Mark and I just came back from seeing King Kong. It was hyped by so many of the reviewers as the best movie of the year.

I think we are the only people I know so far who didn't like it! It was too long, each scene could of been cut in half and it would of been much more enjoyable. There was an hour or so of the movie with no dialog at all. Just creatures chasing the heroes and Kong fighting with dinosaurs. 10 mintues of that would of been plenty.

It was fairly true to the orignal movie which was nice and I think if they would of kept it below 2 hours, it would of been much better.

Anyone else seen it yet?

Yeah, I saw it...and I have to admit I fall among the folks who LOVED it. I agree it was long, but it didn't feel that long to me -- every moment was jam-packed with either stunning action, or wonderful scenes. I thought Naomi Watts did an amazing job, conveying a startling range of emotions with little more than her face. And the beast was SO real -- even little things, like the way he would kind of blow out air, much the way my dog does when he's just settled down in his favorite spot and lets out a little air-blow. I don't know, maybe I'm just a Peter Jackson fan -- I adored all three LOTR movies, in fact I bought my son all the extended versions, mainly because *I* wanted them! (Of course, the fact that it gave me even more scenes with that lucious Viggo Mortensen didn't hurt...) <img border="0" alt="[naughty]" title="" src="graemlins/naughty.gif" />

The only part in KK I had a hard time with was all the bugs -- ICK! I HATE bugs, especially spiders but basically anything crawly. I was squirming in my seat during those scenes. And the scenes when they were up high, both on Skull Island and on top of the Empire State Building, gave me vertigo! It was so real -- I felt like I was up there, and I had that fear-of-falling thing going on. My heart was pounding.

I saw the movie with my 14-yr-old son, which may have influenced my opinion -- he absolutely LOVED it! He wants to be involved in making movies when he grows up, he loves everything to do with movies. If he keeps his grades up and doesn't misbehave, his reward every weekend is that I take him to a movie. So I'm getting to see a lot more movies in the theater than I have in years past, especially when the kids were young and we basically only rented (babysitters being so expensive).

LeeAnne, I agree with you about the vertigo! I also thought that there was quite a bit of awesome cinematography going on. Who is Viggo? If he was the hot Captain, I agree with that, too!!

Viggo Mortensen played Strider, AKA Aragorn, who ultimately ended up as the true King of Gondor. He can rule my world anytime! ::::swoon::::
;)

Oh, I thought you meant Viggo was in King Kong, too. I thought he might of been that cute French Captain :)

I know that is on the list of movies that we want to see along with The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe.

Diana will hate the bug thing for sure and I will definately hate those shots up high, if you feel like falling. Shoot I can't stand going over tall bridges even.

It was good but could have been great. The movie is just too long (197 minutes!!!!) and that causes an uneven emotional experience. I liked the lead-up to the journey to Skull Island and the journey itself. But the time on Skull Island was just too much. Did we really need to see so many different action scenes consecutively? It was fatiguing and consumed about 45 minutes of time tha could have been better spent through deletion. Allison and I both started dozing off mid-way through Skull Island! As a result, the burgeoning empathy between Ann Darrow and King Kong gets short-circuited (which is a shame because Naomi Watts was absolutely brilliant). Other than that you can see why Peter Jackson is probably one of the best directors in the business from his attention to detail (great close-ups at the right times) and juxtapositions of mechanical actions (like the steam turbines) and natural phenomena (the waves) with the charaters' dialogue. Great acting from the cast overall. There's the aforementioned Ms. Watts, but I especially liked the crew of the Venture (the captain, the "cook", Hayes and Jimmy). And Baxter did a very good job at being craven yet opportunistically daring. The chemistry between Adrien Brody and Naomi Watts wasn't quite there, but Brody was very good as Driscoll (he was especially good at conveying that "resigned to his fate but will make the best of it" feeling. I don't really care for Jack Black in general, but he did a great job at conveying Denham's amoral and calculating nature - kind of a Faustian Marlow if you can imagine such a combination.

The king told his loyal knights that whomever could collect the most ping pong balls could marry his daughter. After 3 months the 1st knight came back with 200 ping pong balls. 2 months later the 2nd knight came back with 500. 6 months later the last knight came back all bloody, his left arm almost torn off and the King said "my god, what happened to you just by collecting ping pong balls"? The knight replied "Ping Pong balls, I thought you said King Kongs balls"
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