YOU ARE A MONKEY, DEREK!

With Oscar season about to heat up, James Franco has written an article for Deadline in which he argues that his be-ping-pong-balled co-star, Andy Serkis, deserves the same consideration for wearing a wetsuit and jumping around like a monkey that other actors get for pretending that guys in wetsuits are actual monkeys. As I’ve said before, only through a team of men drawing another man acting like an ape who became a man were we able to discover what it means to be human.

…Narratively it was always his film: I play an emotionally stilted scientist who in the process of mistakenly unleashing a lethal virus on the human race, learns to care for others; Serkis gets to play Caesar, essentially Che Guevara in chimp form.

Che Guevara as a chimp? What an innovative idea, it’s almost as if they got it from a t-shirt…

Andy Serkis is the undisputed master of the newest kind of acting called “performance capture,” and it is time that Serkis gets credit for the innovative artist that he is…

…Audiences are used to large scale effects: impossible explosion, space travel, fantastic fairytale worlds, boys in tights swinging around New York, men with Squids for faces, but there is still a disconnection that happens when a character’s outer surface is rendered in a computer like Caesar’s was. We want to forget that there is a human underneath, the effects are so  well rendered we either forget that the spark of life in it’s eyes [sic] and the life in its limbs is informed by a breathing human or we are so drawn into the ontology of the character we can’t grasp its artistic origins or exactly how it was created. What this means is that we can enjoy such a character – enjoyment testified by the response to such films as Avatar, Return of the King, and Planet of the Apes – but we don’t give artistic credit where it is due.

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The media is going bananas today (WHACKETY SCHMACKETY) with the news that Cheetah, the chimp who starred opposite Johnny Weissmuller in Tarzan the Ape Man, died this week at the age of 80. Not only did he outlive both his co-stars (Weissmuller died in 1984 at 79, and Maureen O’Sullivan, who played Jane, and who died in 1998 at 87), but chimps normally don’t live past 50, making Cheetah some kind of chimp George Burns. If that were the end of the story, it’d be quite simple. But these chimp stories never are.

It seems “this is the chimp from Tarzan” is a popular claim among chimp owners (and to be fair, there were likely multiple chimps used in the film), and an impostor was outed a few years ago.

Another Cheeta – this time with no “h” at the end of his name – was exposed as a fake in 2008 by Washington Post journalist RD Rosen, who had been asked to write a biography of him. In later years, the fake Cheeta had found himself marketed as a painter of “ape-stract art”, with several canvases exhibited at London’s National Gallery. However, with a little investigation, Rosen discovered that the cigar-smoking, paint-daubing impostor was in fact born in 1960 or 1961 and had never been in a Tarzan film.

I like the idea that this journalist made it his mission to out this CHIMPOSTOR for the fraud it was. He’d probably be sitting in his crappy motel room, watching yet another human-interest story on local TV, with this fraud Cheeta finger painting and living it up, while RD Rosen gritted his teeth and crushed a pencil in his fist. This son of a bitch had to be stopped, but no one would believe him, not even his gruff-but-fatherly editor. “GIVE IT UP, ROSEN! YA GOT NO EVIDENCE!” But RD Rosen never let a few banana peels slip him up on his way to THE TRUTH.

As for the recently-departed Cheetah, here’s what we know about him:

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The Hobbits come from a magical realm called "Diagonal Earth."

MGM just released the first trailer for Peter Jackson’s fourth Hobbit movie, the first of the two-part The Hobbit, The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey. Judging by people’s reactions — “shaking and crying!”, “Peter Jackson is a God,” (just to quote a few from my Facebook wall), people are reeeeeeally excited about it. All I’m saying is, don’t over exert yourself. Grab your inhalers and meet me after the jump.

“The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey” follows title character Bilbo Baggins, who is swept into an epic quest to reclaim the lost Dwarf Kingdom of Erebor, which was long ago conquered by the dragon Smaug. Approached out of the blue by the wizard Gandalf the Grey, Bilbo finds himself joining a company of thirteen dwarves led by the legendary warrior, Thorin Oakensheild. Their journey will take them into the Wild; through treacherous lands swarming with Goblins and Orcs, deadly Wargs and Giant Spiders, Shapeshifters and Sorcerers. Although their goal lies to the East and the wastelands of the Lonely Mountain first they must escape the goblin tunnels, where Bilbo meets the creature that will change his life forever … Gollum. Here, alone with Gollum, on the shores of an underground lake, the unassuming Bilbo Baggins not only discovers depths ofguile and courage that surprise even him, he also gains possession of Gollum’s “precious” ring that holds unexpected and useful qualities … A simple, gold ring that is tied to the fate of all Middle-earth in ways Bilbo cannot begin to know.

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YOU ARE A MONKEY, DEREK!

I think most of us could already predict this was coming based on how furiously everyone was jacking each other off over motion-capture when Rise of the Planet of the Apes came out over the summer. Now it’s official: Fox is pushing hard for a Best Supporting Actor Oscar for Andy Serkis’s performance as Caesar the ape. I’m all for it, but only if he has to give his acceptance speech using the talking sign language glove from Congo.

Fox will push to create momentum for a possible best supporting actor Oscar nomination for Andy Serkis for his performance as ape Caesar in Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Fox Filmed Entertainment co-chairman and CEO Tom Rothman said here Monday night.
“I think we may be at the place where we will see a first-ever in Hollywood this year, which is to see Andy Serkis get nominated for a best supporting actor for Planet of the Apes, even though his face never actually appears,” he told The Hollywood Reporter at the Gotham Independent Film Awards at Cipriani Wall Street when asked about Fox’s contenders for awards season. “But his performance appears, so we are going to push that hard.”
Further discussing Serkis’ work Rothman said: “The emotionality – what you see and what you feel – he did it. I saw him. I watched him. Then they digitally overlaid – you can think of it as a costume – the skin and the hair of an ape.”

“He BECAME Caesar the ape. It was incredible to watch. He refused to break character for the entire shoot. I saw him hurl his own feces at a PA who messed up his Starbucks order once. What an incredible artist.”

“…But I tell you the thing that people felt – and a lot of people where moved when they saw the movie – is because of his performance.” [THR]

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No real surprises in this weekend’s box office returns, so I’m excited to report that this post is even more boring than usual. Rise of the Planet of the Apes, in its second weekend, dropped 49.8% from its opening (about average for a blockbuster) and narrowly held off The Help in its first weekend for the top spot. If only The Help had gotten Andy Serkis in a motion-capture suit to help animate the overwhelming sense of noblesse oblige, perhaps things would’ve been different. It’s a shame, really. I love it when hot white chicks solve racism. (AH STILL LURVE YOU, EMMA STOANE, YER CHANGIN’ THIS BOY’S LAHFE!)

Elsewhere, 5nal Destination had the distinction of being the first Final Destination sequel to open weaker than its predecessor, a bit of news I like to think of as “holy sh*t, no wonder they keep making these turds.” Meanwhile, Glee: The 3D Concert Movie opened even weaker than The Jonas Brothers 3D Concert Experience, probably on account of being moderately less gay. Glee 3D sold less than half a million tickets, but what do they expect trying to open the same weekend as The Gathering of the Juggalos? That’s probably where all the Glee fans were. I got an invite to a “singalong” showing of this a few weeks ago, and… wow. Just wow. I like music and all, but not nearly enough to want to hear anyone in the world sing along to it at every opportunity. I feel like half of pop culture now is that chick at the bar who won’t stop dancing even when she’s in line for the bathroom. Bitch, cut that sh*t out, we know you’re having fun, stop spilling my drink.

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