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craigoxbrowHaving the day off due to covering yesterday and Saturday (after the Christmas party, fun fun fuuuuun) I naturally dashed off to the lunchtime-to-early-teatime screening of Peter Jackson's King Kong.
In point of fact, the "scream for your life!" scene featured prominently in the teaser wasn't actually in the film. Which is mildly odd.
"The classic film will always be the classic film. Ours is the remake of the classic film."
- Peter Jackson explaining how and why this film worked.
One notable departure is that the original Kong was treated ambivalently, but here Jackson was (like most kids) clearly on the big ape's side. I don't have a problem with that, of course, but it's an interesting change.
Strangely enough, the original Kong also had a much better entrance.
Naomi Watts carried the film, being funny, charming, wistful, sad, somewhat useful in a couple of the action scenes and finally heroic.
Jack Black as Carl Denham was a likeable scumbag who occasionally slipped into Jack Black -isms, mostly with his expressions.
Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll was sorta useful to have around.
Andy Serkis will probably get Empire and SFX Award acting nominations this time rather than being a clear favourite, since playing a gorilla in an actor-to-CG map is less impressive than playing a speaking near-human character with Dissociative Identity Disorder in one.
In almost three hours, I expected the introduction for Jamie Bell's character to pay off.
Bugs. Ewwww.
The music, which generally followed standard scoring procedure, dropping to the quiet and elegiac for the Pit made it seem all the more eerie.
The racially-integrated grey natives were a bit too much like the Uruk-Hai in their manner and how they were used.
It could have shaved off about ten minutes by not having that shaky pseudo slow motion, which is easily my least favourite of Jackson's stylistic tics. I personally could have lost the all-involved-tangled-in-vines action scene as well. Slow motion was also used to pump up the emotion at the end, which I think may have been over-egging it. We were already bummed enough.
In all, though, a good tragic time was had.
The Cameo was a great place to see it, too, with its deco stylings and gold curtains. No ads or trailers either.
In point of fact, the "scream for your life!" scene featured prominently in the teaser wasn't actually in the film. Which is mildly odd.
"The classic film will always be the classic film. Ours is the remake of the classic film."
- Peter Jackson explaining how and why this film worked.
One notable departure is that the original Kong was treated ambivalently, but here Jackson was (like most kids) clearly on the big ape's side. I don't have a problem with that, of course, but it's an interesting change.
Strangely enough, the original Kong also had a much better entrance.
Naomi Watts carried the film, being funny, charming, wistful, sad, somewhat useful in a couple of the action scenes and finally heroic.
Jack Black as Carl Denham was a likeable scumbag who occasionally slipped into Jack Black -isms, mostly with his expressions.
Adrien Brody as Jack Driscoll was sorta useful to have around.
Andy Serkis will probably get Empire and SFX Award acting nominations this time rather than being a clear favourite, since playing a gorilla in an actor-to-CG map is less impressive than playing a speaking near-human character with Dissociative Identity Disorder in one.
In almost three hours, I expected the introduction for Jamie Bell's character to pay off.
Bugs. Ewwww.
The music, which generally followed standard scoring procedure, dropping to the quiet and elegiac for the Pit made it seem all the more eerie.
The racially-integrated grey natives were a bit too much like the Uruk-Hai in their manner and how they were used.
It could have shaved off about ten minutes by not having that shaky pseudo slow motion, which is easily my least favourite of Jackson's stylistic tics. I personally could have lost the all-involved-tangled-in-vines action scene as well. Slow motion was also used to pump up the emotion at the end, which I think may have been over-egging it. We were already bummed enough.
In all, though, a good tragic time was had.
The Cameo was a great place to see it, too, with its deco stylings and gold curtains. No ads or trailers either.
