Matt, I suspect that the rat-monkeys featured in Dead Alive also originated on Skull Island. It would explain so much....

Matt, I suspect that the rat-monkeys featured in Dead Alive also originated on Skull Island.

If you look carefully at the empty crates in the bottom of the ship when Adrien Brody is getting the tour, one is labeled "Sumatran Rat Monkey." I was quite pleased.

it's good as a record of two great Broadway performances.

Maybe great on stage. In close-up, I couldn't shake the feeling that Broderick was playing Bloom as mildly retarded, and it was, as I said, painfully uncomfortable.

except the horrible LSD character, so cringe-worthy

More cringe-worthy than replacing him with a string of embarrassingly dated gay jokes?

Yes, because all the gay people I know dig the gay jokes, so they work in the same way Bialystock does--he's a broad comedic exaggeration of a Jewish guy of a certain era and De Bris is a broad exaggeration of a Gay man of a certain era. When watching the original movie it feel so much like an older guy trying to write a satire on the craxy hippy young people and instead creating a character which has nothing to do with any human being living or dead that it isn't funny. Dick Shawn does what he can, but it's a lost cause.

Plus, the Chrysler Building dress was fabulous!

all the gay people I know dig the gay jokes, so they work

This isn't an argument I understand. My parents, who were craxy young hippies, think LSD is hysterical. Should you retroactively find him funny just because I know people who relate to the character type and do?

I may not have been clear. I just wanted to say the gay jokes are not embarassing or offensive any more than Bialystock is anti-Semitic. I can see why you didn't like the movie--as I said, I think it's not much of a movie.

Anyone interested in the sequel to Underworld? It's coming out in a month and this is the first I've heard of it.

I didn't invest a lot in the first picture, though it was fun enough. I like the idea of there being more low(er)-budget action-adventure-type films being put out there to balance the ridiculously huge-budget blockbusters. I can't help but think the genre will stagnate if it keeps up the latter route.

Oh, and who can say it enough: Kate Beckinsdale back in the leather catsuit.

DH actually bought me the Underworld DVD for Christmas--but I think that might be totally related to a comment I made about KB skewing my Kinsey scale. I am, however, looking forward to the sequel if only because it's principals are very pretty and I will withstand any amount of cheese to see Kate in leather and latex again.

I just wanted to say the gay jokes are not embarassing or offensive

I was embarrassed watching them. I never said they were offensive, and I don't think the two are equivalent.

We has a good Christmas Movie Day yesterday. Saw Fun with Dick and Jane which was not as bad as we thought it might be, luckily. probably not worth going to the theater, but a good rental. We also saw King Kong, which, yes, was too long, but I was completely caught up in it. Naomi Watts is very good, and so beautiful that it is pure pleasure just to look at her face. The group I went wih was mixed on Jack Black--I liked him a lot but several peeps who were with us HATED him. We all thought it was lame that noone ever seemd to be aware of heights, even when they were on the top of a cliff or running along a crumbling rock wall or on top of the Empire State Building.

As for that last, I guess getting slung around like a rag doll by a giant ape as he clambers over mountains and falls from ravines would be a pretty intensive form of acclimation therapy for one's acrophobia .