Blog Credo

The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.

H.L. Mencken

Sunday, December 15, 2013

Movies

We went to see The Hobbit today, and it was very entertaining.  It's a rip-roaring tale - though I don't recall the book being that way.  It may have been Tolkein's English reticence.

Anyway, while it's very good, there is very little space for acting in it.  There were a few such moment in Lord of the Rings, mostly in the relationship between Frodo and Sam, and the way Aragorn was torn over his destiny.  And of course, Ian McKellan is wonderful.

But The Hobbit seemed to crowd out those moments.

I was thinking of this in relationship to the death of Peter O'Toole.  The sort of movies he made - with the exception of Lawrence of Arabia - rarely get made today.  The sort of idiosyncratic stuff like The Ruling Class just don't make it into theaters.  While TV has picked up some of the slack, it would be nice to see some sort of venue for great acting.

No comments: