Film Review: The Unexpected Journey, Part 2

It looks as though we're going to get through this film a little quicker than we made it through the Lord of the Rings ones. I'm sure this is because these are relatively newer and so I haven't had a decade of watching them regularly noticing all the little things I like to nit pick about.

Last week we were introduced not only to Bilbo (old and new), we also got the run down on the gang of Dwarves who Gandalf invited round for tea. They all had a bit of a singsong, but now it's time to learn just why they're there and get this journey underway.

42. Thorin has a bit of an Aragorn thing going on here. Except he's not so easy to like.

43. I like that Gandalf lights his pipe with his fingers. It's little things that make these movies for me.

44. Poor Gandalf, having to explain that he's never actually killed a dragon.

45. Significant moment of handing over the key. I like that the next film explains how Gandalf came to know all this. In fact, I like how these films help explain just why Gandalf decided to back a Dwarven crew with a random Hobbit, against a dragon.

46. Another little nod back to The Fellowship of the Ring with Gandalf getting all tall and shadowy.

47. The Dwarves really do have everything covered don't they. Funeral arrangements! Laceration! Evisceration! Incineration!

48. I do really like Bofur. He's so unhelpful.

49. By the sounds of things, Bilbo was a bit of tearaway in his youth, wasn't he?

50. I think golf played with goblin heads would be a lot more interesting than the regular game of golf.

51. A tale or two? More like six films worth!

52. If I was Bilbo, I'm not sure I'd leave the crew of Dwarves in my house and go to bed. Look at the mess they made of the pantry. The place could be stripped before you got up!

53. Time for another song. I've come to love all the songs in the books so I'm glad they slotted them into the film. Standing around singing of an evening seems like a very Dwarvish thing to do.

54. I love that image of the embers rising out of the chimney while the Dwarves sing about dragons and fire.

55. Bilbo's all 'yay, they've gone... oh... they've gone... hang on a minute...'

56. Time for another quick trip through Hobbiton. If I tried jumping a fence like that I'd probably faceplant on the other side.

57. Everyone except Thorin is pleased Bilbo's shown up. Nothing really seems to impress Thorin.

58. The betting on whether Bilbo would show up is a nice touch.

59. Home is now behind you; the world is ahead. Love.

60. Bombur snoring in moths is really gross.

61. Bilbo is sweet with his pony considering how awkward he was a few minutes ago.

62. Flashback!

63. This place should look familiar if you've watched the Lord of the Rings trilogy recently. That battle's taking place where everyone stopped to cry in Fellowship of the Ring after Gandalf fell in Moria.

64. This is all straight out of the Lord of the Rings appendices. It makes me feel warm and fuzzy when I read them now because I like how they worked so much of the story into these films.

65. I do kind of wish they'd made some mention of the whole 'burned Dwarf' thing (there were too many bodies to bury, so they were burned instead and there's great honour among Dwarves at having a relation who was a burned Dwarf).

66. I like that they learned their lesson about 'from whence it came' in the Council of Elrond scene and Thorin just says 'whence he came' here.

67. Watch out guys! Someone's out to get you.

68. I kind of love how they dodge the rights issue with regards to the names of the two blue wizards. Also, how old does Gandalf have to be to forget his colleagues names? Then again, he's got loads of names of his own, it must get confusing.

69. "Is he a great wizard? Or is he more like you?" Heh.

70. It kind of irritates me that the hedgehog is called Sebastian. What kind of Middle-earth name is that?

71. Then I get over it because the hedgehog is really cute and I don't want it to die.

72. And then it says thank you when he cures it which is beyond cute.

73. I know lots of people don't like Radagast's sleigh, but I kind of do. It makes sense for him to travel with animals and why not rabbits?

74. Thorin and Gandalf both want to be in charge. I think that's why they spark off each other like that.

75. Fili and Kili are like those kids at school who push the gullible kids into doing something for them, so they're not the ones getting into trouble. 'Oops, we lost the horses, Bilbo, you go find them.'

76. I think this whole bit is one of Mr Click's favourite bits in the while film as well.

77. It's so gross, but I do kind of like the bit where Bilbo is used as a hanky.

78. The trolls are one of my favourite bits in the book. I like how it's been done in the film except for the fact that they say 'burglar-hobbit' instead of 'burra-hobbit'. It's such a minor thing but I miss it.

79. The trolls are actually voiced by three of the guys playing Dwarves, so at this point some of them are fighting themselves. You'd think they'd play nicer together.

80. To be fair to the Dwarves, when it looks like the trolls are going to dismember Bilbo, they do surrender, even though it means they're going to end up as dinner.

81. I always wondered how they did the spit thing and imagined it was some sort of animatronics and computer trickery, but they actually did fasten the guys to a big spit and turn them round and round. The behind the scenes stuff is fascinating.

82. Thank goodness Thorin figures out what Bilbo is doing and shuts up the others. Not that it works for very long.

83. "Who's that?" "No idea." "Can we eat him too?" Hehe.

84. It's funny how they had to have the trolls end up in a certain position because of the stone figures in Fellowship. I wonder if Peter Jackson would have done things differently if he'd known he was going to do this movie too.


