RIFLE RANGE BOY

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014) The saga of clash between the human and their supposedly inferior evolutionary cousins, the primates, which started in the late 60s continue in the times of our children. My son, DA, had been pestering me to view this 8th offering of this franchise even before its release. And there I was enjoying the advancement of cinematography and make up of a 21st century film. What started as philosophical movie in 1968 with Charlton Heston had slowly evolved to impress the masses. At a time in the future, the world as we know is almost annihilated of its inhabitants after an viral epidermic befalls mankind. Man quickly succumbs to this ailment in mammoth proportions. The world looks a scene from a Discovery Channel's "50 years after Man". Roads are abandoned, public amenities are left to rot and the world is an empty place (almost). We are brought to a thick lush jungle where a large colony of apes and other primates swing from tree to tree...

Somebody rated very highly of this 1968 Charlton Heston starred movie called 'Planet of the Apes'. I remember running home to watch the TV series of its spin-off in RRF on Wednesdays. Of course, it clashed with the Tamil movie segment over TV2 and Sgt. Urko and his team had to be sacrificed on alternate weeks.(Tamil movies were screened on alternate Wednesdays; Hindi on the other; Amma would monopolize the TV then!) This 1968 movie is slow moving by our present standards with more talking and less action and lack of firebrand. It takes swipe at many of human's daily actions and basically tells us to safeguard our planet for the future generations. Apes are the cultured ones here and men primitive - mute, dirty and incapable of thinking. There are zoo animals! It is set in 2000 years in the future when Heston and his crew members crash land on a planet (we later discover that it is indeed planet Earth). They are apprehended by apes. Heston is unable to communicate as his n...