Red Carpet Premieres
BERLIN

PETER JACKSON INTERVIEW...

How does it feel now the film has been screened and people are responding so positively to it?

I am not a filmmaker with a message to impart upon the world. I simply want to entertain people and I'm always pleased when people enjoy a film I've made. This particular film is sort of a lifetime ambition of mine. I was inspired by the original King Kong when I saw it, aged nine, on TV. Three years later, I borrowed my parents' Super 8 movie camera, made a little model of Kong out of wire and rubber, and some of my mum's fur coat, and started to do a remake of Kong. I didn't get very far. It was a little bit ambitious. I actually switched from that to doing a remake of Monty Python's Flying Circus, but I always harboured this desire to one day remake King Kong. In 1996 I tried to do it for seven or eight months and it got canned by the studio. So then we jumped sideways into Lord Of The Rings...

One of the most intense scenes in the film was at the bottom of the ravine, with the insects. That's a scene that was cut from the 1933 film. Did you refer back to original storyboards or was this all in your mind already?

In the 1933 movie they cut out the scene in the ravine because of the pacing, and I can understand why. I covered myself when we were scriptwriting because unlike the 1933 film, I had several of our principal characters actually falling to the bottom of the ravine. I sent our entire cast, pretty much, down to the bottom. That was a little bit of future-proofing so that, a year later, I wasn't going to be tempted to cut the scene out.

Click for full interview BBC.CO.UK

KING KONG NEW YORK PREMIERE...

New York - He's back, and New York is besieged with King Kong fever: the newest film incarnation of hairy King Kong premiered to the world before 8,000 guests Monday evening who watched the beast once again climb up the Empire State Building.

Initial reviews of 'King Kong' have already proclaimed the Hollywood blockbuster by director Peter 'Lord of the Rings' Jackson to be a modern masterpiece.

The 200-million-dollar movie about the doomed love of a giant gorilla for a Hollywood actress hits cinemas as the annual box office take is slumping at least 6 per cent from last year's figure.

But hopes that director Jackson has fashioned a hit on par with his previous 'Lord of the Rings' epics have risen following initial reviews in the U.K. press.

'That Jackson's 'King Kong' upgrades the now hammy original with wit, heart and humour is a pleasant surprise,' wrote critic Kevin Maher in The Times.

'That it does so by reinventing the action blockbuster, in form and emotional impact, is nothing less than an act of cinematic alchemy.'

Jackson himself, who just finished editing the film a few days ago, said he needs more distance in order to judge the film.

Monday was declared King Kong Day by New York City Mayor Michael Bloomberg in front of a massive replica of King Kong in Times Square.

Jackson and Naomi Watts, who plays heroine Ann Darrow, posed by the giant feet of the replica gorilla, whose movements in the film were portrayed by actor Andy Serkis, of Gollum fame from 'Lord of the Rings'.

Words: monstersandcritics.com

THE STORY OF KONG...

It is 1933, and vaudeville actress Ann Darrow (Oscar® nominee for 21 Grams, NAOMI WATTS) has found herself—like so many other New Yorkers during the Great Depression—without the means to earn a living. Unwilling to compromise and allow herself to sink into a career in burlesque, she considers her limited options while aimlessly wandering the streets of Manhattan. When her hunger drives her to unsuccessfully try to steal an apple from a fruit vendor’s stall, she is rescued—literally—by filmmaker and multiple hyphenate Carl Denham (JACK BLACK of The School of Rock).

It seems that the entrepreneur-raconteur-adventurer is no stranger to theft, having that day lifted the only existing print of his most recent and unfinished film from under his studio executives’ noses when they threatened to pull his completion funds. Carl has until the end of the day to get his crew onboard the Singapore-bound tramp steamer, the S.S. Venture, in hopes of completing his travelogue/action film. With that, the showman is certain he will finally achieve the personal greatness he knows awaits him around the corner…and although the crew believe that corner to be Singapore, Denham actually hopes to find and capture on film the mysterious place of legend: Skull Island.

Unfortunately for Carl, his headlining actress has pulled out of his project, but his search for a size-four leading lady (the costumes have all been made) has, fatefully, led him to Ann. The struggling actress is reluctant to sign on with Denham, until she learns that the up-and-coming, socially relevant playwright Jack Driscoll (Oscar® winner for The Pianist, ADRIEN BRODY) is penning the screenplay—the fees his friend Carl pays for potboiling adventure are a welcome supplement to Driscoll’s nominal income from his stage plays.