King Kong [1933, Special Edition]

Yesterday, I was at the hkflix.com website and saw this -
http://www.hkflix.com/xq/asp/filmID.532750/qx/details.htm

King Kong already released on this site. HKFLIX is a popular HK retailer with office in the US. They don't sell pirated copies or computer burnt copies. They sell legal stuff from HK distributor.

Now how is this possible that King Kong original is up for sale at this site. Agreed it has got Chinese characters on the cover but it has the original English soundtrack with few extras. I am confused. Does Warner studios don't control this? John?

On the other hand read this -
http://movies.yahoo.com/mv/news/iw/20050817/112429938000.html

--Ranjan

Currently, the 1933 "King Kong" is available only as an import (from DVD Academy). They advertise it as "the officially licensed Korean release of the 1933 Classic King Kong." Supposedly, it is region-free and will play on all DVD players.

Warner Bros. will release its own "King Kong" sets on November 22. I'd wait.

John

For some reason I thought that King Kong was never released on DVD before anywhere in world. Maybe Warner gave distribution rights to DVD Academy. I will pick the US release.

--RJ

Great review!

I still love the FX in this movie, and not in any campy sense. I think this movie looks fabulous even today. Of all the crimes CGI is responsible for, putting an end to glorious stop-motion animation is at the very top of the list.

"Of all the crimes CGI is responsible for, putting an end to glorious stop-motion animation is at the very top of the list"

I don't share the same sentiment

Comparing the best intances of CGI vs stop-motion animation, it's a no contest. The fluidity and freedom of motion of the former is quite unmatched by the latter. Stop motion animation often imposes a lot of contraints on the possible things to do with the puppet - not so with CGI. Obviously, as with stop motion animation, the skill of the animators is very important (along with the budget of course)...otherwise "fake and lifeless" CGI becomes a problem. But, the best CGI animators and effects crew can breathe life into their digital creations as well as the best puppeteers can.

I think your issue here is nostalgia. There are plenty of movies with bad stop-motion animation. Quality issues don't fall exclusively in the domain of CGI.

Stop motion animation has had its time. It is still a viable technique, to be sure, but it does not produce anything as well as the best CGI effects can.

It's not nostalgia. CGI still looks terrible. Jackson made some nice advances in LoTR so there is hope. The difference is in the genesis of the image. The power of photography stems from its link with the physical reality. With CG, "There's no there there." Just shimmying pixels with no life and no weight. And thus no emotional heft - see the comical CG "ping pong" Yoda vs. the far more affective puppet Yoda.

This is why Gollum worked so well. Though a digital image, the source was still a real physical performance. The most promise seems to me in rooting the sterile "fluidity" of CG with the tangible.

Chris,

"With CG, "There's no there there." Just shimmying pixels with no life and no weight. And thus no emotional heft - see the comical CG "ping pong" Yoda vs. the far more affective puppet Yoda.
"
- CGI is incredibly difficult to weild, and requires a mastery and many iterations to arrive at the final image. But I am of the opinion that the final composited image of a masterful work is heads and shoulders above what stop-motion models can achieve. You say that the power of photography lies in its rootedness to reality, but how real does the 1933 King Kong feel in representing its size and heft? Not really (pun intended). It looks like a small puppet. It is not the fault of CGI if the animators are not up to par.

- Just a bunch of shimmery pixels with no life etc? Is there more life to a puppet? The physicality is there, but the only advantage scale models and puppets have over current CGI is the ease of filming the object and having something to physically manipulate. But beyond that, for fancy sequences like the Warg attack in The Two Towers, it's virtually impossible with stop motion animation.

"This is why Gollum worked so well. Though a digital image, the source was still a real physical performance. The most promise seems to me in rooting the sterile "fluidity" of CG with the tangible."

- Which is NOT a problem of CGI. You are confusing the quality of acting and character with the technique. It is very possible (and evident from many old movies) that stop-motion animation produces craptacular performances too.

In conclusion:

Face it, once the technology has further improved, and the art of CGI is mastered (many animators have problems matching lighting and tend to overanimate characters...like Ping Pong Yoda), there really is no question against it.

Your reasons for thinking that stop-motion is more realistic compared to CGI is shaky at best. And you are ignoring how limiting stop-motion animation can be in its implementation. Yes, stop-motion animation has its unique 'character' in itself but that is mostly due to the obvious puppet quality of the visuals.

In the industry's efforts to churn out CGI laden movies, many have failed to imbue the CGI effects with purpose and character, which is the fault of the filmakers, and not of the process. Also, like it or not, things that are impossible to do with models are being attempted in CGI, so this 'beyond reality' is further accentuated. But CGI in itself offers tremendous potential in the suspension of belief beyond the reach of traditional techniques...IF PROPERLY DONE.

Actually, let's hypothesize:

Say we go back to 1933. Say we show them Jurassic Park and King Kong. Which one do you think people will buy into more?

A lot of these 'pixels are flat and lifeless' arguments show that knowledge of the process is interfering with the perception of the effect.

