King Kong...

Over the course of the last couple of days I have watched Peter Jackson's version of King Kong. I'm afraid to say that the same vision that made Jackson's Lord of the Rings trilogy such a triumph was probably his downfall on King Kong. It was self-indulgent on many fronts: too long, too much CGI, too many ineffectual "romantic moments" between Naomi Watts and Kong. Ironically, the fact that it takes us over an hour to meet Kong is not something I had a problem with, in fact, that first hour was my favourite third of the film. It allowed for some nice development of a number of interesting characters, including the leads (Naomi Watts and Adrien Brody) and a few of the others (most notably Jack Black and Jamie Bell). Unfortunately I felt that all that good work was then completely wasted as the film, quite understandably given its title, shifts focus to the peril and action that ensues after Kong appears. That said, I still feel that the movie could have been saved but the ongoing action that worked so well in the Fellowship of the Ring was King Kong's downfall as the characters are not given a moment to breath in a series of deadly encounters, many of which have very little to do with the discovery of a giant gorilla.

I read an interview in Empire magazine with movie-monster legend Stan Winston, in which he used King Kong as an example of how CGI can never entirely replace puppetry/make-up/costumes because all those things are real, whereas CGI is not. I have to say that I entirely agree with him. But it is not only apparent on the close-ups (like you might imagine), it is sometimes surprisingly obvious on some of the long range, wide angle shots. It's such a shame really, because with the right mix of CGI and models/puppets/etc. it could have been so much better.

There was great potential for King Kong to be a much better film. A lot of the pieces of the puzzle were in place ready to be taken advantage of, but I think it got wrapped up in its own cleverness. It failed where another great monster movie, Jaws, succeeded. By turning the focus from the humans to the monster, we lost the human element and so had very little emotional involvement.

Shame really.

Quality not quantity...

Blogger has introduced a few new features to enhance the blog-keeping experience, some of which I have started to use. One of the new bits is a streamlined "blog archive" in the sidebar to the right. Something that is almost immediately evident if you look at previous years and months is how much my posting frequency has declined since the start of it all in March 2004 - there were a couple of months in '04 when I post 14 times, yet I managed a lowly 20 in the entirety of 2006. Does this mean that more happened in my life back then? Or does it mean that less happened? You would think that I have more to write about now, but I guess I just have less time to write it. Although you might beg to differ with how I am rambling on about nothing in particular in this post!

Anyway, I will try to write fresh posts more often in the coming months, whether they be about the twins or just about the latest movie I've seen.

Incidentally, over the last couple of weeks during the days I have been home with the kids I watched (or rather, took the odd glance at) the Lord of the Rings trilogy in order. It is my conclusion that The Two Towers (film number two) is the best of the three. While it still has a few things that let it down, it is more focused than the first and doesn't suffer from the ridiculous never-ending ending of the third. Anyone else have thoughts about this? Other Jess-related Lord of the Ring tidbits: Boromir is my favourite character (I love the scene when he saves Merry and Pippin from the Uruk Hai) and the Ride of the Rohirim (spelling) is my favourite scene from the trilogy.

First word...

We think Morgan said his first real word last night. He was looking through a book (as he does often) and there was a photo of a banana. Marla started saying "banana" to him, encouraging him to say it too, when all of a sudden he said "nana". The look on his face was priceless and he repeated the feat, both the word and the look a number of times... enough for me to get a photo:

47 days...

Yes, it really has been that long since my last post. I know at least three of my faithful followers have been eagerly anticipating this long-overdue post-holiday post.

We are back in the UK after three weeks overseas. During which time we spent at least one night in three different countries and twins had to adjust to four changes to their sleeping arrangements.

The first stop on our journey was on December 11^th for one night in Dublin where we stayed with the Goggins family (Eddie, Suzie, Hailey & Ed) - this was all possible thanks to the timing of the Air Lingus flights which meant we arrived in Dublin from Bristol after the flight to Chicago had already left. It was good to see Eddie and his family again but the visit was all too brief unfortunately and we left the next morning.



Then we had four nights in Chicago with Marla's parents, during which time we attempted to get the twins used to the six-hour time change - not to great success it appeared. On December 16th we flew to Cancun, Mexico for the Wertz family vacation to celebrate Jim & Barbara's 50th wedding anniversary. All Jim & Barbara's four children, seven grandchildren and three in-law children were present making a grand total of 16 people. We stayed in a six-bedroom villa/hacienda type house in Puerto Aventuras on the "Mayan Riviera" of the Yucatan Peninsula. There was lots to do in the area and the trip was packed full of activities including cenote swimming, shopping in Playa del Carmen, snorkeling, zip-lining through the jungle, more shopping, visiting Mayan ruins, and general relaxing (or not relaxing if you were on twin-watching duty) by the pool. For me the highlights were the Mayan Ruins. We visited two sites: on the first day we all went to Tulum, which is the only Mayan site on the coast (and is picturesque indeed) and on the last day Marla, the twins and I went to Coba, which is 28 miles inland and boasts the Yucatan's tallest Mayan pyramid (which I climbed!). Many photos from the whole trip can be seen on my Flickr pages - I have created a special set of photos specifically for Mexico 2006.





After returning from Mexico we spent Christmas with the Wertz family and generally had a nice time. We managed to see Pam and Greg on two occasions, which was very nice (I have already told Dwight stories to at least two people since!). We were unable to see Susanne and Mark or Chris and Lisa (sad face). By the end of the three weeks the twins were really starting to warm up to everyone and had seemed to adjust completely to the time change and all the havoc it had played on their body clocks... just in time for us to return to the UK and go through the whole thing again.