DECEMBER 23
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MOD
Girl,
December 23, 2005 On the Cover: Maricris Baredo Alea |
Disyembre 23 sa Kasaysayan ng Pilipinas
Noong Disyembre 23, 1900, itinatag ang Partido Federal ng Pilipinas. Binubuo ito ng mga konserbatibo at nakaririwasang Filipino at mestisong Kastila kabilang sina Pedro Paterno, Felipe Buencamino, Cayetano Arellano, Trinidad Pardo de Tavera, Rafael Palma at Pascual Poblete.
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Ang Kasunduan sa Tripoli (Tripoli Agreement), na nagbibigay ng autonomy sa Region IX at XII sa Mindanao, ay nilagdaan noong Disyembre 23 1976.
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GLIMPSE FROM THE PAST
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Bing Crosby and Bob Hope (for the film Road to Rio),
on the cover of Look (December 23, 1947). |
Personalities and celebrities born on December 23:
1875 – Clemente Jose Zulueta, historian, bibliographer and founder of La Libertad and La Union – in Paco, Manila (d. September 9, 1904).
1895 – Victorio Edades, “Father of Modern Arts in the Philippines” and national Artist (1976) – in Dagupan, Pangasinan (d. March 7, 1985).
1929 – Gilopez Kabayao, violinist, public servant and Ramon Magsaysay Awardee for community service (1972) – in Fara-on, Fabrica, Negros Occidental.
1941 – Arthur Defensor Sr, politician – in Iloilo.
1961 – Lorna Tolentino (real name Maria Victoria Lorna Aluquin), multi-awarded actress – in Concepcion, Tarlac.
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Lorna Tolentino
on the covers of Chic (September 5, 1994) and Good
Housekeeping Philippines (October 2004). |
1990 – Anna Maria Perez de Tagle, Filipino-American singer and actress – in San Francisco, California.
1993 –Jessie Khing Lacuna, swimmer – in Pulilan, Bulacan.
KING KONG: FACTS, TRIVIA AND BLOOPERS
In the original film, although Kong's island home is usually referred to as “Skull Island,” the term is never used in the movie, nor in the sequel Son of Kong (1933). The confusion arose because the main natural feature on the island is called Skull Mountain.
The original King Kong version was released four times between 1933 and 1952, and each release saw the cutting of additional scenes. Though many of the outtakes (including the censored sequence in which Kong peels off Fay Wray’s clothes) were restored in 1971, one cut scene has never been found. It is the clip in which Kong shakes four sailors off a log bridge, causing them to fall into a ravine where they are eaten alive by giant spiders. When the movie (with spider sequence intact) was previewed in San Bernardino, California, in late January 1933, members of the audience screamed and either left the theater or talked about the grisly sequence throughout the remainder of the film. “It stopped the picture cold, so the next day back at the studio, I took it out myself.” Said the Merian Cooper
Both Merian Cooper and Ernest Schoedsack had been wrestlers, and they acted out the fighting moves for the battle between Kong and the T-rex in the effects studio, before the animators shot the scene.
Close-ups of the pilots and gunners of the planes that attack and killed Kong were shot in the studio with mock-up planes. The flight commander is Merian Cooper and his gunner is Ernest Schoedsack. They decided to play the parts after Cooper said that “we should kill the son-of-a-bitch ourselves.” Both were unaccredited actors in the film.
According to Fay Wray’s autobiography, On the Other Hand (1988) revealed many interesting things about her role as Ann Darrow, the blonde seductress and love interest of King Kong. Although Wray is best remembered for portraying Ann Darrow, she never produced the piercing scream for which she became famous for. That scream emanated from actress Julie Haydon, and it was dubbed to Wray. She also dyed her dark hair blonde for the role.
In his review in The New York Times (3 March 1933), film critic Mordaunt Hall incorrectly refers to Fay Wray’s character Ann Darrow as “Ann Redman.”
There was more than one model of Kong used in the 1933 film. There are considerable differences between the Kong on Skull Island and the Kong in New York. Kong’s “official” height (from the 1933 movie posters) is 50 feet. He was close to 19 feet tall in the jungle and close to 25 feet when in New York City.
King Kong’s roar was a lion’s and a tiger’s roar combined and run backwards.
From late 1919 until the 1921 Treaty of Riga, Merian Cooper was a member of a volunteer American flight squadron, the Kosciuszko Squadron, which supported the Polish Army in the Polish-Soviet War. On July 26, 1920, his plane was shot down, and he spent nearly nine months in a Soviet prisoner-of-war camp. He escaped just before the war was over and made it to Latvia. For valor he was decorated by Polish commander-in-chief Józef Pilsudski with the highest Polish military decoration, the Virtuti Militari.
Cooper has a star on the Hollywood Walk of Fame (his name is misspelled “Meriam C. Cooper”).
A King Kong animation TV series was shown in 1966-1969. In this version, Kong lives peacefully on an island with the Bond family and fights various villains. Kong’s best friend, Bobby Bond, is voiced by Billie Richards. This popular ABC Saturday morning children series, however, pretty much ignored the canon from the films.
In the 1976 King Kong remake, employees of the Empire State Building expressed their displeasure at the producers’ decision to stage the remake’s climax at the World Trade Center by picketing the 102 floors of the ESB dressed in monkey suits.
Edgar Wallace (full name Richard Horatio Edgar Wallace) was a prolific British crime writer, journalist and playwright, who wrote 175 novels, 24 plays, and countless articles in newspapers and journals. Over 160 films have been made of his novels, more than any other author. In the 1920s, one of Wallace’s publishers claimed that a quarter of all books read in England were written by him.
On April Fools Day 2005, Peter Jackson posted an elaborate practical joke, where he posted a web diary on www.kongisking.net. He “revealed” that they were already starting production on “King Kong: Son Of Kong” and “King Kong: Into the Wolf’s Lair.” Both films, supposedly to be released in 2006, contained the principal characters riding Son of Kong, strapping machine guns to his back and fighting Hitler’s genetically mutated creatures. The film was going to be produced under the banner of “Big Primate Productions.” Peter Jackson has been known to pull pranks of this sort before.
The marketing campaign for King Kong started in full swing on June 28, 2005, when the teaser trailer made its debut, first online at the official Volkswagen website at 8:45 pm EST, then at the end of the NBC broadcast of Fear Factor at 8:55 pm EST, then in theaters attached to copies of War of the Worlds, which opened on last June 29, 2005.
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King Kong on the cover of Entertainment Weekly
(December 23, 2005). |
Fay Wray was in negotiations to appear in the 2005 King Kong remake, before she died on August 8, 2004. Director Jackson wanted her to deliver the legendary last line: “Oh no, it wasn’t the airplanes. It was beauty that killed the beast.”
Peter Jackson’s King Kong video game is a multi-platform game based on the 2005 movie he directed.
Plot holes (a question on logic): If Kong was able to climb to the top of the Empire State Building, what prevented him from climbing over the wall that enclosed his habitat on Skull Island?
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Si Iya Villania
tampok sa taklob-pahina ng MOD (December 23, 2005) |
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