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Let's find out what JammerLea has picked for this series this time!

I voted yes on King Kong mainly for the stop motion special effects. However, personally, this wouldn't be on my list of top 100 films. Besides the obvious racism and misogyny, sometimes it was so slow that my mind kept wandering. When something finally happened, it was usually something being killed. For example, the way they kept shooting that stegosaurus went on forever, it was kind of upsetting. And King Kong is supposed to be a beast, I get that, but he kills everything and anyone and this made me appreciate later adaptations (and "rip-offs" like Mighty Joe Young) where you feel more sympathy for the ape. I guess I prefer my Kong to be more than just a brainless brute who smashes things.

He seems to have no idea how to cook for a large amount of people either. His timing is all off. He's got tons and tons of pasta cooked and ready to go but there are piles of raw meat sitting out on the counters. The meat is going to take way longer to cook than the pasta, Giorgio. Get it together.

I think you hit exactly why this film needs to be included. It really showed how movies could physically create totally fictional, fantastical realities for actual actors to interact with. It's exciting, it's thrilling, and it has this two-story ape engage with human actors as its own character. This certainly did not pre-date cartoons, but it does pre-date Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs, the first full-length animated feature, by four years, while only being six years after the first sound picture, The Jazz Singer. We are in brand new territory here, but the fundamentals of storytelling are still adhered to and valued, even if the love story is rather undercooked. From a personal standpoint, I love stop-motion, I find it fascinating to watch and I lament its demise in the wake of more efficient means of creating these kinds of characters. From King King to Ray Harryhausen to Nightmare Before Christmas to Studio Laika, I love that medium so much. So I see King Kong as a sort of progenitor of that whole field (even if the technique was not invented for the film). The racism IS deplorable in this movie, as is the troubling idea bandied around at the time (thanks to movements like "scientific racism") of Africans being more closely related to apes than other races. The very idea of a white woman being kidnapped by an ape from "Darkest Africa" is subconsciously mining that concept. There was a lot of and Eugenics going on in America and Europe at the time, and this movie struck such a chord with audiences that it might have been cultivating those cultural currents. Was it conscious of the filmmakers? I don't know. It doesn't seem malicious the way Birth of a Nation was. Do I wish it wasn't in the film? Undoubtedly. I think you could have a King Kong that functions as a metaphor for the destructiveness of Colonialism, about the dangers and evil that inevitably come when one culture arrives and imposes its values and morals on another. White people come, extract resources from a native culture, and bring back a violated version of it for their own benefit. It could be a Beauty and the Beast story where the real Beast is racism if done right, but the way the Skull Islanders are depicted, the 1933 Kong definitely does not reach those heights. I still think it belongs on the AFI list though.

I felt really bad for these two characters, but on the other hand, I paid more attention to them than anyone else in this film. They were the only ones I that really felt like characters to me and were relatable from a customer service standpoint. There's always that one person who makes ridiculous requests. I also was concerned that the food fight took place in their kitchen, in which case I was ready to throw down for them. I only sort of paid attention, but it seemed after that show, when Giorgio is just hanging out with people, he suddenly decides that HE wants to cook for EVERYONE. And that's the other thing that drove me nuts. This is a large crowd, and two people cooking for them seems like way too little to get that much food ready in a reasonable amount of time. But then they proceed to ruin as much of the food as possible with their stupid food fight and I'm just like... you STILL have people WAITING FOR FOOD out there! Again, maybe this is my customer service background, but WHAT THE HELL ARE YOU DOING??? The manager already told them the guests were getting restless with hunger. Now they're going to be at the least incredibly disappointed, and at the most very very angry. Just... I don't know... get catering... order some pizzas... something more reliable than two people whose special skills do not seem to include cooking at any other point in the movie.

Thanks, Slide! My son’s sick and it slipped my mind

You can argue that some of that is in there, maybe unintentionally thanks to the work of the animators making Kong so sympathetic upon his death. But I think it's hard to watch the movie and not feel sorry for the death of the beast . . . and by extension, for the exploitation and destruction of the native peoples he is a metaphor for. I mean, yeah, they're still basically equating those people with gorillas. I'm just saying it's complicated.

