h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

aww i loved huckabees too

saw just like heaven.. the ghost type film with mark ruffalo and reese witherspoon, nice enough post xmas film... had the obligatory at the end of course.. that mark ruffalo has a certain charm

also saw the mighty celt on dvd.. with robert carlyle and gillian anderson... i think it was a good film, but we had difficulty understanding the very strong irish accents...robert carlyle and gillian anderson [of the x files] were easy enough to understand as neither of them are irish anyway, and being welsh i don't usually have a problem understanding other celts... but it was hard to keep up with the conversations in some parts must be very heavy local accents...

anyway if you are very squeamish about cruelty to dogs.. this film will upset you dog racers

Went to see Factotum last night. Quite enjoyed it. Haven't really read any of Bukowski's books, might have enjoyed it more if I had.

Other than that, Gandhi and Lawrence of Arabia yesterday afternoon. Two absolute classics.

Saw Chinatown on DVD recently. A mate of mine lent it to me, saying it was his favourite film. I was unconvinced, not having much sympathy for the subject matter. Then I watched Insomnia when it was on TV the other night - similar sort of film but better in all departments. Al Pacino or Jack Nicholson? No contest

"The Producers" - very funny.

I'm interested to know how Insomnia - a story about a paranoid police detective hunting a killer is a 'similar sort of film' to a story about a slightly seedy PI investigating a disappearance and uncovering corruption in Californian Govt...

Well OK then, same genre, more or less - both contain cops and bad guys. My brain hasn't woken up this side of the New Year

Brain working, hopefully. You're just emphasising the differences - let me add some more similarities. Both cops are hard-bitten, and haunted by their past experiences in a dodgy area of Los Angeles. There is a deceptively pleasant interview with the villain in both cases. There are elements of corruption or insider dealing in both films, which both inexorably lead to a downbeat ending. Considering they're both cop films, I reckon there are enough similarities to generate a description which falls within the reasonable semantic bounds of the word 'similar'. Case closed, M'Lud

Finally got to see King Kong last night.

In generality;

Faaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaaar
tooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooo
looooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooooong.

In specific - mis-cast (Jack Black, don't ever try and do 'serious' acting again), mis-conceived (why change Driscoll's character from ships mate to author? Why introduce unneccessary characters - Jim, Baxter and a new ships mate? Why change Denham from a decent human being to sleazy, unpleasant, exploitative creep, thus rendering the film's final line not only pointless but a lie?), pompous (don't try and compare a story about a giant ape with Heart Of Darkness. You'll look silly) and far too full of the silly tropes and tricks we already saw a million times in LotR.

The good points;

The arrival at Skull Island (albeit it feels like it has been a glacier ride to get there and the experienced ship's captain behaves like a kid in charge of a paddling boat), a glittering 1930's New York, another fine 'performance' from Andy Serkis as Kong, the 're-stored' spiderpit sequence which is eerily effective and a beautiful scene with Anne Darrow and Kong watching the sunset together which does manage to establish the melancholy of Kong not being the only one of his kind, but the last.

But none of those will look any good on tv, and it ain't worth paying your hard earned money to see this stinker in the cinema just for them.

Basically;

Any version of Kong where you find yourself going 'Oh just die, you fat b*st*rd' at the climax, as well as wishing Anne darrow would either be pulled off the Empire State with him or jump to her death in grief really isn't a very satisfactory version of the story.

If this is how Peter Jackson treats an old childhood friend then I'd hate to see what he'd do to the kid in 4B who used to steal his lunch money.

Hmm I planned on seeing this on Tuesday - but there's "Just Like Heaven" on as well, so I might plump for that. Besides, if it's that long, I won't have time to see the end as Dad is due at the hospital at 2pm. (S.S. starts at 10.30, 20 mins adverts then 10 minute trailers)

Well, given that Kong runs to 3 hours, you'll not be out of the cinema before 2. I would say go and leave when you want, it'll probably make the film about the right length, but that's not very helpful.

Is there an intermission? I don't think I could last 3 hours without a trip to the loo . . .


az

Nah, I'll watch Just Like Heaven. Thanks,

Oh just go to the loo. Bod knows you won't miss anything that important for the length of time it takes to have a loo break and a fag.

I quite enjoyed Kong. Sat through the 3+ hours quite happily! If only for the effects. The spiders, T-Rex fight and the chase through the gully were all incredibly well done.

Jack Black was definitely a mistake though.

Incredibly well done they may have been, but certainly in the case of the 'stampede' it felt like a sequence specifically designed to cash in on the video game, and the T Rex fight got boring way before the end, which was just plain silly.

Both sequences really felt like someone saying 'anything Willis O'Brien did we HAVE to do bigger, better and with more disnosaurs'. Well, I guess one out of three ain't bad.

Mind you, I'd like to see Jackson tackle something less iconic. He'd probably make a good fist Conan Doyle's 'The Lost World'.

Don't play video games, but if they look like that I might start!

Never having seen the original, I can't comment on it. But as a remake that was intended to be faitful to the original as much as possible, (I presume?) didn't he have to make the main action sequences bigger, better and with more dinosaurs?!

Think he is adapting The Lovely Bones next. Should be an interesting departure.

The Lovely Bones?



Can't wait for that. Fantastic

If that's a 'faithful' remake, I'd hate to see an unfaithful one! And the point is surely that bigger isn't always better (as the sfx sequences in this movie prove rather well)?

No, bigger isn't always better. But however revolutionary the effects in the original were at the time, they still look cr*p now!

But I wouldn't be surprised if other parts of the original are better than the remake.