And when you see the completed film you come to appreciate the genius of this particular piece of match-making. "I was never into any of Le Carr? spy books, all that Cold War stuff, but The Constant Gardener is more interesting to my Third World sensibility," says Meirelles, perched on a sofa in the decidedly non-Third World setting of London's Dorchester hotel. Their reaction was effusive, at least in public, and Mr Jackson was given the go-ahead.. At first glance it seems like a very unlikely artistic marriage.
On the one hand, you have John Le Carr?master of a civilised, very British sort of spy story. Not only did he exercise complete control over King Kong, along with his partners Fran Walsh and Philippa Boyens, but key parts of the production were withheld from the corporate front office until the film was completed.Universal's top brass recently flew to New Zealand to watch the three-hour cut and decide if they were prepared to release it at that length. It's a brilliant movie, an epic feast."Mr Jackson was, in effect, handed the keys to Hollywood after the smash success of his Lord of the Rings trilogy. The News of King Kong's extra weight and girth - the running time, originally intended to be about two-and-a-half hours, has shot past the three-hour mark - seems to have been greeted, however, with nothing but excitement and pleasure among executives at Universal Pictures."We expected to see a long movie," the chair of Universal Pictures, Stacey Snider, told Variety, "and we loved it. Jackson, the man who set Hollywood alight with his epic cinematic trilogy of The Lord of the Rings, has included an array of blockbusting special effects in the film, which alone are estimated to cost as much as $32m (£18m). The fine for reaching an extraordinary total budget of $207m is expected to be split between Mr Jackson himself and his production company.
DOWNLOAD THIS: 'Sharks', 'What's Your Damage?', 'Pull the Lever'. Discerning the lyrics is more trouble than it should be, which is a shame, as the few clear lines hint at a sharp line in iconoclastic rhetoric - "But when it's the end of the world, d'you think we'll have more reason to live?" When the singer reins in his delivery, most effectively on "Pull the Lever", he's capable of something approaching the lofty disdain of Mark E Smith, asking "Shall we clear up this bloody mess now?" Yes, is the answer. The film director Peter Jackson has been forced to pay a fine running into millions of dollars for going massively over budget on his latest project, King Kong. In places, they sound like Slayer or Napalm Death with eccentric taste in tempo, occasionally punctuated by breakdown sections or middle-eights in the manner of Atari Teenage Riot, as everything bounces luridly, distorting angrily on tracks like the single "Boa vs Python", a drill'n'disco blend. A certain spikiness is all but mandatory in young British rock bands now, but Test Icicles have gone way beyond the optimum on this debut album. For Screening Purposes Only is a user-unfriendly artefact that tries to be as hard to grasp as possible, and is arguably not worth the effort. Its dozen tracks are mostly tense, bitter barrages of yelping pop-metal in which the prerequisites of angular guitar shards and pummelling backbeat are augmented by hoarse squawking.