I dunno if Heavenly Creatures is the last good movie Peter Jackson has made, but it’s probably the best film he’s ever made. It’s a pity it is so little seen; perhaps some of the complaintants here who are inveighing against Jackson’s characterization and writing would better enjoy that film.
Besides, it was Kate Winslet’s first film role and the won that garnered her attention, so that’s not a bad thing by any stretch.
Stranger
Agreed. I remember the fuss made because The Last Samurai had scenes shot in the Taranaki. Big whoop. And we still haven’t seen the last of the skiting over The Piano, or that Tem Morrison was in the last Star Wars flicks. The TV3 blanket coverage of the Wellington “premiėre” of Kong was embarrassing.
Haven’t seen Kong yet, and will wait until I can get in on a discounted day so I don’t pay the full $15 for it – but I’ll see it for the special effects and the fantasy, not because it’s specifically a Peter Jackson movie. Same with Narnia.
Just don’t go in thinking it’s the “feel-good movie of the year”. It’s certainly a good movie; but very disturbing (as was the real-life story that it’s based upon).
Ah, come on…Mother just “had an accident” and slipped on the path. 
Best quote:
“I’M going to The Fourth World… it’s sort of like heaven. Only better, because there aren’t any Christians!”
Stranger
In order to enjoy opera one must be willing to suspend disbelief. C’mon, face it - opera has some really great music set against some really, really dumb plots. If you think of it that way, one can enjoy some really stupid movies despite their ridiculousness.
Face/Off is, IMHO, the absolute best opera movie ever. In order to enjoy the movie, one must accept the fact that you can take John Travolta’s face and slap it on the head of Nicholas Cage (and vice versa). If you can see past this utterly preposterous plot device, Face/Off is an excellent little cop thriller/drama.
One treads a much smaller line when viewing The English Patient. One side sees the hero as a treasonous villain; the other as a romatic and tragic figure. There is, of course, a third side, which views the story as boring and cliched tripe, but as I’m confining my discussion to opera movies I’m going to relegate those dissenters to the curb for a drink and a smoke, and we’ll get back together on Hotel Rwanda. Either of the two real sides must toss out different bits of logic or sentimentality to get to the heart of the movie.
King Kong has all of the spectacular displays of Verdi’s original production of Aida. You get the love, you get the massive animals. You get the battle scenes - and spectacular battle scenes they are! Perhaps the best CGI battle scenes to date, even if they did recycle Jurassaic Park to pull it off. Except for the bug scenes, which made me twitch.
It was technologically spectacular, but it failed my opera test. While I could perfectly comprehend the Travolta/Cage face switch I simply could not believe that a blonde from NYC with a bad Brooklyn accent could care for a (presumably extraordinarlly smelly) 25 foot tall creature that spent the first part of their relationship alternating between trying to eat her and offing her with his breath. I cannot believe that this thing was attracted to a human the size of his thumb. I cannot believe that a bit of vaudveillian pratfall would win over a creature who could not comprehend either vaudville or pratfall.
I spent a lot of time trying to draw analogies that would allow me to break into opera mode. “It doesn’t matter what we look like! We’re all the same…well, we’re not, because those people with dark skin tried to kill the white people, but the APES! The APES are ok!” “Well, ok, most people with dark skin suck - they want us dead! But the APE, the ORIGIN OF OUR SPECIES! He’s ok! Exception that proves the rule!” “Beauty killed the beast…so watch out for women, because they’re all plotting to use and abuse us men, who are so much superior…” “Oh, fine, oKAY! The CHINESE are all right, even if they do have stereotypically horrid accents, because the one-eyed cook liked the Chinese guy, so not ALL non-white people are bad. right? RIGHT?!?”
And on a much more venal note…I got tired of seeing buckteeth. Every time Naomi tried the love/adore act, all I saw in her half-open mouth was her two front teeth, and ditto Jack Black at the denouement. Kyle Chandler may have been a wimp, but at least he kept his mouth shut and looked noble while running away.
So, what, my final judgement? 10 on looks; 2 on brains, and that’s only because it was occasionally funny.
Hey, I haven’t seen it yet, and I agree about suspension of disbelief being requisite for any fantasy but what seperates the mediocre fantasy work fro the great is its internal consistency: the rules can be whatever you make them up to be but they need to stay the same rules within that world or suspension of disbelief becomes well nigh impossible.
If Kong fails that test then I will be disappointed, no matter how pretty it is … unless it is real funny.
Wow. That OP got more traffic than anything I ever said while I was a mod.
Thanks for all your thoughtful comments, that was fun.
Btw, many of you are full of shit.
You do realize that for some of us (read: me) that’s a large part of her appeal?
You answered your own question. Because it’s a movie about anticipation, and suspense, and excitement, and humor, and character, that’s why.
