HBO Game of Thrones: Season Five New Characters

Season Five of HBO's Game of Thrones starts again this year on Sunday April 12, at 9 PM.  I am not looking forward to this premiere as much I did for earlier seasons. I didn't think that the likely source material for this season, primarily books four and five of George Martin's A Song of Ice and Fire series, was gripping reading like the first three books. However I am an unabashed Stark bannerman. That bias can occasionally warp my enjoyment of the story. Books four and five introduced a boatload of new characters and shifted emphasis to events in new Westeros locations or different continents altogether. This was a an issue for me because I want bloody revenge for the Starks. I really just want to see the remaining Starks grow up, reunite and destroy their enemies but to quote Ramsay Bolton, "If you think this has a happy ending, you haven't been paying attention". George RR Martin has consistently said that his story's conclusion will be bittersweet. I don't think that revenge, justice or the Starks are the most important elements of his tale. We shall see. It is 2015. The book series has at least two more entries yet to be published while the HBO series will probably complete in 2017 or 2018 based on prior statements by the showrunners. So there's an excellent chance that the story's conclusion will be shown on HBO before it is revealed in a book. So it goes. Theoretically show viewers could visit book reader blogs and drop spoilers all over the place, just for fun. Season Four already depicted non-book events. Some of these were presumably Benioff/Weiss initiated story changes while others could have been Martin created storylines which he has not yet published but has shared with the showrunners. It's important to remember that the showrunners know Martin's ultimate ending while we don't.  Supposedly inexplicable narrative twists may make perfect sense if we knew the greater story. We do know that the British-Nigerian actor Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, pictured above, will be playing a character named Malko. Malko was not in the books. He may or may not be a replacement for or amalgamation of other book characters.

Season Five and future seasons will have more surprises both for people who have read all of the books and people who only watch the show. Season Five will feature many people from Dorne, which we talked about here and here previously. Dorne is not as patriarchal/patrilineal as the rest of Westeros. In the books it's also slightly more diverse. We'll see if that last element makes it to screen. Sarella Sand, the Red Viper's black daughter, has not been cast AFAIK. Another Dornish character, Arianne Martell, has either not yet been cast or has been dropped. Both absences could have butterfly effects for the remaining story. Anyhow, please watch below for introduction of some new actors. And as usual please don't discuss spoilers if you know them.

Movie Reviews: Everyday Sunshine, Leaves of Grass

Everyday Sunshine
directed by Lev Anderson and Chris Metzler

I wrote a previous post on Fishbone's music here. Everyday Sunshine is not only the title of one of Fishbone's most accessible songs but is the title for the generally sad but mostly informative 2011 band documentary. This documentary followed the band for about three to four years. At the time this documentary was made the band only had two original members remaining (frontman, saxophonist and poet Angelo Moore and bassist Norwood Fisher). Before watching this documentary in its entirety (I had previously seen bits and pieces) I knew that Fishbone had never really attained massive financial success or even decent returns. However I was surprised to learn just how far they had fallen. At one point Moore was living with his mother while Fisher only had a small modest apartment. No palatial estates, vintage auto collections or harem of supermodels for these two men. Sometimes people tell us to do what we love and good things will follow. Perhaps, but those good things don't necessarily include money. We follow the band as they play to shockingly small and visibly bored audiences in Eastern Europe, carry their own instruments and other gear through airports,and arrive at music stores for CD signings only to discover that the band outnumbers the people who are interested in having a CD signed.

Laurence Fishburne provides narration. He used to moonlight as a bouncer in some of the clubs where Fishbone honed its craft. Most of the original band members were from South Central LA with the exception of Moore who met the other members when they were bused to his local suburban Valley high school. Moore is described as having no hood sense at all. He narrowly avoided a few beatdowns when he went to South Central to visit and practice with his new friends. The early story was told via humorous Fat Albert style animation. The cartoons captured Moore's near constant charming and somewhat manic smile and Fisher's laid back confidence. Fisher used to ask fellow students if they wanted to be in his fan club.

