German cinema magazine.

Friends at thorinoakenshield.net have a full online translation of the print publication and since we aren’t German speakers, we can’t say if anything is lost in translation, but it reads pretty clearly.

Here are some highlights but if you read beyond this point, expect full-on potential spoilers! (We can’t say if they are true or not, but the writer surely dishes the info matter-of-factly.)

****Seriously, last chance, major potential spoilers!****

“A greedy dragon, a rather testy skinchanger, a river ride full of action and the battle of the White Council against the Necromancer of Dol Guldur: Middle-earth fans should be prepared for something big; because with “The Hobbit – Desolation of Smaug” (starting December 12th) Peter Jackson will (once again) show all he’s got.”

“A lot of the appendices will also be used in part 2.”

“Hardcore fans will find the revelation of the Necromancer (Benedict Cumberbatch as CGI shadow) as witch master Sauron just in a couple of sentences in the book. And according to Tolkien the pale orc Azog doesn’t survive the Battle of Azanulbizar (in the beginning of “The Hobbit – An Unexpected Journey”), while Jackson definitively turns him into Thorin Oakenshield’s arch enemy now. Orcs invading Esgaroth on the other hand was completely invented by Peter Jackson. Just like Tauriel – this young, only 300 years old elf which will add a bit of femininity to the male dominated story.”

“This story needs estrogens”, Evangeline Lilly jokes. And Peter Jackson adds: “Thanks to characters like Tauriel we will discover more about the life in Mirkwood, which is completely different from Rivendell.” But the Silvan pointy-eared beauty is not supposed to be a mere copy of Arwen from the old trilogy. After all the people of the wood elves is a lot more dangerous and suspicious than Elrond and his companions. “We are like ninjas from the undergrowth.” (Lilly)”

“Peter Jackson not only uses additions like this to narrate a coherent chronicle of Middle-earth, he also uses them to sprinkle a little treat for spare time hobbits here and there. For example fanboys will anticipate the first encounter of Legolas and Gloin, father of grumpy dwarf Gimli from the “Rings” films. Other than “An unexpected Journey” the sequel is going to be distinctly darker though, stresses Jackson.

“One climax of the new trilogy, which over 2000 actors and extras worked on, is the death of the dragon. Whether Smaug’s fall will end part 2 however is yet unknown. Certain is that the Battle of the Five Armies will play the center role in “The Hobbit – There and Back Again”.

Those are the highlights and you can read the full translation right here, from ThorinOakenshield.net along with scans of the magazine’s pages while the German publication can be found online here, but we didn’t find a link directly to the article.

Oh and she isn’t even slightly ugly and does pushups covered with jelly preservatives and sweat, which is pretty sweet. I still don’t think she smiled once in the whole movie but, didn’t bother me.

So the movie I saw is “Prometheus,” but the truth is, it reminds me sooooo much of these shows I remember about aliens with freaky-deaky black banana heads, sharp teeth, slime skin and acid blood. First there was one about just one of these black, creepy-as-bleep death machines (with a robot modeled after the original Bilbo Baggins) and then there was a sequel with dozens of nasty aliens and their way-clingy babies.

So I remember those movies. Somebody out there in reader land thought I was, like, 15-years-old.

I wish!

Then people wouldn’t be telling me to get a job all the time.

The first one I only saw at home in full on 2.0 stereo when my parents didn’t pay attention at the video stores (the stores were like Redbox but you could actually walk inside them.) The second one I saw in the theater. I have this really fresh memory of trying not to pee my pants (I really, really had to go but couldn’t leave) and accidentally crushing this girl’s hand a little. It wasn’t like, broken or anything serious. She eventually married some other dude. (Sorry chic, I hope you read this and have the same fond memory. Show this to all the girls you know who are married in case it was her.)

Anyway, this new movie is a lot like a mash up of both of those. A bunch of scientists go to space to look for some muscled albino giants who vandalized a bunch of caves on earth but who are total lightweights and can’t hold even a cup full of alien moonshine. This Queen is with them and she is an ice queen now, with a lowercase Q, but like I said, she is unhappy middle management – which is really unhappy.

This time though, all the people with the queen are excellent actors, including the business savvy drug dealer from the best show in the history of shows, “The Wire.” Respect to him too for getting out of Baltimore and becoming a space ship captain. Especially good was this robot made to look just like Magneto when he was young, but not when he was older and looked like Gandalf. His name is David and he rules the movie with his very own kind of special robot-crazy. He is spiffy, watched “Lawrence of Arabia” and you want to play basketball and ride bikes with him but also sometimes he is a creeper and you want to run away at top speed.
But he could catch you.
Easy.
Anytime he wanted.

But weird that in the future they will make robots look like people associated with “Lord of the Rings” movies. Kinda gives me an idea of what kind of robot to make that looks like Aragorn – you know – just for the women.

