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A Tribute to King Kong takes place as part of the The St. Louis International Film Festival Sunday, Nov. 6 beginning at 6:00pm at Webster University’s Moore Auditorium. The first film screened will be the new documentary Long Live The King, which explores the enduring fascination with one of the biggest stars — both literally and figuratively — in Hollywood history: the mighty King Kong. Produced and directed by Frank Dietz and Trish Geiger, the creative team behind the award-winning “Beast Wishes,” the documentary devotes primary attention to the 1933 classic, celebrating the contributions of filmmakers Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack, stars Fay Wray, Robert Armstrong, and Bruce Cabot, writer Edgar Wallace, and especially stop-motion innovator Willis O’Brien. But Kong’s legacy is also fully detailed: the sequel “Son of Kong,” the cinematic kin “Mighty Joe Young,” the Dino DeLaurentis and Peter Jackson remakes, even the Japanese versions by Toho Studios.

Coleen Gray in 'The Sleeping City' with Richard Conte. Coleen Gray after Fox: B Westerns and films noirs (See previous post: “Coleen Gray Actress: From Red River to Film Noir 'Good Girls'.”) Regarding the demise of her Fox career (the year after her divorce from Rod Amateau), Coleen Gray would recall for Confessions of a Scream Queen author Matt Beckoff: I thought that was the end of the world and that I was a total failure. I was a mass of insecurity and depended on agents. … Whether it was an 'A' picture or a 'B' picture didn't bother me. It could be a Western movie, a sci-fi film. A job was a job. You did the best with the script that you had. Fox had dropped Gray at a time of dramatic upheavals in the American film industry: fast-dwindling box office receipts as a result of competition from television,...

“We’ll give him more than chains. He’s always been king of his world, but we’ll teach him fear. We’re millionaires, boys. I’ll share it with all of you. Why, in a few months, it’ll be up in lights on Broadway: Kong, the Eighth Wonder of the World!”

King Kong screens at Schlafly Bottleworks (7260 Southwest Ave.- at Manchester – Maplewood, Mo 63143) Thursday, May 7th at 7pm. It is a benefit for Helping Kids Together

Doors open at 6:30pm. $6 suggested for the screening. A yummy variety of food from Schlafly’s kitchen is available as are plenty of pints of their famous home-brewed suds. A bartender will be on hand to take care of you. “Culture Shock” is the name of a film series here in St. Louis that is the cornerstone project of a social enterprise that is an ongoing source of support for Helping Kids Together (http://www.

What if I told you that the people of Pompeii had it coming? That the whole city was a moral cesspool and the eruption of Vesuvius was a final judgment on a corrupt society? You would probably object on grounds of basic human decency, and you’d be right. But I’m not the one that thinks so. That would be Hollywood. There aren’t very many movies about the destruction of Pompeii, but the handful that exist share something quite objectively strange. Paul W.S. Anderson‘s fiery dud is only the newest example of this genre, a disaster movie in which the audience is invited to find moral satisfaction in the flames. With Pompeii it isn’t quite so obvious, but I’d argue that’s just because the script is terrible and doesn’t know exactly how to express what it’s going for. You have to look at it in the context of the...

More fun than any civilization’s fiery extinction should ever be, Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii 3-D is gloriously exciting kitsch – a poor man’s Titanic crossed with an even poorer man’s Gladiator. We all know about the explosive demise of the titular Roman city, turned to ash and stone by the eruption of nearby Mt. Vesuvius back in 79 A.D. Over the years, it’s captured the imagination of many artists, particularly E. Bulwer-Lytton, whose 1834 novel The Last Days of Pompeii inspired many (very loose) theater and film adaptations. Previous film versions have tried to add poetic dimension to the tale of this decadent city’s comeuppance. Often, as in King Kong visionaries Merian C. Cooper and Ernest B. Schoedsack’s 1935 film or the classic 1959 Italian peplum starring Steve “Hercules” Reeves (and ghost-directed by Sergio Leone), the story becomes one of Christian sacrifice overcoming Roman venality on the...

All Is Lost Well, while I wish more people would have seen it in theaters, I'm happy more people will likely see All is Lost now that it's available on DVD and Blu-ray as Roadside didn't exactly give the film a widespread release. Granted, by this time it seems the line has been drawn as to whether you're going to harshly judge the film on its nautical merits or run into issues if it has been hyped up too much in your mind. All I say is give the film a fair shake. Rent it, turn off the lights, silence your phone and just watch for 106 minutes and I don't think you'll be disappointed.

