July 15, 2014

This APES/BOYHOOD Mashup Is Worth Your 98 Seconds


I was fortunate enough to see Richard Linklater's Boyhood in Austin at SXSW and it is exactly as groundbreaking and wonderful as you've heard.  It's a film that revels not in life's major turning points but in the minutiae that gradually adds up to indelibly color our worldview.  I'm going to see it again tomorrow night and I can't fucking wait.

I also can't wait to see Dawn Of The Planet Of The Apes again and this mashup, featuring the music and pull quotes from the Boyhood trailer intercut with footage of Caesar, demonstrates exactly why this franchise is so great.  Sure the action is all top notch, but the reason it's so effective is because the apes are all so damn lovable. These aren't effects, these are multi-dimensional characters that live and breathe and in whom you become very emotionally invested.



Apehood, courtesy of Nelson Carvajal, perfectly illustrates the beauty of Andy Serkis's performance. By leaning heavily on the coming-of-age stuff from Rise, it almost feels like a dramatization of the documentary Project Nim, about a family in the 70's who adopts a chimp and teaches him sign language.  When we get a shot of Caesar in full war paint sitting solemnly astride a horse, it actually kind of hits me in the gut.  That sharp contrast really accentuates the inherent tragedy of Caesar's arc.  

I would watch the shit out of this movie.

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