So this is the Hobbit.

Date: Sunday 30th December
Film: The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (2012)
Director: Peter Jackson
Starring: Martin Freeman, Ian McKellan and Richard Armitage
Running Time: 02 hours, 49 minutes
Rating: 8/10

I am not a Middle Earth fan. I tried reading the books and didn't enjoy them, I made an attempt to watch the LOTR trilogy that didn't go so well (it was New Year's Day, I'd just swum in a Welsh lake, I'm really not sure I was in the best place for anything that involved thinking), and I wasn't convinced that I wanted to see The Hobbit.

I'm not going to say I am completely converted, but I did really enjoy this film. There were aspects that didn't click with me - whilst the motion capture is amazing; the characters created using this are well defined and the texture is incredibly realistic; the (albeit rarely used) CGI effects struck me as a little basic and dated.

I am definitely Elf-ist, they aren't a massive feature of An Unexpected Journey, but when they did pop up I found myself getting a little distracted.

This is a well cast film, Martin Freeman plays the lead brilliantly and the dwarves do a great job of separating themselves as individual characters, a difficult task when there are 13 similarly dressed characters running around on screen.

We didn't see The Hobbit in higher frame rate, nor 3D and I'm glad we didn't. Some of the more fast moving  scenes would have been, I imagine, difficult to track.

All in all, I was pleasantly surprised. I think I'll find myself back in Middle Earth again sometime soon.

Challenge day: 96
Challenge time: 05 days, 14 hours, 15 minutes
Challenge film total: 70