MOVIE
REVIEW:
'Psycho'
Every
now and again the film society in UCD presents a classic movie,
free of charge, in a lecture theatre. And so it came to be, that
I finally experienced Alfred Hitchcock's 'Psycho'. To start, I knew
virtually nothing about the film beforehand, which is a good thing
– no preconceived ideas, no expectations. Not least, I enjoyed
not knowing who the psycho would be.
I'm not a fan of horror – most horror storylines are so far
from believable they stretch into comedy territory. So I'm happy
to report that Psycho was the first film to really get my heart
pounding – it scared me. Psycho is also the first film I have
ever seen which caused the people around me to shriek. Not so much
"oh, that made me jump" screams, they are a dime a dozen
– its not difficult to say 'boo'. I mean proper blood-curdling
screams of terror! We were being sucked into the film, we believed
in the story. When I think back – I smile. And I think back
a lot.
Partly, I think the black and white film helps. Because B&W
is rarely used today, and because much historical film documents
are also in B&W, old movies have an eerie historical feel.
The camera work, awkward angles and focussing tricks, and the perfect
pacing of the story make the film work on another level –
a technical level I suppose. This too puts 'Psycho' in a different
playing field to most other horrors. I reckon you could take out
all the 'scary bits' and still have yourself a worthwhile film.
Try applying the same logic to, say, the Blair Witch Project, or
the Exorcist. Dull dull dull. Of course, you'd have to be a fool
to listen to me: I'll leave it for you to decide – if you
haven't already, go see Psycho! If you have seen it – go see
it again!
In the meantime, I have to tend to mother….
'Psycho'
is available through Amazon as part of a box set of other Hitchcock
classics, but do not muddle with the 1998 film of the same title:
MOVIE
REVIEW:
Pan's
Labyrinth
This
fantasy come war film is earning 4 and 5 stars around the board
– so I have to ask, is everybody seeing a different film to
the one I saw last night? The gimmick, it seems, is simple –
splice two very different films genres together, get an original
and awe-inspiring masterpiece. But the calculations are all wrong
– one average film plus one average film = two average films,
not a masterpiece; maybe this explains why I was doubly disappointed.
I don't have much else to say. The fantasy world is uninspired and
dull with one exception, the murals of the baby-eating monster coupled
with lingering shots of a pile of toddler's shoes, next to the motionless
creature depicted in the murals. This really hits the spot and was
the only time in the entire film where there is a sense of history
to, and genuine threat from the fantasy world. But then Ofelia eats
a grape – surprise, surprise, and the film gets back to being
'the never-ending story' on steroids.
The plot in the 'real world' is predictable and slow, the characters
clichéd. The numerous point -blank gunshots and stabbings
into people's faces are out of place and cause cringes, nothing
more.
…and don't be fooled people - subtitles don't make a film
any better.
My final verdict? It's alright, but 95% of people seem to LOVE it,
the two people I saw the film with certainly did, I just can't work
out why.
Decide
for yourself, Pan's Labyrinth is now available on DVD:
BOOK
REVIEW:
Oceans
of Kansas – a Natural History of the Western Interior Sea
Michael
J. Everhart, 2005. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis,
ISBN: 0253345472. 322pp.
The book was borne out of popular demand. Mike Everhart’s
web site, Oceans of Kansas (www.oceansofkansas.com)
went online almost 10 years ago, yet it remains to this day a valuable
and popular online resource for all manner of information on the
fossil-bearing rocks of Kansas and the extinct fossil animals they
yield. The strength of the website lies in the depth and scope of
the material, and particularly in the emphasis on visuals - a picture
does, after all, say a thousand words. “But where is the book?”
visitors to the website would ask, and Mike has endeavoured to create
one for us. It forms a part of the Indiana University Press’
extensive Life of the Past series, edited by James O. Farlow.
Like
the website, Oceans of Kansas is dedicated to the inhabitants of
the depths and shorelines of the Western Interior Sea. This inland
sea completely covered what is now known as the state of Kansas
during the Late Cretaceous. It stretched across the middle of North
America from the Gulf of Mexico in the south to the Arctic Circle
in the north, dividing the continent, and formed a home for a wide
diversity of marine organisms. The faunal list includes invertebrates,
fishes, marine reptiles, pterosaurs and marine birds, which frolicked
in these ‘oceans of Kansas’ during the deposition of
the Upper Cretaceous, Smokey Hill Chalk Member (the focal point
of the book), and the over- and under-lying horizons.