There are a lot of bands that go through periods where members feud, argue over songwriting credits, insult each other's spouses or girlfriends, refuse to talk to each other or even get in physical fights. I think that's normal. I wish the documentary had explained more of the issues among and between original Fishbone band members. Instead,we have the trumpet player (Walter Kibby) suddenly blurting out that the pianist/trombonist's problem (Chris Dowd) is that he has always been an a%*@!! , Dowd stating that he left because he was tired of the personality conflict bs while everyone seemingly agreed that Moore was literally insane and a hyperactive prima donna on stage. Those things may be true. I don't know. But I wanted more details on why the original group couldn't have risen above those sorts of problems. There is the sad story of how the guitarist (Kendall Jones) went temporarily bonkers and joined his father's polygamous religious cult. The band's (and Jones' girlfriend's) attempt to rescue Jones got the band bogged down in lawsuits and criminal charges just when it was on the verge of a commercial breakthough. We do get an intense discussion between Fisher and Moore. Moore felt that he had more creativity than he could express in the current Fishbone structure while Fisher said that he wasn't at all interested in being in a band with Moore's alternate persona of Dr. Maddvibe and had had quite enough of Moore's theremin explorations, thank you very much. There are other lawsuits and never much money.

Still for all of this the band soldiers on. Other musicians, often better known and almost always much wealthier, tell of the first time that they met or heard Fishbone and/or how much the band influenced them. These notables include Ice-T, Gwen Stefani, Branford Marsalis, Perry Farrell, Flea and several other musicians. Stefani in particular claims that she owes a great deal of her stage style to Moore. She says she adores him.
There's a lot of vintage and modern concert footage. The band, their producers, fans and other musicians claim that none of Fishbone's releases ever captured the ferocity and tightness of their live shows. I think that's accurate. The balance of the documentary concerns the occasionally tense but always deep relationship between Moore and Fisher. Both of them deal with their lack of financial success in different ways. Moore is sarcastic, biting and direct about industry racism and record company or rival band ripoffs. He's also pretty upset about some child support and visitation issues. Fisher claims that sure he would like to have more money but wouldn't have given up his experiences for that. Both men also appeared a little peeved at relatively conservative and rigid African-American popular music tastes. I believe that Fisher said that although he thought his band played "black" music they were simply not going to try to sound like Bobby Brown. And they never did. But that cost them.

If you are a hardcore Fishbone fan you've probably already seen this film. But even if you aren't a fan or are instead just curious about how and why some bands make it and others don't this was a pretty interesting film. It ends on a bright note. As one filmmaker noted, Fishbone's great strength was that it was a musical democracy where everyone could and did contribute something to the mix. But what worked musically didn't necessarily work for marketing or other business decisions. Talent alone is not enough for success. That's true in music or any other career path.
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Leaves of Grass
directed by Tim Blake Nelson

The only reason I decided to watch this older film was because it was directed by Tim Blake Nelson, whom I liked so much in Cherish. Nelson also acts in Leaves of Grass. The film shares a title with the Walt Whitman poetry collection but the art I truly appreciated after watching this film was Steve Earle's music. Earle also has a pivotal role in Leaves of Grass but for whatever reason I had never paid that much attention to his music, with the exception of his version of The Wire's theme song "Way Down In The Hole." That changed. I REALLY like his song "Lonely are the Free" though I know that for some people his accent and cadence may not be quite to their taste. Free your minds I say. The song plays over the end credits and in my opinion fits quite well with some of the movie's themes and some other things that were on my mind at the time. Anyway. This is one of those movies where I initially wanted to write a very short review, not because I disliked the movie but because I liked it so much that I don't want to ruin it for you by giving away too many spoilers. Nelson also wrote the movie. It has a lot of intelligent mordant writing that spices up the storyline. Things never really drag as the film flips back and forth between family drama and black comedy. There is violence within. People hurt and get hurt. There's also some pretty incisive social and philosophical commentary. As one character tries to explain to another one "The world is broken and it's up to us to fix it."

