This is the sort of thing that makes the Dope the best place on the internet.
Please, Uncle Will, keep going! Tell us about the bloody parts!
re: discovering actresses on the streets:
Not to mention the luminous Rosario Dawson. sigh
I’m really looking forward to Kong. The burning question is: can Naomi scream like Fay?
DVD review:
http://www.thedigitalbits.com/reviews3/spinsheet111505.html#kin
Brian
The sacrifice scene is so unsexy from the photos I’ve seen… compared to those in which Jessica Lange was oozing sexual apeal… its outright boring.
Dude, it’s a movie about a seven-storey-tall monkey that fights dinosaurs.
I’m looking forward to it. I think they’ve taken on the project with the right attitude.
Posted by Diogenes:
Not to nitpick – I just want to assure anyone who hasn’t seen the trailer that it’s not a helicopter, but a biplane. I was really glad that Jackson set the story in the 1930’s.
Posted by N9IWP:
Apparently it’s now unlost! At least, I read that the new DVD release includes that formerly lost scene. Yea! (I think my beautiful girlfriend is getting me the DVD as a “get well” present while I’m laid up in a leg brace.)
Personally, I think it’s gonna rock. I wasn’t sure about Jack Black at first (my first choice would have been William H. Macy) but from the trailer I think he’s got the right kind of intense, boylike enthusiasm.
In defense of Fay Wray: she was actually a decentpretty good actress, and certainly a hard-working one (she starred in King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game at the same time, working 18-hour days running through the same jungle sets for both movies). She could also do comedy, and was funny as a very dumb blonde in the movie Affairs of Cellini. And, of course, a fantastic screamer.
The 1933 is one of my favorites, so regardless of how Peter Jackson’s movie goes, I’m glad they’re finally coming out with a good DVD release. I know it’s corny, but each time I feel a flutter of excitement when Denham recruits Ann Darrow with something like: “It’s the adventure of a lifetime! It’s excitement and danger, and a long sea voyage that leaves at dawn!” Brings out the kid in me.
The 1976 remake was just a bad idea, start to finish. It did produce one surprise: Jessica Lange, who many people expected to fade back into obscurity, but who worked her ass off to become a respected actress.
So, I’m hoping for the best with Jackson’s movie. As long as he’s geared up for New York in the 1930’s, y’know what I’d like to see him do? That’s right, Doc Savage. Peter Jackson has the resources and the clout to do a proper Doc Savage movie, which would rock like nobody’s business.
I remember Jessica Lange for those very sexy scenes… and I didn’t think the 1976 remake was bad… the acting was subpar… but it seems the same in this new version.
NBC is pushing a “Never before seen preview of King Kong” that will appear during the movie Shrek Sunday evening.
No, it’s definitely still lost, and unlikely to ever turn up. The scene on the restored Kong is included as an extra and is the one that Jackson produced, based on a couple stills and production drawings from the missing sequence, contemporary descriptions of the action, observation of O’Brien’s animation of the spider model in The Black Scorpion, careful reconstructions of other models (which Jackson actually owns) from the sequence, use of 1930s effects, and liberal quantities of imagination.
It’ll be neat, but at most it’ll be similar to what the original sequence might have been like – not a reconstruction. There’s also been a lot of talk that this scene will be “restored” to body of the film in the new release – not so at all, and a good thing, too. Even if PJ miraculously produced a shot that was frame-for-frame identical to the original, it would be a mistake to insert it into the film – it was taken out because it didn’t fit, and screwed up the pacing. You’ve got the protagonists running furiously in terror, a couple of redshirts fall out of frame, the action stops, the redshirts try to get away, the critters come and eat them, and then snap, you’re back to the furious running. Doesn’t work.
The good news is that some of the short scenes that were cut out because they were deemed too graphic, suggestive, or crass have been restored to the film. (eg; Kong undressing Ann, killing various people, etc. No idea if they’ll put the bit with him picking his nose in or if that was just the animators arseing about.)
There’s a good article on the PJ spider scene at retrocrush.
…spoilers on the below link!
Darkhorse have put up a preview of the first few pages of the King Kong comic…it should give you an idea of how the movie opens. See the preview here.
I saw a version (at a church youth halloween party) with Kong undressing Ann and eating people, but not picking his nose. Kong had the silliest lecherous grin on his face when he pulled Ann dress off her. Kong also picked a native up, put his head in his mouth, dangled him around a moment and bit his head off.
