OT: Kong

Just got back from seeing it (yes, I'm a fanboy as only movies rival my passion for music). I can sum it up in one word: Wow. The whole jungle sequence is classic. I loved the original growing up, but this film gave me the same kind of feeling, if not even moreso. LOTR is a hard act to follow, but when he says this is the movie he was born to make, the movie that made him want to make films...well, I believe him. You could sense that this was a labor of love. Like somebody getting to record and produce his idol with an unlimited budget. I was hoping PJ would pull it off, and he did. Again, Wow.

Peace

I'm going to wait for the movie to come to free tv. I realize that modern day graphics can be pretty thrilling on the big screen, but I just can't get into that big monkey.

I did love LOTR though.

Great! I'll see it within the next week, probably....is it out already?

One thing, though - I saw an ad for it on TV, and the special effects looked really....digital. I was blown away by the realism of The Gollum in LOTR, but was less than enthralled by Kong in the ad. Does it look a lot better in the theatre?

I'm gonna wait for it to come on cable... and probably not then. It's 3 hours long. For me, 3 hours is the province of movies like 7 Samurai... if you ain't Kurasawa, keep it under two. The original was 105 minutes long. Jackson's is 187 minutes. Time enough to deal with Son of Kong and maybe Mighty Joe Young, as well.

I was talking with a buddy of mine who is also interested in animation/special FX and we agreed that -- at least as far as the trailers -- it didn't look so good to us. I thought some of the motion -- in the trailers -- looked awkward and artificial.

The same, one supposes, could be said of the original, but clearly THAT monkey, stop motion puppet from 3/4 of a century ago or not, had soul.

There've been a couple of movie remakes over the years that justified themselves, though I can't think of any that were as good as the originals. (Talking movies made from movies, not books, or other outside source materials.)

Full disclosure: I thought Jackson's first LotR was a very mixed bag, sometimes filled with charming animated sets (the Hobbit village... really, I want to retire there), but with problems mixing CG and the few natural backgrounds (crossing the mountains also looked liked they'd crossed into an entirely different movie wiht different production values and style)... and, while noting the difficulty of dealing with the source material, I have to say I found the pacing jarring, moving from plodding expository dialog to actions scenes that often became tiresome in their relentlessness.

I was intrigued when I heard Jackson was going to do Kong. Based on his statements, it seemed clear he loved the movie. But sometimes love, in itself, is not enough.

Kong: If it's worth doing, it's worth doing properly!!!! I hate when films that clearly need a longer time to do justice to the story are chopped down to friendly little chunks.

LotR: You must have been watching some sort of pre-production version?!?!

No {censored}.

Well, I thought the original Kong did very, very well in an hour and three quarters... it's always seemed like an epic to me on any screen I've seen it on. (And I have seen it on the big screen a few times as well as the small about a jillion times.)

The LotR I watched was from the DVD release. Don't get me wrong, as I noted, some of it really does look good. It just didn't work for me.

It should perhaps be noted that, at the height of the original "Hobbit-mania" I put down the first LotR book someplace in the middle and never picked it up again. Zelazny's Lord of Light was a lot more my speed...

So, you know, one size don't fit all... I certainly don't want to rain on anyone else's parade, though.

The video stores are FILLED with movies that sold a jillion tickets and DVDs that I can't stomach. I have something like 20 channels of "prime" pay-for movies (all JUST so I can get the tier with the "free" Turner Classic Movie channel!) and it's a RARE day -- make that fortnight -- when I find something on Showtime et al that I can stomach more than 10 minutes of. (That said, I caught about 10 minutes out of the middle of "Monster" last night and decided I was going to have to watch that one.)

YMMV... hell, everyone's mileage varies from mine.

Yeah... you know?

Hell, how about HBO does a Desperate Housewives or Sex in the City type show set in the Hobbit Village? Get some cute Hobbit girls in too-short tee shirts and stuff... I'd sign up.

Some movies are just meant to be seen on the big screen. This is one of them. The knock on the Hulk was that it looked like Roger Rabbit from the trailers, but in the movies it worked. For all the flaws of that movie (don't get me started), the Hulk itself was an impressive, living, breathing feat. Kong is extremely well done. I loved Gollum, but there are moments where you KNOW it's a digital character. Even in the all important close-ups, not once did it blatantly say "hey, look at this CG character!"

In the entire film, I can think of two shots where it's OBVIOUS that it's effects, but they go by so fast that most people won't notice them (kind of like the guys wearing sneakers in Gladiator). They did nothing, though, to dampen the mood. He did a knock out job.

