Pterodactyls Are Pterrifying!

Last night was A Single Man. i don't have much to say about it specifically, except to say that it was very good and also quite sad, but not in a particularly depressing way - visually really wonderful, a lot of visual style. Some have considered it "over-stylized" but i disagree, on the basis that, well, i just didn't think so.

Colin Firth was absolutely wonderful. It takes a special performance to not reveal certain things. i found myself seeing some mild similarities to The Reader (in my opinion, the movie that should have beaten Slumdog Millionaire for Best Picture), in that both dealt with a certain kind of taboo relationship, and main characters who were trying (and succeeding) to hide elements of their pasts (being a Nazi or being a gay man whose partner had died). It was an awesome performance - restraint is so much more effective in a performance, but so much less celebrated. it brought enough gravity to the movie to balance out the stylization of the visual appearance.

This morning was the 1933 King Kong. and i'll tell you, it was really good! of course, the special effects are now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain amount of realism, and the acting style is now almost 80 years old, so it lacks a certain grounding in actual human behavior, but it was still an engrossing story that played out with a lot of excitement. i was especially surprised at how faithful Peter Jackson's 2005 version had been to the original. When watching it, i kept thinking, "Whoa, was that really in the original? Dinosaurs? Island people? King Kong fighting a T-REX?!?!" But sure enough, it was all in the original (even Kong breaking the T-rex's jaw bone!). It makes me want to go back and watch the newer version again now because i think it was a whole lot smarter than i had realized at the time. It essentially takes a story and movie that already works on many levels (seriously, just watch the original version, and you'll see, it still holds up in a lot of ways), kept all of the function elements, and brought the effects into our own century so we could watch it without snickering.

This movie was yet another reminder to me that if an old movie has been deemed a "classic" on one level or another, if it has that kind of reputation, the odds are that it deserves it, so go watch it!

Lemon out.