And Now, Some Words On King Kong

We've just received a communiqu from our man at the Venice Film Festival, Mr Damon Wise, who in between hobnobbing with stars, being shut out of beer tents, and trying to charge his mobile phone, has by some miracle been managing to send us reports of his exploits in the Italian city. He's been lucky enough to get a few words with Elijah Wood, and while he was there to promote Everything Is Illuminated, managed to get his take on the snippet of King Kong that the actor was lucky enough to have been shown recently. "I saw the 20-minute showreel,” he told us. “Amazing… amazing." It certainly, bloody well is, given that the vast majority of the rest of the world has only seen one tenth of that amount. So what did he see? Alas, he was remaining tight lipped about most of it, dammit, but he did fill us in on one crucial sequence. "I saw the animatic of the Empire State Building sequence. I was in tears watching an animatic. Fucking amazing. It’s gonna be great.” Damn straight, and we can't wait. So how has he managed to get access to this when he's been busy working on no less that three major films this year? It turns out that he took his holiday after that trifecta of flicks (Illuminated, Green Street and Sin City) down in New Zealand, where he visited his good friends Peter and Fran, and they must have just had the footage sitting in the DVD player - you know how it is... Jammy git. On the related note of the intended subject, Damon also reported to us that Everything Is Illuminated gets the thumbs-up; it's "tight and intelligent", and that "Schreiber’s self-penned adaptation is about as clear (and dare we say about as good) as one could get from the source." Which is nice. Sounds like there's lots to enjoy from the Fellowship between now and the year's end. Only three and a half and a bit months to go, folks…