This movie stars Edward Norton in two different roles. He's playing identical twin brothers who are estranged from one another. Actually Billy Kincaid (Norton) is estranged from his entire family and isn't too broken up about it. Billy is a Brown university philosophy professor who's a rising star in his field. He's working on new books and has what amounts to groupies in the philosophy department. He's nonplussed when he hears news of his brother's death but decides to travel home to Little Dixie, Oklahoma for the funeral and to help settle accounts. His brother Brady (Norton) was a rising marijuana dealer with his own philosophical bent. Billy is more than a little upset when he discovers that Brady is not dead. People lied to Billy on Brady's orders so that Brady and his best friend Bolger (Nelson) could settle their own accounts with Tulsa drug baron Pug Rothman (Richard Dreyfuss) Brady intends to use Billy as an alibi for his meeting. Brady also thinks that Billy needs to make amends to their mother Daisy (Susan Sarandon). At first Billy wants no part of any of that but ends up staying a while because one of Brady's friends Janet (Kerri Russell) is making goo-goo eyes at him. Janet is an English teacher and poet. She's just as smart as both brothers. Brady might have taken a different path than Billy but Brady is no dummy. He may still have a "hick accent" but that has nothing to do with his brain power.

This film is as much about the meaning of life and the importance of love and family as it is about sibling rivalry and drug dealing. I enjoyed it. I will rewatch it. It has a few weaknesses in that tones switch suddenly and jarringly but on the other hand, that's true to life as all of us will eventually discover. Nelson's and Norton's accents impressed me but then again Nelson is indeed from Oklahoma.
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Je Suis Charlie: Paris Attack on Charlie Hebdo Offices

I think that one of the keystones of modern civilization is the ability to say, believe or write things which others find offensive without being killed for your expression of thoughts. I don't think that anyone who believes in freedom of speech can hold otherwise. And even people who aren't necessarily the biggest fans of free speech still usually aren't big fans of murder. So all right minded people deplored the Paris acts of murder directed against the satirical magazine Charlie Hebdo. At least two armed French-Algerian men, presumably angered by satirical and scatological cartoons depicting the prophet Muhammad, stormed the magazine offices, killing twelve people and wounding eleven others. At this time the men are still at large. They are believed to be the brothers Cherif and Said Kouachi. 

On Wednesday, eight journalists - including the magazine's editor - died along with a caretaker and a visitor when masked men armed with assault rifles stormed the Charlie Hebdo offices during an editorial meeting. Eleven people were also wounded, some seriously. Two policemen were also killed.

Witnesses say the gunmen shouted "we have avenged the Prophet Muhammad" and "we killed Charlie Hebdo", as well as "God is Great" in Arabic. The attackers fled to northern Paris before abandoning their car and hijacking a Renault Clio, police say. The magazine's office was firebombed in 2011. It had angered some Muslims by printing cartoons of the Prophet Muhammad as part of its irreverent take on news and current affairs.

These murders and attempted murders were immediately condemned by the overwhelming majority of Muslim leaders, religious and otherwise, in France and beyond. Nevertheless, the murders of French cartoonists for blasphemy feeds into the idea of a clash of civilizations, much beloved by extremists in all of the Abrahamic faiths. In this Manichean understanding, certain religions are simply incompatible. We must eliminate or suppress them. We can not possibly live with them. They are evil. Obviously "we" and "them" and "they" depends on who is speaking or writing. Strangely enough the people rushing to condemn all Muslims for the depraved acts of a few don't think that others should condemn all whites or all cops or all Christians for similar acts in the past  or the present. A Muslim acting badly reflects on all Muslims but a Christian acting badly is one individual. Right. Doesn't that seem a little, well, wrong?

