Hasta La Gadget!

I referred to Rise of the Planet of the Apes, Fox’s 2011 reboot of their venerable Apes franchise, as “an end of the world movie that makes you forget that it’s an end of the world movie.” Well, the end of the world is very much front-and-center when it comes to its ambitious sequel, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes. As directed by Cloverfield’s Matt Reeves (stepping in for Rise‘s Rupert Wyatt), the latest Apes stands head-and-shoulders above this summer’s blockbuster crop by providing a rollicking entertainment wrapped in a rich character study. It does what the very best sci-fi should do by leaving the audience wondering, “What would I do?” and (perhaps more importantly for the studio’s bottom line), “What happens next?”

With a pre-title sequence that depicts the rapid, ravaging effects of the “Simian Flu” plague we were introduced to in the last movie’s closing minutes, film picks up ten years later, with human civilization effectively wiped off the planet save for a very hardy few. Meanwhile, still in the San Francisco redwoods where we left them, chimpanzee leader Caesar (Andy Serkis) has seen his burgeoning civilization of intelligent apes grow even as he’s watched the fires of humanity gradually dwindle.

Related: Zaki’s Review: Rise of the Planet of the Apes

This delicate status quo changes substantially when a small band of human survivors, part of the very small percentage of people who manifested a resistance to the virus, attempt to access a hydroelectric dam so they can bring power to their small community in the decayed ruins of San Francisco. Caesar, who was raised by a man and knows the good and kindness they’re capable of, is amenable to the idea, as long as they leave immediately afterwards. Caesar’s fellow Koba (Toby Kebbell), who’s body bears the scars of abuse he received while captive in a human test facility, is less open. And thus are the battle lines drawn on the simian side.

Meanwhile, the humans’ de facto leader Dreyfus (Gary Oldman) is just as distrustful of the apes (having the majority of your species wiped out by something called the Simian Flu would leave some emotional scars, I’d imagine), but kindly scientist Malcolm (Jason Clarke) sees an opportunity for the two sides to work together, and pleads for more time. And thus does a desperate race toward reconciliation begin even as the clock of war counts down. And if you think there’s any way things are going to end well for all concerned, you obviously haven’t seen how this story is supposed to end.

Before I even get into the rich storytelling terrain that’s mined in Dawn, I need to yet again acknowledge the towering achievement that is WETA’s revolutionary visual effects in creating their ape armies. As embodied by actors Serkis, Kebbell, Terry Notary, Judy Greer, etc., these are living, breathing characters that look and feel just as tactile and textured as John Chambers’ still-spectactular ape makeups in the original five-film cycle (not to mention Rick Baker’s brilliant work in the otherwise-execrable ’01 reboot).

Related: Zaki’s Retro-Review: Planet of the Apes (2001)

With a script by Rise writers Rick Jaffa & Amanda Silver along with The Wolverine‘s Mark Bomback, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes stands with the very best of the eight (!!) films in this long-running franchise by squarely using its sci-fi setting to make some very cogent, very pointed observations about human nature. As director Reeves has said on several occasions, Dawn depicts the moment when it could have been “Planet of the Humans & Apes” but for the unwillingness of individuals on either side to bend. In that sense, this story truly marks Caesar as a mythic, larger-than-life figure: the peacemaker who will never know peace.

If I do have one quibble, it’s the same as with the last one: the human characters are never as fully realized as their motion-capture opposite numbers. Clarke (also playing John Connor in the upcoming Terminator reboot, making him the go-to guy for leading humanity out of multiple apocalypses) gets the most to do, but Keri Russell (who first worked with Reeves on Felicity way back in the halcyon days of the late ’90s) and Oldman both feel under-utilized. Luckily, with actors of their caliber, a little goes a long way, and that’s certainly the case with Oldman, who’s able to make the most of a fairly limited arc.

While Rise of the Planet of the Apes was littered with cute in-joke nods to the franchise’s long and storied history (a character watching a Charlton Heston movie, another quoting his most famous line from the original film, etc.), Dawn eschews such beats in favor of thematic echoes that place it in the same continuum and style of storytelling. Whether deliberate or unintentional, there’s a mirroring of the structure of the last film, Battle for the Planet of the Apes, that benefits this one by giving a sense of “All of this has happened before, and it will happen again” (I realize I’m mixing my sci-fi metaphors with that one, but just roll with it).

