King Kong [Blu-ray]

REVIEW: When Peter Jackson brought his idea of King Kong to the movie studios back in 1996 he was quickly denied it. So, in the mean time he did three small films, you may have heard of them, they were about some ring or something like that. Universal came back to Jackson and said that if he still wanted to do it that he could. The result is one of the most awe inspiring films of all time. It's seriously hard to describe the scope of a film like this version of King Kong. We all know the story, I mean the script is 72 years old. Carl Denham, an eccentric filmmaker, is about to be finished because his producers are fed up with his recent flops. He decides that he's going to make a grand epic by exploring the uncharted and mythical Skull Island. He lures Vaudville actress, Ann Darrow who is reduced to stealing food because she can't find work. Jackson creates the perfect atmosphere of an America during the depression and we get this sense of desperation on both Denham's and Ann's part. On the boat Ann meets Jack Driscoll, her favorite playwright who is writing Denham's screenplay. They find Skull Island unexpectedly in the fog and in an incredible scene the ship tries to maneuver from the jagged rocks of the island wall. Once on shore the characters encounter the natives who kidnap Ann and give her as human sacrifice to Kong, who lives on the other side of a massive wall.Most of the film takes place on the island as the entire group tries to rescue Ann. The island has an atmosphere that is just undescribable. It's absolutely wonderous, and the scale is just immense. The brontosaurus stampede through the canyon is incredible. The visual effects are amazing in the film, and Jackson seamlessly blends visuals with sets to make it work. Later on Kong protects Ann as she tries to escape three Tyrannosauruses. The sequence is breathtaking, and you will watch with your jaw dropped as these giant beasts fight to the death. Another sequence is the spider pit scene, which was not in the original but is reportedly a lost scene. It never made it into the final cut of the 1933 version, but it is here in full glory. The most vile insects imaginable blown up to a huge scale will make you cringe into your seat. Everything is done to the extreme, but not to a point where the audience says "oh that's impossible, that would never happen", well maybe it's impossible but it's fantasy, so lighten up. Nothing is too extreme to a point of implausibility. The greatest thing about this version is the emotion, the connection between Kong and Ann that was hard to absorb from the original. We see a connection of two souls, a lonely beast who is the last of his kind, and a women who has been thrown out on the street. It's a love for one another's presence and Jackson handled that with expertise.The film has a shift in tone once we leave Skull Island, and Kong is captured and brought back to New York. We go from this incredible land of mystery to the city where Kong is put on display. Carl Denham has saved himself and thinks he is back on the top, which is all he cares about. Once Kong escapes and rampages through New York City looking for Ann we start an emotional ride all the way to the end. The moment Ann and Kong ascend the Empire State Building you start to anticipate the inevitable end. You watch as Kong basically climbs to his doom just to spend one last sunrise alone with Ann. After a poignant scene at the top there is the shot of the biplanes coming in from behind the building and it sends unnerving chills down your spine. The film's climax is stunning, one of the grandest most iconic scenes of cinematic history recreated through the mind of a master. James Newton Howard's score adds an emotional boost to Peter Jackson's poignant and epic vision. The movie is more than a visual effects romp, it is a truly beautiful story expressed in such a way that it will leave a grand mark on you as a movie goer. This new version has 13 minutes of restored footage, mostly stuff that is a homage to the original like the underwater escape off of the rafts.Jack Black plays the overly eccentric Carl Denham with perfection. His reaction, as he stands in the auditorium after Kong escapes into the city, sends a message that this character has basically brought upon is own demise. Naomi Watts plays her role mostly through screaming and through facial expressions, and she does a fantastic job interacting with a character who was digitally added in later. Andy Serkis did the motion capture for Kong, just as he did the acting for Gollum. His facial expressions and body movements give Kong a human presence, and it helps with the emotional connection of the two characters. Jackson even gave Serkis a side role in the film as Lumpy the cook, which I thought was great too. Adrien Brody plays Jack, who I think never comes to realize the connection