Alas, our 3 year old tradition is over. We’ve just been to the cinema and saw the last part of The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies.
I believe it was my first time crying in the cinema. I was really heartbroken because I finished the book long ago and the movies were all that I had left.
It was splendid. Everything about the movie was beautiful and it just rocked my socks. I actually wished for the story to not end. I even wished for the movie to alter the ending of the book, so 3 of the main characters (and my favorite ones) would not die. But they did keep the ending.
I guess, I can’t complain. I still have The Lord of the Rings books to read (and the movies to watch). Yet somehow I doubt I will find another Fili and Kili in literature.
Yes, I have a crush on two fictional characters. I guess that happens a lot these days. I am also sure I am not the only one, since there is a huge fanbase out there as heartbroken as myself.
All we can do now, is find new movies that will keep us glued to the screen. 2015 is looking pretty promising in terms of movies. That means we will have plenty of opportunities to go out and enjoy ourselves. And 2015 is not that far away; 2 more days left.
I am anxious on how things will turn out in the new year *fingers crossed*. We shall see…
1. Penguins of Madagascar which will be released at the end of November. Meaning we will be able to see it in December.
2. The Hobbit: The Battle of the Five Armies. Same thing as the Penguind of Madagascar. We will be able to see it in December. It has become a tradition of sorts to see this movie with my brother and my sister-in-law. Hopefully they will come with us to see other movies as well.
I know for sure that with The Hobbit and The Penguins of Madagascar we will have to book the tickets well in advance. Last year, when we went to see The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug, I had to reserve the tickets with one week in advance. And I was lucky. The second day after I booked the tickets, there were no more seats available in any cinema.
Hopefully, we will have a good time. As much as I love the movies, I hate going to the cinema. Every time there was someone or something that just ruined everything, e.g. the woman with the 2 yo that cried the entire How to Train Your Dragon 2, the 2 very tall guys that just happened to sit in front of us when the place was almost empty or (my favorite) when they just get so bored that they start talking during the movie.
I have so many things to be happy about, yet just one thing gone wrong and my entire good mood went away. So, at the moment I’m trying to get back to my happy place.
I mean, I should be happy. I’ve seen a movie that I wanted to see since last year (when we saw the first part), I have a new game to play, new clothes, I’m free for Christmas and right now I am enjoying my weekend (which is in the middle of the week).
Saturday & Sunday were awesome on so many levels for me.
On Saturday, after work we went out. We had dinner at a chinese place and went to see “The Hobbit: The Desolation of Smaug“. I never knew I had a fangirl inside of me that just needed activation.
First of all, the amount of screen time Kili received in the second part was incredible. They probably realized the power Aidan Turner has on the female population and took full advantage of it. I mean, I have his face on my phone screen. I’m not like this, I swear! But my good he has such a nice eye smile.
I was surprised to see that in the cinema there were parents with kids, old people, couples, friends. I mean this movie was for everyone. It was fun, it had a little bit of romance thrown in, a lot of action (the barrel scene was funny, Legolas being a ballerina and all that), drama and of course the ending that probably killed everyone since it will take another year for the third part to come out.
Still, at the end I heard some people saying they didn’t enjoy it. I was shocked, but then again I recognize the type. The ones that are never satisfied by anything, and always find something to complain about, so they don’t actually count.
Moving on, on Sunday we had a mini team building. It was fun to hang out with people from work. We had dinner, went to laser tag and even karting. There was no difference between us and the little kids that were running around in the arcade. Sometimes, I thought we were worse. Of course there were minor incidents, hitting each other, crashing the karts, little things like that.
We were supposed to also go to a movie, but it was getting late and some of us had work the next day and we just separated around midnight. That was the sad part, but we’ll have other team buildings not to worry.
Oh, and Christmas came early this year for me and Johnny. New clothes, including underwear and socks (it wouldn’t be Christmas without them), a new watch for Johnny, a PS3 for the both of us, and lots of games. My favorite is Kingdom Hearts.
I used to play this game when I was in high school, but along the way I got addicted to it and they took it away from me. I can totally understand them, but now they have no power over me. I shall play till my heart is content, or till I get annoyed with a certain level that I can’t pass.
Overall, things are great. The fact that I won’t have a full vacation and won’t be able to celebrate the holidays properly shouldn’t count that much. I should try to get the best out of it.
Today I finished “The Fellowship of the Ring“, the first book of “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy.
I’m actually happy that I finished this book because it has been on my reading list for a long time. The truth is that even till this date I have not seen “The Lord of the Rings’ movies because I wanted to read the books first.
I was really inspired to read “The Hobbit” before starting reading “The Lord of the Rings”. “The Hobbit” shows how the hobbit (Bilbo Baggins to be more precise) ends up with the ring, “the ring to rule them all“. The first book of “The Lord of the Rings” starts in the Shire (the land of the hobbits), 50 years later after Bilbo Baggins gets the ring from Gollum and leaves it as a heirloom to his nephew Frodo Baggins.
And in come Gandalf and the hobbits are off on an adventure of a lifetime.
What is really nice about “The Fellowship of the Ring” is how much the beginning of the book resembles “The Hobbit”. When Frodo & co where leaving from the Shire I was remembering about Bilbo first time out of the Shire along the dwarfs. In a weird way you get a nostalgic feeling and its hard not to compare Frodo with Bilbo.Then again, Bilbo was hired as a master thief, not knowing the perils that he might encounter (OK, he knew about the dragon), whereas Frodo is more or less aware of the power of the Ring and he knows he is in danger.
The only thing that I didn’t like about the book was the lack of dwarfs. Really now, one dwarf is not enough for an adventure.
