Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes is the fourth movie in the current continuity of the Planet of the Apes series of movies, and the tenth overall. It follows the adventures of intelligent chimp Noa (performed with motion capture technology by Owen Teague) some generations after the last movie, War for the Planet of the Apes. Directed by Wes Ball, it features a variety of apes, including gorillas and orangutans in addition to chimps (gibbons are also mentioned in passing).

It begins with a quick prologue to the funeral of Caesar, the ape protagonist of the previous trilogy of movies. I felt like those movies came to a definitive end with the last movie; Kingdom is less a direct sequel to War and more the start of a new story set in the same world, so it feels a bit like the proverbial cake that you can both have and eat, too, as far as previous trilogy endings are concerned.

Here is another new animated feature that we aren’t getting in America, at least right now. The Cartoon Brew website has just posted this article about Savva: Heart of the Warrior, a new Russian animated feature that opened in second place in that country, and has since been released in Poland and is coming to other countries in 2016. An American voice dub has been prepared, but no American release has been scheduled yet.

The CB article includes the trailer and a half-dozen stills. Savva and many characters are human, but there are plenty of talking animals including Angee, a white wolf or werewolf.

2011’s Planet of the Apes movie, Rise of the Planet of the Apes, is unusual in that it has no novelized tie-in. Instead, the movie release’s tie-in book is Conspiracy of the Planet of the Apes, an almost-coffee-table hardcover novel featuring an original “offstage” story by Andrew Gaska (from a plot by Gaska, Rich Handley, Christian Berntsen, and Erik Matthews) set during the events of the 1968 movie, imaginatively depicted by “over 50 illustrations from various top talents in the industry, including full-color paintings by Jim Steranko, Joe Jusko, Dave Dorman, Barron Storey, Sanjulian and Mark Texeira, starship design by Andrew Probert, character portraits by Matt Busch and more!” (publisher’s catalogue).

In the 1968 movie, four astronauts are sent in frozen hibernation on a 2,006-year mission to explore an extrasolar planet. One dies en route; the other three, Taylor, Landon, and Dodge, find a planet inhabited by intelligent apes and feral humans. The astronauts are separated, and the story follows Col. George Taylor (Charlton Heston) as he interacts with the gorillas, orangutans, and chimpanzees; discovers Landon lobotomized and Dodge’s body stuffed and mounted in a museum; and ultimately learns that this is not an alien planet, but Earth in the far future.

Los Angeles, Archaia Entertainment, August 2011, hardcover $24.95 (268 [ 4] pages).

Two recent articles on the BBC website have pointed to further advancements in the understanding of ape intellegence. Orang-utans, not one of the most social of great apes, still seem to be social enough to have developed regional cultures, everything from making a bronx cheer before sleeping to riding falling dead trees for the excitement. And like human cultures, once these groups are seperated, or extinct, the culture is gone too.
A group of researchers is claiming a pygmy chimpanzee they work with is talking. Well, not in full phrases, but the ape, kept as part of a linguistics group, has been noted making distinct sounds to accompany things like 'yes' or 'banana.' Given that he'll say the same sounding 'yes' whether happy or angry, it seems to be a case of spontanious vocal development, something thought not in the range of chimps.

Just confirmed today, ConFurence 2002 is pleased to announce a surprise guest for this year's Convention:

Booth Colman, Movie and Television Actor

Booth Colman is best known as the antagonist orangutan Protector of the Faith, "Dr. Zaius," in the Planet of the Apes TV Series.