So, awhile back I started listening to and reviewing all of Phish's shows since their comeback shows at Hampton in 2009. I never really expected to stick with it for long, and really only wanted to listen to the Hampton shows again because I'd recently gotten CDs of them and was excited. This little "project" sort of exploded, though, and now I've done almost 30 shows and am almost finished with summer '09 in its entirety. This is good in a way, but I realized that it's also been pretty much dominating my blog and that there are actually a few of you out there that are still interested in reading about the other things that I intermittently blog about. In the interest of no longer scaring you all away with massive amounts of Phish-related posts, I've started Skyballs and Saxscraper, another blog-space wherein I'll post reviews of Phish shows and Phish-related stuff from now on. So you can safely check in on Defiantly, Maybe from time to time, and hopefully I'll be posting more regularly now that it's summer about life, and learning, and reading and writing, and all those fun things I like to overanalyze when I have free time.
Of course, if you want to keep reading my thousands and thousands of words about Phish's 2009 tours, now you know where to go. I've also removed the previous reviews from this blog and moved them all over to Skyballs and Saxscraper in the interest of completeness.
Also, it's suddenly summer on the Palouse today! Cheers!
May 6, 2013
Apr 26, 2013
Things I Heard Today, Part Four
After a long hiatus, I've been compelled to bring back Things I Heard Today. Continue using your eyes in the usual reading-things fashion to find out why.
So I was walking to class this morning and ended up walking for awhile behind two girls, one of which told the other one this story (paraphrased from memory):
"So, I was in Starbucks this morning and I was sitting across from this mom and her two little girls, and the girls were arguing, like, fake-arguing, and one was yelling 'COUGS!' and the other was yelling 'DUCKS!' and they kept just going back and forth, like 'COUGS!' and then 'DUCKS!' and 'COUGS!' and then 'DUCKS!' Eventually, one of the little girls turned to her mom and asked: 'Mommy? Cougs or Ducks?' and the mom answered 'Ducks, sweetheart.'"
At this point, I was thinking to myself "Aww, what a cute story," thinking that it was over. But no. The narration continued:
"So I totally stood up and yelled 'GO COUGS!!!' at all three of them, and then walked out."
And that's what happened to me today.
So I was walking to class this morning and ended up walking for awhile behind two girls, one of which told the other one this story (paraphrased from memory):
"So, I was in Starbucks this morning and I was sitting across from this mom and her two little girls, and the girls were arguing, like, fake-arguing, and one was yelling 'COUGS!' and the other was yelling 'DUCKS!' and they kept just going back and forth, like 'COUGS!' and then 'DUCKS!' and 'COUGS!' and then 'DUCKS!' Eventually, one of the little girls turned to her mom and asked: 'Mommy? Cougs or Ducks?' and the mom answered 'Ducks, sweetheart.'"
At this point, I was thinking to myself "Aww, what a cute story," thinking that it was over. But no. The narration continued:
"So I totally stood up and yelled 'GO COUGS!!!' at all three of them, and then walked out."
And that's what happened to me today.
Jan 27, 2013
Some Thoughts on Higher Education as Customer Service
So, the other day on Facebook, I posted this: "One of the many strange, frustrating tendencies that seem to have emerged among the last two years' worth of WSU students that I'd never experienced before them: when I assign a presentation or some other project that requires them to read the Course Calendar and choose a day and reading to present on, often at least 50% of the class will email me and just ask me to pick a day for them."
One of the comments I got almost immediately was from a former student, who said "I'm interested to know what you think motivates it? I don't think it's laziness, maybe indecisiveness?" My response, of course, was to devote way too much thought to answering his question and then write way too much about it in my blog...
My first semester at WSU, before I started teaching, I was required to take a seminar which was meant to serve as teacher training, among other things. The professor who taught this Methodology of Composition seminar talked a lot about how we should be kind and considerate and understanding toward our students, but that we should try to be aware of and should avoid encouraging what he called "the customer-service model of education." Basically, his argument was that an ever-increasing number of students come into college perceiving the entire college experience as, essentially, a monetary transaction: they give the university money, the university gives them a degree in return, and they then use that degree to make yet more money working somewhere else. College, for these students, was (we were told) merely one link in a chain of investments, and as such these students would be inclined to see you, as their English 101 instructor, as a small cog in the degree vending machine. If you reinforced this inclination by being too considerate of their needs (moreso than a supervisor or professor might be, more like how a waitress or customer service representative might be), then you ran the risk of them approaching their education (or at least your class as a small part of it) with a "the customer is always right" attitude and an expectation that you would reciprocate.