There was also a scene in which Fay Wray’s left breast briefly popped out. Only a cad would use the freeze-frame feature to take a good, long look.
Have you sought professional help? 
What about the type? No matter how scrupulous everything else is, they HAVE to screw up the type. (I think there’s some clause in the show printers’ union contract that basically says, “You gonna laser print your signs, ephemera, etc? OK. Use only the fonts supplied with MS Word or we don’t print no lobby cards.”)
I’m still going to miss the rippling fingerprints in the ape’s coat.
[rocky horror picture show]
DR. FRANK N. FURTER: What ever happened to Fay Wray?
AUDIENCE: She got fucked by a 40-foot gorilla!
DR. FNF: That delicate, satin-draped frame
As it clung to her thigh
How I started to cry
AUDIENCE: You’d REALLY cry if you got fucked by a 40-foot gorilla!
DR. FNF: 'Cause I wanted to be dressed just the same . . .
[/rhps]
Don’t you love the regional variations in Rocky AP? I’d never heard that before. The standard Fay Wray/King Kong line I’ve heard is “She went apeshit!” The next couple of lines in that song turn into a wonderfully sick abortion joke.
Around here, it’s “She got apeshit on her,” and “You’d cry too, if you had apeshit on you.”
At the bookstore the other day I glanced through **The World of Kong: A Natural History of Skull Island ** (alas, I can’t afford it just now, but sooner or later it’ll wind up on the shelf-- I love lavishly illustrated treatments of fantastic ecologies such as Wayne Douglas Barlowe’s Expedition and the like). The designers at Weta Workshop present **The World of Kong ** as the results of an extensive scientific exploration of Skull Island following the events of the movie. From the contents, it seems apparent that the filmmakers did indeed put a lot of thought into constructing as plausible a backstory as possible to justify the existence of the island’s extraordinary ecology. For one thing, the book speculates that Kong’s species (Megaprimatus kong), while superficially resembling the African mountain gorilla, may in fact have been more closely related to the extinct giant Asian primate Gigantopithecus– which would make more sense for a species native to a South Pacific island group. We also learn that Kong was indeed the last survivor of his kind, which had evidently been suffering a slow attrition over many thousands of years. It is suggested that the cause of this decline may also have been the reason why M. kong might have been forced to achieve such enormous proportions to survive in the first place-- aggressive competition from the island’s dinosaurian species. The text reminds us that great apes in general exhibit a relatively low reproductive rate, which probably contributed to the species’ decline.
I only had a quick look through the book, so I don’t know whether they employed similar ingenuity to justify the existence of meat-eating Brontosaurus or giant spiders, but it seems that Peter Jackson and his crew gave an enormous amount of thought even to the stuff from the original movie that you weren’t supposed to think about. How much of that will make it to the screen remains to be seen, but the fact that they were very conscious of these issues makes me hopeful that the film will address them in a creative and adroit manner. Supposedly Peter Jackson has been thinking about this movie for quite a while, and his team displayed an impressive ability to present the fantastic with richly nuanced realism in **The Lord of the Rings ** trilogy.
I’d also suggest that the whole “giant ape falls in love with human girl” premise isn’t necessarily an entirely ridiculous idea, if one leaves aside the notion that the attraction was entirely sexual. If Kong was indeed the last of his kind, then anything reminescent of other members of his species would be likely to inspire an emotional response. Chimps and gorillas will often interact with human beings who display the proper behavioral cues-- witness the work of that Jane Goodall tramp, for example. Also, human facial and bodily proportions resemble those of juvenile or infant apes; perhaps Kong’s fascination with Ann Darrow was due to hazy memories of long-vanished baby Konglings.
As for whatever happened to the other sacrifices… good question, although I wouldn’t be surprised if the new movie tries to answer that as well. It’s unwise to speculate without evidence, but perhaps Kong reacted differently to Ann because her appearance or smell was different from that of the islanders. Or perhaps their sacrifice ritual had some bizarre provision for the victim to try and sneak away after a few days, or something equally unfathomable and steeped in myth. You’ve got to remember, these are just simple islanders. These are people of the land; the common clay of the Lost World…
Ooh, that looks cool.
I like the group photo of the Weta crew.
Newsweek preview:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10216525/site/newsweek/
Audio interview of the person who saw the preview:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/10220604/site/newsweek/
Brian