In this country I am more worried about home grown indigenous right wing terror or a trigger happy cop than I am about some immigrant religious nutter or first generation resident. Given the size of the faith communities on the planet, it is a pipe dream to imagine that a faith you don't like could ever be eliminated but fundamentalists of any stripe tend not to deal in practicalities. No, what these murders could do is to increase the growing sentiment among some Europeans that there are too many Muslim immigrants and citizens already resident in Europe. Some people may start to wonder where is Charles Martel when you really need him.

Overnight, seven people believed to be connected to the Kouachi brothers were detained in the towns of Reims and Charleville-Mezieres, as well as in the Paris area. Cherif Kouachi was sentenced in 2008 to three years in prison for belonging to a Paris-based group sending jihadist fighters to Iraq. Following the shootings at the magazine, there appear to have been a number of revenge attacks on Muslims reported by French media, though nobody was hurt:

• Two shots were fired at a Muslim prayer room in the town of Port-la-Nouvelle in the southern region of Aude on Wednesday evening
• A Muslim family was shot at in their car in Caromb, in the southern region of Vaucluse
• Dummy grenades were thrown during the night at a mosque in Le Mans, western France
• The slogan "Death to Arabs" was daubed on the door of a mosque in Poitiers, central France, during the night
• A blast hit a kebab shop beside a mosque in Villefranche-sur-Saone in central France

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European countries have traditionally been ethnic homelands and not settler states or targets for immigration The murders may increase the stigma around Islam. It is also important to make it clear that "free speech" in the abstract includes a lot of things that I do not like and that I think that most decent people would not like. Some which Charlie Hebdo published were roughly about the same quality and tone of work that Hustler owner Larry Flynt might have featured. Some cartoons were deliberately offensive. Worse, some of them just did not amuse. But I don't have to agree with them or find them funny to be upset that other people murdered the cartoonists. I feel very strongly about freedom of speech, the right to dissent, the right to have your own beliefs. If I want to reject your religious views that's my right. If I find them silly and harmful and decide to spend my time making fun of them that's also my right. Your moral choices when faced with that situation are to counterattack with your own speech, ignore me, or perhaps try to get me fired from my job. It's not a moral choice to beat me into submission or kill me. Not in the US or most Western countries anyway. Other countries have different ideas about mocking religion.

All that said we should remember that in many aspects the US has greater freedom of speech than France. In the US, you can deny the Holocaust or make fun of it. If you're funny enough you can build a career out of telling racist jokes. You can suggest that Black people were better off under slavery and/or are less intelligent than everyone else. You can write books earnestly explaining how white people are genetic Ice Age mutations predisposed to violence or how your particular ethnic group just happens to be smarter than everyone else. In France such things can get you banned, fined or arrested. So it's not that France is some free speech paradise. It's not. If I were a French Muslim religious extremist I might well be peacefully agitating for my religious sensitivities to get the same free speech carve out as other people's ethnic or racial sensitivities. 

But the bottom line is that if your understanding of your religion requires you to kill people who make fun of it, then a modern secular society with separation of church and state is simply not for you. You should depart such a place at once and resettle in a country which features ruthlessly enforced blasphemy laws. You would be much happier and so would I. It's a win-win situation. Quite simple really. #JeSuisCharlie

What are your thoughts? 

NYC Subway "Manspreading" Double Standards

Big Sister Is Watching You

I am often glad that I live in a region where public transportation is all but considered an environmentalist plot to deprive every true blue red blooded American of his right to drive a vehicle of his choosing anywhere he wants to all by himself if he so desires. Okay that is obviously an exaggeration but not by all that much. People like their cars and trucks around here. What public transportation exists in southeast Michigan is modest and often doesn't go beyond municipal boundaries. Although downtown population densities are slightly increasing, suburban sprawl remains king. Even people who live and work within the same city usually drive to work instead of taking the bus. There isn't really any train or subway system. Outside of married people working at the same firm, carpooling isn't all that common. Single driver usage rules. This means of course that each driver is king or queen of their own vehicle and all that resides within it. They can listen to music as loudly as they wish, recline their seat as far back as they want, use the passenger's seat as a combination office desk/restaurant table and sit in their seat however they damn well please. This last consideration is under some attack in New York City. Apparently there are some women people who have decided that how some other men people sit on the subway is not only rude, gross and downright nasty but that it's also sexist, unchivalrous, in need of public shaming and likely eventual ticketing by police. Yes I am talking about that apparent scourge of New York City public transportation, men sitting with their legs wider apart than some women care to experience. The horror!!! The horror!!!  



