Results tagged “kingkong”

THEATER: The audiophiles who make up Radiotheatre are celebrating the 75th anniversary of the first King Kong film by reviving their aural homage on Tuesday nights in June. Using contemporary technology to create a lavish sound design that, er, apes the old-timey radio aesthetic, the show is a lush treat for the ears, though not so much for the eyes. But who wants to look at that hairy beast anyway? Tonight you can close your eyes and forget all about Peter Jackson. – John Del Signore

• Today on the Gothamist Newsmap: a crime scene/hanging at East 13th St. and Shore Parkway in Brooklyn, a child mauled by a dog in the area of 91-43 Gold Rd. in Queens, and a possible escaped prisoner on Wards Island across from Manhattan.
• Asbestos removal at the Carroll St. F and G line station appears to be a non-issue. Only the Blog Knows Brooklyn received a note saying that air levels were fine and removal is not scheduled for the immediate future.
• The New York Aquarium's sharks at Coney Island are moving on up. They're upgrading their modest 90,000 cubic foot tank to a $67 million waterfront palace.
• The City is pursuing criminal charges against an 82-year-old buildings engineer for what they claim was perjury. A $.99 store whose designs he ok'd caught fire and rotten timbers allegedly resulted in the deaths of two firefighters.
• Did the Hell's Angels plan a 'Bay of Hogs' Long Island beachfront attack that ended in embarrassing failure during the 1960s? Apparently, after the Rolling Stones' concert at Altamont, some Hells Angels tried sailing to Mick Jagger's estate to kill him, but hit rough seas and fell overboard.
• The box office at Yankee Stadium opened this morning at 10 a.m., as the organization began selling tickets to games at the Bronx Bombers' final season in the House that Ruth Built, and that we mostly paid for when it was renovated.
• Bravo to Shannon O'Hanlon, the 9-year-old 4th grader from Queens who won yesterday's Fay Wray Scream-A-Like Contest at Film Forum in Manhattan. The contest was part of a commemoration of the 75th anniversary of the original King Kong film.

In a Friday review of the 1933 original production of King Kong, The New York Sun's film critic Bruce Bennett wonders why the low-tech original continues to hold up so well after 75 years, especially in comparison to higher-tech remakes. "How, then, does a puppet made from rabbit fur, a rubber ball, and some socket joints, painstakingly animated frame-by-frame during the depths of the Great Depression, ably kick the motion-capture behemoth of Mr. Jackson's modern edition to film history's curb?"

At 8:30PM (following a half-hour red carpet special), the 80th Annual Academy Awards ceremony will begin, finally putting an end to the "There Will Be Oscar" or "Oscar Country for Old Men" type headlines.

Did your commute feel more like Springfield than New York today? If you're out and about than you'll likely run into the Simpson-izing of Manhattan! Too bad we don't have a monorail here.

EVENT: Join Chief Jim Riches, 9/11 families, rescue and recovery workers in an effort to Tell Rudy Giuliani to "Stop Politicizing 9/11". Rudy will be at a fundraiser at the Waldorf later today, and will be greeted by those who believe he's no hero. Why? They say: "He failed the FDNY & uniformed & civilian victims. He gave us incompetent commissioners ( FD,PD, OEM). No integrated command. He abandoned us on 9/11. He gave the FDNY defective radios. He lied about the toxic air -- 70% of responders and many civilians are sick." More info here.

The new J.J. Abrams movie which is still listed as Untitled, but is unofficially being referred to as Cloverfield, was filming on the Lower East Side yesterday and last night. Did anyone catch it? The monster movie is due out January 18th, 2008 - and this past week Abrams spoke of the somewhat mysterious project at Comic-Con.

You may be familiar with James Sanders' book Celluloid Skyline: New York and the Movies, which celebrated New York City's role in movies and is a must for any fan of New York, architecture, or film. But even if you haven't, you get a chance to experience it in beyond the pages: Starting tomorrow, Grand Central Terminal's Vanderbilt Hall will be the setting for a Celluloid Skyline exhibit. There will be huge "scenic backing" paintings from old films, film footage, artifacts, displays and more that will show NYC's role in production and as a "mythic city" of the movies. Here's a description:

[The exhibit] will also carry visitors into the dream city of the movies, through “immersive” elements that allow visitors to feel as if they are actually inhabiting the various environments of the filmic city – streets, skyscrapers, rooftops, theaters, waterfronts, interiors – allowing viewers to come away with a greater understanding not only of the moviemaking process, but of the urban character, texture and significance of the real city.

