Image Credit: Weta Digital Ltd.
After seeing Safe Haven this weekend and not shedding a tear, I realized I don’t cry at Nicholas Sparks movies — even though they pull out all the stops: war, cancer, the beauty of nature, Alzheimer’s … sometimes all in the same film. Although this fills me with pride, it also makes me think about when I do cry at movies, and it turns out, the issue might be with me. So here goes my confession: I cry at all the wrong movies. READ FULL STORY »
Image Credit: Everett Collection
“Seasons of Ape-Human Love”? “Seventy-Six Fighter Planes”? “And I Am Telling You I’m Not Going (to Climb Down the Empire State Building)”? These made-up songs will not appear in a new musical based on the classic 1933 film King Kong — but the show itself is very much real. According to a press release, Kong is set to premiere in June 2013 at Melbourne’s Regent Theatre.
The musical’s book was written by Tony Award nominee Craig Lucas, who also penned the script for The Light in the Piazza. Its score is studded with both refurbished Depression-era tunes and original material by contemporary artists including Sarah McLachlan, Justice, Massive Attack’s Robert del Naja, and The Avalanches’ Guy Garvey. Producer Marius deVries will oversee Kong‘s music; he’s being credited as the show’s “composer and arranger.”
Image Credit: Photofest NYC
In the current age of remakes and sequels and prequels and reboots and preboots, resurrecting a classic film from the viewpoint of the original’s villain sometimes qualifies as “outside the box” thinking. For example, there’s Malificent, Disney’s plan to tell the Sleeping Beauty tale from the point of view of the sorceress; and Pan, in which Aaron Eckhart’s Captain Hook will be a hero detective on the trail of child killer. (Heck, the entire Star Wars prequels were about getting to the heart of Darth Vader!)
Now Fox Animation is planning an animated version of King Kong, told from the ape’s point of view, according to Deadline. READ FULL STORY »
It think it was the giant 3-D spider that put me over the top.
On Tuesday, I joined a small gaggle of invited press and VIPs at the official unveiling of Universal Studios Hollywood’s King Kong 360 3-D, the replacement for the old, animatronic studio tour Kong attraction, which was decimated in a fire two years ago. The brainchild of director Peter Jackson, the new Kong experience unfolds on two massive parabolic 3-D screens that wrap around either side of the Universal Studios Tour tram cars, inside a custom-built soundstage. Before you enter, Jackson appears on the TVs mounted inside each of the tram cars and tells you to put on your 3-D glasses (which you hopefully haven’t dropped somewhere along the line of the studio tour up until that point). Then your tour guide rolls the tram cars inside, and after plunging into eerie almost-total darkness, the screens suddenly light up, and boom, you’re back on Skull Island — i.e. the Skull Island from Jackson’s 2005 King Kong. READ FULL STORY »
When an accidental fire torched a large section of the famed Universal Studios backlot in 2008, the giant animatronic King Kong that had terrorized countless visitors on the famed studio tram tour in Los Angeles was one of the most high-profile burn victims. But with the old-school jumbo gorilla reduced to a charred hunk of plaster and metal, director Peter Jackson lept at the opportunity to re-make the King Kong attraction in the image of his 2005 behemoth movie remake, replete with as much state-of-the-art technology as possible.
The result is King Kong 360 3-D, opening at Universal Studios Hollywood July 1. READ FULL STORY »
Spoilsports at Forbes note that a gorilla the size of Kong is biologically impossible; for one thing, a creature that big would barely be able to walk. (He’d also need to eat the equivalent of 15,000 Big Macs or 65,000 Pop Tarts every day.) But the movie gets high marks for Andy Serkis’ aping of gorilla behavior. No word on how accurate the T. Rexes and giant spiders are.
And they’re off…in the race for Oscar!
Jumping out to an early lead, it’s Brokeback Mountain (left, costarring Jake Gyllenhaal and Heath Ledger), fueled by Best Picture nods from the Los Angeles Film Critics Association and Boston Society of Film Critics over the weekend, but dark horse The Squid and the Whale is in hot pursuit after taking home top honors from the New York Film Critics Online.
Don’t count out Capote, either, especially not with Philip Seymour Hoffman in the saddle. His performance won the best actor prize from the Los Angeles critics, while Vera Farmiga was named best actress for Down to the Bone. The group gave supporting actor nods to the prolific Catherine Keener (for her work in Capote, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, The Interpreter, and The Ballad of Jack and Rose) and to A History of Violence‘s William Hurt. Best director went to Brokeback‘s Ang Lee.
The Boston critics (whose ranks include PopWatch’s leading man Gary Susman) concurred with their
Left Coast colleagues in the best picture, best director, best actor, and best supporting actress categories. They awarded Reese Witherspoon the best actress prize for her performance in Walk the Line, and Paul Giamatti with the best supporting actor award for Cinderella Man.
New York’s online critics made it a clean sweep of the weekend’s awards for Seymour Hoffman, but respectively spread the wealth for best actress, best supporting actress, best supporting actor, and best director among Keira Knightley (Pride and Prejudice), Amy Adams (Junebug), Oliver Platt (Casanova), and Fernando Meirelles (The Constant Gardener).
The American Film Institute also placed its bets this weekend, by naming its own list of the year’s 10 best movies: Brokeback Mountain, Capote, Crash, The 40-Year-Old Virgin, Good Night, and Good Luck, A History of Violence, King Kong, Munich, The Squid and the Whale, and Syriana.
Do any of the above winners make your personal awards list? Or are there any glaring omissions? Holla back!
addCredit(“Brokeback Mountain: Kimberley French”)