So this space ship flies away for a couple of years. Now, if you haven’t guessed, I am not a scientist. Also I didn’t stay at a Holiday Inn last night or any night; I think for they money I can do better. But the closest star to Earth is Proxima Centauri, which is more than four light years away and these scientist weirdoes say out loud (or maybe it was creepy David) they have been sleeping for two years plus some months, days, hours and minutes, but they probably can’t travel faster than light speed, so were they awake for a long time and then only went to sleep later? Or how did they get there so fast? More like 22 years. I mean they still ride four wheelers when they get there so, light speed? Notice to you silly screenwriters, use Google when you make stuff up because we will catch you.

It made me feel weird to type that.

So anywho, if you have watched a commercial for this flick, you already know they have the coolest mapping equipment ever seen with these glowing red globes and then they discover some mighty peculiar black buildings on this distant-but-not-that-distant moon and you also already know, really everybody knows, that things go, well, uh, bad.

At this point I should tell you: Don’t bring the kids, but you probably already knew that. The other thing I should tell you is, as my granny used to say, “make a poo poo before you go.” Those of you who demand dignity in a writing thing about a movie: Plan ahead and vacate your bowels at home. Look, I am not going to pretend that this scary movie is going to make you poop your pants. It isn’t, unless you already poop your pants and then, no offense to you, we all have problems. But when things start to go bad, you are going to sit in your movie chair, and clench up. Really tight. You are going to squirm in your seat, your heart is going to race, you are going to sweat a little and it might be hours and hours before you can “go” again, so take care of it at home. (And don’t hold hands — see above.)

The hilarious thing about this is, when it starts, the all-knowing audience can see it coming but wholly cow, it will freak you anyway. The tentacle people (if you don’t know who I mean, be very glad) are going to build a monumental statue to the glory of this one part. Might even worship it. I hope real aliens never get any ideas from this flick and I hope real aliens don’t have bodies that look so much like human private parts. But this crazy audience watched this scene as horrified as I can remember seeing in a theater in decades (cuse I am not 15) and when it was over, they clapped.

In the middle of the freaking movie, they clapped. Dude ran to the top of the stairs and did a Rocky pose with both arms to the sky and the hipsters were glad to see it. People high-fived. One person rolled in the isle. Tears of joy were shed, hands were crushed, babies will be born in nine months — and lots and lots and lots of clenching up.

Then there is this medical part. Don’t let anybody tell you about it and don’t cover your eyes.

But lets pause for a moment and yell at the screenwriters again. Send them angry tweets with your mean, angry face photos. A bunch of scientists (really “smart” people) are YEARS away from earth and family and the beach and Del Taco, and they go to this screwy, empty moon world, and when they find a little air, they decide they should take off their helmets. Nobody nobody nobody nobody is going to take off their helmet ten minutes after arriving on a moon with underground castles and a landing strip. Nobody. Superman would leave his helmet on and if he didn’t Bat-Man would kick his teeth in because he wouldn’t want to risk being contaminated by stuff that is weird and undetectable because you know, it’s ON A NEW WORLD! Duh. Plus, they don’t pay attention to the little things that are science like, stuff crawling on the ground.

So I want to stop now because I don’t want to ruin anything — better to go in blind. And not to be a cinema or art geek (too late) but somebody better send H.R. Giger a love letter and bottles of drink and massage gift certificates and then go rub his feet in person for inspiring the design of this moon’s housing projects. Maybe they already did, because I didn’t get a press kit (yes studio publicist people, this is me giving you the hard stare) but that dude’s double-helix things are on the screen pretty much always and that gave lots of juice to the audience celebration. It is not only bad-to-the-bone but bad-to-the-creepy-exoskeleton. Can’t say enough really, so imagine about three more paragraphs of praise with extra smart sentences that leap off your computer screen and make you quote them on Twitter.

Your eyes will be having an organic-mechanical-nightmare-technology-furniture-party with balloons and dancers so if you dig that, go buy a ticket. If you don’t dig that, “Anne of Green Gables,” is probably on PBS, definitely on Netflix.

Remind your brain not to get too pissed though when some stuff, like I already said, comes and your mind screams that high-pitched sound they used three times in the movie commercial that haunts you.

In fact, I bet that is where they got that sound, from some focus-group audience brain. The awesomeness of most of the two hours makes the moments of hillbilly writing that I didn’t mention all of (sorry real hillbillies, you aren’t good at space stuff) so irritating.

Last thing, there are two endings. One sets up ideas for the next film and the ideas are so sweet and so adventurous and so pure sci-fi horror and so spacey and so promising that I was giving them the thumbs up from my chair. Hot.

Then they tack on a little postcard that isn’t awesome, like when your Aunt sends you a note from Preston, Idaho. My director’s cut would be 20 seconds shorter. In fact, just leave early. So, mostly I like the movie and I want to see more ice queen flicks, because, hey, we hardly knew you, and more pushups would be good. But, also to the movie sometimes: DUH! Still, fingers crossed for a sequel.

Note: Another post from our film reviewer Sand WitchKing.

Thor is pretty good in this film but he traded in his hammer for a big ax and he never uses his lightning powers. He can still outfight anybody except the super-creepy brother of the serial-killer-way-evil Queen who made the audience so uncomfortable they giggled sometimes. Strange thing is, Hawkeye is in this too, disguised as a prince or something or, come to think of it, maybe it was Legolas. But this guy had all the cinema arrow hero tricks stuff down cold. I mean, he has definitely studied archery movies hardcore. Plus he is way brave and way defiant of his cautious and always wrong dad who talks a lot but never does anything. And he, the son, is also really handsome. I like girls but I could tell, because all the handsome guys shaved, but only a day or two before the film got made.

