Peter Jackson DVD/Blu-ray (166mins)

The release date of the third instalment of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy has been pushed back from 18 July 2014 to 17 December 2014.

Allegations of animal cruelty on the set of The Hobbit threaten to tarnish the film's reputation. So has director Peter Jackson done enough to answer them?

For all the sound and fury, not a great deal actually happens in this initial episode but audiences are bound to eat it up and come back for more

It's nine years since the finale of the Lord of the Rings saga, The Return of the King, premiered in 2003, but now Tolkeinites are a-quiver again as they await the first instalment in a new Hobbit trilogy, which hits cinemas Thursday. Can it recapture that old magic? Well, critics are split, but there's a lot of admiration out there for Peter Jackson's epic vision.

There is a sense of sledgehammers being used to crack nuts in the first part of Peter Jackson's Hobbit trilogy. J R R Tolkien's short 1937 novel has been turned into an enormous Wagnerian epic.

New Zealand's capital city was taken over by pointy-eared, costumed Hobbit fans today, many of whom camped overnight to grab the best spots for the red carpet world premiere of the film.

Is there some kind of law of modern culture that says everything must come in threes? Fifty Shades of Grey, The Dark Knight movies, The Hunger Games books, Hilary Mantel's Thomas Cromwell books, Toy Story, The Matrix… It seems that publishers and film studios would do anything to get a franchise under way, and to tell its audience, as if they were small children, that the characters they liked will be back with more adventures next year…

Steven Spielberg has thrown the kitchen sink, particularly visually, at this animated Tintin, yet it still fails to capture the sheer delight of Hergé's adventures.

Starring: Charlie Creed-Miles, Will Poulter

You may, by now, be pretty sick of hearing about The Hunger Games, the dystopian flick starring Jennifer Lawrence, due out on Friday. There seems to have been blanket coverage for weeks, nay months, preparing us for the action flick that's aimed at teenagers but which adults will love too (yadda yadda).

OMG, the AIM-listed technology company, has hit a purple patch, unveiling two new deals in the space of the past few days.

One thing that would definitely help Britain's small and medium-sized enterprises grow into large companies one day is more business from a customer that spends £236bn a year procuring good and services. Step forward the public sector – if it were to raise the amount of business it awards to SMEs, even by a small percentage, the results could be dramatic.