I started to do a list of blog highlights for 2005, but this was the year when I pretty much gave up blogging anything of substance. The blog went back to its roots of being a brain dump of links and random thoughts, blogged whenever the hell I felt like it, rather than on any kind of regular schedule.
I hope y’all had a peachy New Year celebration. We did our usual midnight movie (though this year we timed it to end after midnight rather than starting it just before midnight). Kong was ok (review to follow), but it didn’t have the “aren’t we cool, going to a movie while the world is busy watching some dumb crystal ball slide slowly down a pole?” feel to it. Oh well.
King Kong was pretty nifty, but I think it’s more about Peter Jackson getting a free pass to do whatever the hell he wanted after Lord of the Rings. It was way longer than it needed to be, and suffered from the dilemma of recreating a classic film without doing the exact same movie. I was never a huge Kong fan to begin with, but he did a pretty good job.
Technically, it was brilliant. The cgi 1930’s New York was awesome (even more so than the monkey). The acting was ok. Even though I love Jack Black, I was afraid he’d be too goofy for this, and he bordered on it, but I actually found him to be one of the most entertaining parts of the film. Naomi Watts was excellent in her role as Ann Darrow. The rest of the cast was pretty good, too. I especially liked Kyle Chandler as the preening movie star, Bruce Baxter, and it was fun to watch Andy Serkis play Lumpy, the ship’s cook.
Again, my main problem with the movie is Jackson’s tendency to overdramatize things with slow-mo and to s-t-r-e-t-c-h everything out. There are a couple of places here where it feels like the neverending ending to Return of the King. (Learn to edit, man!) But it was a worthy waste of time and money and a good way to pass through the imaginary time barrier between years.