As to the length...man, I was real hesitant when I found out it was three hours(!) long the other day. I've only seen a few movies that were that long in the theater (Peter was the architect of two of them), because it's something I just don't have the time for. Add to that the fact that while I had high expectations, I was braced to be disappointed. Not a good combo. The movie only felt like it was 2 hrs long because it flowed so wonderfully. They told a lot of story that moved right along.

As a side note: there's actually a hotel in New Zealand that's modelled after the Hobbit village (http://www.woodlynpark.co.nz/thehobbitmotel.html).

Peace

I thought that Rosy (the chick that Sam married) was quite agreeable. But one of the things I'd like about living in Hobbiton is that all that sort of "Desperate Housewives" style drama wouldn't exist. Hobbits have their own social order and stuff (similar but not exactly like early 20th century Britian) but when it all shakes out it'd definately be a life of simplicity and comfort.

Well, until those blasted orcs or evil dark lords pop up every 100 years or so...

3 hours is relative..

If you're dragged by your wife or girlfriend to a 3 hour chick-flick it can be an agony that feels like 3 months!

If it's a rollercoaster ride that has you glued to the screen and delivers everything from thrills to sadness, to laughter, to intense action, then we hardly notice.. For example most people don't even realize that HEAT was 3 hours long. Many great movies are like that. People come out of the movie surprized at how late it is..

For the record, in every review Ive read, the 'slow' portions of Kong are all in the 1st hour.

Agreed. But by the time you get into the into the thick of the action, the beginning seemed to go by quicker than you think. Way less painful than the setups of some long movies.

Peace

I happened to be programming my DVR just now, loading up a little Shakespeare, and thought I'd share a few movie times, here:

Julius Caesar (Brando, Mason, Gielgud) 121 minutes

Henry V (Sir Laurence Olivier) 137 min

Othello (Orson Welles) 93 minutes

Throne of Blood (Kurasawa's Macbeth retelling) 110 minutes

(I also got Forbiden Planet, a sci-fi retelling of The Tempest, which comes in at 99 minutes. And the musical spinoff of Taming of the Shrew, Kiss Me Kate 1t 110 minutes (it's all those dance numbers with Bob Fosse... worth the 'extra' 20 minutes... )

I dunno, I was taking you kind of seriously until you mentioned those two heaps of excrement. People seem to lose the critical faculty when dealing with tv shows alot methinks.

Originally posted by blue2blue I happened to be programming my DVR just now, loading up a little Shakespeare, and thought I'd share a few movie times, here: Julius Caesar (Brando, Mason, Gielgud) 121 minutes Henry V (Sir Laurence Olivier) 137 min Othello (Orson Welles) 93 minutes Throne of Blood (Kurasawa's Macbeth retelling) 110 minutes (I also got Forbiden Planet, a sci-fi retelling of The Tempest, which comes in at 99 minutes. And the musical spinoff of Taming of the Shrew, Kiss Me Kate 1t 110 minutes (it's all those dance numbers with Bob Fosse... worth the 'extra' 20 minutes... )

What you think of Tarkovsky? Me favourite director by a considerable distance.

Question: How many trips to the bathroom would an average middle age man make during a three hour movie?

Heh.

I've only seen oneor two Tarkovsky's and it was back in the 70s...

The Steamroller and the Violin, of course, which popped up at some shorts festivals. And Solaris, of course. It was a long, long time ago and my memory of the film is faint. And, of course, it was the shortened American release. (Like they had to shorten it to win over the Saturday night date crowd, huh? Geez.) Maybe it's time I should see the full 165 min. version...

Anyhow, of course, movies should be the length they should be. Sometimes that's longer, sometimes shorter. Sometimes the director and editor find the right length; sometimes they don't. Sometimes a creative team decides to tell a story in a way that, one supposes, demands greater length or extended story-telling devices.

And maybe I'll find that the new Kong acquits itself of its rather extraordinary length. But, see, I just don't think there's anything about the first film that needs fixing... so it's kind of like rewriting the Bible and having it come out twice as long... it just makes you wonder.

Originally posted by bbach Question: How many trips to the bathroom would an average middle age man make during a three hour movie?

Answer: 11

That is if your a complete idiot like me, and you happen to drink a tanker truck full of coffee because you were dumb enough to go to an 8am showing of the 1st Lord Of The Rings movie with a bunch of Tolkien freaks that you thought were kinda cool because they had there own "universe", but end up being just a bunch of latter day trekkie losers disguised by the millenium!!

