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| 19 Dec 2005 10:54:58 pm |
 TWO MUST SEE HOLIDAY FILMS |
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When it is time for holiday movies, and it is right now, you can’t go wrong with two of my favorites. One is very old and a must see if you’ve never seen it before. The other is only a couple years old but as holiday classics go I highly recommend it.
The first is of course is “It’s a Wonderful Life,” made in 1946. Jimmy Stewart’s personal favorite film you can watch it over and over and really never miss a beat. It’s long, perhaps too long for today’s audience, but you can’t help but shed a tear when the final bell rings and the angel Clarence gets his wings.
This film starred Stewart, Donna Reed as lovely as she ever was, Ward Bond and a host of other unforgettable characters who live on forever. It’s a Wonderful Life never gets hokey and the good folks of Bedford Falls never tire of bringing you joy.
If you have never seen it, draw up a chair and watch it with a friend, or by yourself. You won’t regret it. Watching it with a friend is preferable because remember this; it is Christmas.
The second film I cherish mainly because it is the most upbeat and loveable lark of a holiday film I’ve ever seen. “Love Actually” stars just about every modern day British actor of note from Hugh Grant to Alan Rickman to Emma Thompson to Colin Firth. Liam Neeson even has a role as a single dad and Keira Knightly is also along for the ride. Billy Bob Thornton, believe it or not, has a small role as a lecherous US President, huh huh.
This film has its down moments but they are just about all uplifted and brought back to life throughout the picture, and the music is wonderful. The travel scenes are cool and it is just a wonderful holiday flick. It is one of those films when you walk in on the middle, you stay to the end. The scenes featuring Firth going to find his one true love, Sienna Guillory, to propose are particularly touching and extremely funny. And everybody is extremely pleasant to watch for one reason or another.
A new holiday classic this is one that is truly a date night film for just sitting by the fire and popping in the DVD with your best love. Actually. Both of them are.
Enjoy and happy holidays! |
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Category : General
| Posted By : kckings |  Comments[0] |  Trackbacks [4638] |
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| 17 Dec 2005 02:28:55 am |
| KING KONG MAKES LIKE JACKIE CHAN IN NEW VERSION |
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If you like special effects you certainly get your $10 worth with the new King Kong. Make no mistake about it. King Kong IS a special effects movie and director Peter Jackson never lets you forget it. Now if it only had a script, some dialogue worth listening to and a little better casting; Jackson might have the mega hit he was looking for. Instead what he gets is three hours and seven minutes of mostly top notch special effects covering up some very bad special effects.
The premise of King Kong is of course the ultimate Beauty & the Beast story. The problem is Fay Wray still rules in the 1933 version. You can’t top it no matter how hard you try and adding color and digitalization to it doesn’t make it any better. It just makes it different. Indeed it makes it pale in comparison.
The special effects are really wonderful for most of the film. The close-ups of Kong are tremendous and the ape shows some pretty good emotion. He could have shown more. I mean c’mon was he getting scale?! The Ape looked like he was going through the motions, rather than the e-motions.
The fight scenes were pretty strong but when King Kong goes Jackie Chan on a pair of unsuspecting T-Rex --- well, martial arts aside, it was quite laughable. I totally thought the other monsters on Skull Island were overdone. The spiders and the other creepy crawlies had way too much to do. Cutting their scenes by two-thirds wouldn’t have hurt at all.
The shots of Kong and the Babe playfully fooling around on the frozen pond in New York were really cool, and they made you not only laugh but start to enjoy this long, and I do mean LONG film. Then the army comes in and screws it up for everyone.
The first 20 minutes were strong and the set design was a pleasure. As the film moved along, and c’mon everybody knows the story so we’re not telling tales out of school here, it got kinda hokey. The thing which bothered me was simple. The powerful special effects were blended with crappy special effects and to cover those crappy special effects the shots were made tight. So tight as to make them blur hoping you didn’t notice because the action was predominant. Maybe Jackson was thinking “if we go fast enough maybe nobody will notice.” Nah, it was just a blur.
Naomi Watts can act. Although, she didn’t have to in this picture. She just had to look good, emote some facial expressions and well, look good to the ape. You see after the first hour and 30 minutes, she didn’t utter a full sentence longer than ONE word. The word was “NOOOOOOO!” All she did was moan, scream, yell no, look sexy, look vulnerable, scream, moan yell no and well, you get the picture. She had no dialogue.
