Nobody Knows Anything

Welcome to Diane Patterson's eclectic blog about what strikes her fancy

King Kong: the review

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“‘Why did the twenty-five-foot tall gorilla climb the building?’ ‘You had me at twenty-five-foot tall gorilla.'” — Darin, in the car last night coming home from the movie.

Oh, what a disappointment King Kong was. I don’t know what cut of the movie all these raving reviewers have seen, but could it possibly have been this three-hour-and-fifteen minute extravaganza?

Let me sum up this movie in two words: slow motion.

There are lots and lots (and lots) of scenes in this movie where the film literally goes to slow motion, and does so to no apparent end that I could figure out. Slow motion film always reminds me of shows like “A Current Affair,” where they put the footage of the alleged perp in slow motion not only to make him seem more sinister, but because they just don’t have that much footage of him to begin with and need to stretch it out.

But the movie itself also unfolds at a slow motion pace. Director Peter Jackson is going to do everything in depth here: when you have a $200m. budget, fleshing out not one, not two, but possibly seven or eight different vignettes on How Bad The Depression Is seems like a good idea. Or, as I said to Darin, “Did you catch that Naomi Watts was in vaudeville? Don’t worry, because you’ll have six more opportunities to get up to speed on that.”

It’s an hour before we get to Skull Island, and it’s another hour before Kong gets to New York. (I’m not exactly sure of those numbers, actually, because Act 3 in this pic — Kong in NYC — moves at an ungodly, and illogical, speed. Suddenly Kong is on stage in New York — and Jack-the-playwright’s new play is opening the same night! With uh, what: the world’s shortest rehearsal time ever?) When the movie is on Skull Island — one gigantic action scene — the problems just keep piling up: we have brutal savages, giant gorillas, T-Rexes, and a humongous collection of the world’s most ravenous man-sized insects. (I couldn’t even play the insect part of World of Warcraft. I had my eyes closed for the insect bits of this movie.) When Adrien Brody and Naomi Watts fell into a river during their escape, I actually expected another detour with sharks or something.

My general reaction to the frenetic, well-produced goings-on is: Who cares? Yes, there’s lots happening, but I wasn’t particularly invested in any of it. Possibly the problem is how damn long the movie goes on for: maybe if it had been “People go to island, people find Kong, people bring him to NYC to a coldwater five-story walkup, then shoot him off tall building when he looks for a Rm W Vu” it might have meant more. But the movie never sells me on the grand tragedy of this giant gorilla who connects with a blonde chick and then falls off the Empire State Building. I mean, what: were they going to get married or something? Nope, sorry, not feeling it. Mostly wanted the movie over.

Jack Black, as the movie producer who finds and exploits Kong, has one mode, one facial expression in this movie. Naomi Watts has pretty much just one of each too: one more closeup of her looking searchingly at (insert one: Kong, love interest Adrien Brody, mates from vaudeville act) and I was going to scream. The special effects are amazing — my comment was, “It’s great how you’re actively watching a scene that has no element that ever existed in real life” — and if you’re interested in seeing this movie, see it in the theater.

But see it soon. I can’t imagine King Kong is going to be around for long. The theater we went to last night was mostly empty.

The rabbit hole

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Via Firedoglake, Media Matters has a wonderful bit up about our wonderfully unbiased press:

In a November 13 column, Washington Post ombudsman Deborah Howell addressed reader requests for the Post to conduct its own polls to measure public support for impeachment:

First, there was a swarm to me and to Post Polling Editor Richard Morin asking that The Post do a poll on whether President Bush should be impeached. Whoa. Since we get mail all the time saying that we are biased against Bush or are in his back pocket, why would The Post want to do that? The question many demanded that The Post ask is biased and would produce a misleading result, Morin said; he added that the campaign was started by Democrats.com.

But Howell’s defense doesn’t ring true. Her reference to complaints that the Post is “biased against Bush or are in his back pocket” is simply an irrelevant dodge; it has nothing to do with the question. It’s simply the same tired and lazy strategy that news organizations often fall back on in the face of criticism: saying, essentially: hey, both sides complain, so we must be doing everything right.

Further, Howell didn’t explain how “the question many demanded the Post ask is biased,” she just asserted it (attributing the assertion to Morin). But how would it be biased? Surely it must be possible to design a poll question to measure the public’s support for impeachment that isn’t “biased.” After all, the Post did it repeatedly when there was a Democratic president.

For example, A January 1998 Post poll conducted just days after the first revelations of Clinton’s relationship with Monica Lewinsky asked the following questions:

“If this affair did happen and if Clinton did not resign, is this something for which Clinton should be impeached, or not?”

“There are also allegations that Clinton himself lied by testifying under oath that he did not have an affair with the woman. If Clinton lied in this way, would you want him to remain in office as president, or would you want him to resign the presidency?”

“If Clinton lied by testifying under oath that he did not have an affair with the woman, and he did not resign, is this something for which Clinton should be impeached, or not?”

Morin was the Post’s polling director at the time, and he wrote the January 26, 1998, article reporting the poll results.

By the way, if you’re not reaading the incredibly valuable Firedoglake (the only blog I check more often than my RSS feed allows), you are missing out. It is the sine qua non for explaining all things Fitzmas — seriously, the ins and outs of what Judy and Scooter and Karl and Woody have been up to have been parsed and translated for the lay reader in a way that’s utterly beautiful… and it takes the mainstream media a couple of days or even weeks to crib from them and put sort-of explanations in the papers.