At the time, eight years ago, there seemed to me to be an obvious response to this: these students were clearly misunderstanding The Point of College, and there was no way I was going to approach teaching my courses as if I was trying to earn a tip from my "customers." At the time, eight years ago, I was sure that I was right, that college was really A Lofty Pursuit of Knowledge and Betterment and these potential students were wrong. Now, I'm not so sure anymore.
It turns out, a lot of students really only do come to college to get a degree so that they can get a particular job. They could care less about liberal arts requirements, on-campus cultural events, visiting speakers, foreign film festivals, and everything else. When I request that they "expand upon" a point in the third paragraph of their paper, they aren't interested in reading up any further on Michael Pollan's research on nutrition and culture for the mere sake of learning more; they want to know exactly how many more sentences they have to add in order to make sure that their GPA gets the boost it needs from my class.
Sure, I like the idea that I can be that Hollywood-movie-style teacher that is just so damn good at his job and so inspiring that he can turn this type of student into a wide-eyed academic that reads Joyce in his/her spare time, and cries when they hear Blake recited aloud, but there's a reason that that type of thing happens in movies: because it's an idealized view of real life. Well, that's not entirely true: very occasionally, something like this does happen to a student of mine, but when it does, it's just as much because of them and their interests, needs, personality, etc. as it is because of some Dead Poets Society vibe I might or might not be throwing off through my teaching. Some students are still open to the idea of college as a privilege to be taken advantage of and appreciated, as a place of potential growth where you can do and learn amazing things for four years because you're very very lucky to be living in a very particular place at a very particular time and with enough money in your pocket. It does seem to me that over the last eight years the number of these students have massively decreased, though, to be replaced by a lot of people who are just here to get their piece of paper and get out.
Do the members of the latter group treat me like a waiter or a customer service representative? Do they do things like emailing me and demanding that I pick their presentation date for them? Yeah, pretty frequently, but I'm sure that I exacerbate the problem by planning classes in which I make students responsible for their own successes and failures and require them to actually act like adults even when they're only (gasp!) 17.
But, I guess the reason that I'm writing all this is really because in thinking about the reasons why students might insist that I pick a presentation date for them, I'm realizing that I sympathize with them more than I expected to. Who can blame students for thinking about jobs before Aristotelian debates and slam poetry in our current economic climate? Who can blame students for feeling like a number (and responding in kind) when they attend a university with 30,000 students and the only teacher who actually knows their name for the entire four years is their English 101 teacher? And though I'm loathe to admit it, in my case at least, their English 101 teacher is currently teaching 166 students, and doing a job that takes at minimum 60 hours a week to complete in the most slapdash way possible while only getting paid for 27 of those hours, which means I'm often not exactly free to take the time and make the effort to make any of those individual students feel like I've done more than blasted through their papers at the last minute before collapsing into bed four hours before I have to teach again. I find that I'm coming to believe that the customer-service-mentality kids haven't decided to treat the university system like a Starbucks because they're all assholes who should know better. They've decided to treat the university system like a Starbucks because that's how the university system presents itself nowadays, probably because administrators and other higher-ups in universities make a hell of a lot more money that way than if they portray their schools as elite hidey-holes for people who like to not get paid that much to think all day long.
I'd have to say, then, that my bet would be that the kids demanding that I pick their presentation date for them aren't being lazy, or stupid, or purposely obtuse; rather, they just interpret any stutter, any uncertainty, any confusion in the running of the machinery of (in this case) Humanities 101 as an obvious failure on my part to give them the tools to smoothly navigate the diploma vending machine. I wouldn't doubt that the possibility that choosing a particular topic for their presentation, based on what they might be interested in or what they might be intrigued to learn more about never occurred to them; again, not because they're idiots, but because that's not what they're here for. Which sucks, because on a personal level, that is what I'm here for. But, when I look at the situation in high ed more generally, can I really blame them for prizing the product over the process?
One of the comments I got almost immediately was from a former student, who said "I'm interested to know what you think motivates it? I don't think it's laziness, maybe indecisiveness?" My response, of course, was to devote way too much thought to answering his question and then write way too much about it in my blog...