But your question is ludicrous because you’ve taken it to a ridiculous extreme. I could just as easily turn it around and say, “If you’re going to throw up your hands at the idea that a woman could be carried and swung around with such force and not be killed by her injuries, why accept ANYTHING in the movie? Why accept a 24-foot tall ape or an island where dinosaurs still live in the 20th century? Why don’t you just become as embittered and simplistic as Nickrz and go on a rant about how the whole thing is a pile of shit?” That’s a stupid question, too, because the answer is obvious: you didn’t dismiss the whole movie because you were successful to some degree at recognizing the elements of the movie that are important.
Close, but no. The fantasy works because the characters are forced to consider a 24 foot ape in THEIR physical world. The fact that people seem to be missing is that every single movie you go see is a fantasy. The level to which the world is different from our own varies from movie to movie, but as soon as you start making edits, composing shots, and creating characters and plotlines, you are creating a different world.
And instead of comparing the world on the screen with our world and patting themselves on the back for pointing out the consistencies that the filmmakers were too stupid or “fat with CGI effects” to fix, people should make an effort to realize what are the important differences between the world of the movie and the real world.
And in the world of King Kong, G forces and ballistics just aren’t important.
I have not kept thoroughly up with this thread, so I apologize if this has already been pointed out.
Jackson’s “bravest edit ever” (did he really call it that?) is one of his tributes to the original film. In KK33, we get exactly the same edit: Kong collapses on the beach, overcome by “gas bombs,” cut to theater marquee, “Kong! The Eighth Wonder of the World!”
On second thought, if Jackson DID call it the bravest edit ever, he was clearly referring to Cooper’s original.
I think to have overexplained at that point might have seemed, to Jackson, like he would have been criticizing Cooper, rather than celebrating him. Having recently rewatched KK33, I got a big kick out of the edit; I was like “Yesss!” Not actually out loud though.
Aye, that’s a big part of the spirit of the thing. People complain about the 2005 Ann being unharmed after being banged around for hours and hours by Kong, without respecting that the 1933 Ann was, too. That’s just the way it is.
Hell, during the 1933 Kong vs. Dino fight, Fay Wray’s “Ann” was perched on top of a 30’ tree when it got knocked over in the scuffle and landed on top of her, pinning her lower body to the ground. When Kong dispatched the T-Rex and came back for her, he simply lifted the log (with something like a five-foot diameter) off of her and made off with her again – that is, after accidentally dropping her a good ten feet or so, for good measure. Not a bruise – not a scratch – and certainly not jellied bones a life spent shitting into a bag, if she managed to survive at all, which is what you have a right to expect in the real world.
That doesn’t prevent Cooper’s King Kong from being one of the best movies of all time, though. If you’re going to respect King Kong when you reapproach it, you’re not going to try to make it over into a piece of neorealism – to do so would be to utterly miss the point.
Sorry to harsh on your fetish, hon, but I spent a good part of the movie wishing someone had offered her some nose drops so she could finally close her mouth.
It’s not just you; while I wouldn’t say that Naomi Watts’ teeth are the defining factor for me, I do find her smile to have a certain endearing quality that might well be lessened by a set of cosmetically idealized nibblers. If Naomi Watts has ‘buck teeth,’ then by Gadfrey, the buck stops here! Come to me, my precious *femme * squirrel fatale…
Ahem. Anyway… just got back from my fourth viewing, and I’m surprised to find that the brontosaur stampede is starting to grow on me a little. It’s an exercise in sheer cinematic exuberance that unfortunately stands out as significantly more implausible than the initial “giant ape meets city girl on dinosaur island” premise we’re otherwise required to accept. Streamlined a bit, I think it would have been much more effective, but as it stands it’s trying to grab our attention from too many directions at once. If we’re supposed to be terrified on behalf of the crew, then the cartoonish physics and comic relief bits seriously undercut the sense of awe. It’s a riotously enthusiastic scene that ultimately collapses in a pileup of overkill, much the same way as the dinos themselves do. And then there’s Wilhelm in the middle of it, just to make sure we don’t get too emotionally involved on any level. I can no longer endorse any scene that has Wilhelm in it.
Additionally, I noticed that the brontosaur sequence starts out with Denham exhorting Baxter to get into shot with the animals, because “otherwise people will think they’re fake.” Since the movie is as much about moviemaking as it is about people making a movie, I wonder if this whole sequence wasn’t Peter Jackson’s attempt to mark the closing of the era that the original King Kong ushered in, that of awe-inspiring special effects. Ever since the birth of the motion picture industry, one of its most extraordinary features has been the ability to create the illusion of nonexistent fantasy worlds and impossible events. From what I’ve read, that’s why the original movie inspired Jackson himself to become a filmmaker.
But now we’re at a point where the technology is becoming so commonplace and refined that there’s really nothing that can’t be filmed convincingly anymore. You want armies of thousands? No problem. Fire-breathing dragons? What color and how many? You say you want your main character to dodge out of the way at the last second as the city of New York is destroyed by a giant meteor? Just step over here in front of this green screen.
Very soon special effects will be viewed in the same manner as a film’s color and sound-- people will expect perfect realism as a matter of course, and any deviation from that will be either an intentional directing choice or unforgivably sloppy filmmaking. Jackson must be only too aware of this, and I wonder if this ridiculously excessive sequence was his way of marking its passing, by creating a dinosaur scene to end all dinosaur scenes.
