Sometimes, when volunteering at the local theater, one must sometimes suffer through terrible (but popular) movies. This week was my turn to carry out my obligations. The movie: Jurassic Park. I’ve hated this movie for decades. It brings in money, though, so I sold out my principles.
That doesn’t mean I won’t complain about it, though!
But it does feature a lawyer getting eaten.
Movies like this, actually, most science-fiction movies, require you to ‘suspend disbelief’ to grant them credibility in your mind. I agree with PZ I could not make the extreme stretch to ‘suspend disbelief’ regarding a lot of the silliness of jurassic park.
Have you seen this remake of the famous “raptors in the kitchen” scene with up-to-date Deinonychus? (There’s also a version with a realistic Velociraptor.)
nevillepark @ 3
Back when Stephen Jay Gould was alive, I read a lot and learned the difference between Deinonychus and velociraptor. And the likelihood that at least the smaller theropods had feathers.
Unfortunately, this has made a lot of Gary Larson cartoons obsolete. A great cultural tragedy!
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Btw back in the nineties most books on the time period did not bother to feature much about the reptiles the proto-mammals evolved from, even though that was the dominant branch of reptiles for a long period.
People know “amphibians, reptiles, something something dinosaurs mammals”.
I would rather watch Jurassic Park than Close Encounters of the Third Kind or even worse: (barf!) E.T.
Christ, I hate E.T.
It is infantile shite and the fact that it did it was so popular just makes me want to resign from the human race.
Can you please find some good, weird Japanese film for the theater?
Or… Fred Dekker’s “Night Of The Creeps”, a great 1980s horror comedy with all the eighties vibes.
“-The good news is, your dates are here.
-What’s the bad news?
-They are all dead!”
Brandon’s Cult Movie Reviews: Night Of The Creeps
.https://youtube.com/watch?v=1ughRVMgYks
birgerjohansson @ 6
I can’t say at this point if it’s good, but I’ll be seeing Exit 8 this weekend at the local repertory movie theatre, admission free so, good or bad, all I’ve wasted is time.
Both Jurassic Park and The Matrix had bad premises but you can forgive that if the film drags you in with wilful suspention of disbelief.
For the same reason, I like Lucy and Inception.
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Weird, good action films:
From Dusk Till Dawn.
Shoot Them Up
In The Mouth of Madness: Sam Neill meets Lovecraft.
Repo Man
Runaway.
Richard Smith @ 7
Under The Skin is creepy alien conflict, from the alien’s perspective. This role helped launch Scarlet Johansson ‘s career.
(Yes, she has a Swedish surname, but I think she is 100% Merican)
If you would rather have reality:
Dueling Dinosaurs
At the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences
See the skeletons of a nanotyrannus and a Triceratops excavated together from the Hell Creek Formation. While it appears the two animals may have fought and died together (thus the name of the exhibit) information provided clarifies that the two specimens were found in an ancient sand bar, putting into question whether they even died in the same place or were moved by flood waters.
Anyway, you get lots of information, a view of the prep lab, located in an excellent natural science museum covering numerous types of life from various habitats, and…
admission is free!
I liked the novel as a teen, and thought the movie was okay… in hindsight I think both were bad.
The novel did introduce me to chaos theory (albeit a horribly distorted version of it), so that’s a “good” thing.
I remember when it came out.
The hype was all about the CGI and the remarkable realism of the critters*.
The cinema (I actually went!) featured one of those autostereograms (‘magic eye’) which I could see.
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* This was before the feathers and colours thing was widely-known.