It wasn't the apes. It was capitalism killed humanity.
Capitalism in this instance being represented by private bioengineering outfit Gen-Sys. Researcher Will Rodman (James Franco) is on the brink of discovering a breakthrough cure for Alzheimer's involving a particular virus strain and is testing the drug on chimps. Assisting him is lab techie Robert Franklin (Tyler Labine of Reaper the TV series fame), who discovers that something is terribly amiss even when Gen-Sys boss Steven Jacobs (David Oyelowo) pushes to fast-track proceedings to start bringing in the greenbacks.
Unbeknownst to Jacobs, what he's really done is fast-tracking humanity's demise. So, when generations later Cracked.com would run an article on ten things that did humanity in, Rodman and Jacobs would rank way up on the list, which I don't suppose is a good thing, especially when the article would literally be written by wisecracking chimps.
Rise is a bad case of Murphy's Law that taps into today's zeitgeist for inspiration.
(Running time: 105 minutes)
Sunday 25 September 2011
Thursday 15 September 2011
That song association game
Today we're going to play a game where I associate songs to places; places I've had the pleasure to call home.
Bogor
My favourite city. The year is 1994, I'm in my first year of college and Sheryl Crow's All I Wanna Do, Dada's Dizz Knee Land, and Counting Crows' Mr. Jones get heavy airtime and form a soundtrack to that particular year, but none so more than:
It was a late afternoon and I was in my room when I heard the song playing from a television set in the room opposite mine. I went to check it out and concluded that the singer in the video clip was a cool cat and that the song summed up where I was at the moment: clean air, excited to be away from my parental home, exhilarated to be going to college, grateful to be going to college at all, ambitious.
Wormerveer (NL)
My hometown. Recently I've come to appreciate how big an influence my childhood has had on my adult life: soccer, the books I read, the movies I watched, Saturday morning cartoons, the teachers at school, family gatherings at my grandparents'. The Doobie Brothers' Listen to the Music, which I got exposed to when a cover band was practising at the yellow-painted community centre, and Spandau Ballet's Through the Barricades are all reminders of these, but none so more than:
After I took in the video clip on TV I might have stepped outside the door and into the crisp air – the sky featuring wisps of white clouds but otherwise clear and blue, the apartment building blocking the sun and casting a shadow onto the street below – and trying to decide how to spent the rest of the day in ways that should be nothing less than most excellent.
Bogor
My favourite city. The year is 1994, I'm in my first year of college and Sheryl Crow's All I Wanna Do, Dada's Dizz Knee Land, and Counting Crows' Mr. Jones get heavy airtime and form a soundtrack to that particular year, but none so more than:
It was a late afternoon and I was in my room when I heard the song playing from a television set in the room opposite mine. I went to check it out and concluded that the singer in the video clip was a cool cat and that the song summed up where I was at the moment: clean air, excited to be away from my parental home, exhilarated to be going to college, grateful to be going to college at all, ambitious.
Wormerveer (NL)
My hometown. Recently I've come to appreciate how big an influence my childhood has had on my adult life: soccer, the books I read, the movies I watched, Saturday morning cartoons, the teachers at school, family gatherings at my grandparents'. The Doobie Brothers' Listen to the Music, which I got exposed to when a cover band was practising at the yellow-painted community centre, and Spandau Ballet's Through the Barricades are all reminders of these, but none so more than:
After I took in the video clip on TV I might have stepped outside the door and into the crisp air – the sky featuring wisps of white clouds but otherwise clear and blue, the apartment building blocking the sun and casting a shadow onto the street below – and trying to decide how to spent the rest of the day in ways that should be nothing less than most excellent.
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