Matt Reeves interview on The Planet of the Apes

I am sure everyone but myself has seen War for the Planet of the Apes this past weekend?

I did not, but looking forward to it. I still think the original 5 Apes movies are the best but these are good, and have some easter eggs for long term fans. I listened to KCRA's podcast The Business which has an interview with director Matt Reeves. The process involved in making these films is fascinating; they actually cut the movie together with all the dudes in their wetsuits (before the CG magic happens) and then send that off to Weta for the effects shots. On Dawn he had to make the movie within 2 years with a ticking clock; on War he had a full 3 years and reviewed every Apes film to figure out how to make this one. Reeves also discusses the forthcoming Batman film he is making starring Ben Affleck.

I was accidentally spoiled on the ending for War, not by Twitter, not by Facebook, but by the New York Times! The article is Andy Serkis on the Ending of 'War for the Planet of the Apes' and I did avoid it. However when flipping around to the end of the arts section, they had a question in bold type which my eyes could not avoid!

Terrible! All I can hope is that Ed Sheeran is not in a cameo in this film the way he was on Game of Thrones the other night! Nuff Said.

Movie Posters: The Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai

Last week I found Phantom City Creative among a new batch of Planet of the Apes movie posters.  PCC also did an amazing job on this poster for the Adventures of Buckaroo Banzai!

Amazing job, right down to the electric logo and the likenesses of all the movie actors.  John Lithgow's expression is priceless.  Peter Weller looks geeky, even though we all know Weller as a tough guy now from his recent roles on Dexter and Fringe.

Here is the theatrical movie poster from 1984 when the movie was released.  Everything about that jacket and tie on Peter Weller screams the 1980s.  They dressed Robocop like he was Madonna's boy toy.

Buckaroo Banzai was sort of like an American Doctor Who combined with the pulp sense of Doc Savage.  He didn't have just five amazing guys but a large team of geeks and freaks.  Motifake's poster with Team Banzai is a perfect example.  Nuff Said!

Planet of the Apes: New posters by Martin Ansin and others

Back in 2010, I reveled in artist Martin Ansin's trippy portrayal of The Flash.  This week, SlashFilm brought to my attention this poster to make any film fan go Ape!

Ansin's poster for the very first 1968 Planet of the Apes film was done for a marathon at the Alama Drafthouse.  Now this will be going on sale today as part of a set of posters, then later it will be sold individually.

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes by Phantom City Creative.  I love this film the most out of the entire series, even though I think the first one was the best written and directed.  The poster captures all the key elements: Caesar, Lisa, the Gorilla rebels, and the climactic scene at the end with Breck.

Escape from the Planet of the Apes by Rich Kelly.  This artist chose the perfect scene to illustrate, the moment the Apes remove their helmets and reveal to the world that they are not human!

The prints will be sold as a set on Thursday, January 26th for $230. Any remaining individual prints will go on sale on Friday, January 27th.  Follow @MondoNews for on sale announcements.  Nuff Said!

Captain America: My new favorite comic book movie

My headline says it all.  Previously, my fav comic book film was Spider-Man 2.  Going into this year, I had anticipated liking Green Lantern or Thor more than Captain America.  Green Lantern fizzled for me and Thor was pretty good but I missed a lot of stuff from the comics.  The adaption of Cap’s origin by director Joe Johnston worked almost perfectly for me.  The flavor of the World War II era is reflected beautifully throughout the scenes from New York to basic training to a USO tour that Steve Rogers joins.  The casting was pitch perfect, all the way from Chris Evans as Steve Rogers to Tommy Lee Jones and Hugo Weaving.  The actors make this fantastic story come to life by establishing an emotional connection with each other.  I really believed Stanley Tucci as Doctor Erskine.  Even Weaving as the Red Skull, while going over the top, makes it believable.
Here are some of my favorite bits:

• The easter egg at the World’s Fair.  Did you see the Human Torch in the glass cage?
• The continuity tie-in with Thor’s father Odin and the World Tree Yggdrasil.
• How Captain America punched Hitler in the US Bonds tour.
• How Captain America #1 cover reflects Cap’s tour.
• Bucky is portrayed more like Brubaker’s version.
• The Howling Commandos in action.  Neal McDonough as Dum Dum Dugan!
• Every time Cap threw his mighty shield.
• Every time the Hydra oath was recited.
• The last action scene with the plane harkened back to truck scene in Raiders of the Lost Ark.