Related: Zaki’s Retro Review: Planet of the Apes (1968)

These “echoes” of Apes past are literalized by Michael Giacchino’s brilliant music score, which clearly homages the unique atonal qualities of Jerry Goldsmith and Leonard Rosenman’s soundtracks of the original films, while also bringing his own indelilble musical identity. Now, given that there’s two-thousand years worth of story available to the filmmakers, it’s entirely possible that this Apes franchise will at some point outgrow its lead the same way the first one did its star. And while it’d be a shame to lose Caesar (if not Serkis, who could presumably soldier on as a new mo-cap monkey the same as proto-Caesar Roddy McDowall), the road he’s been placed on, while possibly tragic, is also impossibly compelling.

I’ve been a die-hard fan of the entire Planet of the Apes canon ever since I first saw the terrifying cartoon show as a wee lad in 1987. I’ve long held that the Apes franchise deserves to be mentioned in the same breath as sci-fi stalwarts like Star Trek and Star Wars, but unfortunately, at some point it was consigned to weekend TV marathons and got turned into a punchline, (a situation that surely wasn’t helped by the unfortunate Tim Burton digression of ’01). But now, thanks to the pipe-laying efforts of Jaffa & Silver, who conceived the Rise reboot, and thanks to Reeves & Co. advancing the ball with Dawn, I’m finally getting my wish. A

To hear me and my co-host Brian Hall talk through the original 1968 Planet of the Apes, check out the special episode of the MovieFilm Podcast below:

My 3-year-old son was off from preschool last week, and just between you and me, I played partial hooky from work to take care of him.

After seeing one alarming headline after another declaring that an infant or toddler had died after being left alone in a hot car, one North Carolina dad decided something needed to be done.

So, on a sweltering day in Raleigh, when temperatures soared to about 90 degrees, Terry Williams got into his car, rolled up the windows and switched off the air-conditioner.

“I want to know how it feels to be left in the car,” Williams said to the camera, his face slicked with sweat.

He went on to lament the staggering number of children who die every year after being left in a hot car. “This is wrong, man. We go through this every year,” he said in the clip.

“Don’t be the next fool on the damn news talking about [how] you left your kids in the backseat,” he added later. “Share this message.”

Uploaded to YouTube on June 20, Williams’ so-called “hot car challenge” went viral this week, landing on Reddit and several media outlets.

So far, the response to Williams’ video has been mixed.

“Definitely a great reminder and message to spread, but it isn’t fair to call parents [who] have left children in cars ‘fools,'” one YouTuber wrote after watching the clip.

As Huffington Post columnist Lisa Belkin reminded us in a blog post last year, it might be easy to judge the parents and caretakers who are accused of leaving their children alone in cars, but the truth behind each tragedy is often much more complicated.

“Calling the parents inhuman monsters might make us feel better, but it won’t save the next child. Recognizing they are human beings just might,” she wrote.

Still, parents and caretakers shouldn’t ignore Terry Williams’ underlying message: Heatstroke can kill. Period.

According to public safety awareness website Kids and Cars, an average of 38 children die in the U.S. each year from heat-related deaths after being left inside motor vehicles. So far this year, 16 children have been reported dead after being trapped in hot cars.

Child safety expert Janice Williams told Minneapolis news outlet KMSP-TV that many people simply don’t realize how quickly a car can heat up and become hazardous.

“Some parents intentionally leave their kids in the car because they are running a quick errand,” she said. “Too often, however, parents misjudge how long errands take. It only takes 10 to 20 minutes for a car to heat up to deadly temperatures.”

To demonstrate just how hot — and dangerous — it can get inside a parked car on a sweltering summer day, a North Texas police officer also posted a YouTube video recently which shows him sitting inside a parked vehicle.

“I didn’t expect it to be so bad, because I’m getting in and out of my car all the time when it’s hot, but right around the 15-minute mark it started hitting me,” Cpl. Jessie Peterson told NBC 5 News of the experience.

Kids and Cars says that a child should simply never be left alone in or around a car. “Get in the habit of always opening the back door of your vehicle every time you reach your destination to make sure no child has been left behind,” the organization advises.

For more safety tips on how to keep your child safe from heat-related injury, click here.

“Harry Potter” actor Dave Legeno died while hiking in Death Valley National Park in California, TMZ reports.

Legeno’s body was reportedly found by a pair of hikers on Sunday in a remote area. Police told TMZ that Legeno most likely died of heat related issues and may have been dead for three to four days before his body was discovered.

Best known for his role as werewolf Fenrir Greyback in the “Harry Potter” film series, the 50-year-old, was also an MMA fighter.

HuffPost Entertainment contacted representatives for Legeno to confirm the TMZ report. This story will be updated if and when they respond.

This is a developing story.

It seems to be a growing belief that the Republican Party has been hijacked by anti-science ideas and that somehow the Democratic Party is the party of scientific sanity, but the distinction may not be as clear cut as out might think. Or is it?

