Films seen so far this year: 231
Films seen in the last week: The Devil's Rock, Film Socialisme, The Referees, Trust, Super (again, still funny), Jane Eyre, Fright Night, The Art of Getting By, Super 8

FILM OF THE WEEK: The Tree of Life

TV-to-film adaptations: Arrested Development and The Inbetweeners
This week it was reported that the often-rumoured Arrested Development movie was indeed going into pre-production, at least as far as co-star Jeffrey Tambor was concerned. Personally, I'll believe it when I see it. While it was an undoubtedly brilliant (and unfairly cancelled) comedy series, Arrested Development arguably made stars of all its main cast members (Will Arnett, David Cross, Michael Cera) and single-handedly revived Jason Bateman's career. Obviously there's a lot of loyalty amongst that cast towards the show, to say nothing of a vociferous fan base but surely they must be wondering if it will really translate to the big screen?

Because the list of failed TV-to-film adaptations is much, much longer than the list of successful ones and this is doubly true of comedies.
Of recent examples it's probably only the Simpsons Movie and the first Sex and the City movie that can really be called successes, at least in the sense that they didn't radically alter the premise of the TV show (unlike, say, Starsky and Hutch or The Brady Bunch Movie) in order to succeed on the big screen.

The truth is that TV shows are TV shows for a reason – Arrested Development was wonderful in 22 minute bursts, but I seriously doubt they can make that same idea work over 90 minutes. Personally, I'd settle for five new episodes instead. I have similar doubts over the upcoming big screen adaptation of the UK's The Inbetweeners. I love the characters and I love the show, but again, that show works in two 12 minute bursts of swearing, sixth-form shenanigans and filth and I'm not convinced it'll work in a big screen format, even if they ARE going to Magaluf. After all, it didn't work for Are You Being Served?

That said, I'd be delighted to be proved wrong – I'm just not very optimistic and given the troubled production history the Arrested Development movie has had so far, I'm refusing to believe it's really happening until shooting starts.

Trailerwatch: Rise of the Planet of the Apes
I have to say, I'm really torn on the idea of Rise of the Planet of the Apes. On the one hand, someone (in this case director Rupert
Wyatt) is finally telling the one story that was conspicuous by its absence in all the other Planet of the Apes movies, i.e. exactly how the apes took over Planet Earth in the first place (I hope that's not a spoiler). I also love the fact that the story is tied into present day fears about genetic engineering, while the tagline (“Evolution Becomes Revolution”) is nothing short of genius and seems tailor-made to annoy America's many evolution-deniers (there are a scary number of otherwise completely sane and rational people in America who don't believe in evolution, such is the scary power of US religious propaganda in education).

Also on the plus side, the cast includes James Franco (and who doesn't want to see James Franco clashing with monkeys?), Brian Cox and Tom Felton (rejoice, Draco-fans!), while Andy Serkis dons the motion-capture suit once more to play head monkey Caesar. On the minus side, however, the cast also includes Freida Pinto (even her brief appearances in the trailer are excruciating to watch), while the CGI monkeys are ... well, they're not very good. Well, it's not so much that they're not good, it's just that they're very obviously CGI. They could have at least thrown in a few real-life chimpanzees? Maybe spliced in a few clips from Project Nim? Otherwise they might as well have made it as an animated feature.

Still, it does look like a lot of fun and I'm looking forward to seeing it. Rise of the Planet of the CGI Apes opens on 3rd August, which, by brilliant coincidence (or rather, canny scheduling on the part of the distributors), is also the same week that chimp-learning-to-communicate doc Project Nim opens.