My first semester at WSU, before I started teaching, I was required to take a seminar which was meant to serve as teacher training, among other things. The professor who taught this Methodology of Composition seminar talked a lot about how we should be kind and considerate and understanding toward our students, but that we should try to be aware of and should avoid encouraging what he called "the customer-service model of education." Basically, his argument was that an ever-increasing number of students come into college perceiving the entire college experience as, essentially, a monetary transaction: they give the university money, the university gives them a degree in return, and they then use that degree to make yet more money working somewhere else. College, for these students, was (we were told) merely one link in a chain of investments, and as such these students would be inclined to see you, as their English 101 instructor, as a small cog in the degree vending machine. If you reinforced this inclination by being too considerate of their needs (moreso than a supervisor or professor might be, more like how a waitress or customer service representative might be), then you ran the risk of them approaching their education (or at least your class as a small part of it) with a "the customer is always right" attitude and an expectation that you would reciprocate.
At the time, eight years ago, there seemed to me to be an obvious response to this: these students were clearly misunderstanding The Point of College, and there was no way I was going to approach teaching my courses as if I was trying to earn a tip from my "customers." At the time, eight years ago, I was sure that I was right, that college was really A Lofty Pursuit of Knowledge and Betterment and these potential students were wrong. Now, I'm not so sure anymore.
It turns out, a lot of students really only do come to college to get a degree so that they can get a particular job. They could care less about liberal arts requirements, on-campus cultural events, visiting speakers, foreign film festivals, and everything else. When I request that they "expand upon" a point in the third paragraph of their paper, they aren't interested in reading up any further on Michael Pollan's research on nutrition and culture for the mere sake of learning more; they want to know exactly how many more sentences they have to add in order to make sure that their GPA gets the boost it needs from my class.
Sure, I like the idea that I can be that Hollywood-movie-style teacher that is just so damn good at his job and so inspiring that he can turn this type of student into a wide-eyed academic that reads Joyce in his/her spare time, and cries when they hear Blake recited aloud, but there's a reason that that type of thing happens in movies: because it's an idealized view of real life. Well, that's not entirely true: very occasionally, something like this does happen to a student of mine, but when it does, it's just as much because of them and their interests, needs, personality, etc. as it is because of some Dead Poets Society vibe I might or might not be throwing off through my teaching. Some students are still open to the idea of college as a privilege to be taken advantage of and appreciated, as a place of potential growth where you can do and learn amazing things for four years because you're very very lucky to be living in a very particular place at a very particular time and with enough money in your pocket. It does seem to me that over the last eight years the number of these students have massively decreased, though, to be replaced by a lot of people who are just here to get their piece of paper and get out.
Do the members of the latter group treat me like a waiter or a customer service representative? Do they do things like emailing me and demanding that I pick their presentation date for them? Yeah, pretty frequently, but I'm sure that I exacerbate the problem by planning classes in which I make students responsible for their own successes and failures and require them to actually act like adults even when they're only (gasp!) 17.
But, I guess the reason that I'm writing all this is really because in thinking about the reasons why students might insist that I pick a presentation date for them, I'm realizing that I sympathize with them more than I expected to. Who can blame students for thinking about jobs before Aristotelian debates and slam poetry in our current economic climate? Who can blame students for feeling like a number (and responding in kind) when they attend a university with 30,000 students and the only teacher who actually knows their name for the entire four years is their English 101 teacher? And though I'm loathe to admit it, in my case at least, their English 101 teacher is currently teaching 166 students, and doing a job that takes at minimum 60 hours a week to complete in the most slapdash way possible while only getting paid for 27 of those hours, which means I'm often not exactly free to take the time and make the effort to make any of those individual students feel like I've done more than blasted through their papers at the last minute before collapsing into bed four hours before I have to teach again. I find that I'm coming to believe that the customer-service-mentality kids haven't decided to treat the university system like a Starbucks because they're all assholes who should know better. They've decided to treat the university system like a Starbucks because that's how the university system presents itself nowadays, probably because administrators and other higher-ups in universities make a hell of a lot more money that way than if they portray their schools as elite hidey-holes for people who like to not get paid that much to think all day long.
