Yearly Archives: 2007
Mighty Joe Young (1998)
Ligia and I bought Mighty Joe Young (1998) on DVD a while back, and it sat in our library, waiting to be viewed, for a few months. We finally got the chance to see it tonight. We didn’t know quite what to expect, but we were rather pleasantly surprised. It’s what I would call a good movie. The plot, although a bit thin in some spots, was tied together well. The characters were believable where it mattered. It was easy to root for Joe, Gregg O’Hara (Bill Paxton) and Jill Young (Charlize Theron). We have a simple litmus test: if we can sit down to enjoy the movie without being bothered by the way it was made, then we like it. This movie passed the test just fine.
The best part of the movie was Joe Young himself – a huge, artificial gorilla that its creator, Rick Baker, somehow managed to make very believable. The movement (gestures, facial grimaces, walk and stride) seemed very natural. It was very easy to forget Joe was not real and actually see him as Joe, a gigantic gorilla very out of his element in Los Angeles. As a matter of fact, this movie was nominated for an Oscar because of its great special effects.
This 1998 version is a remake of an original 1949 movie, made after a screenplay by Ruth Rose. The original story was written by Merian C. Cooper, who also developed and produced the original King Kong (1933). Somehow I think the gorilla in this movie looked and behaved much better than the original stop-motion figurine in the 1949 version — although there’s a certain element of nostalgia that’s associated with those special effects.
It snowed today
We had a beautiful snowfall today — just gorgeous. Big, fluffy snowflakes kept coming down for what seemed like (and probably was) hours. When it was done, we had a thick, white blanket of fresh powder everywhere. Tree branches and leaves were heavy-laden with the white stuff. It clung to everything, weighing it down, bringing it closer to eye-level so we could enjoy it more. Ligia’s piano lessons were cancelled, but we couldn’t stay in. We took the MINI (which has snow tires) and went out for a drive.
We stopped at Cabin John Regional Park, which is a favorite of ours, and walked through the forest, taking photographs of everything that caught our eyes. I took my tripod along, and an umbrella that acted as a protector for the lens. Snow powder kept falling off the branches, and it wouldn’t have done to get the lens wet. Then, on a whim (but oh, what a welcome one!) we stopped for lunch at Momo Taro Sushi, inside Cabin John Mall. We had miso soup and sushi, of course: California rolls, tuna rolls and salmon rolls. They were delicious, as usual. Then we drove out some more, but it was no fun this time. The trucks had already cleared the road of snow. It’s not a lot of fun for me to drive on a clean road in winter. It’s much more exciting when there’s snow on it. That extra element of unpredictability adds extra enjoyment to an otherwise regular drive. Yes, I realize it detracts from the practicability of it all, but by gosh, I like it when things are sometimes impractical.
I tried to look away from the clean, black road to the postcard views that lined it: houses covered in a thick quilt of white snow, little picket fences barely visible, bumps where shrubs used to be, cars covered in their entirety — everything quiet, beautiful and relaxing. I’d love to find a long, winding country road that never gets plowed, and drive on it for hours, with a good camera in hand, lots of memory and plenty of battery life. I think I’d drive slowly, stop just about every minute or so, and take photos, lots of them. Gosh, I’d love to do that for a living, just go around taking photos, all day long…
We’re home now, and I’m post-processing some photos I took a while back. Now that I’m done with a pressing project of mine — that thing plagued me for more than a month — I have a little more free time and can catch up with my backlog of photos. That’s a wonderful prospect, and I look forward to it with joy.
Raoul Pop 