After
an introductory chapter, and a chapter describing the historical
discovery of the deposits and the stratigraphy, the book is nicely
structured taxonomically as Everhart runs through each the groups
living in and around the ancient oceans. We begin with a review
of the invertebrates, plants and trace fossil (chapter 3) and move
quickly into the vertebrates – sharks (chapter 4) and fishes
(chapter 5). Some of the shark remains belong to the ginsu shark
(Cretoxyrhina) pictured on the front cover attacking a
medium sized mosasaur. The first group of marine reptiles to feature
are the relatively rare turtles (chapter 6), followed by the mysterious
long-necked elasmosaurid plesiosaurs (chapter 7), the short-necked
plesiosaurs (polycotylids and pliosaurids) (chapter 8), and the
mosasaurs (chapter 9), including the giant Mosasaurus and
the durophagous Globidens. Chapter 10 takes us into the
sky above the oceans to meet the pterosaurs, particularly the genus
Pteranodon, and here we stay in part for a look at the
flying and swimming toothed birds (chapter 11). The last group of
animals are the dinosaurs (chapter 12), of which a few must have
been washed out to sea from the surrounding shorelines. The book
is neatly tied up in the final chapter (13), ‘the big picture’,
which reminds us, this time in a stage by stage setting, of all
we have learned.
Each chapter is interlaced with tales of historical and personal
discovery, with insights into the excitement of excavation. We are
told the more infamous tales from history: the discovery of the
first Maastricht mosasaur, Cope’s erroneous reconstruction
of Elasmosaurus with the head on the end of the tail, and
the fish-in-a-fish specimen of Xiphactinus for example.
But we are also relayed a number of equally binding but less well-known
anecdotes: how he has discovered new specimens in the field, how
parts of the same specimen have been matched up after many years,
and the feud between Williston and Eaton regarding the anatomy of
pterosaurs also comes to mind.
The volume comes complete with a gallery of 12 colour plates: a
showcase of Dan Varner’s palaeoart. These paintings are complimented
by many (black and white) palaeo-restorations throughout the text
(by Russell Hawley), and succeed in portraying the fauna of the
oceans as dynamic living creatures. There are also many useful photographs
and scientific illustrations/ reconstructions accompanying the text.
Minor flaws (typos and figures without scale bars) are few and far
between, and are ultimately of little consequence on the impact
of the book. Due to the wide taxonomic diversity covered by this
book, I recommend it to anyone with a general interest in marine
vertebrate palaeontology, but especially (of course) to anyone with
an interest in these deposits in particular, and the organisms they
yield. It is also perfect for anyone with an interest in the history
of North American palaeontology. Oceans of Kansas – A Natural
History of the Western Interior Sea, is an informative and enjoyable
read and it is certainly a welcome addition to my bookshelf!
Oceans
of Kansas is available through Amazon:
BOOK
REVIEW:
Starring
T. Rex - Dinosaur Mythology and Popular Culture
José
Luis Sanz, 2002. Indiana University Press, Bloomington and Indianapolis,
ISBN: 0253341531 153pp.
My enthusiasm for dinosaurs as a child and teenager (and adult)
is evidenced today by a collection of scale models and posters,
a worn out VHS cassette of Jurassic Park, and an ongoing Ph.D. in
vertebrate palaeontology. So, as a self-confessed dinosaur fan,
I was looking forward to reading ‘Starring T. Rex - Dinosaur
Mythology and Popular Culture’. The book is easy to read (it
was translated by Philip Mason) and well illustrated throughout
with many black and white photos, movie posters, and illustrations.
Unfortunately, for a topic with so much apparent potential, it came
as a bit of a disappointment in the end.
‘Starring T. Rex’ is structured in two parts (totalling
26 short chapters). The first part describes the process by which
dinosaurs came to be cultural icons - this is achieved through a
review of the history of dinosaur palaeontology, beginning with
the first discoveries of dinosaurs in the 1800s, and ending with
an overview of the current phenomenon known as ‘dinomania’.
