I'm a big fan of the original film, have mixed feelings towards Tim Burton films. He is an incredible artist, I admit, but most of his films leave me feeling "cold" as I feel alienated sometimes from his caricature over the top characters. Funnily enough, his best and only really moving film in my view is "Ed Wood" and you dont get much more bizarre characters than that do ya? I suppose its because I'm an "old school" fan of Lugosi and Karloff so it touched a nerve with me.

With regards to "Planet..." I haven't seen it (so I will definately rent it) and I dont have the score.

Anyway, here are the specs for the movie...convince me that I should spend my hard earned money and buy it! Is it worth it just for the isolated score alone? Thanks

Gae

Planet of the Apes specs:-

Audio Commentary by Tim Burton and Danny Elfman. Isolated Score. Easter Egg. Featurettes: HBO First Look special; 'Simian Academy' (ape movement); 'Face Like A Monkey' (make-up); 'Costume Tests'; 'On Location in Lake Powell'; 'Chimp Symphony Op.37' (scoring the film); 'Swinging From The Trees' (stunts). Five Extended Scenes; Gallery of Multi-Angle Features. Theatrical Trailers. Music Video. TV Spots. Art and Stills gallery. Additional DVD-ROM Content.

Regardless of my thoughts toward the movie, he DVD is a triumph in every aspect. A bunch of us from the Home Theatre Forum watched a presentation of the DVD at 20th Century Fox in LA projected up onto a 20 odd foot theatrical sized screen and the image was flawless (though the scaled procressive output though a 3 chip DLP helped push it to this size). We watched Phantom Menace DVD after Apes under the same conditions and the poor transfer of TPM really showed in comparison.

I have seen the DVD running on domestic big screen TVs and standard home projection systems since seeing it at Fox last september and it is still in my mind one of the best DVD transfers I have ever seen, and that's tough for a movie as murky looking as Burton's Apes.

Rent it first.

Dan (UK)

I literally considered getting the US R1 version Burton's Apes the other day since Fox in the US is downgrading the release to a single SE later this year, but I thought of watching the movie again, and well...ugh...

Certainly rent it. When in doubt, rent or catch it on TV at some point because at the end of the day only you will decide if you like it or not. Sometimes a bunch of people may put you off seeing a movie, you see it and you actually personally like it.

With regard to the iso score, if you intend to rip it be warned that on the PAL R2 release it will be sped up 4% due to PAL conversion issues. I believe Elfman speaks over a number of the cues however. I actually felt the CD release was a decent representation of the main cues and themes.

The BBC had this programme recently about an outbreak of some sorts, I watch little TV so can't talk specificaly about the show, but they used Elfman's Apes theme in the adds for it. It's also heard in the full Spiderman trailer.

Dan

Gae NP nothing

Here are a few of my praises and criticisms of the film.

Rick Baker's make-up was stunning!! Nothing more to say.

The costumes and attention to the ape-characters was impeccable.

The production design overall was pretty good, but seemed less expansive and spectacular than I expected (belying its studio origins maybe for most of the film)

The cast were mostly excellent with the stand outs being Tim Roth and Paul Gambiatti.

Danny Elfman did a pretty good score that worked well in the movie.

My criticisms are these:-

I've never seen Mark Wahlberg in a movie so I was willing to give him a chance. After a few reasonable scenes at the beginning on the spaceship where I realised that his character was going to be the typical strong, silent macho-type hero, as the film progressed I realised that this guy had absolutely no screen charisma whatsoever and seemed to have the same fixed moronic expression on his face throughout the rest of the movie. What on earth inspired Tim Burton to pay this guy $10,000,000 to actually be the key role in the movie? For me, it was a big mistake to make and ruined the central importance of the film. I did'nt care anything for this guy. In the original I was with Heston all the way. At least Heston was capable of showing emotion and genuine concern.

The jungle shots and Ape city scenes were just too "studio based", dark and small feeling for a film of this magnitude. I felt the same about "Sleepy Hollow".

The opening "Hunt" paled into insignificance if you compare it to the epic shots of the original film...big mistake to film 90% of this on a set and it just seemed to be thrown away. Wahlberg had the look on his face of "Oh look, Apes on horseback...there's something you dont see every day!! )
Also, where are the aerial shots to establish a sense of location and scale? There was'nt much feeling of scale in the movie apart from the concluding battle scenes.

Obviously, the film didn't touch on the social issues in the same depth of the original which weakened it severely.

The fact that the humans were not mute (or dumb) was a bad choice. You'd think that if they had the ability to talk and communicate, someone would have organised escape parties and an opposing strong culture etc rather than hang around for a non-entity like Leo(Wahlberg)to turn up. The reason the dumbness of the humans in the original worked so well was because they acted like cattle and were easily controlled.

The ending was just so hilarious. It was as though the movie had suddenly joined up with an episode of "The Twilight Zone" and Leo found himself in a kind of Simian nightmare. I still dont know what to make of this ending. Its definately outrageous, but maybe just a little bit too much. Only time will tell.

Overall the film was a disappointment. It had elements that I really liked (I'm a sucker for sci-fi) but it also had too many elements that I didn't like)
I would score it *** out of *****

Also, before anyone says it, I know that the movie was not a "remake" but a "re-imagining" but you cant talk about this movie without making obvious links to the original.

As a final thought, Elfman mentioned that the "hook" that got Burton on board the project was how he could experiment with the "movement" of the apes. To me thats just a shallow gimmick and you cant make a great film out of good "movement" alone. If he'd had more concern for the story and script and maybe been a bit more consideration of the lead role, he may have had a better film on his hands.

Tim burton is a talented artist but overall he goofed on this one. Maybe though, 10 years from now, when all the hulla-baloo has died down and the $100 million budget has been forgotten a late night screening will inspire the response "Hell, its not as bad as I remembered it!!" It may even improve with age....only time will tell.

Gae

quote:

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Originally posted by Dan Brecher:
Hated the movie, absolutely bored the hell out of me and it's up there as Burton's worst in my mind (and it is far to violent in my mind)...

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I agree, but it didn't bore me, just made me laugh out loud. As a comedy, Burton's movie is great!!

As for Rick Baker's make-up, I also found it awesome - they really looked like... ogres!