What I would like to say from the start is that Tolkien is really awesome. And, I actually found one of the most awesome tributes made for him on Tumblr:
Basically, what J.R.R. Tolkien did was to create a new world and he didn’t create the world for others, he created the world for himself. Because of this, his creation is truly wonderful.
Tolkien describes everything to the smallest detail and its really hard not to let your imagination run wild. I actually lost track of time a couple of times reading “The Fellowship of the Ring” and twice I almost forgot to get ready for work. Good thing I’m by nature a lazy nature and getting ready to go to work takes 10 minutes.
I actually cannot imagine how many hours this man spent writing these books. What most intrigued me the most is the songs. Almost every chapter has a song or two, and some of them are in elvish.
I’m thinking of taking a small break before starting the second book. It took me a month a few weeks to finish one book and I would like to give my imagination some time to rest. That I don’t want to finish the series too soon. I just want to enjoy them as much as I can.
Happy New Year everyone. Hope the passing of the year was filled with lots of fun, friends and good memories for the year to come.
What can I say, I had fun, as much as I could given my circumstances. I mean, I worked on Christmas, on the 31 of December and on the 1st of January, and when my “weekend” came I actually got a nasty cold and most of time was spent indoors… NOT!
I wasn’t crazy to sleep my free time away. I really didn’t care that I could barely speak or that I was dizzy most of the time, I really wanted to have fun and that’s what I did.
What better way to start the year then with a good movie. So we went to the cinema and saw “The Hobbit“.
It. was. epic.
The last book that I read in 2012 was “The Hobbit” and I enjoyed it so much. I really didn’t expect the movie to be this awesome. It has all the right elements combined in such a beautiful way.
Almost 3 hours of comedy, action and beautiful visuals.
The actors were simply amazing in bringing the story to life. I don’t know who did the casting but, my God they got it right. A new fan base has started on Tumblr and their main idols are Fili and Kili. And sincerely I can’t see why not, the actors are just drop dead gorgeous.
What I loved the most about the movie is that they didn’t cut anything from the main story. They didn’t compromise the details of the book just so they can get a normal 90 minutes movie. Nope, “The Hobbit” lasted 2 hours and 40 minutes and it didn’t even finish the story.
So that means the second part of the movie will be released at the end of the year. It will be a good karma to go an see the second part at the same cinema before 2013 ends.
Science fiction, fantasy and detective books are my favorite. From these 3 genres I read mostly detective books (with Maigret, Poirot, Miss Marple, Sherlock Holmes and so on) and I rarely have time to read anything else.
My last fantasy read was that of The Harry Potter books and I believe it’s been well over a year since I finished the last book of the series. Since then, I tried finding other series that would appeal to me as Harry Potter did.
But then I got stuck reading detective books for a while. I think I still needed time to be able to get over those beautiful wizards and witches.
Last month I started reading The Hunger Games trilogy but I got stuck half way through Catching Fire. I was just tired of having some of my favorite characters killed, beaten or just put in some dangerous situations.
So, I decided I needed something lighter in content and The Hobbit by J. R. R. Tolkien was the only thing that caught my attention.
Actually, I wanted to read The Lord of Rings trilogy but I already started The Hunger Games and I don’t like starting too many books/series at the same time.
The Hobbit is a fantasy novel. It was published in 1937 and since then has been a favorite of many.
I started this book, or better said I tried reading the Romanian version of this book a couple of years ago and I lost interest after the first chapters. I returned the book to the library and just forgot about it until recently.
The fact that it was translated from English to Romanian made me lose interest in it. I recently discovered that the translated version usually looses its charm. So I found the English version, as usual in audio format narrated by Rob Inglis (who does an amazing job by the way).
The story revolves around Bilbo Baggins first adventure.
Bilbo Baggins is of course a hobbit, a respectable one that is, because he never goes on adventures and is very much predictable. But on an “unfortunate” day, the small hobbit gets an unexpected visit from Gandalf, a very well known wizard.
Gandalf is searching for someone with whom he can share an adventure with. Of course, mister Baggins is secretly chosen by Gandalf mostly because of his Tookish ancestors that were known for going on long adventures. But mister Baggins tries to resist and ends up running inside his house.
The next day, mister Baggins is overwhelmed by new visitors: 13 dwarfs and Gandalf as well. They have a small party and at the end of the day mister Baggins is chosen as a companion for their adventure. The 13 dwarfs are looking for a thief that can help them retrieve their long lost treasure of their ancestors that is guarded by a nasty dragon called Smaug.
Poor little Bilbo is somehow roped in the adventure. At first the dwarfs don’t like mister Baggins but they respect Gandalf choice of a burglar. But after a couple of incidents mister Baggins earns his respect as a burglar and a friend among the dwarfs.
The story is really nicely narrated. It took me a couple of hours to finish the book because I couldn’t put my headphones down. It was so easy to just let myself imagine the goblins and dragon, the wogs and the lake men, the dark forest and huge mountains.
I also found it hilarious that a 50 years old hobbit (Bilbo Baggins) will act so much like a child in the beginning but at the end he comes home a completely different hobbit, and a much richer one I might add.
This might be a children’s book but I really enjoyed it.
The Hobbit also shows how mister Baggins comes in the possession of the ring, yup THE ring from The Lord of the Rings trilogy. So, I’m actually happy that I got to read The Hobbit before The Lord of the Rings.
Here I was happy that I was finally moving on to adult books and yet I still come back to children or young adults books. I think my body might be getting old (well, as old as a 25 years old should feel) but my heart and mind are still stuck in my teenage years.
Also, I am actually waiting for the movie to come out. Here’s The Hobbit trailer:
Dare I say the movie looks as good as it can get. I now have another movie added to to-see list.
