Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 13, 2019 8:58:08 GMT -8
Once in a while it doesn’t hurt to check in on some of the more obscure Roku channels. I have one downloaded called Dustx. This is a sci-fi oriented channel. I saw they had some good movies on it. I was looking for a no-brainer having surfed through the first ten minutes a lot of junk looking for something to watch just to get lost in something for a while. They had 1976’s King Kong with Jeff Bridges, Charles Grodin, and Jessica Lange. I’ll leave it for you to judge whether or not Lange is over-acting. But she is certainly attempting to exude the sexuality of Marilyn Monroe. And she more or less succeeds. Charles Grodin is interesting as cast as The Bad Oil Executive. (What do they ever do but allow us to heat our homes?) Grodin might be better remembered as the nice guy from the Beethoven movies with the big lovable St. Bernard. Grodin popped onto the scene in 1954’s 20,000 Leagues Under the Sea in an uncredited role as a “Drummer Boy.” I’ll have to go back and watch that and see if I can spot him. For me, he’s also notable in the Neil Simon movie, Seems Like Old Times. I think this particular one is underrated. I watched half of this last night. I find Jeff Bridges to be just a bit obnoxious and thin but the build-up to first meeting Kong is pretty good. They do an amazing job conceiving that big wall that keeps him contained to his part of the island. Visually it’s magnificent. And the dancing natives who are having some kind of “wedding” for Kong are superb. One can hate this movie for a lot of fair reasons. But at the end of the day, it’s a pretty good adventure.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 13, 2019 9:06:02 GMT -8
Wasn't Charles Grodin "Nicky the Irresponsible Parasite" in The Great Muppet Caper? He was good there, but of course it was a Muppets movie so that probably doesn't say much.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 13, 2019 12:21:45 GMT -8
Yes, Grodin played Nicky Holiday in The Great Muppet Caper. I haven’t seen that one. I’ll see if I can find it. My first comments on 1976’s King King were just at the point where Kong had been captured. I paused for some other stuff and then finished it today. My goodness, the second half is really stupid and corny. Jeff Bridges is embarrassingly bad in this. There is nothing at all good about the corn they popped all over the second half of this movie. Really awful. It turns into a b-movie. Rather amazing. I don’t quite remember that. But it is very typical for movies to lose it about one-half the three-quarters into themselves. Sometimes when even moderately entertaining movies don’t self-destruct I’m amazed. It happens so often.
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 13, 2019 13:40:35 GMT -8
I like Charles Grodin. He has a truly oddball type of humor. I think Midnight Run is my favorite of his films.
As to King Kong, I am glad you wrote your followup review today. I was beginning to wonder if you had taken to drink. The Jeff Bridges King Kong is one of the worst films I have ever seen, and I can thankfully say I only saw part of it. I couldn't stand to finish the thing.
It is obvious you are in a very positive mood and want to spread good cheer about you. Merry Christmas.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 13, 2019 17:19:05 GMT -8
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 13, 2019 20:50:44 GMT -8
Sadly, I have not seen a later version than the Jessica Lange film.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 14, 2019 8:42:01 GMT -8
The 2005 version has several things to commend it including a fight between Godzilla (well, a T-Rex) and Kong. Although this is a Peter Jackson film, not a Spielberg film, there is a bug scene in this that is an example of the worst kind of unbelievable excess of Spielberg — even taking into account we’re talking about a film about a giant ape. The CGI is good and the cast, if memory serves, is rather bland although Jack Black as the ambitious filmmaker is good in the role. Naomi Watts as the modern Fay Wray is certainly not as over-acted as Jessica Lange in the 1976 movie. However, whatever sparkle the cast has is brought down by the anemic Adrien Brody in his role as the Jeff Bridges role (Jack Driscoll this time instead of Jack Prescott). I believe it was Bruce about who was the hero in the 1933 film, John Driscoll. What surprised me about re-watching the 1976 film was just how awful Jeff Bridges was. Even in the early parts which were rather interesting he is notable horrible. I’ll have to re-watch the 2005 version again although I believe I have already seen it multiple times. One reviewer notes: That sounds like our Timothy with the “of course” prefix. And because it’s a good point. In order to support the weight of the body, bones have to do more than double their size for double the height. I think bones have to cube their size, or something like that. The point being that it is an exponential relationship between bone mass vs. body weight, not proportional. This is why the largest dinosaurs had such huge bones….and why you’ll never see an elephant hop. And about the CGI, this same reviewer makes an astute comment: The bolded part I thought was particularly insightful. It’s no secret that modern movies had far too much depended on CGI to the detriment of the basics of a good movie: plot, characters, story.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 14, 2019 9:15:05 GMT -8
You're thinking of what's known as the square-cube law. If you double an animal in size, the volume and weight will be 8 times as high, but the various areas (such as the skin, the surfaces of the alveoli in the lungs, and the cross-sectional area of the bones) will be only 4 times as high. So adjustments become necessary to the body structure to make up for this.
