{"id":15944,"date":"2011-11-06T15:21:17","date_gmt":"2011-11-06T23:21:17","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15944"},"modified":"2011-11-06T17:31:43","modified_gmt":"2011-11-07T01:31:43","slug":"im-king-kong-the-exploits-of-merian-c-cooper-christoper-birdkevin-brownlow-2005-usa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/?p=15944","title":{"rendered":"I’m King Kong: The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper (Christoper Bird\/Kevin Brownlow, 2005): USA"},"content":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy<\/a>.\u00a0 Viewed on TCM.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 Long before his collaborative work at Argosy Productions with the great John Ford, on such notable films as Fort Apache<\/em> (1948), Rio Grande<\/em> (1950), and The Quiet Man<\/em> (1952), Merian C. Cooper co-wrote,\u00a0co-produced and\u00a0co-directed the tedious, though technologically advanced King Kong<\/em> (1933).<\/p>\n

King Kong<\/em> features the\u00a0work of skilled animator Willis O’Brien and his highly crafted, soft-mold over metal armature creatures, which were shot frame by frame for each movement and gesture, known as stop-motion animation.\u00a0 The film also boasted an original score by maestro Max Steiner who scored many a\u00a0screen hit, including\u00a0Gone With The Wind (<\/em>1939).\u00a0 Steiner\u00a0incorporated a leitmotif, which singled out a recurring theme identified with a particular character.\u00a0 King Kong<\/em> also has the distinction of having the lead character Carl Denham,\u00a0loosely based on its creator – Merian C. Cooper.<\/p>\n

I’m King Kong:\u00a0 The Exploits of Merian C. Cooper<\/a>\u00a0 <\/em>takes us back to a time long before Cooper’s Hollywood career began.\u00a0 Born in 1893, Cooper joined the Naval Academy in 1912, but was forced to resign because of his outspoken views that the use of airplanes would lead to victory on the battlefield.<\/p>\n

Cooper became a bomber pilot and was twice shot down, captured, and served time as a POW, first in WWI and again in the Polish-Soviet War, serving as a volunteer.\u00a0 A strong proponent for the many uses of aircraft, Cooper later served on the Board of Pan American Airways.<\/p>\n

In 1925, Cooper and two companions, Ernest B. Schoedsack and Marguerite Harrison,\u00a0traveled to\u00a0Persia in order to document on film, the\u00a0migration of the Bakhtiari tribe\u00a0in search of\u00a0better pasture for their herd; it was an\u00a0early ethnographic film, known as Grass.<\/em><\/p>\n

After Paramount, Cooper went on to work for RKO, Selznick International, and MGM, before partnering with John Ford at Argosy, and\u00a0eventually\u00a0producing The Searchers<\/em> in 1956.\u00a0 Cooper also helped to advance film technologies such as Technicolor and Cinerama – the precursor to Widescreen.<\/p>\n

Narrated by Alec Baldwin and presented through taped interviews, archival footage, film clips, stills, and talking head interviews, with exceptional editing, I’m King Kong<\/em> exudes the curiosity, energy and enthusiasm that was Merian C. Cooper.<\/p>\n

\"\"\u00a0 A larger than life figure that rarely exists today,\u00a0Cooper was “a\u00a0real life\u00a0Indiana Jones” type character that proclaimed\u00a0 “I made myself be a champion…I’m King Kong!”<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Reviewed by Kathleen Amboy.\u00a0 Viewed on TCM. \u00a0 Long before his collaborative work at Argosy Productions with the great John Ford, on such notable films as Fort Apache (1948), Rio Grande (1950), and The Quiet Man (1952), Merian C. Cooper co-wrote,\u00a0co-produced and\u00a0co-directed the tedious, though technologically advanced King Kong (1933). King Kong features the\u00a0work of […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":49,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[75,3,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-15944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-documentary","category-films","category-tv-programming"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/49"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=15944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/15944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=15944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=15944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/studentfilmreviews.org\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=15944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}