McKellen, Coel shine in art drama

   Ian McKellen probably could read your tax return and make it sound as if Shakespeare had written it. The 86-year-old British actor has a voice that can mellow like aged wine or cut as sharply as a newly stropped razor.
   In an age of mumbled, half-whispered dialogue, McKellen delivers the written word with a theatrical precision that's perfectly suited to director Steven Soderbergh's The Christophers, a movie in which McKellen plays Julian Sklar, an aging but once prominent painter.

   Time and disrepair may have made Sklar vulnerable. It doesn't take long for Michaela Coel’s Lori, a talented younger painter, to become Sklar’s sparring partner, quasi-mentee, and muse.

  Working from a screenplay by Ed Solomon (No Sudden Move), Soderbergh fleshes out what’s basically a two-hander by introducing a couple of additional characters, notably Sklar’s conniving adult children (Jessica Gunning and James Corden). 

   For variety’s sake, the story occasionally leaves the confines of Sklar’s cluttered studio, another cliched association of creativity with messiness. Small matter, I suppose. 

   The spotlight rests on McKellen and Coel. Sklar once sold paintings for millions and is now regarded as a spent talent whose late work amounts to rubbish, an assessment he himself acknowledges. Even in sweaters that always seem two sizes too large, McKellen manages to project an air of royal authority, suggesting that Sklar hasn’t totally abandoned his art-star stature. 

     Wary but also wily, Coel’s Lori stands up to McKellen's Sklar. Lori  can’t easily be read, a quality that works to her advantage when Solomon’s screenplay deploys a series of tricky moves based on art forgery, greed, and betrayal.  Skilled at cagey silences, Coel also makes the most of Solomon’s arch, funny, and perceptive comments about art. 

     The Christophers, by the way, are a series of unfinished paintings Sklar made of a former lover. The relationship ended badly, and Sklar refuses to discuss it with Lori. He goes one step further, insisting that she destroy the paintings. This presents a key conflict because Lori has been hired by Sklar’s duplicitous offspring to secretly complete the Christophers for sale upon Sklar’s demise, which we learn is fairly imminent.

     Criticisms of the contemporary art world poke their way toward the surface. Works are bought for tax purposes, and billionaires buy paintings at ridiculously inflated prices that turn them into one more luxury acquisition. None of this feels fresh, but Solomon’s screenplay doesn’t belabor its art-world criticisms, either.

     Good as McKellen and Coel are, the screenplay's trickier plot points and revelations lack the satisfying snap of crisply thrown punches and counterpunches, lessening the story’s overall impact.

      Still, it’s possible to deem The Christophers as a worthy showcase for McKellen and Coel, each of whom paints with the precision of actors who know what marks they wish to make on the canvas Soderbergh and Solomon have given them.

    

It’s just not the cat’s meow

On screen Cats proves strange, monotonous and furry.

Although Cats became one of the longest running shows in Broadway history, I have to confess that the popular Andrew Lloyd Webber production remains unknown to me.

I understand that Memory, perhaps the musical’s best song, has attained stand-alone status. And for a show to have run that long, it must have struck a chord with those who shelled out to see it.

Now, Cats arrives on screen with a large cast of human actors who have been subjected to a digital process that coats them in fur and gives them tails that can sway as languidly as laundry in a gentle breeze.

I’m sure it’s not true, but something about the way the cats move made me think that the whole production had been filmed in slow motion.

So let me get to the point. Without a frame of reference — i.e., other performances of Cats —- I didn’t quite know what to make of director Tom Hooper’s big-screen version, aside from telling you that once I got past the movie’s major gimmick — singers, dancers and actors covered in fur — I was mostly indifferent.

I do know that Cats derives from a T.S. Eliot poetry collection entitled Old Possum’s Book of Practical Cats. It seems odd to me that Eliot, author of The Wasteland, would refer to himself as Old Possum, but I don’t believe Wikipedia would lie.

The movie’s high point: Jennifer Hudson’s version of Memory broke through the stuporous spell under which I had fallen. She practically cried the song. Spoiler alert: Hudson plays a cat who is selected to begin a new life that’s better than the one she has been living. She ascends into some sort of cat heaven — or something like that.

