“This is the biggest ‘what if?’ ever,” John Lasseter said today at the Animation panel at this year’s D23 Expo in Anaheim, CA, in describing Disney/Pixar’s animated feature The Good Dinosaur. Most Pixar films start off with big questions, he said, and The Good Dinosaur is no exception. Footage was shown, and details about the characters and who’d be voicing them were announced.

The main character is Arlo the Apatosaurus, as voiced by Lucas Neff. Other characters in the film include members of Arlo’s family: John Lithgow as Poppa, Frances McDormand as Momma, Bill Hader as older brother Forrest, Neil Patrick Harris as brother Cliff, Judy Greer as sister Ivy, and then there’s Neff as Arlo. Hader, Greer and Neff came out onto the stage, having just met one another.

Casting on The Dark Knight director Christopher Nolan‘s next project, titled Interstellar, is wrapping up.

The cast is already impressive, featuring the talents of Anne Hathaway, Matthew McConaughey, Jessica Chastain, Casey Affleck, and of course, Sir Michael Caine. And now comes word of a handful of new actors who have signed on to appear as well.

It’s being reported that Ellen Burstyn, the Academy Award winner for Alice Doesn’t Live Here Anymore and five-time Oscar nominee for The Last Picture Show, The Exorcist, Same Time, Next Year, Resurrection, and Requiem for a Dream, as well as John Lithgow, the two-time Oscar nominee for The World According to Garp and Terms of Endearment and multiple Golden Globe and Emmy Award winner/nominee for his roles on Dexter and 3rd Rock from the Sun, are both joining Interstellar.

The digital movie rental of the day over at Amazon today is Rise of the Planet of the Apes for only $.99.

This deal is valid through today, Tuesday, April 3, 2012, until 11:59pm PST. Once you activate the rental through Amazon’s Instant Video on demand service, you’ll have access to the movie for 48 hours. If you’re interested in purchasing the digital version, the cost is $14.99.

Also, if you’d like to own a physical copy of Rise of the Planet of the Apes, the Blu-ray/DVD Combo Edition is available for $19.99 while the DVD is $15.49. The Blu-ray edition is part of Amazon’s “Buy This DVD and Watch it Instantly” program “” you get the film as a FREE digital rental you can watch immediately when your purchase the physical copy.

Fans of the unwatchable abomination that is MTV’s (inexplicably) hit show, Jersey Shore, might not know this, but there were plenty of others who sent in audition tapes to be part of the show.

Unfortunately for those of us who can’t stomach more than a few minutes of the show, these applicants weren’t cast on the show, but their audition tapes have now leaked.

You can see the video of these auditions below now!

Rise of the Planet of the Apes
Directed by Rupert Wyatt
Starring James Franco, Freida Pinto, John Lithgow, Andy Serkis, David Oyelowo, Brian Cox, Tom Felton
Release Date: August 5, 2011

Next to Star Trek the Planet of the Apes series is my favorite science-fiction and adventure film franchise by far. I can watch each one of the films, even the lesser sequels like Beneath the Planet of the Apes and Battle for the Planet of the Apes, and come away with something new to think of every time. Each film was a bold and heady Molotov cocktail of intriguing ideas, complex characters, pitch-black satire, and rousing adventure. With the exception of Battle, none of the films ever reached a fully optimistic conclusion, and despite some last-minute tinkering not even the ending of Conquest of the Planet of the Apes was all sunshine and relaxed laughter. The movies were all about the downfall of the human race, brought down by their own imperial arrogance and replaced in the pecking order by the highly evolved apes once treated as pets and slave labor by the ruling elite. It’s certainly one of the most influential series of films in the history of the medium, the original genre franchise, and a merchandising powerhouse years before Star Wars and Harry Potter even existed.

Even though the series reached its end in 1973 with Battle, the Apes franchise endured for decades to come; there was an ill-advised attempt to relaunch the Apes film series in 2001 with the Tim Burton-directed “reimagining” of the original Planet of the Apes and attempts to keep the Planet of the Apes thriving in live-action and animated television that never had achieved the impact of the films. Now the series is getting another shot in the arm with the long-awaited prequel Rise of the Planet of the Apes, which approaches the legend of the Planet of the Apes from an interesting new direction.