Ann has with Kong and he feels distant from the audience as a character.VIDEO: King Kong looks absolutely stunning. This new version is pretty much the same transfer as the previous release. King Kong is a film with some sort of special effect in nearly every shot, so this transfer needs to look great. Color tones are right on the money, black levels are handled well, and the picture is overall incredibly sharp.AUDIO: The sound is again Dolby Digital 5.1, and some are asking "where is the DTS?". While this film would have been spectacular with DTS the Dolby Digital is only a hair behind. Simply, the sound is explosive and dynamic. Ambient noise is effectively spread across all channels to envelope you. The canyon stampede is probably the best sounding scene in the film. Don't dwell on the fact that there is no DTS, the Dolby track is very impressive.SPECIAL FEATURES: The special features are spread across all three discs. The first thing you'll find is the great commentary by Peter Jackson, which is incredibly informative and on par with the Lord Of The Rings commentaries. The next thing on the set are the deleted scenes, and there are a whole lot of deleted scenes. The visuals are unfinished, but it's interested to see what was left out of the already 3.5 hour extended edition. Next on disc 1 is the blooper reel, and this is probably one the best blooper reels I've seen on a DVD. It's pretty long and incredibly funny, and it just shows that Jack Black is funny no matter where he is. On disc 1 there is also a hidden featurette that is extremely funny, it's not hard to find at all. Moving on to disc 2 we have the incredible making of documentary. You can watch the whole thing together, or in the separate segments. There is an introduction by Peter Jackson and he explains that nothing here is repeated from the Production Diaries or the previous DVD. There is some really interesting stuff here, and all film students or film buffs need to watch it. The entire filmmaking process is shown in great detail from pre-production to post. There is also a featurette on recreating Skull Island and how the filmmakers wanted it to make it look like the same Skull Island from the original version. There are also a bunch of animated pre-visuals (basically takes the place of storyboards), and a video gallery which shows the concept drawings in montage form. Finally, you can load the third disc into your DVD drive and view the original 1996 script that Jackson cooked up just have it shot down by Universal, then you can compare it with the final version for the 2005 version. An amazing supplement of features is topped off with three trailers.BOTTOM LINE: "It wasn't the airplanes, it was Beauty killed the beast." When our generation watches the original King Kong we see a clay gorilla walking on miniature sets. When Peter Jackson watches the original King Kong he sees everything that we see in his film today. Every filmmaker has their one source of inspiration, and King Kong was his. I'm glad he shared it with us. We go to the theater for films like this and even though it is the second remake of this story, Peter Jackson has brought this film a new life and made it his film. It is truly a wonderful, exciting, heartfelt, and touching homage made for modern times.

This movie wraps itself around you; all 3 hrs of it. There are a couple of parts where I wish the blanket were trimmed, but they fade into insignificance; at best they would have shaved off a few minutes. So, who cares?Why the 'wrapping' metaphor? Because this movie is all about that elusive story-element called 'pay off'. KK is a masterpiece, not only of re-telling a classic and archetypal tale of Beauty and Beast, but also of almost perfect closure of every foreshadowing-pay-off element in sight.It starts with the music. "I'm sitting on top of the world".... Has it ever sounded more sinister, ominous and bitterly satirical? Caged animals and food-lines. The dead giant surrounded by roaches-sorry, 'people'. Yes, here as well, with every line of the song, there's build-up that ultimately finds closure. Later the captain talks about roaches. The giant insects and leeches in the ravine. The milling crowds streaming into the theater. The milling crowds surrounding the fallen giant. Everything fits together. I watched it thrice and I've yet to find an event that didn't have closure. Even the interminable dino-stampede had a fore-shadowing purpose, but I'll leave it as an exercise to the reader to figure it out.Jackson of course delights in overdoing his creatures; the appellation 'Giant Weta' suddenly assumed new meaning. Real 'Giant Wetas' can be quite sizable and look pretty intimidating; not for the faint-hearted. Jackson just took the name and ran with it. Masking the story-telling significance of the events by making it gruesome and quite scary. That's the way to do it. I