I could have lived for another 100 years and not regretted having missed Ian McKellen delivering a monologue as Gus, the Theater Cat. McKellen, of course, nails it, but seeing McKellen in mangy looking cat fur tended to diminish the scale of the theatrical accomplishment — at least fo me.

But the greatest cat transformation award goes to Judi Dench, who plays a character called Old Deuteronomy — or, for short, Old Deut, perhaps the worst nickname ever imagined by anyone for anyone.

With luxurious skeins of fur draping across her shoulders, Old Deut looks like a woman who hasn’t gotten the message. Fur is out, baby. Somehow, though, Dench projects an air of regal authority and dignity, proving that it’s impossible to make Dench look ridiculous no matter how hard one tries.

Other cast members include Idris Elba, Taylor Swift, Rebel Wilson and James Corden. Elba plays the bad cat who believes he should be selected to ascend into cat heaven. I mention them for want of anything much else to report.

All this takes place in a society of Jellicle Cats. We meet the Jellicles when Victoria (Francesca Hayward), a kitten, is tossed from a car, lands in their company, and provides the movie with its beginning.

Hooper, who directed the screen version of Les Miserables, photographs the dancers stretching and preening with such great care, I wondered if each movement contained secrets that I was being invited to unpack. If so, I missed them.

Evidently, lack of plot is a Lloyd Webber signature. Maybe that’s why Cats doesn’t so much progress as it presents a musical number here, introduces a new character there or wanders about its set.

I suppose all the cat slinking and rubbing is meant to be sexy, but it also seems a bit kinky, like a Halloween party in which everyone wore similar costumes and, late in the evening, started thinking about behaving badly.

So, in conclusion, I say to Old Deut, you have not convinced me. I remain resistant to conversion. I am now and forever, a dog person. Hiss if you will, but to you I say, arf or maybe arf and one half.

The sad truth: 'The Good Liar' disappoints

Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren play a fine duet but an increasingly misguided screenplay lets them down.

I can’t think of a recent movie that I anticipated with more relish than The Good Liar, a semi-caper entertainment starring Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren. Why not be excited? Finally, I thought, an entertainment aimed at adults and delivered by actors who know how to serve up a line of dialogue as if it were the main course at a five-star restaurant.

So you can imagine the scale of my letdown as The Good Liar began disappearing inside a growing fog of disappointment caused, I think, by an increasingly unbelievable and complex plot that pulls what might have been a crisp entertainment into the deadening swamp of attempted significance.

None of this is to say that The Good Liar, adapted from a 2016 novel by Nicholas Searle, doesn’t include some fine acting. McKellen plays a con man who presents himself as a good-natured Brit — not too smart, pleasant company and just witty enough to keep a conversation rolling.

Mirren portrays a retired Oxford professor who lives in an insufferably bland London suburb in a house that looks as if it had been designed to say ... well ... absolutely nothing

Director Bill Condon makes it clear from the outset that neither McKellen’s Roy nor Mirren’s Betty is on a first-name basis with the truth. Before the opening credits conclude, Condon establishes that both characters are willing to falsify descriptions of themselves on the online dating service where they first encounter each other. She checks the box that says she doesn't drink while sipping from a glass of wine. No smoking, says he, puffing away.

So the question immediately arises, who is trying to con whom and why? It’s a question that has produced reliable entertainment for years, so there’s every reason to expect that The Good Liar will avoid being an exception to the rule.

I’m not going to burden you with the plot because that inevitably would involve introducing spoilers. Let’s just say that the script contrives to have Roy, who feigns injury, move in with Betty. They begin to take on the appearances and habits of a couple -- sans sex.

It doesn’t take terribly long for one of Roy’s felonious associates (Jim Carter) to show up and suggest — ever so cautiously — that Roy and Betty might enjoy a considerable financial advantage should they choose to merge their finances.

As all this transpires, Roy and Carter’s Vincent carry on a complicated ruse in which they bilk unsuspecting investors out of thousands of pounds.

And, of course, we know — simply because Mirren can’t help but project a keen intelligence — that Betty also probably has something up her otherwise unruffled sleeve.

Might it have something to do with Steven (Russell Tovey), a man she introduces as her grandson, a lawyer who makes no effort to conceal his suspicions about Roy?

Eventually, the movie must reveal its secrets, which, alas, challenge credibility. I'll provide a slight clue by telling you that Roy's facade begins to unravel when he and Betty take a trip to Berlin.