Not only was the direction, writing, acting great, so was the cinematography and the soundtrack.  While the film is obviously fantasy, it is firmly grounded in a lot of imagery from World War II propaganda.  It was really a great touch with the closing credits, seeing all those famous images along with Alan Silvestri’s great music.  Nuff Said!

X-Men First Class Movie Review: Inglorious Mutants!

Just dug the far-out new groovy mutant movie, X-Men First Class!  On one hand, I loved it, mainly because of the 1960s era setting.  The sets (inspired by many classic films) and time period were very cool and it had some of the best actions scenes out of all the X-Men movies to date.  James McAvoy as young Professor Xavier and Michael Fassbender as young Magneto brought extra dimension to each character.  It was wonderful to see some of the mythology that Chris Claremont had developed in this movie.  I loved the cameos, especially the one in the middle with the curse word that helped attain the PG-13 rating.  Seeing Alex Summers was great and his costume with the circles on the chest was a throwback to Neal Adams’ early design.  No idea who Azazel was until this movie, but I see that he was created by Chuck Austen to be Nightcrawler’s father.  The Banshee was a riot and I got a kick out of seeing how his screaming power enables him to fly.

The one big casting downer was January Jones as the White Queen.  Dammit, the White Queen needs to be played by a woman from the UK, there’s no way around it!  Rosamund Pike would have been perfect, but I guess she must have been busy?  I also didn’t like how the White Queen is subservient to Sebastian Shaw.  Getting him ice for his drink?  No effing way.

A lot of people are talking about Jennifer Lawrence like she’s the next big actress, but I found her to be wooden in a number of scenes.

SPOILERS from here on out.

A number of problems with this movie:

• Xavier lived with Mystique for 20 years and never had any attraction for her?  Not even when she morphed into Angie Dickinson?  Come on.
• Rose Byrne (as Moira MacTaggert) sees a Hellfire Club meeting in Vegas and decides to strip down to her underwear and infiltrate?  Pretty nice lingerie she happened to be wearing too, with garter belts and everything. 
• Why is Rose Byrne’s character even called Moira MacTaggert if she’s not a scientist?  They tried to play off a romance between her and Charles but either it didn’t work or was left on the cutting room floor.
• Darwin’s death—they chose the wrong X-Man.  Darwin can survive the naked vacuum of outer space for crying out loud, he could have digested that energy cocktail!  Cool effect on his skin surface though.
• The Beast isn’t attracted to Mystique?  Come on.  She beats the heck out of Vera any day.
• The Beast’s transformation: how come they didn’t show it all?  Less is more sometimes but this would have been great to see.
• How did the Beast get to the airplane hanger?  You mean he can drive a car with those giant furry paws?
• When you finally see The Beast he looks pretty dorky in the airplane hangar, wearing those horn rimmed glasses.
• The X-Men were in a real terrible situation on the island at the end.  Magneto very intelligently found a way out of there.  But what about Xavier’s crew?  They needed to hightail it out of there fast, but it was never explained how.  Professor X has to keep his students safely hidden, but he would have needed urgent medical attention and I can’t see any way but for the military to pick them up.  Did Xavier mind wipe every military person who picked them up?
• The lowest blow comes from Professor Xavier mind-wiping Moira at the end.  That is really destroys whatever they were trying to create between humans and mutants, let alone the trust developed between the two characters.  Moira did a lot to help out Charles and she gets rewarded by losing months of her memory?
• It’s not exactly the feel-good ending of the year is it?  A downer ending and yet Magneto picks up your spirits a bit in the very last scene.

Despite all this, still a good popcorn flick and I love it for the 60s references alone.  While it doesn’t really tie directly into any early 60s X-Men stories, it was neat to see a comic book film set in the time period the characters originated.  Michael Fassbender as Magento really makes it worthwhile, especially the first third of the movie where he hunts down retired Nazis.  Now here is a film I wish could be made: take Michael Fassbender and put him in a Magneto movie written by Quentin Tarentino where he assembles a team of mutants to take out evil humans around the globe.  A mutant version of Inglorious Basterds.   Nuff Said!

Thor Movie Posters in San Francisco

Kenneth Branagh’s Thor movie premieres next week, but the Thor marketing push began several weeks earlier.  I started noticing all kinds of Thor stuff all over San Francisco and took a few snaps with my phone.  The above one-sheet, featuring Chris Hemsworth as the Thunder God, was taken at the BART station in Castro Valley.