don't know if Jackson is fully aware of what he did-sometimes these things are gut decisions, not necessarily cerebral-but whatever prompted him to make his directorial and editing decisions...it worked.The Beauty and the Beast. Here, too, is something that most other reviewers missed. Because it isn't a 'love'-story between human and simian at all. That's how it was sold to us, and everybody bought it; but it's so much more subtle and, dare I say it?, 'perceptive'. Those who see the story as the boy-girl thing between ape and girl will miss it altogether.The real 'love' story actually _is_ between Ann and Jack. He's the human analogue to the ape, the one who can be what the ape cannot-and who ultimately _is_ what he ought to be. The 'love' story between KK and Ann is more subtle-it is the tale of two creatures, from different worlds, who discover that beauty is...ahh, did you think I was going to say 'transcendent'? Well, possibly that's what Jackson intended to convey, but it could just as easily be understood as beauty simply everywhere, but until it is perceived it might as well not be. That, of course, is the essence of beauty: that it is indeed in the eye of the beholder, for 'beauty' is always 'beauty-perceived'; there is none other.KK is also about 'nobility'; something usually ignored or downgraded in its importance in most films made at the moment. The ape is savage, because he has to be in order to survive. Yielding to softer aspects of one's nature is lethal in that world; even apes can be brought down, in this instance by the closest thing to human existing in that island-enclosure, namely those gargoylish bats; on the mountain top, where KK, and others of his kind, appear to have gone before: the top of their world, whence they could watch beauty; the only kind available here, dimly understood, yet perceived: a sunset. Now KK takes the one other creature whom he has perceived as 'beautiful' to that same, dangerous place; but this time, while he is not killed himself by the sharp-toothed creatures tearing at him, it is by their agency that Ann is taken from him-and also by her human love, Jack, of course; with her, one must emphasize, complete collusion-he is lured to his final doom. Nobility battling it out with savage and basic instincts, urges, imperatives. Nobility wins; nobility instantiated in one's preparedness to protect that which one holds dear, for whatever reason, to any degree necessary. It's a fundamental animal urge; yet it is the one that allows even an animal to achieve nobility, dignity and purpose. The indictment of the human roaches-be they the, extremely un-PC, savages on Skull Island or the hyper-refined crowds going to see the 8th Wonder of the World-is all the more searing, because they appear to have no sense of it; and neither do they have even the tiniest shred of empathy for anything outside their own horizon.Ann's sentiments for the ape are more like 'compassion' than 'love'; understanding of the divided nature of that giant creature, on the human side of sentience in many ways, yet constrained to be something else because of what he is. Is there a better metaphor for humanity itself, and the eternal conflict between what we are and _need_ to be in order to survive and be 'human'; and yet there is that other thing that makes us want to be something 'other'-which we cannot be, individually or socially, because we would cease to be human. In the same vein KK is what he is, and he can only do what he does because he is that way. The paradox of our own existence.Jack is KK's human mirror-image, driven by the same instincts, but here they are constrained by his civilized upbringing. He is not a fighting machine, but a playwright-yet everything he does, shortly after meeting Ann, is essentially driven by the same motives as KK's: to protect her. He doesn't understand this at first; civilization and its essentially trivial accoutrements prevent him from seeing that which truly matters to him. But in the end, after the ape has fallen to his death, he's at the top of the Empire State Building with her.So, you see, the story isn't as simple as some would have it. Some humans come off very badly-especially those who have lost sight of the things that matter, and who become immersed in trivial self-importance and the gazillion meaningless pursuits offered by society to those who need them. But not all have lost perspective and others find it. The ape overall exhibits more nobility than most humans though. This is not so much anthropomorphization of the ape, but an indictment of the insectization of humans.KK is not just a good movie, but a great one; done with obvious affection for the genre and the story-with more depth and dimensions than either of its predecessors; more than I had expected or even dared hope for.Till Noever, owlglass.com, Author: KEAEN, CONTINUITY SLIP, SELADIENNA