These secrets attach themselves to the story, capsizing what should have been smooth sailing toward a rewarding finale, preferably delivered with a garnish of wit.

Alas, Jeffrey Hatcher’s screenplay, which relies on lame flashbacks, has more in mind. Once again, more proves to be less.

Still, there are pleasures here. Mirren suggests much by doing little. When Roy experiences moments of lost control, McKellen’s face collapses. Uncertainty spreads across it like a spot of ink being absorbed into a blotter. And Carter, familiar from Downton Abbey, seems incapable of letting us down.

McKellen and Mirren deserve to be teamed again. We deserve some fulfilling adult entertainment. The Good Liar contains enough promise to keep us from suspending all hope that such mature pleasures someday may arrive — even if, for now, they must be deferred.

Shakespeare finds no peace at home

Kenneth Branagh's All is True speculates about the life of The Bard.

After a fire destroyed the Globe Theater during a 1613 production of Henry VIII, William Shakespeare decided to leave London's glare, put down his quill and spend the rest of his days in the company of his family. Sounds good, no? Of course, not.

In the hands of director Kenneth Branagh, who also plays the aging Shakespeare, The Bard's years in retirement are anything but trouble-free. He's deeply aggrieved over the death of a son he mostly neglected. His wife (Judi Dench) is older than he and treats him with what might be called warm tolerance. His daughter Judith (Kathryn Wilder) misses no opportunity to express her anger at him and another daughter (Lydia Wilson) has married a doctor (Hadley Fraser) whose uptight Puritanism gets on Will's nerves.

In short, the Shakespeare home is anything but peaceful in this speculative bit of fiction about the waning days of the greatest writer ever to put pen to paper.

Under such unruly circumstances, what's a bard to do?

Well, he must ward off potential scandals, manage his finances and deal with a wife who knows that his highly regarded love sonnets probably were not written for her.

All of this sounds intriguing, but Branagh's All Is True winds up sounding as if Ben Elton's screenplay was heavily influenced by modern sensibilities that resulted in dialogue that might have made Shakespeare wince.

The film's title derives from a scene in which an impatient Shakespeare, evidently fed up with being asked the same questions again and again, tells a would-be writer that if he explores the depths of his imagination and produces a work that reflects such depth, it will be true -- and that, in the world of fiction, anything that emanates from such a place must be true.

Is this Shakespeare or self-help?

This is not the only instance of uncharacteristically blunt speech in which Shakespeare and his squabbling family engage. Some of Judith's verbal assaults on a father who cherished his son but gave his daughter short shrift also have a contemporary ring.

With a receding hairline and an artificially extended nose, Branagh gives us a beleaguered Shakespeare who is much criticized by his family for having spent his time in London, ignoring his kin and wrapping himself in his career as a poet and dramatist.

I would have thought that Branagh, no stranger to Shakespeare, might have done better, and I would normally say that All Is True proves marginal or at least that viewing might easily be delayed until the movie is available through one streaming service or another.

But there's one scene that burns itself into memory.

Shakespeare meets with Henry Wriothesley, a.k.a, the 3rd Earl of Southhampton. Wriothesley, thought by many to be the Fair Youth of Shakespeare's sonnets, tries to convince Shakespeare that, as the greatest writer who has ever lived, he might be a touch less concerned about what his neighbors think about him.

Ian McKellen portrays the aging Wriothesley, a man no longer fair or youthful. McKellen adds something that has been missing throughout, a sense of sorrow, grandeur and Olympian intelligence delivered by an aristocrat who can see the finish line and who knows precisely where he's been. The Earl's biography resides in every shaded corridor of McKellen's face and in every inflection of his voice.

This is not to fault Branagh or the other actors, but to note that despite the revelation of family secrets and the march toward a big scene in which Shakespeare must face a truth that undermines his reality, it's McKellen who gives the movie its moment of pure transcendence.

'Beauty and the Beast:' One more time

Disney's reprise of its 1991 animated hit should please old fans and make some new ones.

The idea that love can break the spell of a powerful curse sounds as familiar to us as fairy tales themselves. In the case of Beauty and the Beast -- as imagined by Disney in a new live action version of its 1991 animated edition -- the Beast, a callous prince who has been cursed by a haggard old woman, must find love before the last petal drops off a rose kept in his dank castle. Absent such a love, the Beast and a gaggle of courtiers who've been turned into inanimate objects forever will be doomed to their cursed fates.