Doubling the size might work -- think of it as being permanently in 2 gravities (though the breathing might be a problem even then). But at King Kong's size, it just won't work.
But from King Kong via Them! and Tarantula to Fantastic Voyage (Isaac Asimov, in doing the novelization, tried his best to deal with the numerous scientific problems of the story) and many episodes about people becoming gigantic (or for that matter shrinking), Hollyweird never has understood this science. Or, it would seem, any other science. (Can you say Waterworld, boys and girls?)
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 14, 2019 12:48:55 GMT -8
Considering the "make-believe" nature of much of which comes out of Hollywood, I don't see the need for them to understand science. They produce one unbelievable film after the other.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 14, 2019 18:10:21 GMT -8
The largest dinosaurs were probably as large or larger than King Kung. It depends:
King Kong (1933): 18 ft tall, 5 tons
Son of Kong (1933): 12 ft
Godzilla vs. King Kong (1962): 148 ft, 20,000 tons
The King Kong Show (1966): 50 ft
King Kong Escapes (1967): 66 ft, 10,000 tons
Mechani-Kong: 66 ft, 15,000 tons
King Kong (1976): 45 ft, 30 tons
King Kong Lives (1986): 60 ft, 35 tons
Kong: The Animated Series (2000): 40 ft
King Kong (2005): 25 ft, 5 tons
King Kong Broadway (2013): 20 ft
King Kong: King of the Apes (2016): 50 ft
Kong: Skull Island (2017): 104 ft, 158 tons
Also, there may have been some hardening substance other than calcium in their bones. Aren't bananas high in titanium? Or am I thinking potassium? Maybe there is a special food they eat rich in the former.
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Post by timothylane on Dec 14, 2019 18:43:05 GMT -8
King Kong was so much larger than Fay Wray that it's hard to believe he was only 18 feet tall.
Bananas are indeed an excellent source of potassium, as are potatoes.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 14, 2019 18:48:20 GMT -8
It was hard to read some of those numbers from the poor typography in the video. This FAQ has him listed officially at 50 feet “but he never appears quite that large in the film itself.”
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 14, 2019 19:26:56 GMT -8
That's exactly what I was thinking. Who says these types have to have the same kind of bones and muscle tissue/etc, that we do?
And as King Kung was a relative, I ought to know!
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 14, 2019 20:26:07 GMT -8
I wasn't going to mention the resemblance.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 14, 2019 22:27:19 GMT -8
There once was a big monkey Kong Whose Hollywood history was long But the bad-acting Bridges Had so left him in stitches He sped back to where he belong
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Post by kungfuzu on Dec 14, 2019 22:53:31 GMT -8
There is something about that familial hirsute look that is undeniable.
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Brad Nelson
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Post by Brad Nelson on Dec 15, 2019 8:27:29 GMT -8
I take it you haven't gone full metrosexual and undergone wax treatments and such. Perhaps King Kong is so popular because he at least is a masculine gorilla. To the beast of my knowledge (and one of those movies listed above sounds suspiciously PC) the feminists and social justice Nazis haven't fundamentally transformed the great ape into a poodle quite yet.
Okay, okay. I know. It will be just milliseconds on the geological timescale before we have "Queen Kong." I have no doubt of that. But for now we have the big, hairy ape who likes to removes the tops from his "brides" as Kong did with Jessica Lange in the 1976 movie. The #AngryNaziWomenToo movement hasn't quite banished this film yet. But give them time.
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