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[personal profile] randy_byers
The first Peter Jackson film I saw was The Fellowship of the Rings, and I really liked it. It wasn't my favorite movie of the year (I liked both Moulin Rouge and Amelie better), but I saw it more times in the theater than any other movie just for the eye candy. I thought Jackson had done a wonderful job of capturing the look of Middle Earth. However, I pretty much hated the next two LOTR movies. They just seemed like big dumb (really dumb) loud war movies with lots of swoopy camera and silly slo-mo and painfully broad strokes and Elijah Wood looking constipated. I can't think of a worse scene in modern cinema than the one in The Return of the King where Denethor sends Faramir off to die in slo-mo while Denethor pulps cherry tomatos in his nasty teeth and Pippin sings a Celtic New Age song. WTF? Fortunately, there was Pirates of the Carribean and Johnny Depp in mascara to keep me entertained in the theater that year.

So you could say that I wasn't amongst those salivating when Jackson announced that he was remaking King Kong, but I figured that it might be fun to see a state of the art CGI Skull Island and inhabitants. If I kept my expectations low, I could probably enjoy it as a big dumb spectacle. But as I've read through a series of reviews of the movie, most of them more or less glowing and/or ecstatic, I find myself losing all interest. It sounds too much like the last two LOTR movies, except with even more monsters and noise and big, grand, sweeping, meaningful gestures, plus gorillas in the sunset. It seems as though watching it will be like drowning in big loud treacly pudding. It seems as though there is a huge machine trying to suck me into the theater to endure it so that I can Be With It. It fills me with Lovecraftian dread and loathing.

So now I'm not sure I'm even going to bother. I'd like to see a bigscreen winter spectacle, but none of the CGI fantasies -- Potter, Narnia, Kong -- are appealing to me. (I'll likely see Narnia anyway, if Denys is interested.) So I hope the spectacle of Heath Ledger and Jake Gyllenhaal having anal sex on the range ends up being entertaining, but I'm not sure I can cope with a tragic love story at the moment. So what else is there to look forward to?

Date: 2005-12-15 05:15 pm (UTC)
ext_28681: (Default)
From: [identity profile] akirlu.livejournal.com
Syriana

'Course, at least one of the critics who really liked it thought King Kong was one of the best films of the year, but he's someone I can usually trust so I guess I may be taking your seat at the latter. I sure hadn't previously had any interest in seeing Yet Another King Kong Remake.

Date: 2005-12-16 02:44 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Loads of critics think that PJ's King Kong is one of the best films of the year, and it may well be true. My allergies are my own.

I haven't been able to work up much enthusiasm for Syriana, because all the reviews seem to talk about its politics rather than its cinematic or story-telling virtues. I also have problems with George Clooney as an actor, although I have a lot of respect for him as a producer.

Guess I should just stay home and watch old black and white movies. Lord knows I have a stack of them sitting here waiting to be viewed.

Date: 2005-12-16 07:31 pm (UTC)
ext_28681: (Default)
From: [identity profile] akirlu.livejournal.com
Oh, right. Your Clooney twitch is one I keep forgetting because I can't fathom it. I think he's marvelous, especially when paired with the Coen Bros. -- it's pretty clear to me that he doesn't take himself all that seriously, relative to the material, and that's a quality I always appreciate in an actor.

On the subject of reviewing Syriana, Roger Ebert makes an interesting meta-observation:

"Syriana" is exciting, fascinating, absorbing, diabolical and really quite brilliant, but I'm afraid it inspires reviews that are not helpful. The more you describe it, the more you miss the point. It is not a linear progression from problem to solution. It is all problem. The audience enjoys the process, not the progress. We're like athletes who get so wrapped up in the game we forget about the score.


In fact, his whole subsquent discussion of "hyperlink movies" is pretty interesting and may tell you a bit more about the story-telling style, so by all means go read the whole thing. We saw it last night and I may yet see it again, once I've had a chance to digest a bit. Now I'll know what scene to be out of the room for.