Adriene Brody was a nice piece of casting though. He came off very well for a guy with very few lines. Again he had to use a lot of facial expression but had more lines in 30 minutes probably than Watts had in the entire film.
The casting of Jack Black as producer/con man/promoter Carl Denham wasn’t bad, but it wasn’t great. You waited for that last key line in the film. You know the one. You waited and waited for him to utter those immortal words. And he threw them away!! Shame on you, Jack. Shame. This was your big chance to redeem this film. Blame Jackson if you will.
The one thing this film does is lets you see how far we’ve come from the 1930’s. Here I’m not talking about the special effects, but rather the words “politically correct.” In 1930 it was perfectly alright to allow airplanes to attack a giant ape on top of the Empire State Building, shooting their way with bullets landing where ever they land, missing half the time and watching them riddle New York City. Today can you imagine the furor if the government sent planes over NYC to shoot at King Kong? It would take an act of congress. Somebody would be sent into negotiate with the Kong and talk him down before they shot him.
Denham walks away when the monkey is dead at the end without much of a care in both versions. Today he’d be shaking in his boots at the liability for all the damage Kong did. After all, he brought him to town for the big party and Lloyds of London probably wouldn’t insure this type of stage play. The lawsuits would force the man to put a gun to his head. Which, by the way, should have happened about two hours into this laugher?
Oh, and it was a nice touch shooting the NYC scenes in the dead of winter with the snow covered ground and Kong slippin’ and slidin’ down 46th Street. There were some really great special effects of the ape charging through town at this point. It was only muddled by the bad special effects of the Kong carrying Beauty up the tall building. It got way too hokey at that point with her stiff doll like body not even halfway believable.
Now here is the kicker. It is the heart of winter, the girl is wearing a silky sleeveless evening dress with T-Straps and after an hour of running around she is standing on top of the Empire State Building. Could she have the decency to have just one goose bump. How about some redness in her cheeks? She’s half frozen in real life. No she’d have a broken neck in real life from being tossed about at “break neck” speeds by Kong, but let’s move on. Peter, just make her look a little cold. We’ll understand but even with make believe you have to make it so the audience believes.
I’m sure at 3:07:00 they probably cut the scenes where the crew actually brings King Kong back to NY after they capture him. So we do understand why they didn’t show him crossing the ocean on a raft. It would not have made much sense anyway due to the way they got him down. They could have kept it in if Jackson would have cut some of the Skull Island chases.
There was a really funny and very clever part where the vegetarian Brontosaurus’ were running from the meat eaters and stumbling all over themselves. This is really a superb section of the film. You can seriously imagine this happening after watching it. There likely were stampedes in prehistoric times where exactly this sort of thing happened and
Jackson and his special effects crew captured it with brilliance.
It doesn’t make up for the rest of this bomb though. Too bad, too. It might just encourage more film makers to take the tact, “We can make a lot of money by taking an old action film and re-doing it with today’s special effects.” We hope not. There is much more out there waiting to be made if studios will just take a few inexpensive chances instead of putting their money into expensive duds like this one.
Oh and in case you missed it. Yes, Peter Jackson did cast his two kids, Billy and Katie, as a couple of street urchins on the streets of NY. They were in the Lord of the Rings films too. Nepotism. It’s a Hollywood thing even in New Zealand. Jackson himself was cast as a “gunner” in the film. Hey if it’s your film you can do what you like. Even save a little for the director’s cut if you like.
Oh and again Fay Wray rules! |
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Category : General
| Posted By : kckings | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [17132] |
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| 08 Dec 2005 11:34:43 pm |
| THE INTERNET: CREATING RUDE SHOPPERS ADNAUSEM |
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How rude can people be? In every retail business and store there has to be some understanding about etiquette when walking in and shopping. Case in point; you would not walk into a record store and ask where you can buy records. You don’t interrupt a salesman who is trying to sell a dishwasher to someone by saying “you can buy it down the street for $50 cheaper.” And you don’t try to sell your sportscards to a customer inside a sportscard store.
