Re: (TV) Totally OT: King Kong review for Jay

[Jay <piazzasanmarco@yahoo.com>]

good review ty

i note that other critics, maybe ones with ties to new
york, have marveled at the amazing way in which
jackson recreates depression era nyc

that is one of the main aspects of the film i am
looking forward to

i also note your lack of soul comment which has been
stated, albeit once or twice, by other critics

i of course reserve comment until after i see it

but i will note in passing that there are two movies
which affected me most from my childhood, both of
which were favorites of my father, sort of a monster
in his own right: King Kong and The Incredible
Shrinking Man.

By the way, the just released remastered version of
King Kong '33 is a wonder to behold

out.... 

--- Ty Burr <tyburr@mindspring.com> wrote:

> This is running in tmw's Globe; you asked for it,
> man.
> 
> King Kong
> 
> Directed by: Peter Jackson
> 
> Written by: Peter Jackson, Fran Walsh, and Philippa
> Boyens, based on a story
> by Merian C. Cooper and Edgar Wallace
> 
> Starring: Naomi Watts, Jack Black, Adrien Brody, and
> ... Kong
> 
> At: Boston Common, Fenway, suburbs
> 
> Running time: 187 minutes
> 
> Rated: PG-13 (frightening adventure violence,
> disturbing images)
> 
> Three stars
> 
> ***
> 
> By Ty Burr
> 
> Globe Staff
> 
> Peter Jackson's "King Kong" delivers all you could
> possibly want from a
> modern popcorn behemoth: state-of-the-art special
> effects, epic scope and
> running time, rampaging dinosaurs, things
> majestically going ka-boom. It's
> not so much a remake as it is a loving re-creation
> of the 1933 original on
> extra-strength steroids, with a side order of Botox.
> You've seen it all
> before but most assuredly never like this.
> 
> So why did I come away feeling something was
> missing?
> 
> "Kong" re-establishes Jackson as the king of
> Hollywood gigantism, and plenty
> of moviegoers will feel like they're getting their
> money's worth. After an
> overly drawn-out first hour, the film turns into an
> E-ticket ride of the
> first order, with scene after eye-popping scene in
> which the 24-foot ape
> takes on T. Rexes, elevated trains, biplanes, and
> Naomi Watts. There's a
> brontosaurus stampede almost as terrifying as rush
> hour on the Southeast
> Expressway, and a Times Square donnybrook that's a
> landmark in screen
> mayhem.
> 
> Andy Serkis -- the body under Gollum's digital skin
> in "The Lord of the
> Rings" -- gives Kong enough personality, enough
> soul, to make you believe
> he'd tumble for Watts's Ann Darrow, and the director
> works overtime to
> create a love story between the two that's
> substantially deeper than
> anything offered by the original or the misbegotten
> 1976 remake.
> 
> It's the movie itself that's curiously lacking in
> soul. Jackson is so
> devoted to piling modern CGI wonders on the bones of
> the 1933 classic that
> he forgets to have much fun. Whether by conscious
> choice or through the
> limitations of digital technology, the color scheme
> in "Kong" is one of
> dark, leaden grays. The film is an astonishing
> machine.
> 
> It's also quite nasty in places, in keeping with the
> original movie and with
> the director's beginnings in anarchic splatter
> films. A sequence
> storyboarded for the 1933 "Kong" but never filmed
> finally reaches the screen
> here: chasing Ann and Kong into the interior of
> Skull Island, the ship's
> crew tumbles down a ravine and is attacked by a
> variety of jumbo insects and
> beasties, including carnivorous sea slugs that
> gobble one man down in slimy
> gulps of peristalsis. This is bravura screen horror
> -- and definitely not
> for the kiddies.
> 
> Jackson wants to give us a primal experience.
> Scratch that -- he wants to
> pound us with primal experiences, but the 75 minutes
> leading up to the
> appearance of Kong feel padded and inert. The film
> establishes the Great
> Depression, Ann's desperate financial straits, her
> crush on rising young
> playwright Jack Driscoll (Adrien Brody), the panicky
> attempts of gonzo
> filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black) to hire an
> actress and set sail for the
> South Seas before his investors can have him
> arrested.
> 
> Once at sea, various crewmembers are introduced --
> Thomas Kretschmann as the
> captain of the tramp steamer, Jamie "Billy Elliot"
> Bell as the crazy cabin
> boy, Evan Parke as Token Black Guy -- and you have
> to wonder why, since
> they're probably all going to be dino kibble soon
> enough.
> 
> The 1933 film got all this over and done with in a
> matter of minutes, but
> never mind that. Finally we get to the island, and
> to Jackson's vision of
> the natives as an inbred horde of prehistoric
> savages; the emphasis isn't on
> ooga-booga political incorrectness but full-on
> zombie terror. (Anyway,
> there's enough sublimated racial dissonance later
> on, in the image of a
> beautiful blond in the grip of a dark, bestial
> stranger three stories tall.
> Jackson doesn't really go there, but you grad
> students can.)
> 
> Finally, Ann gets picked up by Kong -- hello,
> gorgeous -- and carried into
> the island's interior, and the movie's true marvels
> begin. The director bows
> low to the original film (I swear some of Kong's
> movements ape the skittery
> stop-motion of Willis O'Brien's groundbreaking work)
> while going for broke
> in key scenes. Kong fights off not one but three
> roaring Tyrannosauri, and
> not just on level ground but ensnared in vines while
> suspended over a
> crevasse.
> 
> Amazing stuff, and there's plenty more where that
> came from. Serkis's
> movements, filmed and then digitally "clothed" with
> fur, give the great ape
> a fluidity that can't be attained with puppetry or
> monkey-suits; this is
> easily the most believable Kong yet. The sequences
> in which he and Ann bond
> are remarkably good-natured -- who knew the big
> fella could laugh? -- and I
> for one could have happily spent the entire movie in
> their company.
> 
> But Manhattan calls and there are period cars to be
> stomped upon. The final
> New York sequences are exciting without being
> compelling; the sense of
> connecting the dots of the 1933 film with a heavier
> digital pen is
> unavoidable. Brody and Black are back on the scene;
> the former has little to
> do given the new rapport between girl and gorilla,
> and as amusing as Black
> is, he's too ironic a performer to approach the
> monomaniacal intensity of
> Robert Armstrong in the original.
> 
> It comes down to, as it must, Kong swatting the
> attacking planes atop the
> Empire State Building. This time, though, Ann is
> begging them to stop, and
> the film suddenly stumbles into a sense of tragic
> loss it isn't fully
> equipped to handle, even with an earlier scene of
> Kong chained and
> "crucified" in a Broadway theater. In the end, the
> film's key line of
> dialogue isn't "Twas beauty killed the beast," but a
> character's comment on
> Denham's "unfailing ability to destroy the thing he
> loves." Peter Jackson
> hasn't destroyed "Kong" -- I doubt that's possible
> -- but his love for
> hollow extravaganza proves to be larger than his
> love for a great big monkey
> or a great old movie.
> 
> ----- Original Message -----
> From: "Jay" <piazzasanmarco@yahoo.com>
> To: <tv@obbard.com>
> 
=== message truncated ===




 


































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