It is the bane of many female subway riders. It is a scourge tracked on blogs and on Twitter. And it has a name almost as distasteful as the practice itself. It is manspreading, the lay-it-all-out sitting style that more than a few men see as their inalienable underground right. Now passengers who consider such inelegant male posture as infringing on their sensibilities — not to mention their share of subway space — have a new ally: the Metropolitan Transportation Authority.

Taking on manspreading for the first time, the authority is set to unveil public service ads that encourage men to share a little less of themselves in the city’s ever-crowded subways cars. The targets of the campaign, those men who spread their legs wide, into a sort of V-shaped slouch, effectively occupying two, sometimes even three, seats are not hard to find. Whether they will heed the new ads is another question. Riding the F train from Brooklyn to Manhattan on a recent afternoon, Fabio Panceiro, 20, was unapologetic about sitting with his legs spread apart. “I’m not going to cross my legs like ladies do,” he said. “I’m going to sit how I want to sit.” And what if Mr. Panceiro, an administrative assistant from Los Angeles, saw posters on the train asking him to close his legs? “I’d just laugh at the ad and hope that someone graffitis over it,” he said.

For Kelley Rae O’Donnell, an actress who confronts manspreaders and tweets photos of them, her solitary shaming campaign now has the high-powered help of the transportation authority, whose ads will be plastered inside subway cars. “It drives me crazy,” she said of men who spread their legs. “I find myself glaring at them because it just seems so inconsiderate in this really crowded city.” When Ms. O’Donnell, who lives in Brooklyn and is in her 30s, asks men to move, she said, they rarely seem chastened: “I usually get grumbling or a complete refusal.”
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Football Players Oppressing Women

I can't believe, well actually I can believe it so that wouldn't have been an accurate statement. I will say that I am more amused than annoyed by the extent to which some people, in this case feminists, will go to extremes to find something to be irritated about which just happens to be primarily done by the opposite gender. Honestly I think that if we were truthful with each other each gender could probably come up with what they think of as excellent reasons that or circumstances in which the opposite gender should be more like their own. I know I could. Generally though, those sorts of discussions are mostly held in single gender forums. Most people don't take them all that seriously. They are just ways to blow off steam. Most people left behind the "Oooh (boys/girls) are icky" stage of life when they were around twelve years old. The so-called "War of The Sexes" will never be lost or won because there's always too much fraternization with the enemy as Kissinger pointed out. Some differences are made to be enjoyed and sought after; others perhaps can be amusingly tolerated. But in any event certain differences are real. They aren't going anywhere. So people should just learn to deal with them. In the big picture I don't think the differences are that important. Making a brouhaha out of how men sit is from where I stand just incredibly narcissistic and entitled. It's also dare I say, more than a little bossy. It shouldn't need to be said but evidently some people need to understand that men by definition have different anatomy than women and are also generally larger than women. Men sitting a certain way doesn't necessarily have anything to do with being sexist or aggressive against women or anything like that. Most of them just need the room. If trying to bully men into sitting like women is the most important issue in New York City, then I congratulate New York City for having solved such issues as housing segregation, police brutality, gentrification, rising income inequality, bad schools and other evils that the rest of the the country is still battling.

