IIRC Pierre Boulle didn't like his novel much, but yeah, I have thought about reading it (and you got to take a French sci-fi class? What else did you do do tell. Fantastic Planet? Alphaville? Incal? City of Lost Children?)

I really like it but I'm nowhere near as impressed as you. Reynolds spends a lot of time explaining his plots over and over, and that's got a bit wearying as I went on. (Of the various space opera series I've read since my 2011 dedication to read more space opera, Lois McMaster Bujold's Vorkosigan Saga is my favourite…

That was the idea, yeah. Lost had Mira Furlan, Babylon 5 had Mira Furlan, so Mira Furlan?

Them's the breaks, @alurin. This could be the next Jeremiah (what's Jeremiah, someone asks? Exactly.)

Yeah that's fair. I guess my positive spin on this is that with talking apes the film wouldn't need to feel the need to have a proxy human protagonist like Franco take up a lot of screentime, but you're right, that liminal quality could get lost.

I've been on an odd space opera kick for the last couple of years and this one I plan to finish Alastair Reynold's Revelation Space series (I'm currently on Absolution Gap, so it'll just be a matter of various short story collections, I believe.)

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Absolutely. Another amazing thing is that the use of CGI actually allows to shift the story of the apes a bit - they're closer to real apes then any of the performers with costumes could ever have managed, so watching Caesar cross over into sapient behaviour is fascinating.

Huzzah! Les' reviews are pretty insightful, and I look forward to eventually reading them.

How often are they though? I remember Homefront was going to have the Chinese as bad guys, but then they made it the North Koreans. I guess the potential market overrides other instincts.

Yeah Andy Serkis is the real, unorthodox star of Rise. He plays a CGI ape that can't talk and it is riveting. If Dawn features more Caesar (who'll probably talk now?) I am all for that.

Twilight of the Planet of the Apes.

Fall of the Planet of the Apes.

I'd agree that Franco isn't great in the movie and I'm pretty okay with him not returning for the sequels.

I'll direct every ape I see, from Chimpan-A to Chimpanzee!

A.S.S. The latest casualty of network squeamishness regarding titles since Ladyballs.

Well Game of Thrones has to do a lot more than just shoot abroad, it needs tons of costumes and special effects. All this stuff looks like contemporary location shooting, so I think we can take as given it's a lot cheaper than that.

True that. B5 has him at his best and his worst. Running the gamut from the tragic arc of Londo Mollari to Byron… you know… taking up space.

Yeah it has not been released in the UK, and will not until the end of this month. Hell, 12 Years A Slave is not out until Friday.

Critics rave about Gravity!