If he ever directs another scene featuring people escaping stampeding dinosaurs, I guess I’ll know I was wrong about that.
I also suddenly realized this time around that the movie displays a remarkable degree of versimilitude in its depiction of primate social interaction. I have no idea how much was intentional on the part of the filmmakers, but it does go a long way toward explaining why Kong behaves the way he does, at least initially. If you find yourself face to face with a silverback gorilla, take note; staring directly at it and screaming is probably the most efficient way to get yourself killed. Ann only really wins Kong over when she stops gawping at him and instead behaves non-threateningly-- throwing herself submissively to the ground, engaging his curiosity obliquely, looking sidelong at him instead of meeting his gaze challengingly. And then at the end of her little vaudeville routine, when she does finally assert herself, he goes into a typical dominance display in turn. When that backfires on him, he won’t meet her gaze anymore, because he has discovered that he can’t intimidate her. So he retreats instead, utterly baffled that someone else has at last responded intelligibly after all his long years of isolation.
I have to say that the scenes of Ann interacting with Kong on Skull Island were some of my favorite in the film, for the reasons you mention.
“I find the ass in compound with the major part of your syllables.”
Stranger
Merian C. Cooper said that it was always important to him to put human figures in the shot with the stop-motion sequences, even if it wasn’t strictly necessary to the action. Sometimes this was hugely risky – composites were often done in camera, and if you screwed it up you’d lose hours of animation hours. Willis O’Brian developed more complicated methods of getting people into the shot, such as previously-shot footage of people physically projected in miniature on the modelling table, with heavy blowers keeping the film from going up in smoke as it stayed on one frame while the animator adjusted the models. And of course there was good use of rear-projected animation sequences with the actors reacting or interacting in the foreground. (The first rear-projection shot ever done at RKO was Fay Wray up in the tree reacting to the Kong vs. Dino fight.)
If you watch the original Kong, you’ll notice that there are very few instances of effects sequences that don’t include live-action humans for reference – and they’re often total throw-aways – Kong climbs up an apartment block, and there are people visible in the windows, via mini-projection. If they weren’t there to lend some realism, it would be much easier to see a foot-and-a-half tall gorilla climbing up a dollhouse.
So that line is a bit of a wink to the audience about something very specific about Cooper and O’Brian’s pioneering in this area.
I think there are a couple of cuts in the bronto chase that may be deliberately a little fakey, though. There are several shots where the running actors are very clearly running on treadmills, which creates a very noticible “unreal” feeling. The running movement isn’t natural, and you really lose the feeling of the actor being in the environment. If you want to make a shot like that look as real as possible, the done thing now is to have the actor run through a greenscreened stage with reference markers to tie it to your virtual set – you’ll even use a computer-controlled camera that can be matched to the virtual camera from the rendered 3D scene, so when it’s all composited together everything seems very genuine.
During the bronto chase, though, there are several conspicuous shots where actors are filmed running in place, with a totally static camera, and then composited in to a CGI dolly shot of the dinos. This looks really weird because the actors are “running” yet remaining perfectly still relative to the camera. Often their feet are out of frame, so there’s absolutely no point of contact between them and all of the hectic action around them.
This is a very crude way to approach the shot – so crude that it creates the same disconnected feeling that you get from the 1933 Kong, when actors are filmed walking or running in place in front of rear-projection screens that supply most of the movement and action of the shot.
Different strokes for different folks, I guess.
I saw Jackson’s version and was absolutely enthralled by it. Tonight, SWMBO and I watched the 1933 version.
Both are masterpieces in their own right. Jackson took the original, made some minor mods to it, plugged some holes in the back story and improved the reason why the ape was so enthralled by the girl. It did not detract from the original in the slightest.
He’s gonna get some Oscars for this, and they will be well-deserved.
That’s an interesting theory. I also noticed that, when Kong first appears, he has that sort of stuttery stop-motion look to him. I think it gradually faded as the movie went forward, though. I figured it was an homage to the primitive special effects of the original film. Although I didn’t notice anything wrong with the bronto chase (heck, I thought it was an awesome sequence. I’m surprised at how badly received it was) it’s interesting that someone else noticed another bit of apparently deliberate retro-fakiness in the special effects.
“He’s gonna get some Oscars for this.” Gods, I hope not. It’s a good movie, sure, but it’s not a great movie. I’m not even certain I should have paid full price for it!
While sometimes the CGI was stunning, at other times it was clunky. There were too many times that I noticed the CGI, which (IMHO) audiences should never be aware of. Too many times that it was too obvious that the actors were standing in front of a screen. I’m with whoever said, “just because you can use CGI, doesn’t mean you should.”
It was too long, by far. 45 minutes could have been cut with ease, without losing the story. The action sequences could have easily been trimmed, we could have lost some exposition, and a few of the soulful gazes could have been eliminated entirely.
Ultimately, I was taken out of the story too many times, whether from rolling my eyes, boredom, or disinterest.
Went, saw, thoroughly enjoyed.
