a lazy Sunday...

My wife and I went to see "Jumper" tonight. It was a good film and I enjoyed it. You could tell, though, from the rather abrupt ending that it is being set up as a "franchise" for future films. The best way to describe it would be "Hiro" from "Heroes" without all the things annoying.

To segue...he was one of the seminal writers for television and one of the finest storytellers--the one and only Rod Serling!


His show, "The Twilight Zone," had several episodes that scared me quite a bit. But he never really had great success in motion pictures. That surprises me. Shamalayan's movies, such as "Sixth Sense," "Signs," and "The Village," harken with a wink toward "The Twilight Zone," and have been quite successful. One of Serling's screenplays that did "break through" was "Planet of the Apes."

I was a bit disappointed with Burton's remake. It had all the technical marvels lacking in the '67 movie, but none of the bite. The absurdity. The suspension of disbelief. One of the things not done in either was with the issue of evolution. If mankind had definitely fallen to the bottom of the evolutionary chain, then why the clothes? The obvious answers are in the times. In 1967, too much nudity was a "no-no" regardless, and in someways that didn't change in the remake--skirting by with giving humans intelligence, but under repression. And an avoidance of the dreaded NC-17, or (horror of horrors!) X or multiple x's.

I did a version of Taylor in an earlier post, inspired by what had been done on "Star Wars: Clone Wars," which was brilliantly animated and a great fix for Star Wars fans. Call it a "what if?...," but I did it with the daydream of what a new animated "POTA" might look like, or at least, how I might do it. A melding of what had been done before in previous incarnations, but with all the satire and "teeth" of what Rod Serling envisioned. And mankind would not be smart enough to clothe--that is something only intelligent creatures do, such as the Apes. Just a fancy, which at least gets me to warm up the pencils.

I, in no way, am taking anything from the beautiful Estelle Warren. Her part in the remake seemed like a waste of her presence. But I do admit that Linda Harrison's "Nova" made quite an impression on me in those days of dawning puberty. So this particular sketch is based on her. And yes, tasteful coverage is a part of the fun.