Disney's lavish remake its 26-year-old animated classic, Beauty and the Beastt, created little by way of anticipatory excitement for me. I'm no fan of remakes that take advantage of advances in digital technology just to wow us, in this case with talking versions of a clock, a teapot, a candelabra and a feather duster. And, yes, these digitally created do-dads probably show more personality than some of the story's human characters.

Having said that, this version -- starring Emma Watson (Beauty), Dan Stevens (Beast) and directed by Bill Condon (Dreamgirls) -- has enough whimsy and amusement to satisfy those who also will be buoyed by reprises of the Alan Menken/Tim Rice musical numbers -- with a couple of new additions.

Much of the credit for the movie's engaging collection of talking bric-a-brac goes to the actors who supplied the voice work: Emma Thompson voices Mrs. Potts, the teacup; Stanley Tucci gives life to as Maestro Cadenza, a harpsichord; Gugu Mbatha-Raw adds her vocal prowess to Plumette, the feather duster. The voice behind Cogsworth, the clock, belongs to Ian McKellen; and Ewan McGregor can be heard as Lumiere, a dashing candelabra.

Condon spices things up with references to Busby Berkeley, a ton of production design, a major investment in costumes and a generally capable cast that includes Luke Evans as the impossibly conceited and ultimately duplicitous Gaston and Josh Gad as his loyal sidekick LeFou.

You've probably read that Disney has made LeFou a gay character. That may be daring for a Disney version of Beauty and the Beast, but nothing in this upbeat entertainment seems designed to take the glow off the movie's mass-appeal luster.

The film even neuters the Beast, who has been given a leonine countenance -- with horns and bad teeth added for the sake of fright. This Beast makes threats on which he fails to deliver, and isn't quite as self-assured in his menace as you might expect.

Still, he's softened by Beauty, and by the end, it's difficult to say that anyone would mind if the Beast remained a beast rather than returning to his more Disnified form as a devilishly handsome prince.

In a nice touch, Beauty and the Beast begin their rapprochement when Belle (Beauty) discovers that the Beast has a well-stocked library. She's an avid reader, evidently the only one in the tiny village she and her father (Kevin Kline) call home.

There have, of course, been numerous versions of this 18th century tale from Gabrielle-Suzanne Barbot de Velqleneuve, including Jean Cocteau's landmark 1946 version, but classic stories seem capable of enduring as many retellings as anyone possibly could desire.

This one opts for a visual razzle-dazzle that plays against Watson's plucky but somewhat ordinary Belle. I wouldn't say that Condon and company achieve perfection, but they've provided a lively, entertaining version of Disney's animated entry from the 1990s.

If we were going to have another Beauty and the Beast, I'm not sure what more we could have justifiably asked or expected.

Five armies battle. Boy, do they ever

Final chapter of The Hobbit passes muster, but I'm glad it's done.

I give up. Why resist director Peter Jackson's final installment of The Hobbit; a.k.a., The Battle of the Five Armies.

If there were a quiz, I confess that I wouldn't be able to name the five armies nor would I be able to say I deeply cared about which one of them prevailed at the end of Jackson's massive, three-part Tolkien extravaganza.

A sense of proportion pushes me into agreement with those who argue that The Hobbit might have been more admirable if Jackson had made one movie instead of three -- or at most, say, two.

It seems unfair to have asked us to spend almost six hours on the two previous movies that set up this final chapter, which clocks in at a fleet two hours and 24 minutes, almost a short when it comes to Jackson and J.R.R. Tolkien.

Say this, though: Jackson certainly hasn't underestimated Tolkien's audience appeal. He has given the Tolkien fan base ample reason to support his efforts, which are chock full of CGI marvels, complex storylines and -- in this case -- a battle that becomes the big-screen equivalent of the 100 Years War. That's a snarky way of saying that the damn thing lasts for about 45 minutes.

Now, if that battle -- which follows a bravura opening in which an entire city is burned by a fire-breathing dragon -- weren't something to see, Jackson would deserve to be scorned. But in both its larger and smaller fights, Jackson presents battles that have the power to awaken those who have suffered through mid-picture torpor.

