King! Kong!

[hnpcc]

We went and saw King Kong at the cinema yesterday. This was mostly because we got an engagement present of Gold Class tickets, which we suddenly realised were due to expire really soon. It was a choice between that or Harry Potter, which I'd already seen and which Dean had no interest in, so we went with Peter Jackson.

I have to say I enjoyed the film, despite the large numbers of lizards/creepy crawly things that could eat you that kept cropping up ad nauesum. Honestly, it's like PJ knew of my twin millipede/crocodile phobias and decided to make a movie just to freak me out. I have to say the overkill kind of.. well, killed it though. By about the 15th human-in-peril scenario I was starting to wonder why the hell they persisted. I'd have gone home ages ago.

Naomi Watts is fantastic, again. Adrien Brody was good, although I spent half the time he was onscreen thinking "oh yeah, Adrien Brody" and the other half thinking "God that's an odd nose on him." Jack Black is good. He should play corporate evil more often.

I've never seen the original or the remake, so I've no idea how faithful it is to the original. I did like the in joke near the start of the movie though - "How about Fay?" "No, she's doing a picture with RKO". Heh.

But yeah, it does require a few elements of suspension of disbelief and thought, particularly if you're of a practical mindset. How, exactly, does one get a 25ft gorilla back to New York on a tramp steamer[1]? And just how many crew does a tramp steamer normally carry? And I hope they cleared the traffic we can clearly see moving below the Empire State just before Kong falls off... OK, OK, I'm not thinking too hard about it.

The Art Deco feel to the titles is great as well, despite Dean pointing out that it was pretty much passe and into Art Nouveau at that stage. Too critical? Us?

One of the things that bemused us was the trailer for Memoirs of a Geisha. After watching it both of us turned to each other and went: was anyone in that actually Japanese? From the imdb entry, yes, there are a few Japanese in there somewhere, but the majority of the main cast are Chinese, with the odd Vietnamese name in there. Very odd. Surely they didn't think we wouldn't notice..?

Still. A good day out at the movies.

[1] Actually that took me back to watching Godzilla with AussieChris. Particularly the moment when the 9 storey monster hid in the 2 storey building and Chris turned to me and said - in a talking to very small child playing peekaboo voice - "Where did the monster go!" Now that? Was a great movie. OK, only because we were hanging shit on it the entire way through, but it kept us wildly entertained. Godzilla's an iguana? Seriously? And he swam to New York to get to the fish markets? Through the oceans full of... yeah, never mind.

Comments

Tsk.

[ang-grrr.livejournal.com]

Art Nouveau until approx. WWI, Art Deco from the twenties. I think after that it all got a bit surreal.

Re: Tsk.

[hnpcc]

I'm going to blame Dean, he's the one has some idea about this stuff!

[dalmeny]

Yeah, Zhang Ziyi. Tres Japanese.

[dalmeny]

Meant to say, I started reading the book at one point. It was of the hurl-across-the-room variety.

[hnpcc]

I understand that large numbers of Japanese had the same reaction. Heh.

[hnpcc]

It's kind of wierd seeing the trailer though: it just looks wrong. Yeah, the scenery is kind of Japanese based, but everything else...

[shnetti.livejournal.com]

I also saw Kong this week, and loved it.

(What is the point of going to the cinema if all you're going to do is talk all the way through the movie? The couple in front of Ant and me were the "worst type" -- the louder the movie got, the louder they talked to hear themselves over it. Ant and I always pick the optimum seats for both of us, so when we moved, I went forward and he went back. Good thing we don't need to hold hands in the movies!)

I have seen both the 1933 Kong (which I loved but hadn't seen for a while, so I also took the refresher course from the ABC last week) and the 1976 Kong (which I also liked, though the general consensus seems to be that it's crap).

Besides the in-joke about Fay making a picture for RKO, the dialogue from Jack's movie that they did on the ship and that Mr Movie Star changed for the "better" is straight from the 1933 Kong. Also the ape costumes on the tribal dancers in the Kong stage act in New York (and the music) are straight from the 1933 Kong. I also speculated to Ant that the comment about Jack's screenplay, "You're killing off the first mate?" -- "The first mate doesn't do anything" or some such was also a reference to the 1933 Kong -- the hero role in that picture wasn't a scriptwriter but the first mate of the ship.

Naomi is excellent. Adrien and Jack were both good. I was rapt to see Thomas Kretschmann (and he saved Adrien Brody again -- they were both in The Pianist together). Jamie Bell's dancing training did him a good turn. ;-) And I liked the character of the guy from Early Edition (though we couldn't for the life of us think where we knew him from).

All in all, one for the DVD collection.

[hnpcc]

What is the point of going to the cinema if all you're going to do is talk all the way through the movie?

Mostly I'd agree. Except for Godzilla. ;-)

Jamie Bell's dancing training did him a good turn.

That's who that was. And heh.

[hnpcc]

And I meant to ask: were you at Crown as well? Cos Dean swears he saw Ant, but I was too busy trying to interpret the signs to work out where Gold Class was to notice people...