I'd have to say, then, that my bet would be that the kids demanding that I pick their presentation date for them aren't being lazy, or stupid, or purposely obtuse; rather, they just interpret any stutter, any uncertainty, any confusion in the running of the machinery of (in this case) Humanities 101 as an obvious failure on my part to give them the tools to smoothly navigate the diploma vending machine. I wouldn't doubt that the possibility that choosing a particular topic for their presentation, based on what they might be interested in or what they might be intrigued to learn more about never occurred to them; again, not because they're idiots, but because that's not what they're here for. Which sucks, because on a personal level, that is what I'm here for. But, when I look at the situation in high ed more generally, can I really blame them for prizing the product over the process?
Jan 10, 2013
Got No Sun-Time When She's Gone: Some Thoughts on Higher Education, Time Management, and The Descent Into Madness
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| This. This is what should be on my car. |
I got into education (and, specifically, English Literature) for all the usual humanity-y, hippie-y reasons, but also because I've always found the clock-in, clock-out, 9-to-5-job life horrifically crushing and depressing, and I liked the idea that a teacher/professor was able to make their own hours, to a degree. Now as anyone who works in higher ed knows, "make their own hours" usually ends up translating to "works 70 hours a week and gets paid for half of that." Seriously, most weeks I work somewhere between 55-70 hours (and sometimes well more than that!) and I get paid for 27.5 hours of that. The rest is work that isn't required, but that you're expected to do (by your department, your advisors, colleagues, and/or the field at large, depending on who you are, what you do, and where you work). The result is, by the standards of the workaday world (who likes to pick on people who "make their own hours" as people who don't actually work all that hard), I work full weeks and somewhere between 15-30 hours of overtime per week, just to make about $18,000 a year. Oh, and last summer I worked at least 40 hours a week every week but two, which I took off for my only vacation of the year, and I got paid for five weeks of that summer work, total.
This post isn't a complaint, though...or at least, if it is, the complaint is implicit in what I actually want to talk about. Seriously, the entire higher education system is absurdly fucked up and deserves a lot of serious critique and reform in a lot of areas including the way adjuncts and instructors are treated at most universities, but that's a rant for another day (maybe tomorrow?).
I love my job. I'm happy to do it. So happy, in fact, that I'll accept $18,000 a year to work for 3000 hours (that equates to a little under 66% of minimum wage, in case you were wondering). But so will a lot of other people, which is why I have absolutely no job security and my entire future goes up in the air every 8 months or so. I love my job so much that it's beginning to occur to me (thanks, in part to reading some of this blog over the last few days) that I could probably stand to love it a little less.
I'm a hard worker; Protestant work ethic and Midwest blue-collar and all that. When it comes to teaching and researching, I daresay that I'm a good worker. And yet, after eight years, my job continues to ask more and more of me, and I find that I can't afford to always say "yes" anymore. There are too many other things to do, too many other facets of life to experience, and, frankly, I really don't think anyone at my current job is going to care and nobody interviewing me for future jobs is going to notice if I only work, say, 45-50 hours of my 27.5 hour weeks from now on. I don't want to let my students or my colleagues down, but I suspect I've only ever avoided that by letting my friends, family, and myself down instead, by not making time for anything else but melting into an exhausted puddle in front of a stupid TV show at 10pm, after wrapping up my workday that started at 7am...for the fifth or sixth day in a row.
I talked about this issue with Lindsey a few nights ago and she suggested that I stop taking on so many projects, stop saying "yes" to everything. It was a good suggestion, but I've never been a "yes" man, really. I've turned down a lot of projects in the last six or so years, and never once have I regretted it, despite the fact that many of those projects went on to be quite successful. Generally if I take extra classes or grading jobs, it's not, honestly, out of the goodness of my heart, but because I need the money to get by. When someone offers me a place in a new project, or any other new responsibility, I find myself immediately weighing it against what I already have to do, and against what little free, "me" time I have. Sometimes the project is worth the sacrifice, sometimes not, but I've never felt compelled to accept something just to beef up my CV or pad my cover letter. If it's not something I can actually throw myself into and honestly care about (for whatever reason), then I don't bother.
