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OT: Kong

aliengroover

By aliengroover
in Sound, Stage, and Studio

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Dave Bryce Newbie

Dave Bryce

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The visual effects supervisor, Joe Letteri, is actually a really good friend of mine. Peter Jackson hired him to do Gollum (and a bunch of other stuff) for LOTR, and was so impressed with Joe's work that he put him in charge of the visuals for Kong.

The funny thing is that Joe used to work for ILM, but he quit after he and George Lucas got in a disagreement when they were working on Phantom Menace. I talked to Joe's wife last week after the premiere of Kong in NYC - George was actually sitting right next to her and Joe at the premiere - and, after the movie, George turned to Joe and said, "Congratulations - you've raised the bar".

I'm sure that must have made his day... :thu::cool:

I liked the film a lot, despite the fact that I thought it was a little overly sentimental here and there...

...and Super 8 - I couldn't agree with you more about the little kids. There was a little girl who couldn't have been more than five sitting right behind me - and her parents kept her there the whole movie. What the hell were they thinking? :rolleyes:

dB

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blue2blue Newbie

blue2blue

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On someone's recommendation, I looked up a longer-format trailer on the official movie website. Maybe it was the aggressive compression, but the trailer looked very impressionistic and "gauzy"...

Now, if anything, tech flaws were a bit more obvious than on TV -- but the overall impression was, indeed, impressionistic, and it made me feel that maybe the tech concerns were secondary, after all. Who cares if the monkey's arms get longer and shorter or bend in ways that arms don't... it's a fairy tale, after all. When I look at the original Kong, I don't see the technical problems -- I see how they transcended them. If the current remake gets the story right -- and obviously a lot of folks in this thread think it does -- then the tech considerations should take a backseat to the story.

The extended clips really did look considerably more intriguing than the 1/2 minute trailers I'd seen on the idiot box. I think I will have to see it at some point. (I saw the De Laurentis, too -- then, again, at that point I'd watch anything with Jessica Lange in it.)


Oh... and I caught up with that 90+ minute Othello by Orson Welles I had listed with all the other Shakespeare movies that came in well under 3 hours... it is a heck of a movie -- it looks amazing-- but I couldn't help but feel the first reel was rushed and could have used some expansion... if I recall correctly, I read a long time ago that Welles chopped out something like 40% of the original play dialog. Then, again, it's common to excise Shakespeare, even in 'serious' stage productions.


Back to Kong, though... sadly for everyone involved, it looks like it's going to tank big at the box office. And that's a giant-sized shame, no matter what.

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UstadKhanAli Newbie

UstadKhanAli

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Originally posted by Super 8

Wow. I thought this thread would generate more interest.


Are people just not interested in this movie?

 

 

I'm totally interested in this movie and can't wait to see it. But I haven't seen it, so don't have much comments. I think if anyone can do justice to this movie, it's Peter Jackson. And I'm glad that he's got the same guy doing the special effects since I think LOTR's Gollum was brilliant.

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felix Newbie

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Just saw it today. AMAZING! In a nutshell, not too long, really great not-run-of-the-mill action sequences, lots of variety (horror, action, comedy, romance, adventure), very intense at times (and very beautiful at other times), true to the classic-ness of the story and time period.

That said, not for little kids (my boys handled it ok, but I was a bit concerned for them at times - we'll see if we have any scaredy-cats at bedtime, or worse yet, nightmares). But they both said they liked the movie, and really liked Kong's character (yes, he's got character). And they were both understandably sad about the ending.

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Gus Lozada Newbie

Gus Lozada

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I'm just getting back from the theater. I absolutely loved it. It is a long movie but then, you have the advantage of it being like several movies in one! The whole jungle scenes were awesome, deserving all the time it took. I have absolutely no complains about the CG characters. I guess NARNIA and KONG have been the best I have seen lately.

I mean, it's only a movie. If movies are meant to be entertaining, exciting and emotive, this IS a movie. A good one.

No Kurasawa here, but a good entertaining film.

And yes... even when we all know how does it end, my girlfriend and I left the theater still with tears on our eyes. Excellent performance of the cute girl and the hairy big ape. :thu::thu:

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zekmoe Newbie

zekmoe

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Musicians are assholes. A 3 hr movie is too long, but a 3 hr concert was jammin!
Anyone who finds fault with LOTR is a hating critical anti fan boy. Kong flew by and 3 hrs is exactly the amount of time it took to tell it properly. The length of a movie is about as relevant as saying there are too many songs on a double album. It is what it is.

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UstadKhanAli Newbie

UstadKhanAli

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I enjoyed it. Good job all the way around.