BART is plastered with Thor posters and banners, like this one featuring the logo and Mjolnir.  It is displayed over the wall facing the escalators going down at the Embarcadero station in San Francisco.



The MUNI buses in San Francisco are always good vehicles for promoting Marvel movies.  Lately the buses seem to be promoting everything geek: Thor, Portal 2, etc.



There are two banner ads on the buses, this alternate version features the faces of Hemsworth, Anthony Hopkins, Natalie Portman, and Idris Elba.

Despite whatever changes the filmmakers made to the Thor mythos, I’m still excited to see the movie next week.  I just love the fact that the movie has brought Thor and the Norse Gods into public consciousness. A couple of years ago at work I created an intranet site that I named Thor.  At the time no one knew what it referred to--and today everyone knows.  I think that is awesome. Nuff Said!

Great Waldo Pepper Poster by Jim Steranko

This MediaScene 1975 cover by Jim Steranko features his rendition of the movie poster for The Great Waldo Pepper, a film written by William Goldman and directed by George Roy Hill.  The star, as you can see here, was Robert Redford!  The movie, which is quite good, is about a pilot (Pepper) who missed out on the glory days of World War I.  Margot Kidder and Bo Svenson co-star as his lover and rival.  Steranko does a great job of portraying the film’s key elements for this cover, while leaving himself room for cover copy on the left.

Steranko also did this illustration for the article on the movie production.  You can tell that he loves this period and he’s very good at drawing airplanes from this era.

What I really liked about MediaScene was Steranko’s enthusiasm for movies, books, pulps, and art.  He probably influenced my tastes more than any other person.  I started reading Doc Savage, the Avenger, Science Fiction films, etc., as a result of this publication.  Yet there was another influence as well, a love of history, pulps, and images from past eras.  Wish I still had a complete collection of MediaScene magazines.  Nuff Said!

Fantasy Film DragonHeart, Screenwriter Chuck Pogue, Hour 25 Podcast

I recently re-watched the 1996 film DragonHeart, written by Chuck Pogue (The Fly) and directed by Rob Cohen (The Fast & The Furious).  I have to say it is cheesy, but lovable in certain aspects.  Who doesn't like the idea of a dragon and a failed knight pulling a con on naive villagers in a protection racket?  The dragon, Draco, was voiced by Sean Connery, which gave it a certain amount of gravitas.  The design of the dragon was created by Phil Tippett studios and was a lot of fun to watch.  I do think Draco looks, or perhaps moves, somewhat like Marvel Comics' Fin Fang Foom.  The cast had a lot of notable actors, like Dennis Quaid, David Thewis, Jason Isaacs, Pete Postlethwaite, and Dina Meyer.  All of them appeared to be doing their best just to get through the filming, probably nursing hangovers along the way.

Quaid doesn't attempt to do an English accent, which was a wise choice, and he has a great buddy relationship with Draco.  The other actors are either extremely cheesy or miscast, especially Dina Meyer.  Apparently she did not have a great relationship with Rob Cohen during the making of this film.  I remember when Meyer appeared on Beverly Hills 90210 during the 1993 season--I expected her career to skyrocket.  Her film career seemed to be going in the right direction with Dragonheart and was more memorable in Starship Troopers (1997).  And Meyer did play Barbara Gordon on the Birds of Prey TV series in 2002.  

Hour 25 Online, a site loaded with interviews with all kinds of science fiction & fantasy writers, has a great 2-part interview with Chuck Pogue from 2001.  Pogue was extremely proud of his original script for DragonHeart, but felt that it was butchered by director Cohen.  If you love inside Hollywood tales, you should really click on the links below to listen.  Pogue shares his experiences writing The Fly, Psycho III, and a script for John Carter Warlord of Mars that was never produced.  Nuff Said!

Link:  Hour 25 Interview with Chuck Pogue, part 1

Link:  Hour 25 Interview with Chuck Pogue, part 2

Movie Posters: Charton Heston in Omega Man, Soylent Green, and Earthquake!

Charlton Heston was the Big Kahuna of the silver screen back in the 60s and 70s.  Here are some posters from old Chuck's silver age of science fiction...

