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Just saw The Hobbit. Or should I say 1/3 of the Hobbit. Kind of feel like I got taken to the cleaners by Peter Jackson. Fellowship of the Ring is a longer book, but just one movie (even in the extended edition), same with Two Towers, and ROTK. No way was it necessary to drag this out the way they are doing. And too much 3D-crap motion (I saw it in 2D, but you could still tell how they filmed for 3D gimmickry == I know, those are fighting words for some of you, but I just DON"T LIKE 3D) which took away some of the elegance that was in the LOTR films. That said, the second half was really enjoyable, and I'll ended up taken to the cleaners for parts 2... and gasp... 3.

The cool thing that this movie offers is a version for everyone. IMAX 2D and 3D and HFR which at this point in time is still considered an experiment. You either like it or not. I like the 5K definition but I would agree that the set designers and makeup people need to up their game for this. The video smooth motion does remove the frame blur, pan judder, and motion jump artifact of 24 fps that the public has become accustomed to. Visual perception is said to max at 40 fps, not 24. The original 24 fps was done as a compromise for cost and quality. remember, Thomas Edison wanted film to be done at 40 fps but could not fight the accountants. Video at 29.94 fps interlaced was used to accommodate the channel spectrum bandwidth of 6Mhz per channel fixed by the FCC and had nothing to do with film. The conversion became a really bad mess until digital TV came along. 48 fps will be a tough do in the video world as it will require a special TV frequency and media player. Currently we have a good match at 24fps for film in Blu Ray as a standard so it is unlikely we will see this cinema 48 fps anytime soon for home TV viewing. I think BluRay will offer 60fps first. ( it does now but not at 1080 resolution ) Some of us are already shooting 1080 60p video although this cannot be played in a Bluray player. It must be played from a hard drive server and many state of the art monitors can display 1080 60p.

But back to the Hobbit- I saw it in 3D HFR and really enjoyed the movie. I went to see the 48 fps specifically but was also pleasantly surprised how good the image looked in 3D too. I normally get fatigued on 2 hour plus 3D movies and my wife due to corrective glasses can last only about 90 minutes. Both of us lasted the entire movie and were not fatigued. Now I did set my wife up with some Real 3D clip-on glasses so she didn't have to wear two pairs of glasses but both of us really enjoyed the movie getting into the story and just allowing the technology to be there.

As for the trilogy part, I agree it would have been nice to have closure but here I agree with my wife. What we don't care for is the long wait between the parts. If they gave us a part per week, we would go each Sunday and have closure on the story. As it is, I decided to use the opportunity to read all the books and even ordered one academic's assessment of Tolkien. This will keep me busy for the time between PJ's screen version chapters.

I decided a long time ago that when watching a movie, don't try to compare with the book. That just frustrates you. Instead, enjoy both for what they are a movie and a book. My next read will not be the Hobbit even though I bought two versions. I have started reading the prequel to all these, The Children of Hurin

I'm very fortunate to have enjoyed this story in the best venue ever, The eyes and mind of a 11 year old, back in 1965. The movies are good but I'm glad to have read the story when very young.

Saw it in 3d HFR IMAX. Really like the film and Imax version. It will be interesting to see the 3d on my home tv.

I personally loved this movie!Much better than most other redo,over the top action crap,that fill the theaters most of the time.