In Contention

Tag: King Kong

  • Forget Best Supporting Actor — it’s time to honor Andy Serkis’ “Special Achievement”

    There has been a lot of talk this week about Andy Serkis’ stirring performance-capture portrayal of ape rebellion leader Caesar in “Rise of the Planet of the Apes.” In many quarters, writers are calling for consideration in the Best Supporting Actor category. It’s a song and dance Serkis and those of us who follow the film awards season have heard before, but I wonder if it’s the wrong approach.

    It’s important to face facts if you want Oscar recognition for Serkis. The Academy — an actor-dominated body — is not ready to hail performance-capture outside of the effects arena. Period. Two years ago, “Avatar” showed us that there was fear there when it missed out on a Best Picture win. It was admittedly one of a handful of issues that served as a stumbling block, but the sense (amplified by competing Oscar campaigns) was that a quickly advancing technique could one day render actors obsolete. Yes, it was a ridiculous fear, but it was a fear nonetheless. And for some, I’m sure it still is.

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  • Peter Jackson’s King Kong…again

    I must say, I’m kind of amped for the new Peter Jackson-directed King Kong 360/3D ride at Universal Studios.  The old, classic attraction, you might recall, went up in flames along with much of the historic lot when the area caught fire in the summer of 2008.  Here’s one of the many commercial spots that have caught my eye as of late.  A five-minute making-of featurette after the jump.  More goodies over at Universal’s YouTube page.

    Oh, and here’s a March 4 Geek Tyrant post with details on the ride that I stumbled across with some brief, wholly unrefined Google searching out of sheer curiosity.

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  • Which films will be remembered in 50 years?

    Daniel Day-Lewis in There Will Be BloodIt is nothing new for a film to be released, find no audience, no critical favor, and disappear to be discovered by a new generation and raised to the level of masterpiece. In fact, this has been going on since the silents.

    Charlie Chaplin’s masterpiece “City Lights” was released four years after the advent of sound, and though popular at the time with both audiences and critics, it was some years later that it was finally hailed as Chaplin’s finest work. “The Wizard of Oz,” one of the most beloved films of all time that celebrates a 70th anniversary this month, was a dismal box office flop when released in 1939.  It wasn’t terribly popular with the critics either, but years later it was finally championed as a work of art and, of course, now the film is considered one of the greatest films of all time and perhaps a more worthy Best Picture choice than the eventual winner that year, “Gone with the Wind.”

    The “Citizen Kane” tale is so well documented I need not continue, and John Ford’s magnificent “The Searchers,” written off as just another John Wayne western, was discovered by film school professors who taught its brilliance to such young minds as Martin Scorsese, John Milius and Francis Coppola. Even Stanley Kubrick’s “2001: A Space Odyssey” failed out of the gate with both audiences and critics, but within a year of its release, many of those same critics had changed their minds about the film.  Within 10 years it was being declared as important a film as “Citizen Kane.”

    When “Gandhi” won eight Academy Awards in 1982, no one was terribly surprised. Yet within a year there were rumblings within the Academy that a mistake had been made and the rightful winner should have been “E.T. : The Extra-Terrestrial,” now recognized as a sublime work of art. And that same year, “Blade Runner” began its life as a major flop, only to re-discovered on home video over the years and become a cult classic.

    Looking back over the last decade or so, which films released since will be recognized 50 years from now? Which films that were passed over by audiences, critics and/or the Oscars will be hailed as masterpieces in the years to come?  I took a stab as choosing a group of films I believe could fall under this label.

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  • Which moments hooked you?

    (from left) Lon Chaney and Mary Philbin in The Phantom of the OperaI love the current poll series about the most influential films of all time, but it got me thinking about the moments in movies that hooked me on cinema forever. You know, the ones we see as kids that have an enormous impact on us, forever bonding us to this art form we all so love?

    For me, as I’ve mentioned before, it was a scene in “The Ten Commandments,” Cecil B. DeMille’s remake of his own epic, which I saw in 1972 (I think) in a re-release of the picture. In the days before video (yep, that old) the studios would re-release their films every few years and this was a major re-release for Paramount. My dad, also a movie junkie (though not as bad as his son), had talked about this for years and now that it was back we were going.

    Admittedly, I was a tad cynical at 12 years old.  I fully expected to be disappointed.  Still I wanted to see it because I enjoyed going to the movies. Little did I know my life would be changed forever.

    We piled into the car and made the drive to the theater, which was packed with familes similar to ours. The lights went down and for the next four and a half hours I was swept back in time, stunned by the size and scope of the film, amazed at the colors, and most of all, astonished at Charlton Heston. Never before had I realized how an actor could command the screen.  I never felt like I was watching a performance, either.  In awe I watched the Exodus scene as literally thousands of actors moved out of Egypt, led by Moses.

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  • ‘Lovely Bones’ next year’s Oscar victor?

    Cover of The Lonely BonesKris recently took his initial stab at predicting next year’s Oscar nominees, so I thought I would join the madness by planting a flag for “The Lovely Bones.”  I read the book in three days at the suggestion of my daughter, who knows that I admire Peter Jackson and that this is his next film. On the way to my office, the train offered a quiet solitude.  I’ll never forget this book.

    The greatest tragedy a parent can suffer is losing a child.  I simply cannot imagine the pain this must cause. As the father of two beautiful girls, 17 and 9, they are the lights of my life and reason for smiling everyday. Should anything ever happen to them, they might as well throw me in the ground with them, because I would be dead.

    “The Lovely Bones” deals with the rape and murder of a young girl, who then watches her family, and her killer, from heaven for years after the event. The father suspects the next door neighbor (great instinct) while the mother cannot deal with the agony and leaves the family to forge a new life. The sister experiences something rather extraordinary that I will not give away, while the heroine grieves for her loss of family as much as they grieve for her.