The second part of the book establishes the nature of dinosaur mythology.
In general, this second section takes restorations of dinosaurs
from movies, TV and literature, assessing and discussing their scientific
accuracy.
Chapters 1-8 review the history of the discovery of dinosaurs and
their first appearances in popular culture. Chapters 9-15 are enjoyable
– they outline the various ways in which dinosaurs and humans
are brought into contact in the fictional realm. This is achieved
by a number of explanations (some obvious, others fantastical) involving
the misportrayal of the prehistoric world (caveman living alongside
dinosaurs), discovery of lost worlds, thawing out of frozen dinosaurs,
time travelling, the reappearance of dinosaurs through evolution
in the future or on different planets, and finally via genetic recreation.
This section boils down to a list of fictional works – essentially
movies, books, and television series, with a brief outline of the
various dinosaur related action.
Chapter 16, ‘The extinction of the dinosaurs’, is a
mishmash - the first third is pure popular science – how did
dinosaurs become extinct? This is followed by some (not-so) popular
culture concerning dinosaur extinction, 1. denial that they went
extinct at all, and 2. fictional explanations that aliens were responsible,
or at least interacted with dinosaurs. Point one brings us nicely
to the next chapter…
As a plesiosaur researcher, I was particularly interested in chapter
17 – ‘Nessie and friends’. Throughout the book,
a general theme is presented - that of popular culture mirroring
science. This struck me as a way of dispelling cryptozoological
myths. After all, if an early 20th century description of, say a
living sauropod in the Congo, matches the erroneous early 20th century
vision of sauropods as sluggish sea-weed munching aquatic monsters,
surely the skeptic emerges victorious? The scope of this topic,
and its relationship with certain religious beliefs (fundamentalist
belief in recent living dinosaurs), seemed to me very worthy of
deeper investigation.
Chapter 18, Intelligent dinosaurs, looks at the myth of brainy (and
not so brainy) dinosaurs. Dale Russell’s infamous dinosauroid
(if dinosaurs had continued to evolve to the present day, this is
what they would supposedly look like – more or less a human)
makes an inevitable cameo appearance, alongside a few reviews of
cartoon and TV series. Chapter 19 returns to the issue of coexistence
between humans and dinosaurs. Chapters 9-15 investigated how the
co-existence was reached; now their happy co-existence is reviewed.
Following on this theme, chapter 20 investigates the nature of conflicts
between humans and dinosaurs in movies. Chapter 21, ‘Dinosaurs
and Terror’, explores the iconic scary dinosaur (in five paragraphs).
We are reminded that dinosaurs are usually portrayed as monsters,
but while this is of course a myth, this is not made clear or clarified
- another under-explored chapter.
In Chapters 22, Sanz analyses the mechanical processes traditionally
and currently used by movie-makers to re-create dinosaurs. The resulting
dino-creations are classified into two groups – real dinosaurs
and dinosauroids. The latter is subdivided into paradinosaurs (half
sauropods, half theropods), sauriodinosauroids (living lizards decorated
in plastic spines and sails), dragodinosauroids (e.g Godzilla).
A clever approach to circumventing the subtleties of scientific
accuracy in movie restorations is to make up fictional dinosaurs,
as executed in the newest version of the movie King Kong (2005).
The ‘Venatosaurus’, a slightly modified theropod, and
the ‘Ferrucutus’, a modification on a ceratopsid dinosaur
provide examples. However, slightly modified real dinosaurs, such
as these, do not fit happily into Sanz’ classification of
movie dinosaurs (of course, the movie was released after the publication
of this book). I suppose these dinosaurs fit under ‘paradinosaurs’,
although strictly this is restricted to half-sauropod, half-theropod
creatures, such as the ‘Rhedosaurus’ from the beast
from 20,000 fathoms (1953). Appeasing the myth of the ‘ferocious
giant dinosaur’, filmmakers combined the giant body of a sauropod
with the toothy maw and vicious habits of a theropod. This is one
of a frequent number of interesting titbits throughout the book.
