I don’t think it’s too far off-base to say that no one really expected 2011’s Rise of the Planet of the Apes to be any good.  Did we really need a prequel to the other films?  Wasn’t Tim Burton’s remake bad enough?  But when the film hit theaters, we were all pleasantly surprised to find it was actually quite good, and left us wanting more.  Because the film was a hit, bringing in nearly $500 million at the box office, a sequel was quickly put into production and is set to be released in July.  If you’ve seen the trailer, it appears that this next film, Dawn of the Planet of the Apes, is set some ways into the future, deep into the war that will decide who has dominion over the earth – man or beast (Spoiler Alert! The monkeys win.)  But that means there’s quite a bit of story left untold.  Luckily, Titan Books has released Firestorm, the sequel to the prequel that’s a prequel to the sequel, to help fill in the gaps.

If you didn’t follow my prequel-sequel description there, essentially Firestorm is a bridge novel, that tells the story of what happens in between Rise and Dawn.  It mainly deals with the spread of the virus, the breakdown of civilization, and the survival of the apes that went on a rampage at the end of the first film.  The story follows a handful of people – a doctor, a journalist, a couple of primatologists, a mayoral candidate, and a band of mercenaries – in the final days of humanity.

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Nick Stoller Says the Muppet People Are Working on a New TV Show
It kills me that Muppets Most Wanted tanked at the box office. I loved it, but I think it just didn’t stand a chance going up against Divergent or whatever it’s called. I hope Stoller is right about Disney working on a new TV show, I’d hate for Disney to abandon the Muppets.

‘Power Rangers’ Getting a Reboot Feature Film by Lionsgate
This doesn’t surprise me, and actually it’s not the most far-fetched thing to reboot. It’s basically superheroes, giant robots, and Kaiju. If they leave out the goofier aspects (or embrace them) from the show, it could make a decent movie.

Charlton Heston being photographed by an ape on the set of Planet of the Apes
Great photo.

This guy collected 75,000 McDonald’s items over 50 years
I can’t imagine having the dedication to collect only one thing, let alone the money, time, and space it would take to have as large of a collection as this guy. His house looks like a McDonald’s museum. Crazy.

Nickelodeon Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles Baxter Stockman Fly Version Figure
I’m not sure what to think about this. In face, I’m almost losing the will to keep up with the Nick figures. There are some cool ones out that I don’t have, it’s just time and money consuming to hunt them all down, and I’ve got too much junk as it is. What do you guys think about the new Baxter Stockman?

The year has come to a close and it’s been swell. This time last year, we had just changed the name of the site from Saturday Morning Central to Top Hat Sasquatch, and the team began to grow. The first group effort was an article about the best movies of 2010. It’s fitting that a year later, after the site has grown with the addition of Bubble Pipe Theater, that we would end with a best movies podcast. It’s the first show that our good friend and contributor Justin Lacey of HorribleNight.com has sat in on, and we were glad to have him. In the show we talk Apes Rising, Captain America and Thor, Super 8 and Attack the Block, Hugo and Hanna, and everything in between.

In the inaugural episode of Bubble Pipe Theater, Tommy, John, Tim, and Rob discuss the ‘Baby Monkey (Going Backwards on a Pig)’ phenomenom, a horrible movie called Birdemic, an eerie correlation between Planet of the Apes and Pixar’s Cars franchise, and everyone’s current obsessions. We’re excited to kick off this geek culture podcast, and we hope you bear with us through the first few episodes as we get all the technical details ironed out.