Next week we'll make tracks to Rivendell.

Chapter-by-Chapter: New Moon, Non-Chapter

It's NaNo and I had a busy week last week, so forgive me for cheating somewhat with this week's chapter review post. Also, Happy Friday the 13th, what better day to pick up a vampire book.

The last chapter was a really long one so I split it in two, basically it boiled down to the fact that Edward wanted to leave Bella. So he did, and surgically removed himself from her life. Bella was somewhat distressed by this and so wandered into the forest. In turn this required her to be rescued by her dad and his friends. It was a gripping read.

You can imagine my delight when I looked across at the next page after the end of the neverending third chapter to see:

October

Ooh, we're jumping ahead, I thought. I turned the page, expecting to see the next chapter. Instead what I saw was:

November

Interesting, I thought. I'll be reading the book in real time, and turned the page for Chapter 4, only to find it said:

December

Which was closely followed over the page by:

January

The page after that has a number 4 on it and a chapter title, so it looks like the story picks up after that. But all this page turning and excitement about whether or not we're rejoining the story has tired me out and the next chapter looks like another long one, so we'll get into that next week.

Enchanted Forest: Shield

I'm calling this page the shield, but I'm not really sure that's what it is. It's got two shields in it, so I suppose it's close enough.

I'm trying to break the habit of making my colouring in symmetrical. It's a tough habit to break, I kind of like it when both halves are the same, but I think it worked quite well in this one. Maybe the next symmetrical picture will be coloured asymmetrically.

It's funny how when I look at these pages now I can start to imagine the colours I'm going to use for colouring it in. As soon as I looked at this page I knew that the birds at the top were going to be fiery colours, likewise, I knew the dragons would be purple. I actually wanted them to be a slightly darker purple but I'm pleased with how they turned out anyway.

When I was in Glasgow the other week I found myself looking at Enchanted Forest in Ryman's stationery shop and it was so weird seeing the pages all blank and empty without any colours in them. There are so many pages still to fill in and I can't wait to have them all done so I can flip through and see them all bright instead of plain.

I've already got plans for some of the future pages!

Wordless Wednesday: Secure

Book 11 of 2015: Nightfall by Stephen Leather

Back in February last year, one of my colleagues at work discovered I would read virtually anything you put in front of me and recommended that I try the Jack Nightingale series of books. I agreed to give them a whirl.

The first in the series is Nightfall which introduces us to the character of Jack Nightingale. A former policeman turned private investigator who discovers that the father he didn't know he had has died and left him an enormous mansion. Oh, and he sold his unborn son's soul before he was born, so unless he can win it back, Jack doesn't have long to live.

I found this a fairly quick and easy read. It's the sort of book you might pick up to read on a train or plane journey. Distraction from what's going on around you. I wasn't entirely sure what to expect from it but once I started it I got into it very quickly. It's one of those 'just-one-more-chapter' kind of books. The sort of one that you find yourself reading late into the night because one chapter before lights out soon becomes three or four, or six.

It deals with the supernatural. It doesn't take very long before lots of people who Jack knows or speaks to keep turning up dead. This makes for a very creepy read, especially if you're reading it late at the night due to the aforementioned 'one-more-chapter' thing. Luckily it's nicely balanced with some funny bits as well.

I couldn't help but think that Leather was really annoyed by the smoking ban. It seemed to get a mention at least every sixty pages or so. I imagine that he's a smoker who is now peeved that he can't smoke indoors.

Throughout the book Jack ends up getting messages from people who keep on telling him that he is going to hell; most of these people then ended up killing themselves in weird and wonderful ways. I didn't quite get why that was happening in this book. All this became clearer to me as I read the later books in the series.


Jack isn't always a particularly likeable character, but he is a very intriguing character. I never knew quite how he was going to react to any situation. That probably helped add to the 'one-more-chapter' aspect of the book. This book does also set things up well for the next book, which I went on to read within a couple of days. Look out for that review in two weeks' time.

NaNo: Word Wars & Sprints & Crawls! Oh My!

The second week of NaNo is upon us and many people will be finding themselves falling into what is commonly known as The Second Week Slump. It sucks.

This is the time where all the enthusiasm you had for your story in the beginning deserts you; all that carefully constructed planning turns out to only take you to five thousand words, not fifty; your writing schedule goes out the window due to family, friends, work, and your neighbours not understanding the sanctity of NaNo; and you've run out of Halloween goodies and all that's available in the shops now is overpriced Christmas chocolate.

It is not pretty.

You'll not be surprised to learn that many people give up on their NaNo at this point in the month, which is a shame because if you're on target you'll have 15,000 words written by the end of the day. How many people can say they've written that much in just over a week?

All the same, it can be hard to force yourself past this point in the month, especially if the first week has not been kind to you and you've started slipping behind. But I'm here to help. These are some useful ways to bulk up your word count and get you back into your story, because sometimes the only way to get past a block is to keep hammering away at it until it shifts.