I don't think my problem is that I take on too much. Rather, I think that I belabor what I do take on, often past the point of usefulness. The downside of all that touchy-feely, make-your-own-hours stuff that makes academia so great is the lack of concrete feedback on the work you're doing. How much class preparation is necessary? How many hours a night should you spend making lecture notes? How long should you spend commenting on student papers? These things, at some point, need to be broken down into a machinistic process, or else they get out of control. I once knew an MA student who spent an hour commenting on each of her students' papers. She had fifty students, and they each wrote six papers that semester. That's 300 hours in fifteen weeks just spent on grading. She was also teaching two classes and taking three graduate seminars. She wasn't especially off her rocker (any more than any of us are), she just couldn't bring herself to invest less than that in her students, and there's no mechanism in place (officially or unofficially) to tell someone when to stop grading, when to stop planning...you do it all by feel, and when something doesn't work out, it's all too easy to assume it's because you didn't work hard (read: long) enough.
After eight years of teaching, I have a fairly good handle on how hard to work on my classes. Sure, my students (some of them, anyway) deserve a lot of effort, and I'm willing to give that to them. But, as I've come to realize, they also deserve the energy and attentiveness that comes from being an instructor who's functioning on more than three hours of sleep, who is especially excited to talk about the reading on, say, Ed Abbey today because he just spent the weekend in the mountains, backpacking and reading Desert Solitaire. It's really not just Work Really Hard, but rather Work Hard combined with a bit of Don't Be Insane.
I have a lot more trouble, though, with the research/professionalization end of the spectrum. Last year I applied for nearly 100 jobs (out of fear of ending up unemployed the day after graduation). These are academic jobs, mind you, that require, generally, a whole portfolio's worth of documents to be mailed. Not only did this almost break me financially, I almost didn't finish my dissertation on time as a result. This year, I'm sending out far less (around 40 or 50), but the downside is that I'm much less likely to actually get interviews. Similarly, from about 2007 to 2010, I regularly sent out articles for potential publication (usually around three a year) and tried to attend 4 conferences a year, at least. Since then, the dissertation and the ensuing job search and increased class load has made that more or less impossible...but if I had the time I'd probably still be at it. There are so many avenues in this job where a "throw it all at the wall and see what sticks" approach works that it's hard to not just adopt that attitude. The more article proposals I send out, the better chance I have of getting published. The more job applications I send out, the more likely it is that I'll get hired. The more conferences I attend, the more likely I'll be to be seen as a member of "the conversation." The problem is, there are no real rules on how many of these things, how much, you really should or can do beyond your own common sense. And when you begin to be driven by a fear of pending unemployment, when you can't afford clothes that aren't used and your girlfriend can't pay for her asthma medication, common sense starts to fly out the window.
All that said, I'm taking another stab at the whole damn thing. This semester, I teach three classes, back-to-back-to-back, until noon on Monday, Wednesday, and Friday. For the rest of the day, until 6:30pm at the absolute latest, I will be preparing for the next class period and doing other teaching-related work. Tuesdays and Thursdays, during normal work hours (9-6 or 10-7) I will be doing research-related work. If there is any overflow, I'll be dealing with it for a few hours on Saturday, but otherwise, I'm going to try to take weekends off. I am going to live like a human being, and, if my career refuses to allow me to do that, well, then I'll just find a new one. I want to do this for the rest of my life, but I don't want it to be the rest of my life.
Jan 8, 2013
Review (sort of): A few more thoughts on The Hobbit
So since the first time I saw The Hobbit, I've seen it a thousand more times. Well, no, not really, but I have seen it two more times. The first time Lindsey and I saw was here in Pullman, in good ol' 2D. I liked it a lot (though I had various reservations that I detailed in the linked post above), and I understood that just like any good piece of media/work of art it would probably reveal a lot more nuance and detail with further viewings. Fortunately, just a few days after our first viewing, we were headed up to the Spokane area for Christmas, and so we were able to catch the film again at the Spokane AMC 20, first in 3D HFR and then in 3D IMAX.
First thing's first: the 3D HFR is amazing and anyone who thinks otherwise (except for people who literally get motion-sick watching it, I suppose) is crazy. Sure, everything looks a little sped-up and like watching the BBC for a few minutes, but after that I found that I stopped noticing and just really got immersed in the story and the much-more-beautiful visuals. I imagine if you just sit in the theater and think "Is this 48fps thing shitty or not?" for the entire film, 48fps might rub you the wrong way, but if that's your primary concern, you probably don't belong in a movie theater in the first place. Sure, it was weird until I got used to it (again, this took about five minutes), but watching the 24fps IMAX version a few days later was weird and seemed slow and washed-out-looking for a few minutes until I got used to it. I certainly don't brood over how lame 24fps is now as a result. Or DO I?!
