“Take your stinking paws off me, you damn dirty ape!” I love Planet Of The Apes. I mean, really love it. Which is why I’ve spent most of the weekend holed up on the sofa. You see, I found an entire animated cartoon series of Escape From Planet Of The Apes hosted on Open FLV (you can download it if you want too!)

This 70’s cartoon version of the Planet Of The Apes franchise was made before I was even born, but it’s one of the most stylish cartoons I’ve ever seen. The retro style graphics are great, with a series of random trippy static drawings dumped in between the animated action to express the character’s emotions. Except it doesn’t; it just makes them look like they’re experiencing some horrific LSD flashbacks.

If you like Planet Of The Apes, or you’re just into retro style graphics, check out Escape From Planet Of The Apes on Open FLV.

Visual film fingerprints. Brendan Dawes has a great poster available over at the Coudal Partners fantastic Swapmeat.

The limited edition poster is based around the film, 2001: A Space Odyssey. As Brendan explains it, “A specially written piece of software takes a tiny snapshot of the film every second. Each row contains sixty of these frames, representing one minute of film time. This process continues for the whole movie resulting in an image that becomes greater than the sum of its parts, in effect creating a unique visual fingerprint of the film.”

I love it when potentially geeky elements (software programming, cult films, etc) are used to create something undeniably cool.

Go and check out the poster, and more at Swapmeat.

I tried, I really did. I tried to watch the film, Zidane, un portrait du 21e siècle, but I just didn’t understand the appeal (I suppose the fact that I’m not really into football doesn’t help.) According to IMDB, the movie is, “Halfway between a sports documentary and an conceptual art installation, “Zidane” consists in a full-length soccer game (Real Madrid vs. Villareal, April 23, 2005) entirely filmed from the perspective of soccer superstar Zinedine Zidane.”

I was intrigued to see what M/M Paris did with the opening credit sequence of the film, but the real star of the film is the soundtrack by Mogwai. The soundtrack is contemplative, and quietly seething. It’s beautiful music, and if you’re into the more laidback sounds of a band like Air, you’re bound to like the Zidane Soundtrack too.

Check out the track Black Spider for a taste.

Bring on the stress! if you want to see a film so full of tension that the whole experience of watching the movie leaves you stressed and exhausted, you have to see the French horror film Ils (”Them” in english). It’s not a cheesy gore flick, but more of a suspense film. I won’t say anything about the storyline, as I don’t want to spoil it for you, but the fact that it’s based on real events is terrifying.

If it’s in a cinema near you, go and see it immeadiatly, before Hollywood makes a cheesy teen slasher movie out of this future classic.

Design Inspiration. Check out this great collection of sleazy retro Film Posters. It’s a great source of creative inspiration in terms of styling, colour, etc. In my opinion, loads of them would maked great framed artworks.

No hablo español muy bien, so I have absolutely no idea what this film is about! I haven’t seen it, I haven’t read about it, I literally know nothing about it at all. All I know is that the graphics & imagery look pretty cool, and being a shallow individual, that’s all I care about. Check out the website and photography, to see what I’m talking about. You never know, the movie might be good too!

More information about the movie Yo Soy La Juani (spanish).

Verdict: A two-hour version of Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus’. That’s not to say I didn’t like it; embarrassingly, I quite like Falco’s ‘Rock Me Amadeus’. However, Falco was rocking the eighteenth-century costumes, baroque interiors and 80’s music well before Sofia Coppola got around to it.

View the trailer for Sofia Coppola’s Marie Antoinette.

The Marie Antoinette Soundtrack is the real outstanding work of the film. Suprisingly, the modern day music by the Aphex Twin, 80’s tracks and classical pieces don’t seem out of place at all. This soundtrack, and Late Night Tales by Air (which also contains a mixtures of 80’s tracks and classical pieces — it must be a french thing) is all I’ve been listening to recently. For some reason, both albums have a cool calm european sort of chill-out vibe thing happening, which works for me!