g r o t t o 1 1

Peeve Farm
Breeding peeves for show, not just to keep as pets
Brian Tiemann
Silicon Valley-based purveyor of a confusing mixture of Apple punditry and political bile.

btman at grotto11 dot com

Read These Too:

InstaPundit
Steven Den Beste
James Lileks
Little Green Footballs
As the Apple Turns
Entropicana
Cold Fury
Capitalist Lion
Red Letter Day
Eric S. Raymond
Tal G in Jerusalem
Secular Islam
Aziz Poonawalla
Corsair the Rational Pirate
.clue
Ravishing Light
Rosenblog
Cartago Delenda Est




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Monday, January 2, 2006
10:57 - Once again, I'm the only one here

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I don't think anyone around here knows what days are supposed to be off work.

It's been a bizarre few days anyway. Two nights of wind storms nearing 50 mph, blowing trees down and rain sideways and knocking out power and cable and Internet service all over the place. One weakness I've discovered of having both your TV and your Internet come through the same cable is that if it goes out, all possible entertainment options are eliminated.

So I went and saw King Kong. Damn good, I say. Though not pleasant if you've got a bug phobia. Heh. It's unmistakably a Peter Jackson movie; not just because it's well over three hours long and feels every minute of it, but because the color balances all have a very LotR-like cast to them, all jagged rocks with overbright/undersaturated gray washed over them. I wonder if it's because they're still using Alan Lee (once a Tolkien calendar artist, and not my favorite of them) as the conceptual artist and they keep slavishly matching the matte paintings and CG sets to his dingy watercolors? Not that I'm complaining; I think it's a very effective—uh—effect, and a welcome change in a movie landscape where everything these days seems to be gloomy and oversaturated at the same time. Also Jackson's signature "climactic moment" directing is in evidence—you know, where the sound all drops to silence, dialogue (including screams) issues noiseless from slow-motion lips, and you hear only soft and distant music while a couple of exaggerated foley effects clatter in the foreground, like an arrow glancing off a rock or a foot scuffing as it loses purchase on a rock or building. I think Jackson can claim that style as his trademark, if not his invention.

The lavish period-ness is just a joy, though. Oh, the Times Square of 1933, in all its gritty December neon-Depression glory, in the age where Broadway was a place where you wore a tux or evening gown, and where stages and sets and balconies—while certainly no more objectively grand than the ones running the headline shows there today—look like something from a planet designed by the Magratheans for a batty old theatre-loving galactic tycoon. This movie plus The Aviator would be a nostalgist's dream doubleheader.

And though some people seem to think Jack Black's acting was subpar, I think it was an unexpected hoot to see him in a pseudo-serious role for once. His character (the opportunistic filmmaker who captures Kong and brings him to New York) almost qualifies as the protagonist, and almost qualifies as the villain; the fact that we see him as both, and alternately recoil at his heartlessness and sympathize with what seems like his genuine attempts to be honest and brave and dutiful and to grab at a once-in-a-lifetime chance to win at a game in which he seems at first to be in over his head, is a great credit to both the writing and the acting. He's not just a one-sided moustache-twisting caricature we all love to hate, like he easily could have been—his motivations come from real character that we can all relate to. (And who doesn't feel sick at heart, petty as it all was, to see his busted camera and ruined film?) The acting is a little bit goofy, but so's the character. I'm just as glad to see such a non-standard role thrown at us. (Likewise with the real male lead, the writer, who looks anything but the part, with his huge crooked schnoz and his hooded eyes, who's presented in direct counterpoint to the ostensible leading-man of the group, the square-jawed movie star, who says, "Heroes don't look like me in real life... they've got bad teeth, a bald spot, and a beer gut. I'm just an actor with a gun... who's lost his motivation." Marvelous.)

People keep saying how the movie industry's carping about low ticket sales this year ought to tell them something about the low quality of movies lately. Well, with movies like King Kong, and Narnia, and several other genuinely monumental achievements in recent years of moviemaking, I'm having trouble seeing what I'd do better were I in their shoes.

Heh. Well, the motion-sensitive lights just went off, so I guess people's absence here is to be taken seriously. What a perfect opportunity to get some work done.

UPDATE: On the other hand, for every grand achievement in entertainment, there is always something embarrassingly stupid to go with it...


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