Ender's Game Not bad, but not great makes Ender's Game a film I expect more people will see (and probably enjoy) on DVD and Blu-ray than ever would have in theaters. I expect I'll catch this...

Article by Tom Stockman

The big guy once known as ‘The 8th Wonder of the World’ is celebrating his 80th birthday. A landmark accomplishment in cinema and fantasy, King Kong still holds the power to astonish and inspire, so in honor of its 80 years, here’s a look at the movie’s groundbreaking production and significant legacy.

Carl Denham, who brought Kong from Skull Island to New York, was an adventurous, globe-hopping filmmaker and the same was true of Merian C. Cooper, the mastermind behind the movie King Kong. Born in 1893, Cooper had been an aviator and hero in the First World War. He began his movie career in the mid-1920s at Paramount Pictures where he teamed up with Ernest B. Schoedsack, a pioneering motion picture photographer and news cameraman who would become his filmmaking partner. Their first successes were a pair of ambitious anthropological documentaries inspired by the...

It’s the last week of August, and that means the end of the summer movie season is finally here. But as any educated consumer of film can tell you, movies that emphasize spectacle over substance are in no way limited to the summer months. And this week’s Trailer Trashin’ is a great example of this, with our first look at this coming February’s historical action-adventure Pompeii.

Premise: Set in the days leading up to the eruption of Mount Vesuvius in Pompeii, a slave on a ship heading for Naples works to get home to save the woman he loves and his best friend, a gladiator trapped inside the city’s coliseum.

My take: There are certain events from history that just lend themselves to being depicted on the movie screen. One such event is the destruction of the ancient Roman city of Pompeii following the eruption of...

Sony Pictures has unveiled the teaser for director Paul W.S. Anderson’s Pompeii.

The film stars Kit Harington, Carrie-Anne Moss, Emily Browning, Adewale Akinnuoye-Agbaje, Paz Vega, Jessica Lucas with Jared Harris and Kiefer Sutherland.

Set in 79 A.D., Pompeii tells the epic story of Milo, a slave turned invincible gladiator who finds himself in a race against time to save his true love Cassia, the beautiful daughter of a wealthy merchant who has been unwillingly betrothed to a corrupt Roman Senator. As Mount Vesuvius erupts in a torrent of blazing lava, Milo must fight his way out of the arena in order to save his beloved as the once magnificent Pompeii crumbles around him.

Pompeii will be in theaters February 2014. Beforehand try to see The Last Days Of Pompeii (1935) – sure, Old Hollywood spectacle, but well worth your time. http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B00ALOL9QO/ref=atv_feed_catalog?...

The disaster thriller Air Collision will have a nationwide DVD release and arrive on Video-on-demand March 27th. Released by Asylum Home Entertainment, this film is set to deliver a treasure trove of terror in the skies and screams of panic on the ground. This science fiction based experience from “Best Director” Liz Adams (“Side Effect”) is going to mortify those afraid of flying and create a fear of flying in those who are not.

This movie features Reginald VelJohnson, Jordan Ladd, Gerald Webb, Darin Cooper, Darren Anthony Thomas, Kevin Yarbrough and Dave Vescio. While some are trying to avoid a collision course with fate, others are only going to panic the passengers even more. First Officer Aoki (Webb) is trying to save the day while Eli Reyher (Vescio) is trying to ruin it.

Disaster films have excited audiences since the silent film era when Night and Ice (1912) showed the sinking of the Titanic.

Creator of film special effects who turned an 18-inch model ape into King Kong

In the history of cinema, many children have followed their mothers or fathers into the film business, but few offspring pursued the path of a parent more slavishly than Harry Redmond Jr, who has died aged 101. Like a master craftsman, Harry Redmond Sr passed on the skills of his trade to his son, the trade being the creation of special effects for films. Most notably, they worked together on King Kong (1933), in which a giant gorilla captures an actor, Ann Darrow, played by the "scream queen" Fay Wray.

The Redmonds were important members of the King Kong technical team under the supervision of Willis O'Brien, the pioneer of model animation. Part of their job was to integrate the stop-motion models and animatronics into live-action sequences by means of back projection and travelling mattes. Although the model...