Anyway, the big difference with 48fps is the reduction in motion blur. This is incredibly, incredibly important (according to my own eyes, at least) for today's movies because it improves two things: 1) CGI effects and 2) 3D. For example, I was amazed at how much clearer the huge, sprawling action scenes featuring the goblins were to follow in the 48fps version. Pretty much every effect in the film looked less like an effect than something that was actually happening. In 48fps, the Goblin King moves realistically. So do the trolls. It's creepy, but not in an Uncanny Valley sort of way. It's creepy because the pretend things look real. And it's awesome. Someone, in another review I read, likened seeing The Hobbit in 48fps to seeing color TV for the first time after using black-and-white sets for years. That's definitely how I felt walking out of the movie afterward. Sure, 48fps is technically "unnecessary," but the bias against it is really obviously just habit talking, and that's never good. I could definitely see it not adding that much to, say, a non-CGI character drama, technically speaking. But after having seen something on the order of hundreds of CG-powered films over the last decade or so, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that 48fps would have made all of those films look less cheesy, fake, etc. It really allows CG effects to shine through in higher detail, and it's just awesome. Same thing with regard to 3D: with the eye more able to follow less motion-blurred action, 3D becomes a joy instead of a chore. It doesn't seem like a gimmick in The Hobbit, because the effects in The Hobbit don't look like a gimmick. So yeah. 3D HFR was amazing, and I hope that at some point in the future I'll be able to look back and remember what it was like to see a 48fps movie before everything was shot in 48fps.
The IMAX showing was cool, but it wasn't a full, reclining-seat, screen-above-you IMAX, just a really big screen. The theater had really awesome surround sound, and the big, curved screen seemed to add a little more depth to the 3D (which served to make the film look just a little more like an actual three dimensional stage play or something instead of a movie where something occasionally pops out at you). 3D HFR was much better, though, in my opinion.
In terms of the film itself, I found that by the end of the third viewing, I was seriously considering The Hobbit as a contender for the best of the four so-far-released Peter Jackson Middle Earth films. I still doubt that the trilogy as a whole is going to stand up as well as the original LotR film trilogy (because the source material is weaker and the success of the later installments are going to depend more heavily on Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's appendices, which has so far been strong but not strong enough to carry a film). But, this is just a damn fun and at times highly affecting movie to watch (at least if you're a Tolkien fan).
In 48fps, a lot of the ridiculous action scenes were a lot easier to follow and thus it was much easier to see that there was a logical (if not entirely plausible, still) flow to their movement. After three viewings, I really came to appreciate how things like Radagast's inclusion and Azog as the primary antagonist actually served to make the story more cohesive. Reading The Hobbit (which I did twice recently), I was surprised to rediscover how random every chapter (each of which are almost separate episodes loosely connected to one another) seemed; unless of course you know the backstory. Working under the assumption that much of the film's audience wouldn't know this backstory (and how many critics that have panned the film really obviously don't even know the book, despite critiquing the film's status as an adaptation?), Jackson and crew integrated a lot of that backstory nicely, making a story that functions satisfyingly on its own and as part of a larger tale, neither of which are things that the original book does that well (and I write that as a huge Tolkien and Hobbit fan).
Upon more viewings, my nitpicks regarding the stone giants, Mario Bros. platforming and such faded into the background as the many positive aspects of the film came to the fore. And really, how reasonable is it to pick on this film for Jackson's occasional action-scene excesses while holding up Return of the King as Best Picture material despite Legolas's Mumakil antics and some of the other more absurd things that happen in that film? Even after seeing the film three times, hearing Ian Holm recite the opening lines of the book, seeing Bilbo decide to spare Gollum before leaping over him to join his friends, and seeing Thorin embrace Bilbo at the end (to applause from around the theater, in one instance) all brought a tear to my eye (again). It's a great movie. It's even better in HFR. Can't wait for the Extended Edition DVD that I'm sure is coming.
First thing's first: the 3D HFR is amazing and anyone who thinks otherwise (except for people who literally get motion-sick watching it, I suppose) is crazy. Sure, everything looks a little sped-up and like watching the BBC for a few minutes, but after that I found that I stopped noticing and just really got immersed in the story and the much-more-beautiful visuals. I imagine if you just sit in the theater and think "Is this 48fps thing shitty or not?" for the entire film, 48fps might rub you the wrong way, but if that's your primary concern, you probably don't belong in a movie theater in the first place. Sure, it was weird until I got used to it (again, this took about five minutes), but watching the 24fps IMAX version a few days later was weird and seemed slow and washed-out-looking for a few minutes until I got used to it. I certainly don't brood over how lame 24fps is now as a result. Or DO I?!
