One Of Terry's Corners Of the Online World

Sally gave me my Xmas pressie early. (Well, one of them.) A DVD Recorder. So it's adios to VHS tapes and hello DVD copies. The set up took some frustrating skull work and bouncing it around with a guy at Dick Smith Electronics, but it is now working a treat and I'm ripping a copy of this movie as a test shot. I already have a DVD copy of the censored version aka Lisa and the Devil and now I can double-case it with my VHS copy of House of Exorcism, the rather more sanguine and explicit version. I'm a big Mario Bava fan.

Sal and I also saw King Kong today. Very OTT but a great flick that grabbed me by the brain and glands. Jack Black's Carl Denham is a slimy proto-Orson Welles (he dresses like Welles in Citizen Kane in one scene.) Naomi Watts' Anne Darrow is a tour-de-force of green-screen acting. The ape is unbelievably realistic and Skull Island makes Jurassic Park look like a kiddie creche. The three hours passes fulsomely and the Depression-Era New York that Peter Jackson evokes is the most believably sad one since "Cradle Will Rock".