The movie begins with an attack by the dragon Smaug on peaceable Lake-town. Smaug is well on his way to torching the entire place when Bard of Bowman (Luke Evans) figures out how to slay the dragon.

Bard (or is it Bowman?) then leads the survivors to a mountain redoubt to seek shelter from a pending attack by the Orcs, who are marching as relentlessly as only Orcs can toward the same mountain fortress.

Meanwhile, other groups also are en route to the mountain, and Jackson introduces us to a variety of familiar Tolkien characters -- of interest to the faithful and of no consequence to anyone else.

Now, the dwarves already have occupied the mountain, which also contains an ungodly amount of treasure. Thorin (Richard Armitage) has taken charge of the dwarves and is busy orchestrating things for his own, ambitious ends.

Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) continues to be a "can't-we-all-get-along" kind of Hobbit, and Gandalf (Ian McKellen) shows up to add the customary gravitas.

It takes a while for all of the various factions to realize that they must join forces against the Orcs.

Enough about the plot, which the uninitiated might best approach with a scorecard listing all the various players.

Here's what redeems Jackson's opus: Significant characters die, and we feel the sorrow of their passing. The tone of the final segment is full of nobility, and, at times, a tragic sense of heroism.

The great battle is followed by a kind of idyll in which Bilbo returns to the Shire, where he attempts to resume normal life. Suddenly, the movie's dark palette is flooded with lush greens.

Personally, I'm happy that the whole business has concluded, and I hope that Jackson finds other ways to express himself. I was touched by this operatic finale, but I've had all I can stand of Hobbits, Orcs, Dwarves, wizards and trolls.

'X-Men' + time travel = a winner

It's difficult -- perhaps impossible -- to say anything critical about the glut of comic-book movies without sounding like a cultural elitist and, even worse, a scold.

Still, I can't proceed with what's going to be a positive and even enthusiastic review of X-Men: Days of Future Past without expessing a little dismay about the way Hollywood continues to cannibalize the backwaters of popular culture.

This move toward the mainstream turns the once-forbidden fruit of comics into tentpole entertainments that can't help but diminish the pleasure of those who shared in what once amounted to a semi-secret society based on avidity and accumulated knowledge, much of it useless.

There, that's off my chest.

Now about X-Men. The latest installment is a superior helping of a big-screen Marvel comic that boasts creative special effects, a mostly involving story and some very good acting.

The story, which brings together various generations of X-men, begins in a horrible dystopian, war-riddled future. Things are so bad that Patrick Stewart's Professor X and Ian McKellen's Magneto have united in a last-ditch attempt to stave off the destruction of humanity.

To accomplish their goal, Professor X and Magneto employ the consciousness-shifting powers of Kitty Pryde (Ellen Page) to send Wolverine (Hugh Jackman) back to 1973. Wolverine's time-travel mission: to prevent the assassination of industrialist Dr. Bolivar Trask (Peter Dinklage) and, thus, alter the course of a history that otherwise would lead to wholesale slaughter.

Director Bryan Singer, who hasn't directed an X-Men movie since 2003, judiciously uses the '70s -- reminding us of everything from lava lamps, to the Vietnam War to Richard Nixon. Wisely, though, Singer doesn't overwhelm the story with the events and curiosities of the '70s: He uses them as punctuation to create an effective mixture of humor and gravity.

Upon returning to the '70s, Wolverine must locate younger versions of Professor X and Magneto, played respectively by James McAvoy and Michael Fassbender.
It's a bit of a stretch to think that McAvoy's Charles Xavier could mature into someone who looks like Patrick Stewart. But there's no faulting McAvoy's performance as a dissolute and cynical young man who has yet to find his inner nobility.

Fassbender, who like McAvoy has played this role before, is entirely convincing as the young Magneto, summoning the out-sized polarities of a personality that seems at ease with both its humane and malevolent impulses.

The key to the plot's resolution can be found in the character of Raven, a.k.a. Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), the shape-shifting mutant who can avert total doom and who also looks sleek in her form-fitting blue outfit.

The themes of this installment mimic those of previous movies. Society's mutants -- those who represent upward steps on the evolutionary ladder -- are scorned by those who either are threatened by their presence or want to harness mutant powers as a means of advancing personal agendas.

As one who has the latter ambition, Dinklage's Trask comes as close as we get to an identifiable villain. Trask has invented destructive creatures called Sentinels, which seem to threaten both humanity and mutants.

