King Kong
Feature Films
Saw it tonight - don't know if it's the best movie ever, but it is right up there.  I don't care if Naomi Watts is too skinny, she friggin' rawks.  She's Fay Wray one minute, Marilyn Monroe the next and Judy Garland during song-and-dance spacers.  I had no idea she's so talented - she's come a long way since Jet Girl.  She's going to win an Oscar for this.

I've been a Kyle Chandler fan since "Early Edition", and he does a great job, too.  The script doesn't give him much meat but he worked with what he had.    

Jack Black is all you'd hope for - he might get an Oscar nomination, along with Watts.  Adrien Brody does a competent job but he won't be nominated. 

Not to piss on their parade, but this is not a young cast.  Watts is 37, Jack Black is 36, Kyle Chandler is 40, Evan Parke is two weeks away from 38, and Thomas Kretschmann is 43. Even Adrien Brody is 32, and Colin Hanks is 28.  These are mature, seasoned actors and it shows in everything they do.  In a way it's a reflection of the Hollywood of the 30s and 40s, where older actors tended to get the best roles.

And then there's the freakin' monkey.  Wow.  During the T-Rex fight, Peter Jackson really makes the audience wait for Kong's trademark fatality move, and it's worth it.  I wouldn't even hazard a guess on the polygon count of Kong's face in close-ups - but I honestly could not see a single pixel out of place.  Kong's face is the most realistic 3D object I've seen.

Please go see it.  You'll love it.

 
Elisha Cuthbert's hockey blog
Interesting Sites
Elisha Cuthbert has a blog about hockey.  Her mother actually plays in an adult ice hockey league; Elisha does not.

 
AOL Moviefone Highlights
Interesting Sites
AOL Moviefone has a multimedia clip library in its film•fix•ation feature called Action Figures: The Evolution of Film's Most Lethally Beautiful Badasses.  Eight shorts are available:
  1. Charlize Theron messing up a perfectly good pergola in Aeon Flux.
  2. Sigourney Weaver in the "And I'll miss you most of all, Scarecrow!" scene in Alien, where she emotionally recites the names of her friends before setting them all on fire.
  3. Linda Hamilton using a nightstick to lay a beatdown on the mental facility staff in Terminator 2: Judgement Day.  The clip runs long to include her filling a syringe with drain cleaner to terrify Earl Boen's character, Dr. Peter Silberman - the perpetually unfortunate psychiatrist who appears in all three films in the series.
  4. Carrie-Ann Moss in her debut scene in The Matrix, cutting down five cops in 22 seconds, including the slo-mo Karate Kid 2 crane move.  It's probably the most influential scene in any action movie of the last ten years - it's been ripped off dozens of times already.  [I know, I know, they've been doing it for decades in anime, to reduce the number of frames needed.  Doesn't matter.]
  5. Angelina Jolie fighting a giant robot in Lara Croft: Tomb Raider.  [Bleh.]  AOL should have used the Route 7 chase scene from Mr. and Mrs. Smith.
  6. The legendary Uma Thurman vs. Vivica Fox catfight from Kill Bill, Volume 1.
  7. Ziyi Zhang flattening a bunch of cavalry riders and then taking out a half-dozen pikemen using cinema verité kung-fu in House of Flying Daggers.
  8. And last but not least, Jessica "Biceps" Biel going all Buffy on some bottom-dwelling skate suckers in the subway station scene of Blade: Trinity.  That scene was completely derivative - "BtVS", The Matrix, The Untouchables, The French Connection, Lost Boys, etc - but somehow Jessica makes it seem fresh.
ActiveX controllers are required, which means it runs best under Internet Explorer rather than Firefox, Safari, etc.


 
Off-topic books
Books
I was browsing through a bookstore today while Christmas shopping, and noticed two books that might interest readers of this site, though they're unrelated to the core topic area of Amaz0ns. 

The first is Physics of Superheroes, a nicely grounded scientific analysis of what goes on in comic books.  It's well-crafted and amusing, and also takes a nice long view of the history of comics in the US.

Read more...
 
<< Start < Prev 331 332 333 334 335 336 337 338 339 340 Next > End >>

RocketTheme Joomla Templates