Word Wars

These used to be my very favourite way to gain more words, from way back in the days of MSN Messenger. One of the great things about NaNo is the social aspect, and I'm a pretty competitive sort of person; word wars pit you again other NaNoers. These are usually conducted in a chat room, the forums, via Skype or on the social media platform of your choice.

Participants agree on a start time and duration, for example :15 for 10 minutes. As people may be in various different time zones the start time is given as minutes past the house. When I used to host them we would usually chat for five or ten minutes and then war for five or ten, depending on what everyone felt was best. At the agreed number of minutes past, the room would fall silent and we would hammer our keyboards like crazy until we were told to stop. The winner (of the bragging rights) was the one who had achieved the highest word count in that time.

These are good if you have access to the internet and a crazy group of friends or online acquaintances to join in on them with. If your internet access is patchy or non-existent then you might want to try one of these other options.

Word Sprints

These are basically solo word wars with a duration but no start time so you can do them whenever suits you. You'll see a post on the NaNo forums that tells you to sprint for 'x' amount of minutes and then you set a time, get writing until the buzzer sounds and then post your total.

You'll see these cropping up on social media (there's a dedicated NaNoSprints account on Twitter where they run challenges regularly through the month as well as posting prompts). I've seen pictures on Pinterest as well, which you can pin and then do at your leisure whenever you need a bit of a push.

If it's the competitive element that keeps you going then you can challenge yourself to better the other people who have posted their sprint totals. Or you could sprint against yourself. This is particularly useful if you only have short bursts to write during through the day; set your timer, write like crazy, note down your total, lather, rinse, repeat. This is particularly useful if you have time to write on your commute, in your breaks, or if you like competition but don't always have an internet connection.

Word Crawls

These are a recent addition to my NaNo repertoire, I only discovered them at the end of last year and I've been amassing a collection of them ever since to use this year. A word crawl is like a story which gives you instructions to follow in terms of how long to spend writing, or the number of words you are to write before you can move on to the next bit. Some take the format of a straightforward list, whereas others are a little more like a Choose Your Own Adventure story.

There are a whole host of these on the forums which you can work through depending on what you fancy. Many of these are done with a particular theme (such as escaping from Zombies) or linked to a TV series, film or book (as in the popular Hunger Games Crawl and the numerous Harry Potter ones) so you can find something to suit your tastes.

Participants usually post their progress through the challenge in the comments on the original forum post. With many of the longer ones it is difficult to complete the full crawl in one sitting, so you might work through one over the space of a day or two. A single crawl can give you anywhere from 600 to 3,000 words, that can be quite the boost when your word count is flagging.


Have you got any useful techniques for pushing yourself to get more words?

Weekly Rundown: NaNo Progress

I'll keep this brief because I'm trying to get up to thirty thousand words this weekend and I've got a little way still to go now.

Normally I would have spent Saturday bumping up my word count, but instead I spent a good half of the day working on my shepherds for my nativity. I went into the weekend at 21,000 words so I felt like I could afford to take it easy for a while. Luckily I don't show any signs of reaching the Second Week Slump yet. I'm happy with the way my story is going, even if I am still only at the early stages (despite heading into my fourth chapter).

I've managed to make it up to 25,000 words now. I wrote 4,002 yesterday; slightly less than the 5,000 I had hoped to aim for. I probably could've managed another thousand later in the evening after tea, since most of what I did was procrastinating on forums and blogs, but I'm still well ahead. I should get another 5,000 down today which'll take me up to a nice round 30,000. Not a bad start for the second week.

When I get around to rewriting it, I think I'm going to have to bring in mention of the story's villain a little earlier than I am at the moment. The dental conference he will be attending didn't get a mention until over 15,000 words and he still hasn't shown up yet. I tend to do this NaNo though, I start things slow and get my word count up early and then rush through things later on when I've got my word count in the bag. I am hoping to work on this book later on down the line though, so that's something at least, I am writing it with revisions in mind.

As I mentioned, I've been back to knitting my nativity again. My shepherds now have arms. I just need to finish off their headgear and beards, then pinch a couple of straws from my mum-in-law to make them staffs. Then it's on with the sheep.

It's funny how I've been procrastinating on my knitting for so long and now I'm using knitting to procrastinate on NaNo.

Aside from writing and knitting, we've officially started watching out Not-Quite-Christmas films. So far we've watched:

• Paddington (because Christmas at the end)
• Ballet Shoes (because Christmas in the film)
• Alvin and the Chipmunks (because Christmas song)
• The Holiday (because set at Christmas)
• Love Actually (ditto above)
• The Wizard of Oz (because Mr Click insists it used to be on TV at Christmas when he was little)

Alvin and the Chipmunks was a bit of a sore point because Mr Click had put his bet on it being The Wizard of Oz that he was drawing out of the pot, whilst I insisted it was going to be Alvin and the Chipmunks. I guessed completely right (with odds of 1/8). He was a little miffed.

He did get The Wizard of Oz yesterday evening. Unfortunately he fell asleep around twenty minutes into it, so I got to watch it (while sewing up shepherds' arms and hands) and he snored until the dog woke him up.

I should really get back to my NaNo now. See you on the other side of 30k!