Review: ‘Rise of the Planet of the Apes’

Rise of the Planet of the Apes is not only the best movie of the summer, it’s one of the best movies of the year. As of this writing, it’s definitely in my list of top five films.

The film begins in the jungle where a group of apes are hunted down, captured and shipped to a US laboratory. This happens in the first two minutes and with that, the compassion you feel for these creatures is firmly established.

At the lab, Will Rodham (James Franco) is working on a cure for Alzheimer’s and to test it, they need to use those apes. When one of the apes goes crazy and trashes the building in the middle of a meeting, they discontinue the project and are are ordered to destroy the remaining animals.

Why did the ape go crazy? Rodham discovers it was because she was protecting her new baby. Fearing that the young ape will die, he takes it home with the thought of finding it a home.

Five years later, the ape, now called Caesar, is a permanent member of the family and best of all, he is exhibiting amazing cognitive skills. Those skills were inherited from the mother because of the drug she had been administered those 5 years ago.

All is going smoothly until Caesar spots the neighbor assaulting Rodham’s alzheimer’s stricken father (John Lithgow) for taking his car by mistake. Caesar bounds out of the house to protect him, putting a massive beat down on the neighbor. The cops and animal control are called in and Caesar is taken away.

This may have been a mistake because the ape starts to change… and not for the good.

This is far and away Andy Serkis‘ movie. He dominates every scene he’s in and thanks to his amazing motion-capture work, I was sucked into his performance from the very beginning. He. Is. Perfect. Thanks to WETA’s digital work, you can see Serkis’s Caesar think, feel. You can see every thought behind those expressive eyes.

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Casting Director Debra Zane is freakin awesome

A friend clued me into this article about Debra Zane, one of the best casting directors out there.

She’s cast several of my friends in some huge films and by all accounts the article below is spot on with how far she goes in trying to get actors cast for parts.

From Reuters:

When casting director Debra Zane brought in the little-known actor Michael Shannon to tape an audition for “Revolutionary Road,” she pulled out all the stops.

Zane assembled a team to play the other roles, with friends and associates filling in for Leonardo DiCaprio, Kate Winslet and Kathy Bates.

“We were playing all the different parts, so he would have different faces to refer to. We had snacks and martini glasses to make it look like a little party,” explains Zane.

She got so into the scene that “when (Shannon) turned to tell me to shut up, I was so embarrassed, (which was) the absolute appropriate response.”

Director Sam Mendes, who has collaborated with Zane on five pictures, saw the tape and hired Shannon to play Bates’ mentally ill son. He went on to score the film’s only acting Oscar nomination this year.

A wiz at spotting breakout talent (Amy Adams, Wes Bentley, Justin Long), Zane has even been known to put together her own version of an actor’s reel to show a director that a performer can play against type.

When working on “Dreamgirls,” she spent eight months scouring talent from around the country. About 700 actors read for the part of Effie before director Bill Condon chose Jennifer Hudson for the part that would earn her an Oscar. But it was clear to Zane from the moment she saw the first of Hudson’s two audition tapes that the “American Idol” reject was a frontrunner.

“I can’t explain to you how people who work in casting know something like that,” she says, “because there are so many elements involved. It’s almost like a chemical reaction where you can say to yourself, ‘The director is going to love this person.’”

Zane has loved actors and movies ever since her childhood in Miami Beach. From an early age, she paid close attention to the “casting by” credit. “That credit struck me. I knew what it meant, and I knew I could do it because I was aware of actors in different roles.”

Nearly 20 years into her career, during which she has worked on such hits as “Traffic” and the “Ocean’s 11″ trilogy, she’s still as passionate as when she began.

“I like making sure you’ve turned over every stone and thoroughly thought through all the angles,” says Zane. “And then it appears before your eyes.”