We saw two movies last night: ‘King Kong’ and ‘Memoirs of a Geisha’.
Kong, directed by Jackson (“Lord of the Rings”), is a spectacular movie with amazing effects but does not come over as being a movie about ‘Kong’. Too frequently, I had this feeling that portions of the movie had nothing to do with ‘Kong’ but more with Jackson’s obsession with visual effects. Cute large bugs and dinosaurs notwithstanding, the movie did not make sense: too much effects, little storyline. You can figure this one out yourself: measure up the time dedicated to Kong in New York and the time spent on everything before that.
Disclaimer: I fell asleep during ‘Geisha’, so everything I say here is ‘hearsay’ (great choice of words there too). Luckily, I fell asleep at the end, so I saw all the regular stars I’ve become accosted to, the ones from ‘Crouching tiger’ and ‘Hero’ (Hero, once again, is magic! (Previously at xsamplex)). The storyline is good but I noticed some things were out of place: I could generally tell the difference between Chinese and Japanese people (yes, you can tell the difference) which made me wonder about this movie particularly knowing the violent history between these two -uh- rivalling nations. Looking up IMDB afterwards, I read that some people weren’t happy about that either (Chinese actors playing Japanese people):
The film was banned in China because Chinese actresses play Japanese geisha. The national film board and the Office for the Administration of Radio, Film and Television claimed that it was banned because the storyline is “too sensitive”.
What would Spielberg do?