Here is a beauty which just happened today. As you probably know I own a sportscard and memorabilia store in Ventura, California. We sell lots of memorabilia and lots of autographs. We have about 1000 signed items in the store. Today, in the heart of the Christmas holiday season when joy should be spread a well dressed, and apparently well-heeled older woman walks in.
She explains she and her family are trying to buy a Brett Favre signed football for her grandson and they decided to ask my expert opinion.
“We know you are the expert so we wanted to get the advice from the horse’s mouth so to speak,” she says.
At this point I’m expecting her to ask me if I have a Favre signed ball or could get one. But no, wait. She does not. Instead, she lays down three pieces of paper printouts from three different web sites of other companies.
“We went on the Internet and we found these three signed footballs, one for $249, one for $299 and the other a lot more at $379,” says the woman. “Which of the three do you think we should buy from?”
It took all of my self control not to throw her out of my store. She came to me as an expert on where to buy something from another company. Did she ask me first, “do you have a Brett Favre signed football or can you get me one,” or even, “can you beat these prices?” No, she asks me what other Internet company she should purchase from.
This is like walking into an Italian restaurant and asking the owner “can you recommend a place which serves really good Italian food?” Or, like walking up to a Chevy dealer and asking “can you recommend a good Chevy dealer?”
It is called common courtesy, etiquette and just plain not being stupid about the people you deal with. Most card store owners I know would have thrown her out and given her a good tongue lashing to boot. Being a person who believes in courtesy I did not. In reality I hoped to sway her to my side and even made some calls to try to do it better which by the way she really wasn’t listening to. I unfortunately got nothing but answer machines from companies on the web she was asking about.
I tried to explain to her I might be able to get one for her at a better price and as she “had to leave” she said in a flippant tone “I’ll check back.” It was the kind of tone which said, thank you but no thank you…we’ll go back to the web sites.
This is one of the things the Internet has done which is sad. It has helped turn people into very rude shoppers. It makes people think “price is all that matters” and in the long run will do more harm than good.
This is why I really appreciate the regular customers I have both on-line and in house. We treat them with common courtesy and they reciprocate. It is a win-win situation for all of us. We all have our bad moments but we still try to do our best. We can only hope to be better people for those who wish to be treated with respect. |
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Category : General
| Posted By : kckings | Comments[0] | Trackbacks [6716] |
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| 06 Dec 2005 12:28:16 am |
| SANTA CLAUS WISHES FOR PIRATE FANS |
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Twas the week before Christmas and all through the land
Every GM was stirring, each with a plan.
The Dodgers got Furcal and placed him at short
The Mets got a handful and more to report
Relief pitchers got rich, oh much richer than deserved
And wait til they blow saves as 2006 will observe
But my team sits idly, well not too idly bye.
There have been constant stirrings for Nomar and Damon,
Please give us a try.
For with Johnny in center and Nomar at third
Jack W. at short and Castillo to be heard,
And with Jason Bay in left with Duffy in right
Eldred at First we could show them some might.
Catchers? We have catchers Doumit and more
And not to forget we have pitching Galore.
They say we are poor but McClatch wants to spend
And a couple of Free Agents even if they are on the mend
Will look nice in Buc Black, and Gold right on through
2006 and the Playoffs yahoo!
Don’t part with Perez, this would be quite dumb.
The guy has a flair and his arm is a gun.
We’d like Blalock from Texas for sure
Overbay from the Brewers is getting the tour.
Fogg and Wells are both on the block
Pitchers are always part of the talk
They aren’t easy to shop each with something to prove
Off years for both make them hard to move.
Oh but my Bucs sit still for the mo,
Just please, oh please don’t sign guys who can’t throw.
Get a nice power hitter who can play third
And a centerfielder with flight
A hitter with power and a lead-off just right.
A short man for the pen we’re sure we don’t need
For Gonzales is the man, all rallies will heed.
We’re young and we’re growing and getting quite good,
And who knows, just maybe a wild card withstood.
So Santa, oh Santa make Littlefield smile,
Make him bright like Rudolph’s nose
And the fans to the park will file.
Bring us a third sacker, and a fleet guy in the field
Deliver us a power guy and a lead-off man please yield
Yes we’d like to recover from losing so long
A Happy Christmas to all, and 2006 our strong song. |
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Category : General
| Posted By : kckings | Comments[2] | Trackbacks [6116] |
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