The Omega Man (1971) was loosely based on Richard Matheson's novel "I Am Legend", and the first thing most people say is that it was a terrible adaption.  Can't you say that about 90% of all movie adaptations?  I had no idea about the source material and found Omega Man to be an entertaining movie.  It's got Chuck living in a post-apocalypse nightmare, going up against Anthony Zerbe as Matthias, the leader of the zombie-like gang.  I always thought Zerbe was a charismatic actor in any number of films and TV shows (Harry O, Centennial, Columbo, etc) that I watched.  He was a good antagonist for Chuck.

Plus, Chuck got to kiss Rosalind Cash, that was pretty cool! 

I'd rather see this version than the Will Smith movie any day. 

Soylent Green (1973) was another future that you wouldn't want to live in, where the only nutrition left is a food product called Soylent Green.  The movie depends on the surprise ending, and the impact is greater if you're a kid that hasn't seen many films.  The kicker stayed with me ever since.  What Soylent Green and Omega Man both have in common are 70s-style downer endings.

SG has a great cast behind Chuck: Leigh Taylor-Young, Edward G. Robinson, and Chuck Connors (star of the Rifleman on TV).

Earthquake (1974) wasn't set in the future, but it was very scary if you lived through a shaker, and I've been in several.  I remember the SenSurround speakers generating a vibrating rumble through the movie theater, and while it wasn't exactly like an Earthquake, it did make the movie more of an experience.  It had a large cast, in the tradition of the Poseidon Adventure and Towering Inferno.  I can't remember anything about the movie beyond the SenSurround, other than Walter Matthau's cameo appearance as the drunk in the bar: What do you have to do to get a drink around here?

Thanks to IMP Awards for the source material!  Nuff Said.

Planet of the Apes Original Movie Posters

Hola, the Dude here, with some far out scans of the original Planet of the Apes movie posters.  I discovered this cool site called IMP Awards with tons of movie posters.  I've stolen some to share with you here. Please keep it between us, I have enough legal problems as it is.


I was way late to the Apes party, caught the first 3 films after they premiered on CBS in the 70s.  I remember seeing the first Apes film advertised all of the place in Los Angeles when it came out.  I am sure there were many variations on the poster released all over the freakin' world.  Did the original Apes poster really did show the full on makeup?  I think this version shows you just enough to wonder, with Dr. Zaius in the spotlight.  Looking at this poster with a fresh pair of eyes, the frightening part of this is the cage for the humans; where exactly did they go to the bathroom?

You can tell from this poster that the third movie, Escape from the Planet of the Apes, has loads of comedy.  Cornelius, Zira, and the baby who will become Caesar are framed in an old American western style photograph.  Below the logo, the Apes look bewildered in those spacesuits as they enter the strange world of humankind.
I heard someone once say that fiction should never try to combine comedy with tragedy.  A story had to be one tone all the way from beginning to end.  Whoever said that didn't watch a lot of 70s films.  Escape is a perfect example:  lots of laughs through the second act as Cornelius' family become celebrities and go on TV talk shows, but after the government figures out that Apes ruled the future Earth, there is one hell of a downer ending.  My advice to you: do not take Quaaludes while watching this flick!

Conquest of the Planet of the Apes is one of my favorite films and the revolutionary story makes for a great poster.  The logo explodes three dimensionally at an angle, just enough to blow your mind, even if you aren't stoned.  The apes revolting and the police gettin' ready to force them away sends me back to Berkeley.  Even though I was never accepted to Berkeley and didn't go to college in the 70s!  It's that powerful!
Did you know Fox is getting ready to re-make Conquest?  It's going to be called Rise of the Apes.  I am highly skeptical, IMHO you cannot possibly improve on this classic.  Ricardo Montalban and Roddy McDowell are irreplacable. The ending of this film is a bit of a downer as well, with Caesar's speech providing the vision that the entire world (beyond Century City) is going to be overrun by Apes!  Will the remake show us scenes of Paris, Moscow, Beijing all conquered by Apes?  Now that stirs the imagination.   What would Apes look like speaking in French or Mandarin?  A Russian Ape, that would be quite funny.

Beneath and Battle are two of the worst posters.  Beneath should have featured Linda Harrison as Nova front and center. I would have also made a Nova spinoff, a Nova TV show, and Nova door-size posters. BTW, there is a neat little interview with Linda Harrison over at the Forbidden Zone.  I think Battle was the least profitable Apes movie because of this godawful painting.  Why highlight General Aldo (who doesn't look all the frightening) instead of Caesar, the Ape who just conquered an entire friggin' planet?  Big mistake, Arthur P. Jacobs!  Your bank account was in for a world of hurt!