Random thoughts (my flaky cable modem ate yesterday's more focused comment):
Martin Freeman was great; his acting chops made Thorin's death scene actually moving, and the scene where he gives the Arkenstone to Gandalf / Bard / Thrainduil was really good - and very true to the book as well. There's a lesson there...
That said, the whole "dragon sickness" explanation for Thorin's assholery was stupid on stilts; Tolkien is explicit in all of the lore of Middle-Earth that the Dwarves have this weakness for treasure waiting to express itself, and sometimes it can affect even the best among them. On the subject of the Dwarves, PJ continued his abysmal treatment of them: Gimli was used mostly as comic relief in the LOTR films, and here only Thorin and Kili were treated as other than buffoons (and Kili only because he was saddled with the made-up love interest).
All in all, I wasn't that disappointed because my expectations were so low. And...frankly, that was in part because, IMHO, Peter Jackson made a hash out of LOTR too. I know that's a minority view, but I stand by it. PJ and the screenwriters never got the true nature of Frodo specifically and hobbits in general; they are much weaker and buffoonish than in the source material. And one example of many: having the army of the Dead win the Battle of the Pellenor Fields was unforgivable. The places where Jackson's LOTR succeeds are where he hews closest to the books: e.g., the Mines of Moria.
As far as a potential movie of The Silmarillion goes, it's my understanding that the film rights to it are not expected to be sold / licensed in the foreseeable future, and certainly not to Peter Jackson - it is said that Christopher Tolkien abhorred PJ's films. And The Silmarillion would take an enormous amount of work to be filmable anyway: almost all of the dialog would have to be invented (the book is written in a "legend / myth" style with very little dialog); much of the narrative is written as episodes instead of an actual story (the tale of Turin Turanbar is a good example); and it is quite compressed - as a movie, it would be 20+ hours easily. I dearly love The Silmarillion, but as a movie, I can't see it working. Maybe some visionary will come up with a workable proposal and convince JRRT's estate to go along, but said visionary will NOT be Peter Jackson.
