"It is not the critic who counts, not the man who points out how the strong man stumbled, or where the doer of deeds could have done better. The credit belongs to the man who is actually in the arena..."

"Its my ruddy life"

"If you don't go when you want to go, when you do go, you'll find you've gone."

"If you don't follow your dreams, you might as well be a vegetable."

"Invercargill, I-N-V-E-R-C-A-R-G-I-L-L. Sometimes I spell it with one 'L' to save ink."

"You live more in 5 minutes on a bike like this going flat out than some people live in their lifetime."

"Bates: Moving the film's location from Africa to the south sea islands doesn't remove the stigma visited upon the native people depicted in it, says Newsday's Jim Pinkerton. He says even subliminal messages in movies are important."

"Craig Hall - Mike the Sound Recordist"

"John Sumner - Herb the Cameraman"

"Lobo Can - Choy"

"Andy Serkis - Kong/Lumpy"

"Kyle Chandler - Bruce Baxter"

"Jamie Bell - Jimmy"

"Evan Parke - Hayes"

"Colin Hanks - Preston"

"Thomas Kretschmann - Captain Englehorn"

"Adrien Brody - Jack Driscoll"

"Jack Black - Carl Denham"

"Naomi Watts - Ann Darrow"

"Every movement in that film was about a human connecting with this huge beast who was one hundred per cent 'other'. Kong basically looks at Ann Darrow three times in that movie. It's all about the disconnect and him being this lonely, psychotic hobo who can't connect with other people."

"Perhaps as a consequence of the writers coming to this after three movies with their large Middle Earth ensemble (which included nine principal characters and plenty of supporting roles), the characters in King Kong are almost gratuitously well developed all around. The crew of the SS Venture is essentially made up of pulp archetypes, but unusually, they're all given enough screen time that they're not just Star Trek-style red shirts by the time they disembark on Skull Island."

"Q. I heard you actually referred back to the original's storyboards?"

"Although Naomi Watts makes a splendid heroine, there have been complaints that Jack Black and Adrien Brody are not precisely hero material. Nor should they be, in my opinion. They are a director and a writer. They do not require big muscles and square jaws. What they require are strong personalities that can be transformed under stress. Denham the director clings desperately to his camera, no matter what happens to him, and Driscoll the writer beats a strategic retreat before essentially rewriting his personal role in his own mind. Bruce Baxter (Kyle Chandler) is an actor who plays the movie's hero, and now has to decide if he can play his role for real. And Preston (Colin Hanks) is a production assistant who, as is often the case, would be a hero if anybody would give him a chance. The result is a surprisingly involving and rather beautiful movie -- one that will appeal strongly to the primary action audience, and also cross over to people who have no plans to see "King Kong" but will change their minds the more they hear. I think the film even has a message, and it isn't that beauty killed the beast. It's that we feel threatened by beauty, especially when it overwhelms us, and we pay a terrible price when we try to deny its essential nature and turn it into a product, or a target. This is one of the year's best films."

"There are astonishments to behold in Peter Jackson's new "King Kong", but one sequence, relatively subdued, holds the key to the movie's success. Kong has captured Ann Darrow and carried her to his perch high on the mountain. He puts her down, not roughly, and then begins to roar, bare his teeth and pound his chest. Ann, an unemployed vaudeville acrobat, somehow instinctively knows that the gorilla is not threatening her but trying to impress her by behaving as an alpha male -- the King of the Jungle. She doesn't know how Queen Kong would respond, but she does what she can: She goes into her stage routine, doing backflips, dancing like Chaplin, juggling three stones. Her instincts and empathy serve her well. Kong's eyes widen in curiosity, wonder and finally what may pass for delight. From then on, he thinks of himself as the girl's possessor and protector. She is like a tiny beautiful toy that he has been given for his very own, and before long, they are regarding the sunset together, both of them silenced by its majesty. The scene is crucial because it removes the element of creepiness in the gorilla/girl relationship in the two earlier "Kongs" (1933 and 1976), creating a wordless bond that allows her to trust him. When Jack Driscoll climbs the mountain to rescue her, he finds her comfortably nestled in Kong's big palm."

"[to Carl, after being uncertain about him bringing Kong back to New York] Forget it, Denham. No chains will ever hold a creature like that."

"[to Carl, whom he has just saved from a slimy demise in the insect pit] That's the thing about cockroaches. No matter how many times you flush them down the toilet, they always crawl back up the bowl."