I can now say that I’ve seen Peter Jackson’s King Kong. Actually, I need to add a caveat to that: I’ve seen what I call the projectionist cut of King Kong. I operate the projectors for a small community theatre. Our current equipment uses manual changeovers, arc rods, and 2000′ reels. That means I see films in bits and pieces and usually don’t hear much or any of the dialogue.
In short, my conclusion on the film is that it’s too long for my taste, but has some very good parts. Highlights for me were the acting of Jack Black (surprising, actually), Naomi Watts, and the team of Andy Serkis and the Kong Animators. The scenes with just Kong and Ann Darrow were really excellent. Once I got to the last two reels I noticed a definite improvement. The whole New York sequence was absolutely amazing.
On the lowlight side, I’m not a big fan of “monster movies” so I could have done with a less of most of the Skull Island action sequences. They’re a part of the story, but I found them a bit boring. The effects work was very good, but seeing a bunch of dinosaurs and giant bugs in a film isn’t really remarkable anymore. And, I definitely thought the Kong fighting off the three Tyrannosauri was far and away too indulgent. If I wanted to see giant beasts fight I’d watch one of the Godzilla vs. Whatever films.
Often times these days the DVD editions of films come out with deleted scenes or extended editions. King Kong is one movie that I’d love to see a shorter edition with less of the grandiose effects scenes and more of the interesting character bits with Kong, Ann Darrow, Carl Denham, and Jack Driscoll. But, like I said I’m not really into monster movies so my opinion is probably moot.
Wow! It seemed to start off a little slow in terms of excitement with a big lead for BC, but Team Canada came back late. And, curling doesn’t get much better than a last rock for the win. It was disappointing as a Team Jones fan to see her miss that last shot, but it was without a doubt a great game. Congratulations to Team Scott on a well played spiel and bon chance in Grande Prairie.
With the 20th Olympic Winter Games now completed I’ve been thinking about the men’s ice hockey tournment in Torino. Personally, I think that it was a great tournament (Canada’s loss notwithstanding) on it’s own terms. My concern was with the way it was co-ordinated with the professional hockey season. Fitting the NHL season into the time before and after the Olympics seems to have really cramped things up. As well, some teams seemed to have a lot of marquee players involved.
Given the nature of both, I don’t see any effective way to prevent conflict between the two as presently organized. However, I think it could be organized a little bit differently and still be very good. I really enjoyed the World Cup of Hockey in 2004 and I think it was a fairly successful event. That got me to thinking about how the ice hockey events differ from comparable events in the world of football (soccer).
The FIFA organization has always ensured that the World Cup and the Olympics do not compete for status even though both are quadrennial events; the World Cup has always been the marquee event. Over the years the Olympic tournament has taken many different guises (not unlike Olympic ice hockey), but recently they’ve established it as an under 23 tournament. And, that really makes a lot of sense to me. It creates a marquee type event that stands between junior level tournaments but doesn’t really compete with the World Cup (not that anything really can).
I would really love to see the NHL/NHLPA and the IIHF come up with something similar for the Olympics and the World Cup of Hockey. That is, the World Cup of Hockey should be established as a long term quadrennial event (offset from the Olympiad) with a straightforward qualification system. And, the Olympic tournament should be limited to younger players. My knowledge of player ages is not sharp enough to decide on that limit, but it could probably be anywhere from 23-25.
This would allow the World Cup of Hockey to be organized in the off season, and feature all the best professional players each participating nation has to offer. And, it would allow for a great Olympic tournament that wouldn’t necessarily involve shutting down the entire NHL for the duration (maybe a short breaks and some games short a few players per team).
Obviously, none of this is my decision to make (and maybe it isn’t even a good idea), but I do stand by it as something worth thinking about.
This Small Farms business plan contest is interesting. (That website is a bit opaque; make sure to click through some of the image links for more info.) Living in an agriculture centred community as I do makes the ups and downs of the ag industry a part of my life even though I’m not a farmer (despite the blog title). I will be very interested to see what kinds of plans come out of this competition. I remain unconvinced that a lot of small farms can be really viable: the structure of the industry is not really friendly to small start-ups like you see in software and related tech fields.