Tag Archives: film review

The Hobbit: The Battle of Five Blogs

Posted on December 17, 2014 by Brenton Dickieson

Or thereabouts. A very serious sounding business, isn’t it? Well, we have fewer enemies and more allies than Peter Jackson’s crowd. We also have fewer extras and less CGI–though some of us may CGI a little for dates on the … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections, Reviews | Tagged Blogging, C.S. Lewis, fantasy, film, film adaptation, film review, Inklings, J.R.R. Tolkien, Peter Jackson, The Battle of Five Armies, The Hobbit, The Oddest Inkling | 20 Comments

Chance, Providence, and a Third Option: A Walter Mitty Reflection

Posted on October 15, 2014 by Brenton Dickieson

It was my son’s night to pick our family film, and of all the superhero, gang-busting, technicolour films he could have chosen, he picked The Secret Life of Walter Mitty. Granted, Ben Stiller is on our nine-year-old’s radar as a … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections, Reviews | Tagged algorithm, Ben Stiller, Discworld, facebook, film, film review, Forrest Gump, james thurber, John Cusack, Providence, social media, Terry Pratchett, The Secret Life of Walter Mitty | 7 Comments

On Trusting Your Audience: My Thoughts on “The Giver” on Film

Posted on August 20, 2014 by Brenton Dickieson

Lois Lowry’s The Giver was so transformational for me that it sits so far back in memory I can no longer remember when I first encountered it. It was, I think, the first dystopia I understood. Its post-apocalyptic calm is … Continue reading →

Posted in Reflections, Reviews | Tagged Christopher Nolan, dystopia, film adaptation, film review, Inception, J.R.R. Tolkien, Jeff Bridges, Katie Holmes, Lois Lowry, Lord of the Rings, The Giver, The Hobbit, utopia | 15 Comments

The Writer’s Spidey Sense (#WritingWednesdays)

Posted on May 21, 2014 by Brenton Dickieson

This blog is part of a series of Wednesday posts on Writing Resources. See next Wednesday for the value of False Starts in Writing. In our beat-you-over-the-head technotronic age, CGI is going to be a big feature in any superhero … Continue reading →

Posted in Creative Writing, Fictional Worlds, Reviews | Tagged 2012, CGI, Fictional Universes, film, film review, Matrix, secondary worlds, Spiderman, spidey sense, The Amazing Spider-Man 2, writing, Writing Wednesdays | 7 Comments

Not All Adventures Begin Well: My Review of Peter Jackson’s Adaptation of The Hobbit

Posted on January 2, 2013 by Brenton Dickieson

Not all adventures begin well. Certainly, as we have it in Tolkien’s The Hobbit, a hapless Bilbo Baggins all but stumbles into his first adventure, racing off toward the Lonely Mountain without his handkerchief or his pocketbook. Practically naked without … Continue reading →