So like the rest of the movie, the existence of the kitchen scene entirely hinges on Giorgio's ego and lack of consideration for other people's needs. Makes perfect sense, in retrospect.

all the leaves are brown, and the sky is grey, don't let it bring you down, new Handbooks on the way

Paul and Amy, I really enjoyed this episode. As an animator, I got a kick out of Paul being flummoxed and at a loss to explain why he enjoyed watching Kong the character so much, even though the effects techniques are relatively crude compared to today's sophisticated cgi. I think Willis O'brien and his crew are due a bit more credit than they were paid in this podcast. To my mind "King Kong" is an incredibly significant film for a key reason. Previously, special effects were just that, tricks that were used to enhance brief sequences in a film, to bring some realism to circumstances that were too difficult or dangerous to film for real. In "King Kong" the effects are undeniably the star. "King Kong" is the first time special effects are used to bring life to a central character of a feature length film. Willis O'brien had previously used his stop motion techniques in "The Lost World" on a variety of rampaging prehistoric critters, but Kong is different. Kong is a brilliant example of "personality animation", or animation where the character appears to be thinking and making decisions. In this film, for the first time, the barometer of special effects changes from "how realistic is this effect?" to "how engaging is this performance?". As your guest zoo employee points out, there are many things about Kong's design and performance that are not accurate to a real gorilla, but in animation we regularly speak about "realism" and "believability" as separate concepts. Kong's brilliant performance, executed by a team of unseen artisans, transcends its technique. It is engaging and believable. This is the film proved that a special effect could hold it's own as an actor, and it's the milestone that paved the way for Yoda, E.T., Roger Rabbit, Dobby, Gollum and so many more. Keep up the good work, alex

I shouldn't be surprised that Jason had no idea about spilling tea but honestly I'm still surprised.

As someone that performed for 10 years, Opera is so hard.

My new favorite quote...

After a brief hiatus, I got so excited to catch up on HH when someone told me that there were lots of Chef Kevin bits and segments on the show now. Imagine my disappointment when I tuned in to find out that he had NOT actually been dismembered.

More Jordan and less Kevin thank you

just want to say how truly grateful I am for H&S showing me love on the Chef Kevin AMA Pro Version and on this week's HH. for the past few years both my parents have had Alzheimer's disease, a form of dementia. my Mom was diagnosed in '04, my Dad in '15. during these years HH and this forum have provided a much needed escape from all the hellish bullshit of reality. making the pictures especially, getting lost in pixels for hours has been a valuable coping strategy throughout my Mom passed away in April. I played ukulele and sang at her funeral. so to have the boys be so nice on top of doing their great funny shows makes me feel that despite life's gloomy dark thunderclouds dropping constant pain and sorrow, sometimes a warm ray of light might shine through, offering a little hope and healing

This movie aggravated me in ways I just can't explain, and I do enjoy listening to the more notable songs of classical music, but I now wish I watched the edited version because it was just unnecessary for the most part. I was surprised that there was no turn for the main relationship in anyway, like the wife finding out about the affair, or the doctor getting into a relationship of her own and ends up making Pavoratti jealous and in turn want her more. It was just like "they're gonna fuck for a bit and then he's heading back to his mansion and his family." It honestly reminded me of the ending of The Terminal with Tom Hanks and Catherine Zeta-Jones in that the whole movie is sort of building this relationship between an immigrant stuck in the airport due to no fault of his own and this flight attendant who is the mistress of a government official, we think that they will get together in the end but after all is said and down. While both are what I feel are fairly accurate representations, they really don't make for good movies as it just goes against what the audience is hoping for with the couples.