**A lot of these 'pixels are flat and lifeless' arguments show that knowledge of the process is interfering with the perception of the effect.**


Yes but so what? Perhaps ignorance is bliss, but films are not created in a vaccuum.

All but the least attentive viewer understands there is a difference between watching Jackie Chan perform martial arts stunts and seeing a CG/animated character going through the same motions. This is a fundamental part of the appeal of Chan's films - the knowledge that he really performs the stunts. The fact that the film is a record of a real physical performance makes it more impressive. I would also suggest that even viewers who don't give it much conscious thought can tell the difference between a good Chan film, and a H'wood film which is cut together super-fast in order to make a non-athletic actor look like he's performing stunts.

Another example: A wide shot which shows a man walking onto a basketball court, dribbling the ball and hitting a shot from half-court (in which we can always see the ball) has a much different (and greater) impact on the viewer than the same scene if it is conveyed in a series of cuts: cut of his hands in close-up, cut to the ball in mid-air, cut to a shot of the ball going through the hoop.

Yet another: When we watch home videos, we respond to the sight of our loved ones, to a real recording of a time when they were physically present. The response is not the same to a CG simulation of them.

The high-falutin' term for this is "ontological realism" but we don't need to delve into academia to understand the power of the photograph.

Perhaps this link is gradually disappearing in a world of simulations, and a generation that grows up with only "the fake" will embrace it the same as "the real."

Your arguments continue to be fallacious.

The intent of CGI isn't in replicating Jackie Chans or sportsmen, or our loved ones.

Its very purpose is to enable the creation of the impossible, to aid storytelling. To produce the dinosaurs in JP, T1000 in T2, otherwordly places and things otherwise too expensive or too difficult to do in the physical world.

The 'misuse' and poor use of CGI results in your kind of reaction towards this incredible tool. But it should not be held against CGI itself.

The physical 'reality' of puppets on film is no more valid than the pixel-level reality of CGI. And I'm arguing that CGI produces better results than stop-motion when used properly.

"Ignorance is bliss" comment is especially applicable to special effects. Like I said, special effects (which include CGI as a toolset) is to help suspend disbelief and when comparing the 'realism' of the effect it is important to disassociate oneself from the knowledge of the process since it introduces bias. After all, in special effects, it's the final image that matters, not the technique. Why do you think in science it's so important to perform triple-blind tests? It's because knowledge of the process taints the perception.

I've put forth so many valid arguments in this issue, yet you skirt around it while introducing increasingly off-topic arguments. I should probably stop reading this comments section for a while.

YCH,

As a general rule, merely claiming "Your arguments are fallacious" or "my arguments are valid" is not particularly effective or convincing rhetoric.

I am arguing about what makes an image powerful or meaningful. I am not dismissing CG as a tool, but I think it has a crippling obstacle to overcome: the fact that it does not derive from any physical source. As terrible as a movie might be, one can still enjoy it for the mere fact that it shows a real person or a real location. CG does not have this heft. This is what Ebert was referring to when he discussed the FX in Spider-Man: "Remember the first time you saw the characters defy gravity in "Crouching Tiger, Hidden Dragon"? They transcended gravity, but they didn't dismiss it: They seemed to possess weight, dimension and presence. Spider-Man as he leaps across the rooftops is landing too lightly, rebounding too much like a bouncing ball. "

CG doesn't have this "weight, dimension and presence' naturally - animators have to work very hard to imbue their images with these qualities. So far, few have succeeded.

This is only one piece of the argument, and I do not claim CG is not well suited to certain tasks. But it this "absence" that is at the heart of some of the fundamental challenges concerning CG.

Personally, I've never seen "King Kong" and am looking forward to experiencing it for the first time. Sounds like this DVD set won't dissapoint. Thanks, John!

I'm rather late to the argument, but "Hulk" is another example where people simply did not buy The Hulk because he bounced around like a rubber ball rather than an oversized, HEAVY man.

The 1933 King Kong, Jack Skellington, Wallace and Gromit, and etc...these are all real things. This makes them more "real" than any CGI creation. We know that "something" is actually moving. There is real performance. Compare the puppet Yoda in "The Empire Strikes Back" to the CGI Yoda in Episodes 2 and 3, and you can sense genuine emotion from the puppet Yoda but generate nothing (other than unintended laughs) with the CGI Yoda (which is about as state-of-the-art as you can get with CGI today).

Hell, the chickens in "Chicken Run" made me want to laugh and cry a lot more than Hayden and Natalie did in Episode 2.

At any rate, I still find it amazing that the CGI dinos in "Jurassic Park" look much better and more real than about 60% of the stuff in Peter Jackson's "LOTR". There's a huge difference between integration and simply throwing up on the screen whatever a computer spits out (i.e. that awful sequence with Legolas fighting an elephant in "LOTR 3").

So much better than the 2005-version!
You should all watch this beautiful piece of film history

(And by the way, I really think that Peter Jackson and most of his CGI, both LOTR and KONG, is overrated)