herbiehancock

No 450 - King Kong Director - Peter Jackson Right, sorry for the gap. I've been in the middle of nowhere for a little while and therefore far from my DVDs and LOVEFiLM . This is, to my enfeebled memory, the only film on the list which appears as both the original and as a direct remake. Let me begin by saying the original is better. There are some good moments in Peter Jackson's version, but it suffers from being long and self indulgent. Whereas the original is a leaner and tauter creature feature. Lets begin with my main negative gripe: The film doesn't seem to know when to reign it in, it seems that Jackson is so excited by the concept of remaking the film that he just throws everything he can afford and think of onto the screen. This is most evident on Skull Island when the film becomes nothing but a series of set pieces. Now, I am usually quite fond of set pieces, but we have a seemingly unending series of events for about an hour (a third of the too-long film) which ...

No 242 - King Kong: The Eighth Wonder of the World (1933) Directors - Merian C Cooper and Ernest B Schoedsack It was difficult to find out who directed King Kong... couldn't find it in the credits at all. For these are the 30s baby! Where producers manned the loudhailers and called the shots. There are several films in this blog which have begun at BFI Southbank's Museum of the Moving Image. In the 'Golden Age of Cinema' section, we were graced with the King Kong animatronic . Or a replica of it. Either way, it was fascinating to watch the film and relate the beast on the screen to the mass of faded wires and fur I had seen at MOMI . It is even more impressive when you realise that the film is 75 years old! Whilst King Kong isn't the first big monster film it is probably the most famous of the early ones, and may be the most famous of all time. What is really impressive is the level of scale and imagination within the film. You'd think that there would be se...