Attractive people cast in movie about apes

Bloody Disgusting is reporting that Don "The Real Deadle" Cheadle is going to star in the upcoming prequel to Planet of the Apes titled Rise of the Apes, which actually sounds (gasp) cool? Yeah, I mean it. James Franco is the lead in the film that details the rise of Caesar, an ape that is the bridge between the talking monkeys in charge of bossing a topless Charlton Heston around and the ones that fling poo at me when I wave at them in the zoo. Cheedle's role is unspecified, but since the apes are all going to be CGI, he won't be playing one of them. This isn't the big news I've come here to tell you. The big news is for a friend of mine who has a thing for Freida Pinto...and by "has a thing for" I mean "she should file a preemptive restraining order."
Pinto, who has appeared in absolutely nothing since Slumdog Millionaire other than my friend's dreams, is going to also star in the monkey movie, also probably not as a monkey. The cast is shaping up quite nicely for this little prequel, and the script has been given the kind of love that my friend wants to give to Freida Pinto. Provided that WETA (the guys behind Lord of the Rings) can make fake apes that look half as good as my friend thinks Freida Pinto looks, then we will have something on his hands. My friend wishes he had Freida Pinto on his hands. I'm done now.

Follow me on Twitter!

I've been told to care about this...

I'm not a Planet of the Apes enthusiast. I'm more inclined to investigate the series now that Charlton Heston is dead. What? I felt like me getting into the series would somehow give the cantankerous old gun-toter some measure of pleasure before he died, and eff that. Anyway, I'm barely knowledgeable on the franchise. I was too young to really hit the craze that died out in the 70s and 80s, and then came the Tim Burton debacle. A quick word about that total dogshit movie, though: Looking back on it, that may have been the death of Tim Burton the moviemaker. I know that sounds crazy, but I think his will and spirit got broken by the negative public reaction to the film. He retreated into an insular, well-cultivated fanbase that celebrates his repetition as some measure of genius. If you look at it, everything he's done since then is so totally obvious and expected that I kind of wish we had supported that miserable misfire if just to keep Timmy on the straight and narrow. I'm rambling, this is supposed to be about how they've hired someone to reboot the series in a way. People who know, specifically Devin from Chud, have been pretty geeked about Cesar, the movie that will serve as a leaping-off point for future Planet of the Apes movies. Supposedly, it's a "hard sci-fi movie" (a descriptor that always seems kind of dirty to me...like it's going to have scenes of spaceships doin' it or something) that details humans genetically engineering really intelligent chimps who stage some kind of revolt. You can see where this would lead to the world of Planet of the Apes, what with the apes attempting to rule the planet. Again, this really doesn't do anything for me in particular, but I've heard that I should be excited. So allow me to feign excitement. Whoopie. There. That's the best I can do.