These two chapters also seemed like the place to discuss (going
back to King Kong) the influence of the false myth of gorillas as
ferocious monsters (not strictly dinosaur culture, I know).
Finally, Chapters 23- 26 gives us a peek at Godzilla and the like,
explores the true myth of dragons and their possible relationship
to dinosaur fossils (good stuff), and the behaviour of dinosaurs
in movies (they all live in caves).
In addition to movies, which are well covered in this book, documentaries
also (often inadvertently) contribute to myths surrounding dinosaurs.
A most notable recent example omitted by Sanz is the BBC series
‘Walking with dinosaurs’. And so much other dinosaur
culture seems to be missing from the book. There is no mention of
dinosaurs in comic strips. Gary Larson’s the far side and
Bill Watterson’s Calvin and Hobbes (there are many others),
often take dinosaur myths and run with them - although one cartoon
is figured, this is another missed opportunity for discussion. There
is no discussion of toys or action figures. For example, I remember
being appalled as a child when each dinosaur toy, carnivore and
herbivore alike, possessed a mouth full of sharp bloodied fangs
– such blatant (and probably intentional?) dinosaur myths
result from existing ones, but also serve as a catalyst, exasperating
and spreading the myth. Yet toys remain completely overlooked by
Sanz. There is even no mention of the Flintstones or ‘dino’
the pet dinosaur, either in the analysis of synchrony between humans
and dinosaurs in prehistoric times (chapter 9), or in the discussion
of the co-existence of dinosaurs and humans (chapter 19 where pets
are mentioned specifically).
One interesting point raised by Sanz is the relationship between
science and ‘dinomania’ (chapter 8). For palaeontologists
this is important because public interest fuels funding (p48). But
again, the surface is only scraped, leaving a number of unasked
questions regarding the nature of ‘dinomania’. For example,
why did dinosaur-mania blossom and not, for example, plesiosaur-mania,
mammoth-mania, or Hallucigenia-mania? Or does dino-mania include
all these prehistoric organisms too? Or just the big ones? Or just
the ‘unusual’ ones? Or just the Mesozoic ones? Alternatively
dinomania may simply be a recurring fad as suggested by Gould (1996)
- purely the result of commercialism? I don’t know, and I
was hoping ‘Starring T. Rex’ would explore the subject.
At the risk of appearing pedantic, I have a few niggling points
too. The figures are not linked specifically to the text, and are
sometimes inexplicably cryptic. There is no distinction between
the term reconstruction (which applies to skeletons only) and restoration
(the presentation of animals as living organisms). There is an over-frequent
use of wording like ‘without a doubt’, ‘it is
clear that’, ‘of course’, and ‘obviously’
throughout the book, often in cases when it doesn’t (to me
at least) seem quite as certain as implied – (for example,
on the topic of hunting for mythical monsters: “without a
doubt, the search for fame has been one of the most obvious driving
forces behind the huge amount of research carried out in Loch Ness,
although, of course, we must also include those of human curiosity
for the marvellous”[my italics].) I wonder if some of this
may stem from the translation from Spanish to English. Also, a separate
index/ list of movies etc. would have been nice, maybe even with
a review?
In conclusion, determining to whom this book would appeal is difficult.
It raises some interesting points and discusses intriguing issues,
but all too often cuts itself short. Anyone with a genuine interest
in dinosaur mythology and culture (myself included) may be disappointed
by the fleeting movie synopses and cultural analyses. Dinophiles
may in all probability just be confirmed of what they already know.
If you are looking for a review of dinosaur movies, you could preferably
consult a more dedicated volume (Steven Jones’ (1993) Illustrated
Dinosaur Movie Guide comes to mind). Plus, history of palaeontology
is covered in more detail elsewhere. I’m ashamed to say I
probably judged this book by its cover so my disappointment may
come from my expectations. Nevertheless, I may still flick through
‘Starring T. Rex’ on a rainy day, after I reorganise
my collection of dinosaur stamps.
References
Gould,
S. J. 1996. Dinosaur in a Haystack: Reflections in Natural History.
Three Rivers Press, 496pp.
Jones, S. 1993. The Illustrated Dinosaur Movie Guide. Titan Books,
128pp.
Starring
T. rex is available through Amazon:
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