Assorted movie bits

Proceed with chest-beating and 6.1 jungle roar: Peter Jackson shed 70 pounds while making King Kong, and though he didn't manage to produce anything resembling a trim film, the marketing department has produced some lightweight TV spots for this oversized gorilla of a movie. At least it will be better than Congo.

Who is number 1?: In the words of High Fidelity's Jack Black: "McGoohan! McGoohan!"

Harry Potter and the (magical) dumptrucks full of cash: Thank goodness the whole Christians versus Harry Potter thing has died down, though it seems to have been replaced by Christians versus everyone who doesn't care if Aslan is God or whatever because it's just a movie, dammit. I still haven't seen this movie. Shush.

Shamalamadingdong: So we're all aware of M. Night's favorite board game, and, understandably, some are rather annoyed by his insistence on narrative sleight-of-hand, but despite some blunders, I still think the man deserves real credit for being one of the few filmmakers to take magical realism seriously. He posits worlds in which the fantastic can and does exist -- but right along side the very mundanities that we all take for granted. His new trailer is appropriately mysterious, and Apple has it here.

The endless stupidity of the MPAA: This will certainly help Bram Cohen, but I don't see it doing much to stop piracy, as anyone who has ever used (or even read about) BitTorrent clients knows that it's not exactly difficult to use, let's say... Google, among other search sites, to find trackers.