The King of The North Is Inconsiderate

We talked about the decline of chivalry before. Although I was raised to be chivalrous the world has definitely changed since my youth during the Pleistocene Epoch. There are not as many women today as there were then who appreciate chivalry. But putting that aside I fail to see how sitting like a man is by definition unchivalrous. It sounds to me like some of the women complaining have less of a problem with ungracious men than they do with men period. That's a personal issue. I don't think it should be of concern to the state. Silliness aside this campaign really sounds like something that would take place in a nation like Singapore where individual rights and choices are considered far less important than rigidly enforced cultural conformity. If I were sitting on a bus or train and some woman wanted to sit next to me I would be polite and try to give her as much room as I could. Within limits. But if she starts to photograph me and harangue me about how I am sitting or how my supposed "male entitlement" offends her delicate sensibilities well she will get an entirely different response. Now just imagine if yours truly walked up to a young woman and explained that I was grossly offended because her skirt was too short or her purse was too large and taking up too much space or that she was too fat and blocking other people from using adjacent seats. I'm betting that wouldn't end well. It certainly wouldn't get a twitter campaign, a public transportation PR initiative or a supportive NYT article. It's funny to me that some women will try to deflate any criticism of their actions by calling it shaming but in this instance are trying to explicitly shame men for being men. Like I wrote above, I'm glad that I live where I do and avoid public transportation. The only busybodies I have to deal with are in the workplace. To be fair there are almost as many people in NYC as there are in the entirety of Michigan so perhaps I don't fully grok the concerns around space. Either way I thought this story was funny as can be.

What are your thoughts?

Things Not To Say To Black People

Sometimes when people complain about 'political correctness" they are really complaining about not being able to openly insult certain people any more without worrying about the insulted person's feelings let alone losing their job. These are the people who get personally offended that at work they can't openly call a black person a n****** when they've already given most people the impression they use the slur pretty routinely with friends and family. So I don't pay a whole lot of attention to some complaints around political correctness. But there are other folks who haven't grown up around different people. As adults they do not routinely work with different people or have any of them within their circle of intimates (neighbors, spouses, in-laws, lovers, close friends, etc). And since they're in the majority they don't really need to know what a minority may consider offensive. So though some people may not mean harm by their statement or question, insult can still be taken. We all have difficulty seeing through other people's perceptions. It's not always easy to determine if someone is saying something from honest well meaning, if clueless curiosity, or instead is expressing racist malice. Often times black people try to discern the difference and decide if the situation is worth verbally chin-checking someone. I generally feel that it is worth the hassle to set someone straight. My experiences have been that when you give some people an inch they take a mile. I have usually regretted it when I've let stuff slide. However there is no right answer to this because we are all different with dissimilar tolerances for what we consider offensive, racist, or just off-color (pun intended). 

Settling conflicts with a co-worker is different from getting into it with your boss or other ranking leaders. Keeping your job or a viable career path could mean keeping your mouth shut. There are some common comments or actions which many black people have heard or experienced. Most of these things are generally considered offensive to a lesser or greater extent. I ran across this video while looking for something else and thought it humorous enough to share. I have experienced some of these comments (and more) at workplaces. Stereotypes stink.

Movie Reviews: Let's Kill Ward's Wife

Let's Kill Ward's Wife
directed by Scott Foley

This is a black comedy which is most definitely not for everyone. If you can find murder humorous, if you can think of a few people you wouldn't mind removing from the planet, if you have ever gotten away with something and kept it moving, you might find the premise of this movie to be tolerable. If on the other hand none of those things apply then this film isn't for you. I wasn't that bothered by the film's premise : an unpleasant, aggressive, bullying, harridan causes her husband's friends to consider removing her from the planet. A Fish Called Wanda treated murder comically and did so with great verve. But Let's Kill Ward's Wife is not A Fish Called Wanda in either writing or execution. Although the title is if anything flame bait for people who are worried by "misogynist" or "anti-feminist" overtones, the film attempts to inoculate itself against this charge by having various women be in on what turns into a murder conspiracy. I'm not sure this would have made a difference. It might have been more of a twist if the men had carried out the murder and tried to hide it from their wives or girlfriends at first. Dunno.  
Anyway. My major problem with Let's Kill Ward's Wife was that the film never gives the viewer any reason why Ward (Donald Faison from Scrubs) would have married this woman in the first place, let alone put up with her or have had a child with her. His wife is not only verbally abusive, insulting, and nasty to Ward in private she's also that way in public. She will rip Ward a new one in front of company. She has no problem doing that. 