Well... as long as we're on the subject of length and physical comfort, I should probably disclose that I have a hard time sitting in even the most comfortable seat for more than an hour or two because of the aftermath of injuries from a long ago motorcycle wreck.

As a consequence, I simply don't go to the theatre, where I, additionally, find the distractions from other patrons far outweigh the "big screen experience."

I lived in theatres when I was a kid and in my twenties; I actually flirted with filmmaking, making a 12 min. 16 mm short that my academic program used for recruiting for a few years. So, it's not like I don't know what I'm missing.

But I have a very solid, good resolution conventional TV, I only watch letterbox versions... and when I'm really watching I pull a chair up in front of the set so that the picture has a nice spread, about like watching from the center of the theatre.

But I still hate sitting on my ass much over 2 hours unless what I'm watching is pretty special. It's the comfort -- but it's also the time, too.

If a director wants to take up 3 hours of my time, he better have something pretty special to say and say it pretty well.

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.

My gripes are:

There are some humans in CG scenes that didn't come off as well as I would have liked. I think they pushed the envelope a little too far.

And also, there are some things that happen in the movie that no human could EVER hope to survive....and the humans survive. It took some of the realism out of it for me.

However, there is far too much to love about this movie to let those things get in the way.

You don't notice that the movie is 3 hours long. It doesn't feel short. It doesn't feel long. It just feels appropriate. Jackson knows how to let a film 'breathe'.

My biggest complaint:

Why.....why....why do people bring their little kids to see movies like this????!!!!

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.

Apart from that, you HAVE to see this movie. And yes, you HAVE to see it on the big screen.

Originally posted by Super 8 My gripes are: There are some humans in CG scenes that didn't come off as well as I would have liked. I think they pushed the envelope a little too far. And also, there are some things that happen in the movie that no human could EVER hope to survive....and the humans survive. It took some of the realism out of it for me. However, there is far too much to love about this movie to let those things get in the way. You don't notice that the movie is 3 hours long. It doesn't feel short. It doesn't feel long. It just feels appropriate. Jackson knows how to let a film 'breathe'. My biggest complaint: Why.....why....why do people bring their little kids to see movies like this????!!!! 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. Apart from that, you HAVE to see this movie. And yes, you HAVE to see it on the big screen.

OMG, I couldn't DREAM of taking one of my little neices or cousins to see this. They wouldn't sleep for days. I'm glad I went late, as I wouldn't be able to stand the crying.

And without ruining anything, since you saw it, you know exactly what I mean by the obvious scenes. The thing that saved the one particular escape was that an acceptable number of people didn't survive. It wasn't realistic, true, but I'm just glad I didn't give it the "oh, come on!"

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

LOL!!

Tarkovsky's student film Steamroller and Violin I've only seen clips of but I thought it looked excellent. Solaris has some great qualities but is my least favourite of his work, and also Tarkovsky's own least favourite. I highly recommend Andrei Rublev which is certainly long, but the longer the better when the work is as good as that. Can be pretty heavy I suppose but quite astounding stuff. Ingmar Bergman used to watch it every time on embarking on a new work. Ivan's Childhood is a great introduction to Tarkovsky ..maybe his least known piece but superb.

Not sure myself if I can psych myself up to see a 3 hour action extravaganza involving a very big ape. Enjoyed the LOTR stuff, but that might be my fill of blockbusters for a decade or two.

Dunno, I thought Heat felt like 3 days long. Admit I'm a bit on my own with that opinion.

Well maybe you just like more comedy in your movie mix, and in all fairness, there isn't much funny in a Michael Mann flick..it's all good.

For me, it was another case of me sitting there mesmerized by Deniro. Then when you add Pacino it certainly can't hurt!

Val Kilmer also delivered, and the supporting cast/charachter actors were very good as well, and most of those guys are now stars in there own right...hell, one of then even became the President of the United States. Another, became... Ashley Judd!

Originally posted by Super 8 My biggest complaint: Why.....why....why do people bring their little kids to see movies like this????!!!! 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. Apart from that, you HAVE to see this movie. And yes, you HAVE to see it on the big screen.

Grape Ape, nice reference! I'm glad I read this thread. I wasn't even considering seeing the movie but now I will. I'll also definitely go later at night when there will be fewer kids. Doesn't it seem that more parents are bringing little kids to all movies? Man, what happened to good parenting? A lot of parents have no problem bringing really little kids to the latest Batman or Jet Li movie.