Continue reading "Celluloid Skyline at Grand Central Tomrorow"

Oh, to be a child again! The NY Times has a story about the city's efforts to develop a new playground concept for lower Manhattan. The city has been working with designer David Rockwell on a playground that would include things like foam blocks, water, cardboard tubes, burlap bags, ramps, climbing nets and even "play workers" to help kids, uh, play.

Developers of the Lower Manhattan project envision groups of children collaborating, for instance, loading containers with sand, hoisting them up with pulleys and then lowering them down to wagons waiting to be wheeled off to another part of the park.

Continue reading "Innovative Playground Ideas for NYC "

The Intrepid Air & Space Museum will be moved from its Manhattan pier to Bayonne for repair work tomorrow. Well, it'll head to Jersey if it can even move. The Daily News reports that even though more than "16,000 cubic yards of mud have been dredged from the Hudson and 500 tons of water released from the ballast tanks to lift the ship just 2 feet off the Hudson floor," one part of the aircraft carrier is still stuck in silt.

Whoa-- that was quite a night. If, like us, you've just woken up with a pounding hangover and a foul sugar-coating covering your tongue, we sympathize. Here are some highlights to remind you of how you spent the night-- add yours in the comments if you want us to link to them.

If you needed a reason to look to the skies, now you have one. The folks over at New Era, Major League Baseball's official cap supplier, are donning two Manhattan watertowers with inflatable baseball caps in time for Opening Day. A Mets cap will be fitted on a watertower near the 59th Street Bridge this week, while the Yankee cap won't be up in midtown until next week. New Era says there will be two more inflatable caps on Manhattan watertowers later. If you think you have a large hat size, you ain't seen nothing. The inflatable hats are a size 61.5 (we would think larger) and are 14' high by 16' wide.

Apparently working in the Empire State Building doesn’t hold the cache it used to. According to the Daily News, the vacancy rate in the building has risen to 18% from 1.7% in 2000. To make matters worse, they are asking 25% less per square foot, $48, than most of the average rents in midtown.

JC: ALL RIGHT! I just took extra Vitamin C - I'm waiting for some food delivery.

Gorilla Triska welcomed a baby on January 11! Zoo keepers at the Bronx Zoo aren't sure what sex the baby is, since Triska has been very protective of the baby. Since there were already 25 gorillas at the zoo, maybe that's why it wasn't as huge a deal, but baby animals rule. What's cute about the Bronx Zoo is that they seem to be trying to attract spillover King Kong fans. You can see primate training, but that's with monkeys, not gorillas.

We noted in yesterday’s roundup of theatre in 2005 that at least in our optimistic eyes, last year had plenty of great shows. If anywhere like the same number of impressive plays and musicals appear in ‘06, it’d be hard to complain. But nonetheless, we do have a small wish list.

No don't worry. Gothamist doesn't plan to subject you to yet another film Top 10 list. If you want a good ... uhm ... "overview" of this year's Top 10 lists, you might want to check-out The Reeler's Top 10 Top 10 lists. (Nos. 10-6 appeared yesterday. The top five went up this morning.) If you're looking for something more traditional, you should probably look at 's Take 7 film critics poll.

Here's an extra huge panoramic shot from King Kong-- all 2048x1157 pixels of it! The angle seems to be north-west, because there's something resembling the George Washington Bridge in the far, far background. If you live on the Upper West Side, try to find your apartment building!-- yup, that was a huge mistake. You can see the tops of the two towers at 23rd and 14th streets, and Tompkins Square Park, and smokestacks in Brooklyn, so the angle is facing South-East. We were confused, because we couldn't make out any hipsters in Williamsburg! Mea culpa, mea culpa!

The obvious 800-pound, 2000-pound or even 20-ton gorilla in the room is anyway. Just brave the crowds and get it over with already.

It's all about Brokeback these days: This morning, Kate Beckinsale, Mark Wahlberg, and Steve Carrell announced the 63rd Annual Golden Globe nominations, and Brokeback Mountain walked away with 7 nominations, including Best Picture (Drama), Director, Actor, Supporting Actress (Michelle Williams). Match Point, the unreleased Woody Allen movie, also got nods in Picture and Director, plus Supporting Actress Scarlett Johnanssen. As for the TV nominations, the ladies of Wisteria Lane took four leading actress nominations, giving Weeds' Mary Louise Parker a good shot of winning, though Felicity Huffman and Marcia Cross were fierce this year. We do want to say this, though: Kristen Bell, you were robbed!