His wife is at best average looking. She provides Ward no physical comfort. I don't just mean the obvious. I mean no hugs, no kisses, no nothing. It's the opposite as the viewer is led to believe that she would have no problem giving the passive Ward a backhand across the face. So from a male point of view why would you marry a plain looking nasty hostile woman? It would have been more understandable and interesting had his wife been exactly the same personality wise but been extremely attractive. It would be easier to understand why someone like Ward might have stayed with her for a while.The sad truth is that many men, especially if they lack confidence like Ward does, would put up with a lot of stuff from a woman who may be a witch on wheels, but is nevertheless a babe. Well. We all have our cross to bear. 

Ward's friends are well aware of his predicament. When Ward is guilt-tripped into skipping their weekly golf outing, one of them wonders out loud if they shouldn't just kill the woman who is interfering with their lifelong friendship. This thought percolates but of course none of them mention it to Ward. During a get together at Ward's house, his wife Stacy (Dagmara Dominczyk) overhears one of his friends making flirtatious talk to an actress (Nicolette Sheridan). Because Stacy is at heart a bully she assumes that the man was cheating on his girlfriend and gleefully threatens to rat him out. Panicking, he accidentally on purpose kills Stacy. The remainder of the movie involves Ward, his friends and their wives/girlfriends trying to dispose of the body and avoid unnecessary contact with the police, one of whom is Ward's new neighbor. There is the normal trope of the quiet guy who has hitherto unexamined murderous impulses and the strutting macho guy who falls apart when faced with some ugly decisions. All told though the movie wasn't really that good both because of the messages it sent and the uneven tone. This is just a reworking of Very Bad Things and a few other films I am not interested in seeing again. There is eye candy for both genders as anyone who's read Murder Machine knows when you're disposing of a corpse you need to strip down to your boxers or bra and panties to avoid getting incriminating material on your clothing. Other actors include Scott Foley, Patrick Wilson, James Carpinello, and Amy Acker. 
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Movie Reviews: The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Armies
directed by Peter Jackson

I really wasn't planning to see this but the regular season of college football is over. I had a few hours to kill during my all too brief holiday break. And I can be a completist. So I figured what the heck. In the previous two reviews I already pointed out my modest displeasure with Jackson's alteration of source material supposedly to make the story more female friendly, the inclusion of greater violence, and the general more and more approach to padding out a simple children's book into 3 sprawling LOTR prequels.  Well been there, done that. Jackson and his co-creators have a certain style and preference. I don't think any of them are changing those things at this point in their lives. Either you can deal with it or you can't. I probably should have waited for DVD for this release as my brother has promised he will do. There is the greater question of how far can you stretch an adaptation before the original meaning of the story or the characters has been lost. As we've discussed before this is always a tricky issue. The films Exodus, Noah and The Passion of the Christ take key protagonists who are critical to Christianity and Judaism and portray them as European when these characters were not European. One reason for this is almost certainly financial but another is likely the fact that most of the people producing, financing and directing such films are of European descent and see no issue with writing themselves into the center of the story. I mention all of that to point out that I think that such changes to religious depictions are much more damaging to people than Jackson and crew changing Tolkien's fantasy work to include more women warriors, doomed cross-species romances and aggressively Scottish dwarves. As an interesting aside, in real life Tolkien mused that his dwarves might be considered similar to Jews (slightly different creation story, different language, and lost homeland). Anyway. It bears repeating that this film is less of an adaptation of The Hobbit and more of an "inspired by The Hobbit". I had to keep reminding myself of that while I was watching the movie. In the big picture, Jackson's alterations, whether they work or not, whether I like them or not, don't change the book.

