TV Times

TV Times

‘King Kong’ roams Colombo
Academy Award winner for ‘The Lord of the Rings’, Peter Jackson's latest direction 'King Kong', is now being screened at Liberty cinema Colombo and Arena- Katugastota.

‘King Kong’, a remake of the original 1933 and woven round a giant ape named 'Kong' is written by Marian C. Cooper, Edgar Wallace and produced by Jan Blenkin, Carolynne Cunningham, Fran Walsh and Peter Jackson.

After the huge success of the ‘Rings’ trilogy, Jackson has chosen to return to his childhood dream and make ‘King Kong’. As a child, Jackson was obsessed with the ‘Beauty and the Beast’ story and saw the original film flickering across his black and white TV at home in New Zealand.

After becoming a full-fledged filmmaker and making the critically acclaimed ‘Heavenly Creatures,’ he tried to get ‘Kong’ made in 1996, but this failed. After the success of the ‘Rings’ trilogy, he chose to return to his childhood dream and make ‘King Kong.’

The story unfolds in New York City in 1933 with filmmaker Carl Denham (Jack Black), who has just stolen the only print of his most recent film after studio executives refused to give him the funds to finish his latest travelogue/ action flick. He's only lacking some action sequences and an actress. The only requirement is that she be a size four, because the costumes have already been made. Here he finds Ann Darrow (Naomi Watts), a down-on-her-luck (size four) actress who faces either starvation or becoming a stripper in a burlesque show.

She meets Black as he's desperate to get his crew onboard a Singapore-bound tramp steamer, the dilapidated S.S. Venture. She's reluctant to sign on for such a strange venture until she hears that an up-and-coming playwright she admires, Jack Driscoll (Oscar winner Adrien Brody), wrote the script.

They arrive at the S.S. Venture just as Driscoll is about to depart -he has no intention of going anywhere on this rusty old tub. But with the police hot on their heels, Denham tricks Driscoll into staying on board and they leave the harbour just as the cops arrive.

Unbeknownst to any of the cast or crew, the ship is not going to Singapore.
Denham has bribed Captain Englehorn (Thomas Kretschmann) into taking them to the mysterious and uncharted Skull Island, untouched by civilization. Denham hopes to complete his action scenes on this island shrouded in legend and lore.

Angered by the arrivals the native inhabitants set upon them making them their soup de jour. The natives kill some of the crew and almost kill Denham. But Denham and his crew realise that the natives are the least of their problems. Strange creatures inhabit the island behind a huge wall and the natives capture Ann and offer her up as a sacrifice to these horrifying beasts.

This primordial lost island is also home to a host of non-extinct dinosaurs - and one lonely, gigantic ape that is the last of its kind in the world, King Kong.
As the rest of the cast battles away, a strange but touching relationship develops between Ann and Kong. He becomes her protector and she in turn gives him the emotional connection to another being that he so desperately seeks.

When Kong has to battle a swarm of giant bats, it gives Denham the opportunity to rescue Ann and eventually capture Kong and take him to New York for the show of the Eighth Wonder of the World, a 25 foot gorilla.

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