MOVIES

KING KONG

It would be easy to dismiss King Kong as the encore. The cover version, the B-side, the grand indulgence, the (jungle) drum solo after the three-movement cinematic symphony that Peter Jackson conducted in the Lord of the Rings trilogy. Or to see it as pure movie biz folly. Just because you can redo the 1933 beauty and the beast classic with a computer-animated ape and US$207 million budget ($290 million), should you? That sort of money should buy you a few brand spanking new ideas (especially in Kiwi dollars), not one which has already failed once before in the 1976 turkey of a remake.

And the main problem with reworking the story of Kong is just that - the story of Kong. It's silly if you say it out loud. (Girl meets ape on trip abroad, ape takes a shine to girl, girl's travelling companions put a stop to fledging affair, while battling dinosaurs.)

Kong is a classic movie monster, yes. But every time someone thinks to revive one of those, you usually get hokey embarrassments, even with serious-minded scripts and good actors. Or you get The Mummy.

But stop all this nay-saying because Peter Jackson's King Kong is brilliant.

Yes, there is a risk that assessment is the local hero-worship speaking, a reflection of what the success of the director and his various Wetas and Wingnuts means to our national pride.

But stuff that. King Kong isn't great because you want it to be.

It's great because it's hilarious, relentless, romantic, rambunctious, outlandish and reverential as well as referential. (On deadline to find a replacement actress for his film, Jack Black's Carl Denham runs through a list of 1930s big names, adding "Fay's a size four but's she's doing a picture with RKO" - that would be Fay Wray of the original King Kong.)

It's great because after three hours you know you'll want to see it again. It's great because, like Lord of the Rings, seeing it through New Zealand eyes makes you laugh or sigh in different places.

Like when Kong demolishes the inside of Auckland's Civic Theatre (where dumped composer Howard Shore is seen conducting the orchestra) substituting for a Broadway venue. Or when those local faces keep popping up in minor supporting roles. Or when the giant wetas attack. Or what looks like a giant tuatara eyeing up Kong's new best friend for lunch. Or when in one shot it looks like the coastline of Jackson's boyhood home, Pukerua Bay, in the background.

It's great because it takes what you thought was possible with CGI and confounds you in action scene after scene. This is not a movie which has all its good bits in the trailer. Actually, some bits of the trailers aren't even in the movie. It's great because of Naomi Watts as Ann Darrow. In a rampage through New York's Times Square, Kong picks up every blonde he can lay his hand on in a violent outburst of speed dating. None of them, of course, is a substitute for Ann Darrow and, having been entranced by Watts for the previous two and a half hours, you know how the big guy feels.

The jokes in Kong frequently echo the Jackson of his early horror/splatter/zombie/comedy flicks. Like those, this sets out to impress with occasional grossness, though you can feel the restraint of a contractual obligation of a PG rating coming in the editing of some sequences. There are hints, too of the Lord of the Rings in its men versus beast clashes. But while the Rings trilogy was something of a cross-country tramp, Kong is more a combined sprint and gymnastic event.

As director Carl Denham, funnyman Black manages to keep a straight face even if his eyebrows are occasionally acting like silent exclamation marks. And Adrien Brody, as writer turned rival for Anne's affections, Jack Driscoll, is a convincing cerebral action hero. Like Watts he's able to "sell" the peril of scenes where the digital dangers were added long after "cut".

There are some parts of Kong that feel contrived or surplus to requirements - including the frequent allusions to Joseph Conrad's Heart of Darkness, which is being read by young crewman Jimmy (Jamie Bell). There are moments when the CGI spell is broken, usually around the edge of the frame with some stilted digital extras or on wide shots with Ann in Kong's clutches.

But Kong himself is some piece of work, whether in his expressive close-ups or unforgettable action set-pieces, as when he's swinging from vines down a crevasse while boxing a couple of dinosaurs. Though, once on the run in New York, his ice frolics with Ann on a frozen Central Park lake are too much of a good thing, animation wise. But even before it clambers up the Empire State Building, King Kong has risen to great heights. And that famous last-stand takes its inevitability and choreographs something that is still as visually captivating as it is emotionally affecting. So is the rest of its brazenly exciting three hours. It might be a different sort of beast than his Tolkien adaptations, but Jackson's Kong touches many of the same spots - the ones which remind you just how big movies can be and still be beautiful.



