NEWS
By CHRIS KALTENBACH and CHRIS KALTENBACH,SUN MOVIE CRITIC | December 11, 2005
When it comes to King Kong, why not leave well-enough alone? At first blush, it would seem difficult to improve upon this extraordinary American film, the story of a giant gorilla and his unrequited love for a beautiful blonde. Images from the film have become mainstays of popular culture: Kong roaring at an attacking tyrannosaurus, Kong astride the New York skyline with a terrified Fay Wray dangling from his oversized paw, Kong plummeting to his death from atop the Empire State Building.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Michael Sragow and Michael Sragow,SUN MOVIE CRITIC | December 15, 2002
NEW YORK - Peter Jackson, the New Zealand director of the Lord of the Rings trilogy, almost begs to be described as a hobbit. His hair flies out like untrimmed shrubbery. His endomorphic profile suggests a yen for enormous Shire-style feasts. And he goes barefoot despite the frigidity of his Manhattan hotel room when the heating system breaks down. More important, as his hobbit actors say, he catalyzes fun with every passing second. His avidity for sparking spontaneous humor and emotion in mammoth, outlandish settings gives The Two Towers, which opens Wednesday, an escalating, inexhaustible vitality.
FEATURES
By MICHAEL SRAGOW and MICHAEL SRAGOW,SUN MOVIE CRITIC | December 14, 2005
When it comes to what's great about King Kong, it's not the harum-scarum. It's the girl. That's not to put the title character down. Peter Jackson's King Kong resembles a DC Comics super ape. He boasts the brainpan of Gorilla Grodd and a scrambled version of Superman's power menu: He's faster than a locomotive, more powerful than a speeding bullet, able to leap tall jungle walls in a single bound. As the fearsome monarch of Skull Island, he can dispatch several dinosaurs at once with body-slamming wrestling moves, while holding a human in one hand.
NEWS
By Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan and Cheryl Lu-Lien Tan,SUN STAFF | October 14, 1998
Jamaican musician Peter Jackson has sued the U.S. Customs Service for $10 million, claiming that inspectors at Baltimore-Washington International Airport singled him out for a strip-search and X-rays for possible drugs in September 1997 because he is black.The suit, filed Friday in U.S. District Court in Baltimore, comes seven months after Jackson, 27 -- a reggae artist who goes by the stage name Galaxy P -- filed a $2 million administrative claim against the agency. His lawyer, Marvin Ellin, said he filed the suit because the Customs Service ignored the administrative claim.
FEATURES
February 3, 2006
THE QUESTION The Pink Panther, When a Stranger Calls, The Hills Have Eyes, The Shaggy Dog ... all remakes due by the middle of March. And with The Fog - yeesh - still too fresh in our memory, we wonder, when was the last time you enjoyed a remake more than the original? WHAT YOU SAY There are three remakes I think are unquestionably better than the originals - Gone in 60 Seconds, Ocean's Eleven and The Italian Job. It's not that the originals aren't good and entertaining in their own way, but the remakes are far more imaginative and well done, and thus hold up better even after multiple viewings.
ENTERTAINMENT
By Michael Sragow | December 15, 2002
A new question about The Fellowship of the Ring periodically took over discussion of The Two Towers last week during three days of press conferences in New York: Which is the definitive version of the first movie in the Lord of the Rings trilogy? The 178-minute theatrical cut? Or the roughly half-hour-longer presentation on the "special extended edition" of the DVD? Even director Peter Jackson couldn't decide. He initially suggested that the theatrical version did play better in theaters.