Although few serious Democratic candidates take anti-science positions as major planks of their candidacy, it’s fairly common for Republican candidates to do so.

“We’ve got to stop being the stupid party. It’s time for a new Republican Party that talks like adults,” said Louisiana Gov. Bobby Jindal at the Republican National Committee’s winter meeting in 2013. A year later Florida Sen. Marco Rubio opined on climate change, saying, “I do not believe that human activity is causing these dramatic changes to our climate the way these scientists are portraying it.” Rubio also went out of his way in a GQ interview, questioning the age of Earth as though it were a matter of opinion: “I’m not a scientist. I don’t think I’m qualified to answer a question like that.” And who can forget the bizarre tirade by U.S. Rep. Paul Broun (R-Georgia), a member of the House Science Committee, no less, who claims that evolution and the Big Bang are “lies straight from the pit of hell.”

This recent hostility to science by a major political party has brought on one of the great political shifts in the past decade: the quiet move of scientists toward the Democratic Party. Only 6 percent of scientists identify themselves as Republicans, whereas 55 percent identify as Democrats.

The anti-science tilt by the Republican Party is actually of recent vintage. President Richard Nixon created the EPA in 1970 in response to scientific issues of environmental contamination. President Ronald Reagan was a huge fan of science, particularly space exploration. Though not a fan of environmentalism (he removed Jimmy Carter’s solar panels from the White House), he did react quickly in 1988 to banning ozone-depleting chlorofluorocarbons. During the George H. W. Bush presidency (1989 to 1993), Republicans acknowledged global warming and boasted of efforts to commit billions of federal dollars to finding solutions. But during the presidency of his son, a do-nothing policy on climate change was implemented. In fact, scientists were pressured by the White House to suppress discussion of global warming. The rise of anti-science Republicans seems to coincide with the rising influence and ideological intimidation of the tea party within their midst during the 2012 presidential election. Although 61 percent of non-tea-party Republicans say global warming is occurring, polls show that the tea party dramatically distrusts scientists, and 75 percent are avowed global warming deniers.

False Equivalency

Recently, reporters and other survey interpreters in the news media have tried to create a false equivalency between the political left’s embrace of bans on GMOs and vaccinations and the right’s repudiation of evolution, an old Earth and climate change.

The problem is that not all things are equal. Concern about GMOs and vaccinations is a plausible response to new biological interventions, while denial of entire bodies of established scientific research like evolution, the age of Earth and climate change is simply outright pandering to party extremists. In a 2011 post to NPR, Chris Mooney, author of The Republican War on Science, challenged this equivalency claim, arguing that it posits a ludicrous equivalence between the magnitudes of the left- and right-wing science abuses. “The latter does occur sometimes … but has relatively little mainstream influence, and can hardly compare with the sweeping denial of huge bodies of knowledge (e.g., all climate science, all evolutionary science) that we see on the right.”

What Do Voters Say?

By 2010 public belief that climate change was occurring declined from 65 percent to 52 percent, but it returned to its pre-2010 levels by 2012 and today sits at about 67 percent. Republicans are deeply divided on climate change; nevertheless, Democrats do hold a 2-to-1 edge. Some 35 percent of Republicans, 53 percent of independents and 75 percent of Democrats said there was solid evidence of rising temperatures on Earth. A growing partisan divide is also emerging on human evolution, according to a poll by the Pew Research Center.

What is even more disturbing is that the way to solve these disagreements about science is not to provide more education and better data. According to the 2008 Pew report, having a college degree didn’t appear to make a Republican any more open to what scientists have to say. On the contrary, better-educated Republicans were more skeptical of modern climate science than were less-educated Republicans. For Democrats and independents, more education correlated with being more accepting of climate science. The “stupid” members of the Republican Party are more scientifically savvy than the “smart” members!

As Voters We Are Failures

Poll after poll says that we have very different opinions about science and the process of compromising than some of the members of Congress we keep electing. Nevertheless, when it comes to pulling that lever in the voting booth, we have a knack for electing people into office who do not reflect our commonly shared attitudes.

To make matters worse, recent Pew Research Center studies show that since 2009 the number of political moderates has shrunk from a little over 50 percent of the electorate to about 40 percent. In addition, these moderates are much less engaged or knowledgeable about politics than those on the left or right. The more you know, the less moderate you are. With “smart” people opting out of the Republican Party and disengaging from the moderate center, it is inevitable that our politics are tilting in the luddite, anti-science direction.

All we can do is wait it out, but it may take decades for political tempers to simmer down and the damage to reasoned discourse is undone.