End of X-mas and Kong (1933)

Yesterday, it was time to bite the bullet and take down our Christmas tree. Jane, a couple of days ago, had started taking the ornaments down, but, yesterday, we decided to pack all of that stuff back into their boxes and put them back in storage until the end of the year. We also finally took down and hauled out the tree for our Wednesday garbage pick up.

We kept it up for an extra week, because we got it so late in the season (1 week before X-mas) and we wanted to have it up a little longer. But it was definitely time to take it down as it was getting very dry and the cats, having chased each other in and out of it during it's stay in our living room, created quite a mess with all of the dry needles falling off of the tree due to their rambunctious behavior. It was nice to finally get the house back in order and cleaned up after the holidays.

We also decided to watch the original 1933 version of King Kong. Since the new movie, everything remotely related to King Kong has been polished off and released (or re-released) to the public. In this case, a Special Edition DVD of the original movie. It was really interesting to watch since I had never seen this version in it's entirety before and it was especially interesting to note the faithfulness to and the departures from this original in comparison to the Peter Jackson version (Wow, something has got to be did about my Englishes). Mainly, Hylah was so impressed with this current Kong, that it was by her request that we rented the original. In fact, at one point, she mentioned that she liked this version better. This being the original, it's almost difficult not to like this one best since the technology and craftsmanship used to bring this movie to screen back in 1933 must have been much more difficult to accomplish while testing every limit of the animation and technical crews' imaginations and endurance.

A couple of things that I noticed was the amount of humor in the original. The new one had some comedy in it, but this one seemed almost campy (in spots) by comparison. Also, the special effects in the 1933 Kong were very impressively executed for such an early piece of filmmaking. Finally, the transfer to DVD from, I'm sure, a well worn master was as good as you could ask for.

Now we're going to have to rent the 1976 version to round out the Kong trifecta (more on that later, if and when it happens).