The movie is also AFAIK the last Tolkien piece that Jackson will be able to interpret for the big screen as the Tolkien estate has steadfastly refused to license any more of Tolkien's novels to anyone, most especially Peter Jackson.

When last we left our bloated storyline Smaug (Benedict Cumberbatch) had just departed The Lonely Mountain to bring fire and blood to the human inhabitants of Laketown. Smaug's attack was suitably impressive. It reminded us of just how dangerous dragons can be. In ancient times the Dark Lord Morgoth had several such dragons, far larger than even Smaug. Smaug is likely the last of his kind and not as large as his forebears. But he's still deadly enough to lay waste to Laketown. He does just that right up until the time that Bard the Bowman (Luke Evans) escapes from jail and puts his last arrow, the Black Arrow, into Smaug's heart, killing him. As the previous town master has perished in the attack, Bard becomes town leader by popular acclaim. He decides to seek shelter in the Mountain and the ruined human city of Dale, hoping that the dwarves will provide assistance and also some wealth to help rebuild the homes of their human allies and neighbors. It's the right thing to do. Not all of Smaug's hoard was dwarvish in origin. And Bard did after all kill Smaug, who would not have attacked were it not for the dwarves. A heroic act like that ought to be worth a little something in Bard's opinion. But the dwarvish leader and now King Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) is really not that interested in helping others at present. And he has exactly no intent of giving up any of his gold. He's looking for the Arkenstone, the most valued jewel among all the treasure and symbol of his rule. He's unaware that Bilbo (Martin Freeman) has it. Thorin is becoming increasingly paranoid and prejudiced about non-dwarves. And as the search for the Arkenstone drags on, Thorin starts to cast a side eye at his dwarvish relatives and friends.

In what I thought was the film's most interesting and well done scene the White Council led by Galadriel (Cate Blanchett) attacks Dol Guldur, rescuing Gandalf (Ian Mckellen) and drives out the revealed Sauron (Cumberbatch again) and his Nazgul. Of course by now everyone and their mama has heard of the death of Smaug and the presumably undefended hoard. And everybody wants some. So an elvish army led by the primly prejudiced King Thranduil (Lee Pace) shows up at the Mountain to bring food and gear to the human refugees but more importantly to stake their own claim to elvish heirlooms in Smaug's hoard. Thorin is becoming a greedy lunatic but he's no stranger to war. Seeing the gathering hosts he sends off a message to his cousin Dain Ironfoot (Billy Connolly from The Boondock Saints) to come heavy right now. By Gandalf's account Dain (and Connolly really has fun with this role and his accent) is by far the less reasonable of the two cousins. Although Bilbo and Bard both try to negotiate peace war appears imminent among men, elves and dwarves. Until the Orcs show up.

This film (especially the last 45 minutes) was a special effects extravaganza but it didn't really need to be. There's very little that's emotionally involving. This is unlike the book. It's seen most clearly with Fili and Kili, Thorin's nephews. In the film Thorin's tactical mistakes and the aforementioned elf-dwarf romantic love lead to his relatives' doom. In the book it's honor and loyalty (feudal and familial) that bring their end in the true Northern warrior tradition. "Fili and Kili had fallen defending [Thorin] with shield and body, for he was their mother's elder brother". Perhaps, all things considered, this is a small change but to me it's an example of how Jackson missed or misread some key themes in The Hobbit. YMMV. It was particularly needlessly maudlin to have women and children at the battle. Some of this looked like outtakes from the Helm's Deep battle in LOTR 2. Much of the quirkiness and sense of wonder that was there in the book was lost in the translation to the screen. To be fair by the time of the battle the book had taken a slightly darker tone but that was a brief change in something that until that point had been mostly whimsical. I think Jackson was pushing the prequel idea a little too much. This was nonetheless the most satisfying installment of the trilogy, primarily because it's over. It had some humor but little from the book. You can safely wait to see this on DVD or VOD unless you just have to see long battles or drawn out duels right this instant. I am interested in seeing what else Richard Armitage has done or will do. The film's running time was about 2.5 hours.
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