Saturday, with hobbitses

I have been using the #hobbitses tag ever since I got home. I am easily amused. (It is not exactly highly original, there are a ton of people using it.)

So really the plan was to do normal Saturday things today, and go to see The Hobbit tomorrow, because going to movies is more of our Sunday thing. But there's also a football game tomorrow that I want to watch, and I started thinking that a three-hour football game followed by a (almost) three-hour movie would be a bit much. So I suggested to Rob that maybe we could go to the movie tonight instead, always assuming we could get in. (The funny thing is that Rob was apparently not listening to me too closely and thought I was just saying that we should go buy the tickets for tomorrrow while we were out tonight. Luckily we cleared this up before actually buying the tickets, and he seemed to go along with the change in program pretty happily once we got it straight.)

Now our normal Saturday routine (now confined to Saturdays-when-I'm-not working) goes something like this: Rob goes to the gym, I play video games, we do laundry, we go out to eat rather early to beat the crowds, we go to the grocery store after that and usually get home in time to watch Dr Who when there is one. So mostly what changed is the latter part of that. I started on a new zone in GW2 (Timberline Falls, if you want to know) and went on my usual exploring binge and forgot about the time. But around four I came to enough to start thinking about the whole 48fps thing and 3D vs 2D and all that, even though we still theoretically weren't going until tomorrow, and I got as far as looking it up at the huge Cinemark which is the closest theater to us. That was when I started reflecting on the timetable for tomorrow and that moviegoing might well fit in as well or better tonight, if I could get Rob to agree.

Before we could leave for all of this, we had to run the gauntlet of neighbors downstairs having a cookie party. We really should have gone downstairs and made an appearance earlier when it was in full swing, but the aforesaid fever of game exploration hit, and I kind of didn't get around to it. And Rob didn't push it either. But we did stop and talk to everybody for a few minutes (without actually taking any cookies, I want you to know) and then we went off to the Cinemark to buy the tickets and then went to Texas Roadhouse to eat - not really where I would've picked, but Rob likes it, so eh - and then the movie. We had plenty of time and in fact got seated in time for all the pre-movie stuff that we normally avoid by running in at the last minute. We saw a thing about that Vegas series on CBS and some Canon/Ron Howard thing that sort of mystified me, and... I forget what else. And then eventually a ton of previews, mostly for post-apocalyptic science-fictiony things that I will probably go see all of unless they seem to totally suck - let's see, one was AfterEarth with Will Smith, and then there was one with Tom Cruise that I forget the name of (Oblivion, maybe?) and then Pacific Rim. Stuck in there were a couple of non-SF things that completely failed to register. And of course there were the numerous pleas to TURN OFF YOUR CELL PHONE PLEASE and by the time the movie started, I was like, "Oh, really, this is the movie finally? Oh look, there's the New Line logo, I guess it really is."

Oh, also, there was a GW2 promo in there (along with several other video games) and something about it made a little wave of laughter go through the crowd. I totally did not get why, though. I'm not sure if it was a GW2-is-already-over laugh - because this is The Hobbit, after all, it's bound to be a geekier-than-average crowd - or what that was about. (If GW2 is already over, then they should have laughed even harder at the Mists of Pandaria one, you'd think!)

Anyway. The movie. I went in with fairly low expectations, and I'm sure that helped, but I enjoyed it a lot. It was certainly all over the place tonally, with the whipsawing back and forth between low comedy and I'm-Thorin-and-I'm-hot dramatic slo-mo and bits of The Silmarillion, for god's sake, but mostly I didn't even mind. Rob liked it too. (We sat through a good hunk of credits before we got up, and then went to the restroom and got out to the car, and Rob said, "I bet the credits are still running." And this being a Peter Jackson movie, he might well have been right.)

Oh, also I should note for the record that we went to see plain-vanilla Digital 2D, although I had to explain the whole framerate thing to Rob before we could buy the tickets. I think there were at least 4 different format choices, and the showing we went to was not even sold out, although it was one of the larger theaters and it was hardly empty. I did not even notice where the 3D was supposed to be like I usually do, for what that's worth.