Film of the week - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12A, 166 mins) - Lifestyle

Sponsored by

Film of the week - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12A, 166 mins)

(L-r) JAMES NESBITT as Bofur, MARTIN FREEMAN (front) as Bilbo Baggins, STEPHEN HUNTER as Bombur, GRAHAM McTAVISH as Dwalin, WILLIAM KIRCHER as Bifur, and JED BROPHY as Nori in the fantasy adventure THE HOBBIT: AN UNEXPECTED JOURNEY, a production of New Line Cinema and Metro-Goldwyn-Mayer Pictures (MGM), released by Warner Bros. Pictures and MGM.

Published on 20/12/2012 17:00

There is a moment early in The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey when Gandalf The Grey (Sir Ian McKellen) turns to diminutive hero Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) and counsels: “All good stories deserve embellishment.”

Director Peter Jackson and co-writers Fran Walsh, Philippa Boyens and Guillermo del Toro have taken the wise wizard’s words to heart and embellished JRR Tolkien’s novel to the point of creative obesity.

In the first deviation from the text, Jackson opens his picture at Bag End with the elderly Bilbo (Ian Holm) penning a book to his cousin Frodo (Elijah Wood).

We rewind 60 years to meet Bilbo (Freeman) in the Shire as he encounters Gandalf (McKellen) and a 13-strong company of dwarves, who intend to reclaim their lost gold from the dragon Smaug in his mountain lair.

After a sleepless night, Bilbo agrees to accompany dwarf leader Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) and his troops on their perilous mission.En route, the brave souls encounter elvish allies including Elrond (Hugo Weaving) and Galadriel (Cate Blanchett), as well as wretched Gollum (Andy Serkis) and the corpulent Goblin King (Barry Humphries).

Freeman brings a touch of humour to his pint-sized weakling, who learns that, “True courage is knowing not when to take a life but when to spare one.”

McKellen and co ease back into familiar supporting roles and Armitage swaggers as the vengeful son, who allows rage to cloud his judgement at a vital juncture.

Lifestyle

Looking for...

Featured advertisers

Jobs

Search for a job

Motors

Search for a car

Make Model Price from Price to

Property

Search for a house

Buy Rent

Bedrooms Price from Price from Price to Price to

What is a Cookie?
What is a Flash Cookie?
Can I opt out of receiving Cookies?
About our Cookies

Cookies are small data files which are sent to your browser (Internet Explorer, Firefox, Chrome etc) from a website you visit. They are stored on your electronic device.
This is a type of cookie which is collected by Adobe Flash media player (it is also called a Local Shared Object) - a piece of software you may already have on your electronic device to help you watch online videos and listen to podcasts.
Yes there are a number of options available, you can set your browser either to reject all cookies, to allow only "trusted" sites to set them, or to only accept them from the site you are currently on.

However, please note - if you block/delete all cookies, some features of our websites, such as remembering your login details, or the site branding for your local newspaper may not function as a result.
The types of cookies we, our ad network and technology partners use are listed below:
- Revenue Science ►
  
  A tool used by some of our advertisers to target adverts to you based on pages you have visited in the past. To opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Google Ads ►
  
  Our sites contain advertising from Google; these use cookies to ensure you get adverts relevant to you. You can tailor the type of ads you receive by visiting here or to opt out of this type of targeting you can visit the 'Your Online Choices' website by clicking here.
- Webtrends / Google Analytics ►
  
  This is used to help us identify unique visitors to our websites. This data is anonymous and we cannot use this to uniquely identify individuals and their usage of the sites.
- Dart for Publishers ►
  
  This comes from our ad serving technology and is used to track how many times you have seen a particular ad on our sites, so that you don't just see one advert but an even spread. This information is not used by us for any other type of audience recording or monitoring.
- ComScore ►
  
  ComScore monitor and externally verify our site traffic data for use within the advertising industry. Any data collected is anonymous statistical data and cannot be traced back to an individual.
- Local Targeting ►
  
  Our Classified websites (Photos, Motors, Jobs and Property Today) use cookies to ensure you get the correct local newspaper branding and content when you visit them. These cookies store no personally identifiable information.
- Grapeshot ►
  
  We use Grapeshot as a contextual targeting technology, allowing us to create custom groups of stories outside out of our usual site navigation. Grapeshot stores the categories of story you have been exposed to. Their privacy policy and opt out option can be accessed here.
- Subscriptions Online ►
  
  Our partner for Newspaper subscriptions online stores data from the forms you complete in these to increase the usability of the site and enhance user experience.
- Add This ►
  
  Add This provides the social networking widget found in many of our pages. This widget gives you the tools to bookmark our websites, blog, share, tweet and email our content to a friend.
- 3rd Party Cookies ►
  
  We use Advertising agencies to provide us with some of the advertising on our websites. These include (but are not limited to) Specific Media, The Rubicon Project, AdJug, AdConion, Context Web. Please click on the provider name to visit their opt-out page.

Poll of the Week - Dunbar Civic Week

Sponsored by
Film of the week - The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey (12A, 166 mins)

Top stories

Lifestyle