The park acreage thing is interesting. I grew up hearing this:

With its massive expanse of 1,769 acres, which encompass the Kansas City Zoo and Sprint IMAX Theatre as well as the 7,795-seat Starlight Theatre, Swope Park is the second-largest city park in the United States.

I've never heard what they considered to be the largest though.

By collateral damage, do you mean the number of innocents who died in the rampage? How does that compare to the other two movies? Did PJ give into his lust for spectacle and up the body count past the originals?

Yes, don't know, and yes. Kong does a lot more chewing on people in the first movie, but they don't try to make him sympathetic. And the New York sequences in the new movie show lots and lots of people dying, not to mention anyone who was near the building when Kong finally fell. So I had difficulties in reconciling all that. Sure, I felt bad about the last of his kind thing, but I didn't really feel it was inappropriate to kill a huge wild animal that was rampaging through the city stomping on people.

I've never heard what they considered to be the largest though.

When I lived in Portland, they always claimed Forest Park was the largest wilderness park in an American city, whatever that means. It's pretty damned huge: you could get seriously lost in it for days, I suspect.

Have any of you had a Monastery Fruitcake from Holy Cross Abbey? They are supposed to be excellent.

Yep. I'm not much for fruitcake (so far, anyway), but I did taste it, and it was good. The family who like fruitcake all liked it very much and order it every other year or so. I mean, monk-made cake. Who can resist that?

I felt bad about the last of his kind thing, but I didn't really feel it was inappropriate to kill a huge wild animal that was rampaging through the city stomping on people.

He was being chased! He should have lived happily ever after with his human bride!

Sorry, I'm morphing into that other woman.

The necessity of the whole thing made it sadder for me. Internal conflict, yadda yadda.

The necessity of the whole thing made it sadder for me.

Yeah, it was tragic because Kong was more sympathetic -- but again I kept losing the sympathy with the rampaging violence. A little less rampage and I might have been on board with the sympathy.

::shrugs:: I still enjoyed the movie, even if it was bloated and self-indulgent. And I could have lived the rest of my life without seeing the penis dentata scene, as one of my LJ friends phrased it. Ewww.

Most savage urethra ever! I could have done without a lot of the creature fight scenes, really. And as was noted elsewhere, a lot of the character development of secondary characters turned out to be wasted. I coulda made that movie under two and a half hours, easy.

Ew. And I haven't even seen it yet. Saw Brokeback last night. It does stay with a person, doesn't it? Random bits and pieces kept popping into my head all day.

Must for sleep now. I took a long nap late in the day. Bad, bad idea.

Definitely shoulda been 40 minutes shorter. They could have save about ten of that on the death scene alone...

Skipping and poking head to post that, according to the Buffista Calendar, today is shrift's birthday. Happy birthday, shrift! With lots of wishes for a great day and a wonderful year!

Happy Birthday shrift!