CANADA
from The Economist

CANADA's WINTRY ELECTION:

ENORMOUS though it is, Canada is all too easily overlooked. It may be the world's second-biggest country by area, one of its dozen largest economies and a founding member of the G7 club of rich countries. But much of its vast land is frozen waste. Nearly all of its 32.2m people cling to a narrow belt along its border with the United States. Since it is a peaceful, prosperous-dare one say provincial?-sort of place, it rarely makes much of a splash in the world.

Yet there are two reasons why the world-and its American neighbour in particular-should pay a bit more attention to Canada. The first is a rather old-fashioned one. Canada, and especially its west, is one of the great storehouses of the commodities that the world needs in ever greater quantities-something China has recently noticed. New techniques mean that the tar sands of Alberta can be turned into oil at an ever-falling cost. That in turn means that Canada now claims the world's second-largest oil reserves (behind only Saudi Arabia), in addition to a cornucopia of minerals and ten times more fresh water per head than the United States.

The second reason to watch Canada, as The Economist has argued before, is that it is a healthy rival to the American way. To the “life, liberty and the pursuit of happiness” of the American Declaration of Independence, Canada replied with “peace, order and good government” in its founding charter. At its best, Canada combines a vigorous American-style capitalism with the social provision and socially liberal attitudes of western Europe. It continues to extend a welcoming hand to immigrants even as they are shunned by many American politicians (see article). Its membership of the North American Free-Trade Agreement signals its embrace of political co-operation and economic competition with the United States. That these two different “models” meet peacefully at the 49th parallel and strive to outdo each other can be good for both of them.

Grumpily anti-American
The problem is that Canada is not at its best just at the moment, as our survey of the country in this week's issue explains. The economy is doing well enough. But Canada is becoming grumpily anti-American, in ways that go beyond the ubiquitous dislike of George Bush. And its politics is a fractured mess. On November 28th, after 17 uninspiring months, the Liberal minority government of Paul Martin, the prime minister, expired, losing a confidence vote in the House of Commons. The country now faces an election on January 23rd, just when Canadians have their minds on snowbirding south to Florida or the Caribbean for their winter break.

The immediate reason for the election is a corruption scandal involving Mr Martin's predecessor, Jean Chrétien. After Quebec only narrowly rejected independence in a referendum in 1995, Mr Chrétien came up with a plan to promote federalism in the French-speaking province. This “sponsorship scheme” degenerated into a slush fund for the Liberals. On becoming prime minister in 2003, Mr Martin set up a judicial inquiry into the sleaze. In his report last month, the judge exonerated Mr Martin (who was finance minister at the time), but lambasted the scheme's corrupt mismanagement. That prompted the left-wing New Democratic Party (NDP) to withdraw its support for the government, precipitating the second federal election in less than two years.

The awkward thing is that this untimely election is unlikely to settle Canada's underlying political problems. These do not include corruption, reprehensible though this was: the inquiry found kickbacks totalling just C$1.1m ($940,000). Sleaze is merely a symptom of deeper dysfunctions. The Liberals have been in office for 12 years. Stephen Harper, the leader of the opposition Conservatives, was right to say that Canada was seeing the end of “a tired, directionless, scandal-plagued government”. Mr Martin was a fine finance minister, but as prime minister he has, on the whole, disappointed. Rather than reform Canada's cherished but increasingly expensive state-provided health-care system, he has merely pumped ever more money into it. Although he promised to improve relations with the United States, he has not done so.

The dangers of more of the same
So the election campaign represents a great opportunity for Mr Harper to persuade Canadians to set off in a fresh direction. But the opinion polls suggest that will be hard. The Liberals are the only party with national appeal-a big problem in a country where regional tensions are again on the rise. The Conservatives' stronghold lies in the west, and in Alberta in particular. Alberta's brand of social and fiscal conservatism might win election to the White House, but it is instinctively mistrusted in Ontario, Canada's most populous province. It does not help that Mr Harper is clueless with the media.

To the east lies a second regional problem. The sponsorship scandal has revived separatism in Quebec. The election will see the separatist Bloc Québécois retain its grip on the province's expanded anti-Liberal vote. The Bloc makes it hard for the Conservatives to win a parliamentary majority-yet also makes for an awkward coalition partner.

Unless Mr Harper excels, the election's most likely outcome is another Liberal-NDP government. That does not bode well. Economic growth is no longer outstripping that of the United States, as it did between 1999 and 2002. The gap in productivity and incomes is widening. To close it, Canada needs more investment and enterprise. Mr Martin knows that. Temporarily free from the veto of the old-school socialists of the NDP, last month the government announced tax cuts and new training schemes. That is the right ground on which to stand, but may prove untenable if the Liberals are again forced into coalition with the NDP.

