Famous People Talked to me: David Cronenberg.

So I got to interact with the Greatest Director currently working as part of the 2011 New York Film Festival's dynamic and exquisite press conferences. This is for A Dangerous Method, which is currently stuck in the arthouse slaughter slot at a local venue (10:05pm shows and that's it), so I hope this speaks to your heart...

At the movies: Rise of The Planet of The Apes.

It's rather vindicating when a good movie becomes a big hit. Especially during the summer. So here, then, are my abbreviated thoughts on the newest entry in the Planet of the Apes saga.

Also, as a special bonus, here's the abandoned beginning for the piece, which isn't even really about Rise..., but rather the thing about the Burton PotA that I don't think anyone has really addressed. But check it out, because without your unspoken validation, I am nothing.


The thing nobody remembers about Tim Burton's maligned 2001 remake of Planet of The Apes is that it was the last time he stayed true to his original mission statement as a filmmaker- embracing the strange and unusual. The beauty of its shocker ending wasn't its supposedly clever tweak of the original's shocking reveal, but rather that it punished the Artist formerly known as Marky Mark's character because of his unwillingess to expand his horizons. He could have lived a weird and extraordinary new life on the planet of the apes, and instead he went heroing it back across space to earth because it was safe and it was where all his stuff and ideology was. Well, joke's on you, you can't have that earth back...

Unfortunately, when society as a whole rejected the film (in spite of shelling out hundreds of millions of dollars in tickets), it must have flipped a switch in Burton's brain, because next came Big Fish and that was it. A career built on embracing the strange and unusual now decided it was time to forgive Daddy and coast on the goodwill people had for Johnny Depp. With the exception of Sweeney Todd, it's been a dire spiral.

All of that comes into play in the way that Rupert Wyatt's Rise of The Planet of The Apes defiantly embraces the strange and unusual at every step of the way. Our perspectives are linked with the apes from the beginning of the film, and when humans become part of the story, it is as adjuncts to where the real deal is happening.

At the Movies: Cave of Forgotten Dreams 3D.

Ideally, the movie I'd most like to see in 3D is something like Werckmeister Harmonies. Long takes, sustained tracking shots, not much cutting at all, immersive spaces. Well, Werner Herzog once again leaps ahead of the curve, using 3D technology to map out one of the most fascinating secrets in the world, the Chauvet Cave in France, where undisturbed wall drawings dating back tens of thousands of years represent the first human artistic endeavors still preserved.

Unlike the majority of 3D films currently in theatres, Cave of Forgotten Dreams finds actual physical space way more fascinating than computer-generated vistas or effects sequences (and that's not a slight on 3D tech- I enjoy the added dimension when it's done well). There are moments, drifting along in these deep, enclosed spaces, that one can't help but feel something more than real. It's rare that history can be this visceral without wars or some form of betrayal involved (doesn't that sadly sound like modern life as well), and Herzog, with his magnificent voice, takes us through a meditative look at the human artistic impulse.

Calling this the best use of 3D film technology so far is limiting- Herzog certainly understands the mechanics of how the eye works, using langurous fades rather than abrupt cuts, allowing depth to resolve itself on the viewer's terms. But it seems to me that 3D is best when it comes to realness; I love being immersed in something actual (part of this, I'm sure, springs from my 'puppets>computers' aesthetic). And with all the alien worlds and fntasy spaces that steroptic film presentation has tried to bring us to, I've never been as transported as I was by this film, to a secure little portal into the past.

Also, the fact that 3D film options can include something like this is very encouraging (especially for local audiences). Take a chance and timeslip back into your own genetic history, won't you?

A veritable Whitman's Sampler of stuff.

Here's where my mind is at:

The latest on the Georgian front.

Some good news regarding the evershifting balance between common sense and belief in the world of academia.

The lineup for this year's New York Film Festival is up.

Much in the way that Madonna's "Sky Fits Heaven" worked in spite of using lines from a Nike commercial, R&B phenomenon Chris Brown combines trance-rap synths, Timbaland beats, and a DOublemint slogan and makes pop gold.

Detroit sets what must be some sad new kind of trend.