{"id":6194,"date":"2012-12-13T00:11:35","date_gmt":"2012-12-13T00:11:35","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/?p=6194"},"modified":"2012-12-13T00:11:35","modified_gmt":"2012-12-13T00:11:35","slug":"at-the-hobbit-with-new-zealand-wine","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/new-zealand\/at-the-hobbit-with-new-zealand-wine","title":{"rendered":"At the Hobbit with New Zealand wine"},"content":{"rendered":"<p><a href=\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Fullscreen-capture-12122012-234832.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"aligncenter size-full wp-image-6201\" title=\"Fullscreen capture 12122012 234832\" src=\"http:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2012\/12\/Fullscreen-capture-12122012-234832.jpg\" alt=\"\" width=\"370\" height=\"453\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Kiwi winery Villa Maria were sponsoring the wine at tonight&#8217;s preview showing of The Hobbit, so I got to go.<\/p>\n<p>Pictured above: Warren Adamson (Craggy Range), Kate Sweet (PR person and significant other of Warren), Sarah Shepherd (NZ Winegrowers), me, and Penny Fear (Villa Maria UK).<\/p>\n<p>The film?<\/p>\n<p>Good bits: lots of action and incipient peril (if this is your thing); serious cgi (if this is your thing); the sequence involving Golum (just brilliant); the Goblin&#8217;s underground city, with its rickety wooden structure; the stunning Kiwi scenery; the fact that despite all the fighting and dangerous scrapes, no dwarves, wizards or hobbits are injured.<\/p>\n<p>Bad bits: the 3D was rubbish (this may have been a problem with the cinema, who were showing the film at 48 fps) and almost ruined the watching experience; the licence taken with cgi to the point of absurdity (the\u00a0escape from the goblin city is just silly); the utter maleness of the whole thing; Richard Armitage as Thorin; James Nesbitt as Bofur; the 1950s style painting that is the backdrop for the Elfin kingdom;\u00a0\u00a0and the fact that this isn&#8217;t a stand-alone film because of the ending, which is very abrubt.<\/p>\n<p>I&#8217;m not surprised the New Zealand trade commission got behind this film: it just makes you want to visit New Zealand. Which I shall do, next month.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Kiwi winery Villa Maria were sponsoring the wine at tonight&#8217;s preview showing of The Hobbit, so I got to go. Pictured above: Warren Adamson (Craggy Range), Kate Sweet (PR person&#8230;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6194","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-new-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6194"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6202,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6194\/revisions\/6202"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6194"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6194"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.wineanorak.com:\/wineblog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6194"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}