For all of Canada's abiding strengths, more of the same politics may not be good enough. The booming west-Alberta especially-feels ignored in Ottawa. Another independence vote in Quebec may be no more than a couple of years away. Keeping Canada cool, calm and collected is starting to look a lot harder than it did only a couple of years ago.



This time of year, the newspapers come full of terrifying pictures: travellers camped out on grubby airport carpeting; epic traffic jams; deranged hordes descending on shopping malls (and trampling slowpokes). Long lines have a way of bringing out the entitled executive—glancing about with clenched teeth and a sigh of disdainful superiority—in everyone.

There are, of course, methods of circumventing some hassles, each accompanied by its own tinge of guilt (and glee). Perhaps, at the lunch counter, there is that discreet sign offering speedier service to those who order pre-made sandwiches. (Who cares if nobody else is bold enough to cut to the front? You’re in a hurry!) For Disney World visitors, a wave of the Fast Pass is all that’s required to bypass the two-hour line for Space Mountain. And soon, for an annual fee of eighty dollars, a set of fingerprints, and an iris scan, an air traveller will be able to insert a Clear card into an A.T.M.-like kiosk and enjoy express passage through airport security, in the form of a private cardholders’ line. You’ll still need to pass through a metal detector, but a Clear card is likely to spare you the indignity of being “wanded,” as Steven Brill, the program’s creator, and the author of “After: How America Confronted the September 12 Era,” said the other day.

Brill, who is best known as the founder of Court TV, wears a banker’s collar and cuffs. He is now the C.E.O. of Verified Identity Pass, Inc., makers of the Clear card, and, as he explained, while sitting in his office above Radio City Music Hall, any similarity between the initials of his company’s name and the familiar shorthand for Very Important Person is purely coincidental. “I can prove this to you,” he said. “We started out, and it was called Verified Identity Card, but ‘V.I.C.’ just looked awful. And then it was something with Verified Identity—I forget, but it had a ‘D,’ ‘V.I.D.’ And my two daughters said it looked like ‘V.D.,’ the logo did. So we struggled. There’s nothing in our literature that says ‘V.I.P.’ ”

In any event, the company, whose services are bound to appeal to the very important and the self-important alike, was born of Brill’s experience in writing “After,” and recognizing that what he called “security bottlenecks” were inevitable in the post-9/11 world. On his way to interview John Ashcroft, for instance, Brill waited twenty minutes at the front desk of the Justice Department, only to be asked to show his driver’s license. He felt that the experience was both unpleasant and unproductive. “It was sort of, ‘Look, she may be stupid, but she is ugly.’ ”

The Transportation Security Administration, he knew, was thinking of instituting a Registered Traveler program (details of which it plans to announce next month), for frequent fliers who have passed a background check with Homeland Security. The idea struck him as so logical—an E-ZPass for luggage-toting pedestrians—that, as he wrote, “I am tempted to try launching it myself.”

Brill said, “We take all ten of your fingerprints, we take your iris scans, right and left side, but when you enroll you tell us what your favorite biometric is: do you want us to ask for your right thumb or your left index finger?” He went on, “From T.S.A.’s standpoint, what we’re doing is taking a lot of hay out of its proverbial haystack.” A Clear member is, at the least, a Very Safe Person.

A pilot V.I.P. program, which now has more than twelve thousand members, has been in place at Orlando International Airport for months. (Other companies are competing for contracts with airports in other cities.) “We just did a proposal for Indianapolis,” Brill said, opening a drawer and retrieving a sample card, assigned to John S. Doe. “And San Jose airport just put out a press release a half hour ago saying that they’d signed us up.” He added, “These are airports that want to get to the front of the line.”

New York, though it may have the highest concentration of passengers who would really, really like to get to the front of the line, is not yet on the docket. But, once it is, the possibilities will be great. “I think what we’re starting is something called the Voluntary Credentialling Industry,” Brill said. “You can go to the people who run Rockefeller Center, or Madison Square Garden. You can say to them, ‘For any given Knicks game, forty per cent of the people coming through are going to have a card like this.’ ”

He stood up and led the way from his corner office to a set of cubicles where young people were sorting customer-feedback postcards.

“Give me a random batch,” he said. On one card, on which all the “Terrific” boxes were checked, the phrase “Nice uniforms” was written at the bottom. An employee held up another card and read it aloud: “This one says, ‘It’s almost a sinful experience.’ ”