The first trailer for 20th Century Fox’s upcoming Planet of the Apes prequel, titled Rise of the Planet of the Apes, has now been released online.

The movie shows the origins of the apes that eventually evolved beyond human beings and took over the planet after a scientist’s testing shows shocking advancements in evolution in one of the test subjects, named Caesar.

Instead of going with costumes and makeup, it was decided long ago to use the popular performance capture/CG technologies used in movies like The Lord of the Rings trilogy, King Kong, and Avatar. To make things a little easier, the same team that worked on those films, WETA Digital, was brought in for the job.

You can see the trailer below the line now.

Your Highness
Directed by David Gordon Green
Staring Danny McBride, James Franco, Natalie Portman
Rated R
Universal Pictures
Release date: April 8, 2011

Your Highness is the new movie from the people that brought you Pineapple Express, a movie that mixed stoner comedy with an ’80s action movie with some success. Your Highness looks to do take a stoner comedy and mix it with a Lord of the Rings-style fantasy. I was getting my hopes up before seeing Your Highness, mostly because I like Danny McBride and because I liked what I saw in the commercials. Unfortunately, it didn’t exactly live up to my expectations, which doesn’t make it a bad movie, it just means it left me a little disappointed, and I think a lot of people will feel the same way.

Your Highness is the story of two brothers, Fabious (James Franco) and Thadeous (Danny McBride). Fabious is the successful brother and future king of the land. Thadeous is a screw-up who doesn’t want to do anything except spend his nights with wenches and weed. When Fabious’ fiancée Belladonna (Zooey Deschanel) is kidnapped by the evil wizard Leezar (Justin Theroux), the two brothers must go on a quest to rescue her. They are joined by Thadeous’ squire, Courtney (Rasmus Hardiker), and are later joined by Isabel (Natalie Portman), another adventurer with a grudge against Leezar. Their quest is filled with monsters, betrayal, and a little bit of drug use, before their final confrontation with the wizard.

At the 83rd Annual Academy Awards tonight, The Kings Speech, which lead the pack with 12 nominations, tied for most wins with Inception, both nabbing 4 awards each.

While Inception snagged mainly technical awards (sound, visual effects, and cinematography), The Kings Speech won the big prize — Best Picture — along with a Best Actor statue for star Colin Firth, Best Director for Tom Hooper, and Best Original Screenplay for David Seidler.

Coming in third for most wins was The Social Network, which most notably grabbed the Oscar for Best Original Score by Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross.

While True Grit had a whopping 10 nominations, it scored no wins tonight, while The Fighter won two awards and Black Swan just one — Natalie Portman for Best Actress.

Last we heard, Johnny Depp was in line to replace Robert Downey Jr. as the Wizard in director Sam Raimi‘s upcoming new take on the tale of The Wizard of Oz, being called Oz, The Great and Powerful.

Not long after that, Depp also removed himself from the project, making it one of those annoying situations where every name you could think of was likely to become attached. Instead, the next to be offered the role was James Franco, and at the moment this looks to be a done deal. As good as Franco is, it is still a step down from Depp, who was himself a step down from Downey Jr., who seemed to be the perfect fit as the man who finds himself swept away to the magical lands of Oz, where he solidifies himself as an all-powerful wizard.

The Social Network over the past couple months has been unabashedly accepting every award and congratulatory remark that has been sent its way. It seemed the film was determined to be held in eminence amongst other films that are in awards contention this year. Since the film opened in early October it has been on an irrepressible ascent, exceeding every other film in critical acclaim (according to the online site Metacritic it scored an impressive 95).

Satisfaction endured on the film’s behalf all the way up until this past Tuesday morning, where David Fincher‘s Facebook film tallied a total of 8 Oscar nominations. You may say such a particular outing is absolutely superb. But taking into consideration the mentality of students attending Harvard University (like those in The Social Network), 8 is somewhat of a disappointment when you can have many more. Such students anticipate nothing but the best. Given the multitude of accolades The Social Network received, a measly 8 nominations simply cannot be adequately embraced.