Hobbit; unnecessary SFX; first Christmas lunch

Passed this decorated tree in Kents Hill Park last Friday. Cute.

Met Ray in town on Saturday to go and see The Hobbit. Evidently, Part 1 of 3. We had both been surprised and somewhat sceptical beforehand about its being a trilogy, but in the event, really enjoyed it. Rather than being a film of The Hobbit, it’s really Prequel to The Lord of the Rings, Part 1, featuring the events of The Hobbit. Having said that, it’s ace – though it almost certainly does help if you’re a die-hard fan of the franchise (having once watched all three extended edition DVDs back to back in a nine-hour gorge-athon, we can probably count ourselves as two such). The trilogy-ness is discussed in this Guardian article. It is, as one of the critics quoted therein notes, a purist’s delight.

The H was also the first movie I’d seen in 3D. Ray, being more of an old hand at 3D, thought it didn’t work too well. Certainly I didn’t think it added anything, and ideally I’d prefer not to have to sit through a film wearing a pair of special glasses. I was also disconcerted by something hard to place concerning the speed of panning across landscapes and action in some of the shots (created effect similar to being driven too fast over a humpback bridge), and the way the background was out of focus – spent the early part of the movie rubbing my eyes and attempting to clean my 3D glasses. Possibly this could have been due to the high frame rate referred to in the article above, not that I really know what that means.

Ruth and I went over to Ray’s boat in the evening for a casual lasagne dinner and chinwag. Returned the following morning to collect my car and to drive Ray to Marparts in Caversham to buy a new length of exhaust pipe, the exhaust having fallen off his van the previous Friday. I gather that it has since been expertly welded back on by his mate Darren and is now almost good as new.

Took a day’s leave on Monday to meet ex-Progress South Central people for Christmas lunch. This year, we had decided on having it at the eatery on the London Road campus, formerly The Cotton Club but now, following a refurb, called Eat & Drink London Road. Went not expecting much as the food used to be OK at best, but we were pleasantly surprised at the decent quality of the lunch – turkey was dry and uninteresting, as is often its wont, but the rest was pretty good, and there was much exclaiming over the positively al dente sprouts.

Returned to MK later on Monday afternoon, though not before getting my key to the internal garage door stuck fast in the lock – after trying for about 10 minutes to get it out with no luck, had to just leave it and go. Had to advise Ruth that she would have to access the garage, if she needed to, via the back gate and the main garage door – this forgetting that the key to the padlock on the back gate was locked inside the garage. In the event, she evidently had to climb over the back gate, something which I gather caused a certain amount of difficulty, though she appeared to have treated it with more humour than I think I would have done. Fortunately, there were apparently no onlookers.