06/30/2009
DVD:: 1 comments: by Madison Carter
More real-life monsters (or are they?) courtesy of the History Channel.
My interest in monster movies has often led me to other related fields such as cryptozoology and the ever-present ancestors of the modern turkey, the dinosaurs. I’m probably not alone, and thus film and television producers have long tried to appeal to one by delving into the other. Such is the case for a couple of recent History Channel shows, Monster Quest and Jurassic Fight Club.
I previously reviewed season one of Monster Quest, but now the season two DVD is upon us. This five-disc set continues where season one left off and takes a look at 20 more supposedly real monsters living somewhere out there on the planet. Adopting a scientific approach, they try to locate evidence either proving or disproving the existence of these creatures. It’s an interesting idea, but I’d prefer more of a historical look at the legends, which can sometimes be slighted on these shows. Oddly, some of the more engrossing episodes are the ones featuring what would generally be ho-hum in the realm of monsters. Giant snakes and hogs, for instance, can be researched while creatures like the chupacabra offer little for the teams to actually find.
On the other hand, Jurassic Fight Club has plenty of on-screen beasties, in the form of CGI dinosaurs duking it out. The concept is pretty simple – the filmmakers take two different types of dinosaurs and using their research on the habits and such of the animals, pair them up to see which would emerge the victor in a theoretical fight for survival. It’s basically Primal Rage with better effects and less farting. Fun though. Only 12 episodes comprise the first season of this show, contained on four discs.
Both are ideally watched an episode at a time. Trying to take in more than one back-to-back can become a tad tedious, but paced out, they’re fine informative entertainment.
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Posted by me on 07/18/2009, 11:14 AM
Sorry if this is off topic, but did anyone catch this release this week? Thought it might be of interest to all prehistoric fans.
ACTRESS LANA WOOD ATTACKED
BY 70 FOOT SHARK
Hollywood actress Lana Wood, who once played Plenty O’Toole opposite Sean Connery in the James Bond movie, Diamonds Are Forever, was attacked by what eyewitnesses say was a Megalodon, a 70-foot, 70,000 pound prehistoric cousin of the Great White shark. The attack occurred in the waters off the coast of Monterey, California. . .in the pages of New York Times best-selling author Steve Alten’s new release MEG: Hell’s Aquarium.
Lana Wood, a former Playboy centerfold, has an extensive career in the movies, and wrote a best-selling memoir about her late sister, actress Natalie Wood, back in 1986. She contacted Steve Alten a year ago and asked him to make her a character in his new MEG book, the fourth and best story in the series.
In his review of Hell’s Aquarium, Steve Donoghue, Managing Editor of Open Letters Monthly states, “Alten writes the whole thing in hyperkinetic present tense, with turns and twists in every scene until it squeaks…there’s a scene late in the book involving a shark autopsy that any thriller-writer would give a tonsil to have thought up! The whole thing fizzes with the kind of fun delirium only the most effective giant killer shark novels dare to attempt.”
http://www.wix.com/Meg_HellsAquarium/meg