Last night, the premiere of King Kong was held in midtown, but the PR folks also dragged out a huge King Kong model to place in Times Square, probably getting soggy from the snow (we're sure he smelled like a real ape after that). Gothamist has been watching some King Kong coverage lately since we can't escape it, and we have two observations: (1) Damn, did Peter Jackson lose a lot of weight; and (2) Charlie Rose still gives the worst interviews - his interview with Adrien Brody went nowhere in the ten minutes we watched...Antiques Roadshow is more exciting! The Mayor also proclaimed it King Kong Day - what do we do next year to celebrate? Climb the Empire State Building?

The big budget spectacle, King Kong, will open in two weeks, and while most of the trailers seem to play up a fight with Godzilla and lots of jungle scenes (Naomi Watts - hot and sweaty!), part of the story does more to New York. Now, director Peter Jackson decided not to film in NYC because finding 1933 New York in today's New York is difficult. (Gothamist sorta buys that, but we actually believe that once you've created Middle Earth, then you've got a god complex.) The NY Post reports at what the King Kong New York, part model, part computer generated, includes:

Depression-era big town, Model T Fords roll through intersections of red and green streetlights (no yellow), blasting that wheezy dying-duck horn and narrowly missing a swarm of jaywalkers.

Continue reading "King Kongs New York"

After all the comments on yesterday's post about books set in NYC, we got to thinking, has anyone bothered to come up with a list of all the movies set in the city? The answer, of course, is yes-- at Wikipedia, of course. What an amazing site-- it's like having a genie who's only job is to distract us with useless NYC trivia! They've probably missed a couple of movies here and there, but the list looks fairly comprehensive. Absolute, undisputable fact: the 1970s was far and away the most interesting time for NYC movies-- check these out:

The first trailer for Peter Jackson’s King Kong finally hit the internet, featuring Adrien Brody, a digital King Kong and Naomi Watts as his love interest, a few Jurassic Park leftovers, and Jack Black (who is so hard to take seriously). We’re quite optimistic LOTR’s Jackson can pull off an updated version of Hollywood classic and so far, Jackson insists he's refrained from reinventing the storyline: “Our story follows the same structure. It starts in New York, goes to Skull Island, and there are dinosaurs on the island. Then it comes back to New York and there's the Empire State Building and the biplanes and the whole thing."

Forget wild postings and other guerilla marketing tactics: The next barrier to break in NYC outdoor advertising will be conquering famous pieces of the NYC skyline. And in a post-H&M-ad-on-the-Flatiron world, Alien Loves Predator looks at some other possibilities for advertising on beloved New York City landmarks. Of course, Gothamist has been wondering if Lord of the Rings director Peter Jackson will try to get some sort of advertising on the Empire State Building for his remake of King Kong. Plus, there is the Steichen Flatiron photo remix. [Via reader Jen]

While some New Yorkers are looking for pieces of Flatiron charm in the dumpsters (sometimess fruitlessly) on Broadway and 22nd Street, most people will be seeing another result of the almost endless renovation of the Flatiron building: A huge H&M ad will be wrapped on the front of the Flatiron's northern point. Oh, yes, the Scandinavian value retailer will get to place a 15,200 square foot ad which will feature a woman in a linen suit, according to the Daily News; no word if it'll be a supermodel, anorexic Chanel designer or B-list celeb in the ad. H&M ad manager Steve Lubomski said the ad was the most expensive they had ever purchased and that "It's great to take a landmark building and make it our own. It's a desirable area with a lot of great shopping, plus there's not a lot of clutter." So, kudos to the media buying agency who managed that one - or should Gothamist say "Fie on you!" We totally understand the benefits of advertising, but we're not so sure about putting wrapping the Flatiron for a non-Christo purpose. We'll see if Universal films tries to wrap a King Kong doll on the Empire State building for the new movie.

was barely a twinkle in the eye of the Hollywood pitchmen, those Japanese B-movie geniuses at the Toho Studio had concocted an even better match up: King Kong versus Godzilla (1962). Film Forum will be screening this Toho gem, also directed by the original Godzilla helmer Ishiro Honda, today and Saturday as a part of their continuing series, "They Came From Toho: Godzilla and the Kaiju Eiga."

Sam Seder, Director / Writer / Comedian / Co-Host, "The Majority Report"

A Fay Wray fan site and her IMDB filmography. And Joe S from Gothamist Weatherwondered if lights will go dark for Ms. Wray; the Empire State Building lighting schedule says the lighting will be white, the ESB's usual lighting, but we shall see.

Ben McGrath, The New Yorker