Date: 2005-12-16 10:38 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Fun review, thanks! Syriana still sounds too serious and worthy for my current wintery mood, but I like the concept of hyperlink movies. Without having seen it, sounds like Slacker fits the bill as well.

Date: 2005-12-15 11:43 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] stevegreen.livejournal.com
First Jackson film I saw was Bad Taste, oodles of years ago. From what I've seen, I'll tune in to the remake, soon as I've watched the remastered original.

Date: 2005-12-16 12:04 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I'm still interested in seeing Heavenly Creatures, but I think I'll pass on Jackson's early splatter films.

The original King Kong is one of my favoritest movies, and the new Region 1 DVD is very nice, although not quite as nice as the print I saw in the theater a year or two ago, which was so clear that you could see Fay Wray go spung in the scene where Ann Darrow practices her scream for Denham. I also like all the restored footage of people getting stomped and chomped.

Date: 2005-12-16 10:54 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] reverendjim.livejournal.com
I can't say I've been exactly looking forward to it either, and I don't think it's entirely due to the mental scarring I got from watching the last remake in the cinema when I was young. I'm just not entirely sure it's needed. Then I discovered it's three hours long, which seems totally unneccessary. Though from early reports, "It could have done with being an hour shorter", seems a distinct view.

Nevertheless, I'll probably give it a go sometime.

Date: 2005-12-16 04:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
I actually kind of think I saw the 1976 remake before I'd seen the original, so it probably scarred me less than it has some friends of mine (well, Craig Smith at least). It did, however, bore me. I should probably watch it again sometime just to see if it's as bad as all that. I like Jeff Bridges now, so maybe it will be amusing.

The length of the PJ version is definitely one of the things putting me off. One thing about watching lots of old Hollywood movies is that you come to realize just how much you can fit into a trim 90 minutes.

Date: 2005-12-16 08:31 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] reverendjim.livejournal.com
I think part of my trouble with the '76 version is that I'd believed the hype. I wanted to see a fully animatronic Kong astride the World Trade Centre's towers rather than a bloke in a monkey suit standing on the top of one of them. I had obviously yet to be wary of any film with the name de Laurentiis attached to it.

Dull, but not as bad as Day of the Dolphin.

Date: 2005-12-17 03:33 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] numbat.livejournal.com
As somebody who averages about one trip to the cinema per year I think it unlikely I'll see Kong either. I saw the trailer the other week when I was there for the latest Harry Potter movie and that certainly looked action packed. However my rule of thumb states that any movie can be made to look interesting when edited down to the length of a trailer. Much safer to assume the full length film is boring, and at three hours that seems a gimme, and avoid.

Date: 2005-12-17 07:02 pm (UTC)
From: [identity profile] randy-byers.livejournal.com
Ah, so you're the reason the theaters are going out of business!

I'd ask what you thought of the Potter movie, but perhaps it would better for you to post any review-like thingy to your own LJ, so that all your Friends can benefit. Then again, they've all probably seen it already anyway.

Date: 2005-12-18 03:09 am (UTC)
From: [identity profile] numbat.livejournal.com
I expect the theatres have had a resurgence this year as I've been to see Hitchhiker's Guide and Madagasca this year as well as the Potter flick. A bumper year for me as you can see.

Can't see myself posting about the latest Potter since I don't have that much to say and none of it startlingly original. I enjoyed it, indeed I thought it better than the book, which was the first in the series to be bloated. The film left out a good deal of page filler (most of the sub-plot involving the newspaper reporter for example) and was the better for it. None-the-less there came a point where I began to hope the movie would end soon. I prefer movies to be no more than 90 minutes long so the present trend towards endlessness doesn't suit me at all. Due to not having seen the third movie and the second only once some years ago, it really struck me how much older the teenagers were and how much they had changed. I'd watched the first on tv not long before going to see this one so the difference especially fascinated me. Can't see how they can now make the fifth movie without straying into Beverly Hills 90210 territory. Also, is it just me or does Dumbledore have the makings of a serious addition? He was constantly putting wand to neck and extracting memories or something, which struck me as looking like heroin injection in reverse. Subversive imagery if you ask me.

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