Project Nim
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Project Nim vs. Rise of the Planet of the Apes
After watching Project Nim, the first half of Rise of The Planet of The Apes is like seeing a documentary (albeit a high production one starring James Franco). Or maybe it’s more accurate to say it’s like seeing the Hollywood-cast, fictionalized version of Project Nim, starring a remarkable digitally-captured performance by Andy Serkis as Caesar, our heroic chimpanzee; our Nim. Of course, like any good Hollywood adaptation of a documentary, halfway through Rise of the Planet of The Apes, the plot veers off from that of Project Nim into a more satisfying conclusion for the apes. Caesar is able to […]
by Alix Lambert on Aug 12, 2011 -
Project Nim — A Hammer to Nail Review
(Project Nim is being distributed theatrically by Roadside Attractions. It opens in theaters July 8, 2011. Visit the film’s official website to learn more.) In December of 1973, a two-week old chimpanzee named Nim Chimpsky was taken from the arms of his mother and given to a human family in the hopes of settling a raging intellectual debate. In a famous study, the linguist (and now-famous political philosopher) Noam Chomsky had asserted that language acquisition was solely the domain of human beings, an innate quality existing within and discovered by humans through experience and exposure to language, which combined to […]
by Tom Hall on Jul 7, 2011 -
THE 2011 EDINBURGH FILM FESTIVAL
Spend even the shortest amount of time in the delightful and disturbing Scottish capital and you begin to read native Robert Louis Stevenson’s Strange Case of Dr. Jekyll and Mr. Hyde as a metaphor for the city itself. Edinburgh boasts a warm and welcoming population residing in an atmosphere where an ever-present hint of menace hangs palpably in the air like its famous rainy mist. (This openness is evidenced by the fact that one early afternoon my sister and I were able to pretty much wander in to a Justice Committee hearing of Parliament debating that day’s front page news […]
by Lauren Wissot on Jun 28, 2011 -
“PROJECT NIM” DIRECTOR JAMES MARSH
During the past decade, some of the movies’ most crowd-pleasing moments can be found not in ballyhooed Hollywood blockbusters but in documentaries. Doc like Spellbound, Anvil: The Story of Anvil, and The King of Kong: A Fist Full of Quarters are best seen with an audience ready to cheer. The most dazzling example of this trend just might be James Marsh’s Man on Wire, the exhilarating story of Phillipe Petit, a small Frenchman with big dreams. Marsh recounts how the daredevil Petit strung a wire between New York’s Twin Towers and then proceeded to dance between the two skyscrapers — perhaps the […]
by Mary Anderson Casavant on Jan 20, 2011 -
“PROJECT NIM” | director, James Marsh
[PREMIERE SCREENING: Thursday, Jan. 20, 9:30 pm — Egyptian Theatre] When you embark on any historical documentary or film about events that have already run their course, the biggest prize you’re after is visual images and archive [materials] showing elements of your story. On Project Nim, which is the life story of a chimpanzee who was brought up like a human child, we knew from various contributors that there was going to be sufficient archive of the chimp to embark on the film but we didn’t know the extent of it. Often the biggest surprise on a film project is […]
by Filmmaker Staff on Jan 18, 2011
