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meet the new king
Dec. 20th, 2005 06:17 pm.
I saw KING KONG today. Pretty enjoyable, though I did look at my watch a couple of times. I visited the Gents' convenience just before the show and was able to stay in my seat the whole time, though I squirmed quite a bit due to the fact that about 60% of the movie is spent in some vertigo-inducing spot or other, if not actually plunging toward the ground below. I was disgruntled by the credits -- you wait five minutes for the actors names, and then they put them in multiple columns and they're gone before you can finish uttering a heartfelt profanity for the inconsideration of the filmmakers. After that I stayed through all the crew names (there's somebody named Kong in the publicity staff -- I'll bet she got a ribbing or two) and was pleased to see that they mentioned the names of the principals of the original Kong. There was also a shout-out to Fay early on (doing some picture for RKO), and they used a half dozen or so bits of the original Max Steiner score too.
Jack Black anchors the picture as Carl Denham. He got me to laugh out loud early on with his "you can trust me -- I'm a Motion Picture Producer!" speech. He was more interesting than Kong, which is not faint praise. The ape was a good actor, and as solid as anybody else on the screen. The extras were all well cast and looked great. I wanted to know more about the conductor of the pit orchestra at the NYC show, for instance, and he was only onscreen for a few seconds. Through the miracle of computer graphics and human imagination, they made me believe there's such a place as 1933 New York City. I was having a great time just looking at the signs on Times Square. The opening establishing shots in NYC were worth their own movie, I thought.
Andy Serkis, I found out when the credits whizzed by, played two parts. I'm probably the last one to know that he was the squinty cook. Then I went and looked at an interview. Q: Why squinty? A: Years of cooking with a cigarette in his mouth. I love it.
All in all, it was three hours of fun, with perhaps a slight overkill of terror. I guess without the constant vertigo, it wouldn't have been the same movie, but as soon as I saw there was a ladder up the side of the Empire State Building, I was going "no, no, no..."
.
I saw KING KONG today. Pretty enjoyable, though I did look at my watch a couple of times. I visited the Gents' convenience just before the show and was able to stay in my seat the whole time, though I squirmed quite a bit due to the fact that about 60% of the movie is spent in some vertigo-inducing spot or other, if not actually plunging toward the ground below. I was disgruntled by the credits -- you wait five minutes for the actors names, and then they put them in multiple columns and they're gone before you can finish uttering a heartfelt profanity for the inconsideration of the filmmakers. After that I stayed through all the crew names (there's somebody named Kong in the publicity staff -- I'll bet she got a ribbing or two) and was pleased to see that they mentioned the names of the principals of the original Kong. There was also a shout-out to Fay early on (doing some picture for RKO), and they used a half dozen or so bits of the original Max Steiner score too.
Jack Black anchors the picture as Carl Denham. He got me to laugh out loud early on with his "you can trust me -- I'm a Motion Picture Producer!" speech. He was more interesting than Kong, which is not faint praise. The ape was a good actor, and as solid as anybody else on the screen. The extras were all well cast and looked great. I wanted to know more about the conductor of the pit orchestra at the NYC show, for instance, and he was only onscreen for a few seconds. Through the miracle of computer graphics and human imagination, they made me believe there's such a place as 1933 New York City. I was having a great time just looking at the signs on Times Square. The opening establishing shots in NYC were worth their own movie, I thought.
Andy Serkis, I found out when the credits whizzed by, played two parts. I'm probably the last one to know that he was the squinty cook. Then I went and looked at an interview. Q: Why squinty? A: Years of cooking with a cigarette in his mouth. I love it.
All in all, it was three hours of fun, with perhaps a slight overkill of terror. I guess without the constant vertigo, it wouldn't have been the same movie, but as soon as I saw there was a ladder up the side of the Empire State Building, I was going "no, no, no..."
.