Here is the post I wrote after being in the audience. I haven't listened to the episode yet. This is going to be a long post. I was in the audience for this show and I have been stewing on this movie for like a month now. I wish I could forget about it like June because the more I think about it, the more frustrated I get. I will give the film two props. 1. I was thinking about some of the other starring vehicles we have seen, like the Hulk Hogan movies, and I appreciate that Pavarotti (may he Rest In Peace) was willing to play a flawed character it might be very close to his actual life—I am not sure. But he’s like “yep I cheat on my wife and I am kind of dumb and chauvinistic.” And thought I found him very stiff in most of the movie I did have A feeling (just one) when he performed the final song and was sad. 2. I was happy that Pamela left. It wasn’t treated like she was going to be unhappy forever without him or anything. She’s a hot lady doctor that other men took time out of their day to sexually harass. She had other options. She had an important job to go back to. She’s gonna be fine, guys. What I did object to was, as the gang mentioned, her just dropping her IMPORTANT job to cater to him. She is a lady doctor who performs surgery on children. Maybe tonsillitis isn’t the most dangerous of ailments but if she froze during surgery like he did on stage, someone could die. So when they initially mention something awful happening at the Met, I thought the stakes would be high. You know that this important lady doctor needs to take time out of her life to fix him. When it was revealed during the food fight that it was just a wardrobe malfunction and he was mainly concerned that people laughed at him? I. Was. Furious. What I really WANTED him to say was, “The Met killed my wife.” Like Richard Kimble in “The Fugitive” or something. How great would it have been if we don’t talk about Carla because she was murdered by that dragon or something? Or maybe a rival pushed her off a balcony? Some more of my nerd notes: — Pavarotti did not speak English very well. I read a trivia big on IMDb that said he was surprised that changing the words around meant changing the entire meaning and he had trouble with it. That made me laugh. Yeah English is a real language with meanings. I found the way he pronounced “Pamela” most confounding. It was like “Pah-meh-la.” And initially because the dubbing was bad I thought he said “Karnilla,” who is a villain in the Thor universe. I call her Karnilla in all my notes. — I thought the comedy vignettes (nuns, hat lady, Asian couple, food fight, etc) were all poorly placed. The more I think about it, the more I like the nun in the opening. The Mother Superior is a trickster and gets him to do her bidding by pretending she doesn’t recognize him. But in the second scene? We don’t know why he deserved that. If that had come AFTER the mistreatment of the poor Asian couple, Kwan and Mei Ling, I think she’d be the hero of the movie. Also, the she had the Italian equivalent of a baguette in her hand bag. It was up by her face in the car ride scene. Why she is taking bread on the plane? Did she being a whole meal? I have a lot of questions about her life. — The Kwan and Mei Ling scenes were the most uncomfortable for me to watch. I hate when people treat service workers (or were they friends? Wait, that makes it weirder.) like slaves. I was really upset by it. And I was concerned that place they had the food fight might be the same set, which would mean they might have to clean up that mess? I was ready to start a GoFundMe for them. — I also found that scene way more offensive than the “yellow face” mentioned by the audience in the final scene. I don’t know much about opera but I do have Il Teatro Olivia, a little play set for the picture book character Olivia. It is for her to wear fancy costumes and be the center of attention. All I know about Turandot (the opera being performed in the end) is that Olivia also wears elaborate robes like the African American opera singer. Not that this makes it okay but I think it is standard for a production of Turandot and not an invention of the movie. Also, Olivia is a pig so I don’t know if that is yellow face or not?

"I like a bigger boy." ... "I like a bigger boy."

Carl Tart is a(n inter)national treasure. I was convulsing with laughter for the opening. Part of it was just because the singing was so funny - but also, laughing at the fact that he was going to have to sustain it for the duration of the episode. Scott's blatant setups later on were gold. Especially when Carl didn't seem to get them quite so immediately.

'Tis a consummation December to be wished

"I want April, gimme April" (dat pill)

Yes please use this thread if you have any questions or gripes or requests about the new stuff! I'm still trying to figure out everything that is new and can't promise we have control over ever bit of it but i'll do my best to make it nice and easy for y'all! Good reminder for everyone to go check out your Profile in the top right corner and check your notification settings and such as there are a lot of new features!!

@Shannon would this be the best spot to mention things we miss about the old forums? Or just general suggestions to make this work best for everyone? I was only wondering if we could get back the option to not have "edited by taylorannephoto at x time" when we edit a post. I hate having the whole world be aware that I make a ton of typos and can't spell and have to go back and fix all of my posts lol.