard number of frames so that certain theaters willing to shell out the dough to upgrade their digital projectors can project it to look like a shitty shot-on-video mini-series or an HDTV somebody set up wrong because they didn’t know any better.
More – alot more – on the “48 FPS HFR” technology later. For now let’s talk the movie, as much as is possible. (read the rest of this shit…)
For years Robin Hardy, the director of the original non-mega THE WICKER MAN, has been trying to make this movie based on his novel Cowboys For Christ. It’s supposed to be a “spiritual sequel” dealing with the same themes but not the same characters or story. I expected a barely watchable but hopefully interesting mess, but that’s not what it is. Without being directly connected to THE WICKER MAN it pretty much takes the WILD THINGS approach to sequelizing: kind of a loose paraphrase with all the details changed. It’s clunky at times and always completely unnecessary, but surprisingly compelling. 
This movie has a reputation as kind of a mess. Admittedly it is a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor. In my opinion a 2 1/2 hour broad comedy about paranoia right after the bombing of Pearl Harbor was not necessarily one of the top two or three things the world hoped for as Steven Spielberg’s followup to CLOSE ENCOUNTERS OF THE THIRD KIND. But fuck ‘em. It’s what they got and they oughta fuckin appreciate it. 
I can’t really think of a compelling reason why anybody should see SEASON OF THE WITCH, but it’s way more watchable than I expected. The trailers were dreary and cheap looking, it didn’t look like there was anything very original or exciting about it, it’s from the director of GONE IN 60 SECONDS (remake), and then I think it got delayed but I can’t really prove it because nobody was waiting for it to come out so who would remember?
You know Hammer, the production company over there in London that did the old Dracula and Frankenstein movies with Christopher Lee and Peter Cushing? Well, they’re back, or at least somebody’s using that name again. I wouldn’t take it too seriously except that the first official theatrical release of the new Hammer was 
STAR WARS PART 3: REVENGE OF THE SITHS
Well I got my wish, they made a part 2. When last we left Merlin, Frodo, Viggo, Sam, Dwarf, and Elf, they were all split up. Merlin fell down a hole and there was no giant talking bird to save him this time. Everybody was separated or something. Frodo and Sam were going to go throw the ring in the volcano. I can’t remember what else.
STARWARS VOL. II: ATTACK OF THE CLONES