The first hour before Kong appears seemed appropriate to me, and that was what I heard people complaining about before going to see the movie.

Now, I have absolutely nothing against 3 hour movies, but if I were going to trim any one scene to make the movie shorter, I probably would have trimmed one where they are attacked by creepy-crawlies at the bottom of the chasm. But we're talking a small thing here. The movie flew by.

The middle part of the movie felt very "Jurassic Park", and the movie was sufficiently varied.

Although the ending is still quite tragic I don't remember Naomi Watts' character trying to get Kong to hold her up to stop the planes from shooting at Kong nearly so much as Fay Wray's character did. Am I mistaken here?

All in all, very very enjoyable.

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myshkin Newbie

myshkin

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Originally posted by zekmoe

Musicians are assholes. A 3 hr movie is too long, but a 3 hr concert was jammin!

Anyone who finds fault with LOTR is a hating critical anti fan boy. Kong flew by and 3 hrs is exactly the amount of time it took to tell it properly. The length of a movie is about as relevant as saying there are too many songs on a double album. It is what it is.

 

 

Are you an ass-hole? Being on a musician board I'll presume you are. Either that or you like conversing with assholes and go out of your way to find them.

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joegrant413 Newbie

joegrant413

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Originally posted by Super 8



Must just be the ad. This Kong is photo-realistic. Absolutely amazing.


And this IS a movie you need to see on the big screen. Peter Jackson did fantastic job on this film.


And Jack Black's character is really cool too. I hope Jackson donates the proceeds to his wife and kids.
;)

.......

Why.....why....why do people bring their little kids to see movies like this????!!!!
:freak:
Did they think this was going to be Grape Ape???

There were kids there 5 and younger.


This movie will scare the hell out of little kids. Keep them at home.

....




Thanks for posting this. I plan to see the movie, but my neighbors want to take my 11 year-old and 8 year-old to see Kong. So far, I've said 'no' because I've heard it can be grisly and intense in a few places.

-- Joe

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blue2blue Newbie

blue2blue

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Originally posted by zekmoe

Musicians are assholes. A 3 hr movie is too long, but a 3 hr concert was jammin!

Anyone who finds fault with LOTR is a hating critical anti fan boy. Kong flew by and 3 hrs is exactly the amount of time it took to tell it properly. The length of a movie is about as relevant as saying there are too many songs on a double album. It is what it is.

 

 

Hey... I'm not telling you that you can't like it (LOTR). I found it tedious. You loved it. And a lot of folks did love it, obviously. Big world. Room for everyone.

 

Right?

 

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where02190 Newbie

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Personally I love the big screen experience, but I am almost always sadly dissapointed, since, being a humhead, not only do I want the visual, but I want the audio that accompanies it. Unfortunately, except for the very few times I've managed to get to see a movie shortly after the theater has been calibrated, johnny snot nozed plress play just can't seem to keep his or her hands away from controls that they shouldn't even have access to. If I had a nickel for every movie I saw that had no or little surround, blown or no subs, etc, well lets just say I'd have alot of nickels.

Not one for holding back, I've given up on complaints to the management, as they can't tell the difference if the full system is working or not.

What I have resorted to is e-mailing complaints directly to the theatre management company, which has on a few occasions resulted in letters or e-mails of apologies, sometimes even with some comp tix.

While the special visual efx are kewl, without the associated audio to give me the full experience, it's not at all wowing to me.

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myshkin Newbie

myshkin

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Originally posted by blue2blue



Hey... I'm not telling you that
you
can't like it (LOTR). I found it tedious. You loved it. And a
lot
of folks did love it, obviously. Big world. Room for everyone.


Right?

 

 

No no. You must be an ass-hole by definition not to like this film I think is the point.

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devast8r Newbie

devast8r

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Wow, will you guys quit hand-jobbing Peter Jackson or what? This movie wasn't -that- great. In my opinion, it would have been much better if it were much shorter.

I thought it was dragging even in some of the action sequences. I will admit that the action scenes "raised the bar" in a way not done since the original Matrix, but they were just too damn long! In the jungle scene, by the time they got to the insects I was thinking "Enough already! Move on with the story!"

The movie was good as it is, but I have a feeling that Peter Jackson was surrounded by too many handjobbers, and not enough people to tell him when he was going over the top.

Also, I really hate Jackson's use of slow motion and his weird blurry let's jump around with the camera techniques. They reek of old cliched horror movies. In LOTR, I swear if there was one more second of slow-mo close-up of Frodo, I would have puked.

Don't get me wrong, I love PJ's LOTR and Kong, too, but they do have their flaws.

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