Volume 3, Issue 16
August 2 - August 15, 2001

MOVIE REVIEW

PLANET OF THE APES

About one hour into Planet of the Apes, I looked over to my friend and we both agreed that this film was an utter disappointment. We felt let down because this is probably going to be the last big summer picture, and so far it wasn't working its magic. But that was the first hour. It's in the second half that Tim Burton really grabs the viewers and takes them into the film (forcing many of us to scratch our heads like chimps trying to figure out his ending), and makes up for the shortcomings of the first half.

The year is 2029, and Leo Davidson (Mark Wahlberg) is an Air Force captain who works with advanced chimps in outer space. In the film, chimps aren't just along for the ride (rather they are used like real astronauts), and one is has been lost in an ionic space storm which leads Leo chasing after him. His search crash-lands him on a planet where apes rule.

This is when the film goes stale, and much of that has to do with the fact that we know apes are king and humans are slaves, but Burton tries his best by changing some of the original story: other humans speak, different species of apes, etc.

As a slave, Leo befriends an ape named Ari (Helena Bonham Carter doing her best as a neo-hippie ape), and with her help escapes the city and reluctantly becomes a leader in the war between humans and apes.

Leo's main rival is General Thades (Tim Roth), a tenacious soldier whose main goal in life is to eliminate all humans. Thades has realized that humans might actually pose a threat to apes, so his plan is to eliminate Leo with extreme prejudice, before a revolt occurs.

By now, many of you have heard of the ending (sorry no Statue of Liberty) and might feel it's not quite up to par as you figured. Well, think again. I had been aware of the surprise ending for about two months now, and even with it known, I was still thrown out in left field by its effectiveness.

Recently, executives have openly ridiculed Tim Burton over at Warner Brothers. It first started when Batman Returns wasn't as successful as the first (they claimed it was too dark), and recently they shut down his set for his remake of Superman, claiming that cost was going to be an issue. POTA is a great example of how Burton took a doomed script (Oliver Stone and James Cameron bailed), added some of his originality and made a film that has concepts stemmed from the original, yet is provocative enough to be considered a Tim Burton film. Take that Warner Brothers! B --Neal James

Movie Review

BROTHER

Takeshi Kitano's new film is all about how brother-hood transcends bloodlines. The aptly titled Brother implies this is especially prevalent in organized crime rings. Its characters consider themselves brothers even though they aren't blood relatives, and through all sorts of messy shit, they test their loyalty to each other and their family.

Speaking from experience, I'd have to agree that gang life strengthens the ties between members. See, I used to run with a crew called the South Side Church of Billy Dee (the SSCBD). We had a tag, our own turf, one or two bitches-- everything. Just as the Mafia answers to its don, we answered to Billy Dee Williams. During the summer, the members of the SSCDB would put away anywhere from two to four Colt 45 40s a night-- works every time. We were real G's.

We had a few "made men" who were old enough to buy us beer, but most of us were minors, so we drank in the public parks of Littleton. Our criminal activity consisted of drinking underage in public parks after curfew, of course, but also of bootlegging beer off of bums downtown. We'd drive down to Cut-Rate Liquors across from the Mayan and offer some lucky homeless man a pack of smokes or a pint of McCormick's to buy us as many 40s as he could carry. Like Colt 45, this shit worked every time. After we got our booty, we'd roll back to L-town and let the boozy bonding begin.

By summer's end, our numbers had dwindled, but I still knew who my real peeps was. In fact, I saw one of them just a few nights ago. He goes by the alias $hort$ McGraw. By now, he's wanted in over 15 states. If you ever go drinking at the Park Tavern, I'm sure you know of this 90-proof enigma. This little ball of drunken energy is one of my oldest dawgs. A true member of the SSCBD, he told me that before he headed out to the bar that night, he had enjoyed two 40s.

I didn't even have to ask which brand. As for the film, it's Kitano's first American-made movie. He's a god in Japan, and rightly so: he writes, directs, edits, and stars (under the name Beat Takeshi) in his own films. He is a true badass, but unfortunately Brother has lofty ambitions that don't quite add up when the English language is tossed into the mix. The dialogue is contrived and often really cheesy. The acting is good, the violence is nasty, and the gunfights are swell, but I think old Takeshi should've kept a mini-fridge of 45 on hand to oil the machine.

Like I said, shit works every time. C --Josh Tyson

DVD REPORT

BOOK OF SHADOWS: BLAIR WITCH 2

How do you follow up one of the most successful movies of 1999? If you're Artisan Entertainment, you release one of the worst movies of 2000. Making a sequel to The Blair Witch Project was a nearly impossible task, but Book of Shadows has already become a example of what not to do when you have an indie hit on your hands.

Mercifully not shot in the shaky-cam style of the original film, Book of Shadows follows five young people on a "Blair Witch tour" to see some of the locations so important to Blair Witch mythology. They all pass out after getting drunk, and the next morning they can't remember what happened the night before. As they review some videotapes they apparently shot without knowing it, they discover they might have committed a crime....

On paper it might have looked like a good idea to have respected documentary filmmaker Joe Berliner direct the sequel to a documentary style film. Sadly, Berliner decided to take his inaugural stab at drama with this movie. The movie never builds any suspense, and the acting is often atrocious. Some of the structure problems could have been the result of studio interference, but it was never going to be a particularly good movie. It just isn't scary or fun.

The highest profile extra is that this disc is a hybrid DVD/CD, a first for the United States. One side is a DVD, the other a CD. The CD however, is nothing special. Three (lower profile) songs from the soundtrack, and the complete score, and a live track from Godhead. Big deal.

Much more interesting is the audio commentary by director Joe Berliner. He was given carte blanche to talk about whatever he wanted, which is good because he feels that his film was interfered with at the studio level. He offers a lot of insight into what went wrong, both intentionally and unintentionally

"The Secret of Esrever" is essentially a game. You watch a little feature that has letters running in one of the corners, then you play it backwards and you can read words. The words then give you indications of where to look in the main feature for subliminally creepy images. For instance, one of the words is 'grave', and in the graveyard scene the name on a prominent gravestone changes between shots. Presumably these manipulations were done for the video release, because no one seemed to notice them in the theater.

Conspicuous by their absence are two fake documentaries that were made to support the film, The Burkittsville 7 and Shadow of the Blair Witch. They have been released in that other format, and their absence from this disc is extremely disappointing. I have to wonder, though, if they were excluded from the DVD by Berliner. He seems to be down on mixing fact and fiction the way the original Blair Witch Project did-- which makes me wonder why he was hired in the first place. D+ --Scott Hamilton