What else needs saying?

Not much really. Singer -- in his first X-men movie since 2003's X-Men 2 -- cooks up some fine special effects, among the most impressive, the elevation of an entire stadium that hovers perilously above the White House.

In all, X-Men: Days of Future Past proves entertaining and well-constructed, a helping of comic-book adventure that knows how to wink at itself without undermining its loftier purposes. These mostly boil down to a question as simple as, "Can't we all get along?"
Not all of the X-men are given equal time in this edition, but if Days of Future Past -- a title that sounds a bit too much like a grammar lesson -- stands as an exemplary addition to the never ending cycle of comic-book movies. If we have to have them, they should at least be this much fun.

This 'Hobbit' opts for action

Desolation of Smaug improves on Unexpected Journey, especially when it comes to adventure.

First, a confession: I am not a devotee of J.R.R. Tolkien's The Hobbit. I'd be lying if said that I cared deeply about the fate of Bilbo Baggins, who in the latest movie from director Peter Jackson must confront a fire-breathing dragon known as Smaug.

Yes, I know. Smaug sounds like a particularly virulent form of air pollution, which leads me to my second point. I'm constantly tripping over the names that grow like weeds in Tolkien's mythologically oriented stories: Knowing that Gandalf -- the wizard played by Ian McKellen -- wants to put Thorin Oakenshield (Richard Armitage) on the throne of Erebor could be fuel enough to light the fires of interest in some, but leaves me in search of a truly compelling rooting interest.

Fans of the novel -- which has been divided into three movies by Jackson -- already know that the climactic battle with Smaug will take place deep inside Lonely Mountain, where Smaug guards the treasure that once belonged to an exiled dwarf population.

The same fans probably won't care that this epic confrontation -- we know it's epic because Jackson amplifies the sound to booming levels -- tends toward unreasonable lengthiness. They will, I'm sure, experience the thrills that are meant to be derived from a dark spectacle of a movie built around an evil dragon that talks -- voice by Benedict Cumberbatch.

Smaug may have been given the movie's best dialogue, but the spoken word isn't really the point here.

Desolation of Smaug boasts more action than Jackson's first installment, An Unexpected Journey. Early reviews rightly have pointed out that Jackson picks up the pace, although he still allows the movie to linger for two hours and 40 minutes. And, yes, some of the battles tend to rage on longer than is necessary.

Did I mention that Bilbo Baggins (Martin Freeman) is expected to play a crucial role in reclaiming the dwarf homeland, and that he's accompanied on his journey by 12 dwarfs?

Before Gandalf heads off on his own, he finds shelter for his companions at the home of Beorn (Mikael Persbrand), a man who can become a bear through a process known as skin-changing. I leave it to more erudite pop cultural scholars to determine whether the shape-shifting Beorn influenced the writers of True Blood, which also features characters who can transform themselves into animals.

I'm told that those who demand unwavering fealty to Tolkien's novel may find reason for lamentation. Legolas (Orlando Bloom), a character from the Lord of the Rings, joins this edition. A female character named Tauriel (Evangeline Lilly) also has been added to a mix that definitely favors those who are hirsute and hardy.

Mostly, though, the cast consists of stalwart dwarfs, repulsive Orcs and representatives of other Tolkienesque species. The assorted adventures include a nifty battle with giant spiders. When the dwarves escape from a forest, they're propelled down a roiling river in barrels, perhaps the movie's action high point.

I saw this edition in 3-D projected at the normal rate of 24 frames per second, not at the hyper-vivid 48 frames-per-second that marked the first installment. For me, this made for an improved and much-less-distracting viewing experience. And Jackson and his special effects team certainly know how to employ CGI for maximum impact.

The peripherals -- Howard Shore's score, the haunted landscapes of Jackson's native New Zealand and the elaborately constructed sets -- are all up to snuff.

Jackson, by the way, ends the movie with a terrific cliff-hanger. We'll have to wait until December of 2014 for the conclusion of a story that serves as prequel to The Lord of the Rings saga. I won't be counting the days, but Jackson's fans, who undoubtedly will turn this edition into a box-office bonanza, probably will leave the theater in an expectant mood.

Maybe between now and next December I'll become more Hobbit proficient. Has anyone got a copy of Elvish for Travelers they can loan me?