Serial-Killer Queen takes over the kingdom because, mostly, she hates kings and then locks the little princess in a tower. The super insecure hot Queen isn’t all bad though because despite claiming that she has wiped out tons of kingdoms before this one, and has killed thousands (and she might be being modest on that one point) she gives Bella really spiffy clothes to have in the tower, especially with those Walt Disney, Snow White puffy shoulders, which also makes her brave in a way because Bella is the only person who could threaten her evil Queening and she doesn’t just kill her to begin with.

Not only that, she gives her these rock-star leather pants for underneath her Disney dress which is really handy in case she ever wanted to escape – oh and great running boots. Then one day a bird convinced her (Bella) to look out her window, because I guess if you are in a tower for ten years you never do that, and she finds a way to escape. I don’t want to ruin anything but that makes the Queen angrier than ever and she was hardly ever nice as it was.

Thor is off drinking beer or ale or something and the Queen picks him to lead her team into the swamp to find Bella. I think she knew he was Thor because she could have sent scores of men searching but sent him instead. I bet you can’t guess what happens next. During this part, keep your eyes open for cameos by the Black Riders, Easterlings and oh, they have a cave troll but he has on a mask of the monsters from “Pitch Black,” and his part is sweet. But really, the kids who designed the film, including the monsters, did awesome. I don’t want to get, like, super movie-nerdy, but the creature design and set design were mostly always kinda awesome. Really, they were more awesome than the rest of the film. I would have had them write some script too because it could have used some leftover awesome, but it wasn’t terrible or anything.

So, if you don’t want to know how the movie goes you should stop reading. Right now. Don’t blame me if haven’t ever watched the Disney cartoon or know the story or know how these movies work, but there were these dwarFs. They weren’t dwarVes like Gimli where they are a different race and culture and stuff, they were just kinda regular guys who used to live in a colony of dwarFs. Thing is they all looked like pretty famous British guys from a bunch of violent movies, most of them gangsters, but also funny and violent guys like Ed who killed zombies in that “Shaun is Dead,” zombie movie from way back like, ten years ago, which you can watch on Netflix sometimes.

They take Bella and Thor past a tree (that is super good at hiding not just people but whole regions) to a magical land where there are a bunch of magical creatures and I thought the design, again, was really cool, but parts of the movie were a fairy tale and parts of the movie were trying to be all gritty and realistic so I was like pointing at the movie yelling, “What are you movie? Are you a fairy tale with Narnia Creatures or are you Hill Street Blues? Make up your mind!” I was totally confused and the other kids in the theater were like, “Not cool, even at midnight,” so I used my inside voice after that.

But these dwarFs seemed like they were going to be really cool. I mean Swearengen, the guy who calls everybody #&*#@&% from Deadwood and uses lots of other swears, was there but I also wondered why Tyrion Lanister and other guys who are actually dwarFs weren’t there instead of dudes pretending to dwarFs. But it turns out they didn’t get much cool dialog anyway. I guess having one of them have mystical powers and one of them crush on Bella was good enough.

So after a while everybody recognized that Bella was this super vampire or something with magic blood. The insecure Queen kept asking her magic mirror if Bella was hotter than her and I think the mirror was trying to get her killed because he kept lying and telling her yes – and she obviously wasn’t – which made the Queen’s stress lines show up more and more. Also, the mirror had a weird dude under a golden blanket to talk for him — or else the serial killer was trippin’. I think it was just supposed to look cool.

So eventually Thor and Hawkeye and Swearengen and Ed and pretty much all the good guys ride from the good-guy castle to the bad-guy castle. Bella turns into Joan of Arc and secretly, all this time, she has been seriously skilled at sword fighting and horse riding. (And a reader reminded me she even has a shield with the White Tree of Gondor on it, which surprised me since I didn’t know French princess warriors had that kind of gear.) I mean, what else are you going to do in a castle prison for ten years right? Turns out the good-guy castle is just over the hill and across the beach from the bad Queen’s castle – and oh – they are both awesome! I don’t get why Bella went the long way to get there, but whatever. They also ride when the tide is coming in because Bella just can’t wait but it doesn’t matter that much because the bad guys who have this way-big army suck at arrows and flinging burning pitch and sword fighting. More stuff happens but I don’t want to ruin it.

So like I said, Thor was really good and I am not a big cheerleader of Bella but she wasn’t too bad either. But I don’t get why she is some big movie star. She was pretty good when she pretended to be Joan Jett but she seems a lot more like Joan Jett than a princess – know what I mean?

So, I don’t know that I would go pay money to see this movie. I guess Bella fans will love it but the Queen with all her extremely cool evil costumes was one of the best things so it was more like going to one of those gallery things where they display art and not very much like those stories where you get all emotional about stuff. The pictures were cool though. I sure hope that other movie this year with dwarVes is a lot more involving.