    Jackson is, in my opinion, an enormously gifted filmmaker. I stand among those who believe “The Lord of the Rings” trilogy was the greatest risk in movie history, which paid off tremendously. The final film, “The Lord of the Rings: The Return of the King,” is a masterpiece that deserved every single Oscar it won, the NYFCC Best Picture it won, and actually should have been nominated for a couple more. I remember the emptiness I felt after seeing the film, armed with the knowledge that the trilogy was over and there was no film to look forward to seeing next year from the director.

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  • What does early (and excessive) Oscar hype do to a film’s chances?

    Cover of Entertainment Weekly featuring The CrucibleIn 1996, a fall movie preview of Entertainment Weekly arrived in my mailbox, the cast of “The Crucible” staring back at me on the cover, making clear to me this was going to be THE film of the fall. There were rumors floating within the industry that the film, based on the Arthur Miller play, could conceivably be nominated for 12 or 13 Academy Awards, and it seemed a cinch for at least a Best Picture nod.

    Having directed the play twice, studied it at length in university and being a huge Arthur Miller fan, I was thrilled that the film was finally going to get the intense big screen version it deserve. The 1959 French adaptation was okay, but not enough people had actually seen it. Here was a chance for one of the greatest dramas of the 20th century to make the transition to film with a superb cast, including Daniel Day-Lewis, Joan Allen, Paul Schofield and Winona Ryder.

    Somewhere along the way Fox panicked and released the film late in December, and though Day-Lewis finished second in balloting for the New York Film Critics Awards, the picture never caught fire as it had been predicted to do. Instead it was a dismal box office failure, nabbing only a supporting actress nomination for Joan Allen and an adapted screenplay nod for Miller.

    “The Crucible” is a great film, with powerhouse performances from Day-Lewis, Allen and Ryder, though many critics attacked the latter. But was the film a victim of over hype, or were audiences simply too familiar with the story? What happened?

    The same sort of thing almost happened to Steven Spielberg’s “Munich,” which at this time in 2005 was being touted as not just an Oscar nominee, but the likely winner for Best Picture and Best Director, sight unseen. It opened and was very good, but it wasn’t the searing masterpiece everyone had been hoping for.  And somehow “Crash” won the Best Picture prize.

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  • Movies that Oscar missed

    As film junkies, we all know it happens. Usually every single year there are one or more films the Academy passes over for Best Picture consideration, in some cases because there are, after all, just five slots available, but in others because, well — they blew it.

    Like the rest of you, I sit and listen to the nominees announced live every January and have never had a year when I did not roll my head and ask to no one in particular, “Where is such and such or so and so?”

    I mean for me, the great honor is the nomination, because when “Kramer vs. Kramer” defeats “Apocalypse Now” for Best Picture, how can you possibly take the winners seriously? However, a nomination — that is decidedly different.

    Where was the Best Picture nod for John Ford’s masterful “The Searchers,” arguably the greatest American western ever made? And Alfred Hitchcock’s “Psycho,” which redefined the horror genre?

    Since 1980 there have been a number of truly brilliant films passed over, leaving this critic often shaking his head in disgust, though I get over quick enough to watch the damned awards…talk about hooked. But it amazes me how “The Empire Strikes Back” can be a better film than “Star Wars,” yet not be nominated in the big race. Ditto Brian De Palma’s “Blow Out,” possibly the finest film of his career, ignored in every category despite its artistic mastery. The very same year Milos Forman gave us “Ragtime,” a much stronger film than “Chariots of Fire,” which won the Oscar, or even “On Golden Pond,” one of the five nominees!

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  • Best in show 2005: the year in superlatives

    It’s time to really round out the year and offer up my picks for awards in 2005.

    In addition to the typical categories – which finally see their winners announced today – you’ll find some other fun arenas for awards citation. Call it a mish-mash of MTV-Awards-type kudos and other frequently heralded categories we find time to time in various critics’ awards and precursor ceremonies.

    No one is better at this sort of thing than Nat Rogers over at The Film Experience, so I recommend you all take a look at his Film Bitch awards when he dishes them out in the coming weeks.

    These will likely be my last extensive thoughts on the awards season this year, barring any brief comments I may or may not make here and/or there. There will, of course, be one final predictions update before the end of the year.

    It feels good to wrap everything up before Christmas vacation, I have to tell you. But the Oscar season is by no means over, so I’ll be diving right back in once 2006 finally rolls around.

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  • SHORT TAKE: “King Kong” (***)

    King KongI don’t feel like writing passionately about “King Kong” in the slightest. What I can say with utmost conviction is that the film affords too much of EVERYTHING. The story is bloated, with subplots that could have been fleshed out more succinctly by capable hands (I contend that Peter Jackson is not the most gifted director when it comes to combining the dramatic and the spectacle, even if he is quite gifted at relaying them separately).

    I will, however, say what no one will have the guts to say. 80% of the visual effects in the film are not worth the saliva they will induce. The heart and soul of the budget in this arena was obviously afforded to the Kong close-ups, which, by and large convey one hell of an intimately realized animated creature, but I will stand firm and offer that 12 years later, no filmmaker has flawlessly combined the elements of CGI the way Steven Spielberg’s team did with “Jurassic Park.” These are green screen environments that recall the “Star Wars” prequels – I’m sorry to say.

    Much will be written about a dynamic duel between Kong and a trio of Tyranosaurs. And with good cause. The scene is pulse-racing, and along with the rest of the film’s action sequences, it is exhausting. But for this viewer, not necessarily in a good way. Not all of the time.

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