Anyway, the big difference with 48fps is the reduction in motion blur. This is incredibly, incredibly important (according to my own eyes, at least) for today's movies because it improves two things: 1) CGI effects and 2) 3D. For example, I was amazed at how much clearer the huge, sprawling action scenes featuring the goblins were to follow in the 48fps version. Pretty much every effect in the film looked less like an effect than something that was actually happening. In 48fps, the Goblin King moves realistically. So do the trolls. It's creepy, but not in an Uncanny Valley sort of way. It's creepy because the pretend things look real. And it's awesome. Someone, in another review I read, likened seeing The Hobbit in 48fps to seeing color TV for the first time after using black-and-white sets for years. That's definitely how I felt walking out of the movie afterward. Sure, 48fps is technically "unnecessary," but the bias against it is really obviously just habit talking, and that's never good. I could definitely see it not adding that much to, say, a non-CGI character drama, technically speaking. But after having seen something on the order of hundreds of CG-powered films over the last decade or so, I can say with a fair amount of certainty that 48fps would have made all of those films look less cheesy, fake, etc. It really allows CG effects to shine through in higher detail, and it's just awesome. Same thing with regard to 3D: with the eye more able to follow less motion-blurred action, 3D becomes a joy instead of a chore. It doesn't seem like a gimmick in The Hobbit, because the effects in The Hobbit don't look like a gimmick. So yeah. 3D HFR was amazing, and I hope that at some point in the future I'll be able to look back and remember what it was like to see a 48fps movie before everything was shot in 48fps.
The IMAX showing was cool, but it wasn't a full, reclining-seat, screen-above-you IMAX, just a really big screen. The theater had really awesome surround sound, and the big, curved screen seemed to add a little more depth to the 3D (which served to make the film look just a little more like an actual three dimensional stage play or something instead of a movie where something occasionally pops out at you). 3D HFR was much better, though, in my opinion.
In terms of the film itself, I found that by the end of the third viewing, I was seriously considering The Hobbit as a contender for the best of the four so-far-released Peter Jackson Middle Earth films. I still doubt that the trilogy as a whole is going to stand up as well as the original LotR film trilogy (because the source material is weaker and the success of the later installments are going to depend more heavily on Jackson's adaptation of Tolkien's appendices, which has so far been strong but not strong enough to carry a film). But, this is just a damn fun and at times highly affecting movie to watch (at least if you're a Tolkien fan).
In 48fps, a lot of the ridiculous action scenes were a lot easier to follow and thus it was much easier to see that there was a logical (if not entirely plausible, still) flow to their movement. After three viewings, I really came to appreciate how things like Radagast's inclusion and Azog as the primary antagonist actually served to make the story more cohesive. Reading The Hobbit (which I did twice recently), I was surprised to rediscover how random every chapter (each of which are almost separate episodes loosely connected to one another) seemed; unless of course you know the backstory. Working under the assumption that much of the film's audience wouldn't know this backstory (and how many critics that have panned the film really obviously don't even know the book, despite critiquing the film's status as an adaptation?), Jackson and crew integrated a lot of that backstory nicely, making a story that functions satisfyingly on its own and as part of a larger tale, neither of which are things that the original book does that well (and I write that as a huge Tolkien and Hobbit fan).
Upon more viewings, my nitpicks regarding the stone giants, Mario Bros. platforming and such faded into the background as the many positive aspects of the film came to the fore. And really, how reasonable is it to pick on this film for Jackson's occasional action-scene excesses while holding up Return of the King as Best Picture material despite Legolas's Mumakil antics and some of the other more absurd things that happen in that film? Even after seeing the film three times, hearing Ian Holm recite the opening lines of the book, seeing Bilbo decide to spare Gollum before leaping over him to join his friends, and seeing Thorin embrace Bilbo at the end (to applause from around the theater, in one instance) all brought a tear to my eye (again). It's a great movie. It's even better in HFR. Can't wait for the Extended Edition DVD that I'm sure is coming.
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