Word: davidson
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Dates: during 2000-2009
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...even in these politically correct times, when even dark heroes must be driven by some easy-to-understand childhood trauma and Tobey Maguire gets the lead in "Spiderman," there?s an interesting way to do this - think Michael Keaton in "Batman." Wahlberg?s (or Burton?s) Capt. Leo Davidson has (apparently) a lovely girlfriend who misses him, as well as the usual complement of cookie-cutter friends who send him a joshing taped message from some idyllic backyard barbecue back on Earth. Come home soon, buddy...
...Davidson, meanwhile, is just on a long hitch doing monkey research for the Air Force. He?s vaguely rebellious in a Keanu Reaves kind of way, complaining about monkeys doing mens? jobs (a nod to "The Right Stuff") and zipping off in his space pod to save his favorite chimp, Pericles. But he couldn?t be less interested in the implied philosophical musings that come with the movie - and distinguished it from the mass of movies before or since - and on screen they suffer from lack of nourishment. (Wahlberg does manage a few good lines about how nutty this planet...
...part when I?m supposed to say SPOILER AHEAD, but if you haven?t seen it yet you probably wouldn?t be reading this. Given that this was a planet of apes, and not just Earth, the structural nut of the movie - that the genetically enhanced lab apes on Davidson?s ship rose up and took over - is solid enough. Nobody was ever going to top the Statue-of-Liberty-in-the-sand trick from the original; simply having little Pericles be the father of a new civilization would have been more than satisfactory, if not very surprising...
...always a bad sign) responsible for the new POTA?s blueprint had to have a different ape start the simian civilization, apparently just so the little fella could return for a truly ludicrous deux-ex-machina moment in the middle of the grand battle for planetary control - and so Davidson can borrow the pod and still get back home to wifey in time for dinner with the Feldmans. And the fact that home isn?t what he remembered is the kind of out-of-left-field "surprise" ending that gets mystery writers beat up at Ellery Queen conventions...
...Ohio's legislature neared its first round of forced retirements last year, 13 of 39 term-limited representatives quit to take jobs in the private sector or in Governor Bob Taft's administration. House speaker Jo Ann Davidson, term-limited herself, had to appoint three finance chairmen in a single year. "You have to run an ongoing orientation throughout the session," she says...