(1941, Amistad, Close Encounters of the Third Kind, The Color Purple, Empire of the Sun, E.T.: The Extra-terrestrial, Hook, Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade, Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, Jaws,
Jurassic Park, The Lost World: Jurassic Park, Raiders of the Lost Ark, Saving Private Ryan, Schindler's List)
Producers:
Kathleen Kennedy, Gerald R. Molen and Colin Wilson
Screenplay:
Michael Crichton and David Koepp
Music:
John Williams
Cast:
Dr. Alan Grant: Sam Neill
Dr. Ellie Sattler: Laura Dern
Dr. Ian Malcolm: Jeff Goldblum
John Hammond: Richard Attenborough
Robert Muldoon: Bob Peck
Tim Murphy: Joseph Mazzello
Alexis Murphy: Ariana Richards
Dr. Sarah Harding: Julianne Moore
Roland Tembo: Pete Postlethwaite
Peter Ludlow: Arliss Howard
Nick Van Owen: Vince Vaughn
Dieter Stark: Peter Stormare
Ray Arnold: Samuel L Jackson
Back in 1993, a fantastic suspense film with some cracking
one-liners was created called Jurassic Park, based on the
novel by Michael Crichton.
The title stemmed from the name of a theme park showcasing dinosaurs having
recreated them from DNA samples found in mosquitos that had been trapped and
preserved all this time since picking at the creatures 65 million years ago.
The park's creator John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) invited scientists
Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern,
proving yet again that she can't act to save her life)
along to check it out along with mathematician and fountain of all knowledge
when it comes to chaos theory, Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum).
British actor Bob Peck took the role of park warden Robert Muldoon,
Samuel L Jackson played computer engineer Ray Arnold and Hammond's
two grandchildren, Tim and Alexis, were portrayed by Joseph Mazzello
and Ariana Richards.
What started off as a trip around the park along a controlled path turned into
a nightmare for the characters as the creatures broke free of their constraints
and the park's power failed, meaning the gigantic electric fences didn't work.
From then on it became a race of every man for himself. Some would survive
and some would perish, like any decent monster-chase flick.
Now step forward the sequel that was far from an equal, The Lost World: Jurassic Park,
in which a research team goes to take a look at Jurassic Park's Site B after a
holidaying family have a slight spot of bother when one of their children meets
some hungry natives.
Cue more of the same, without Neill and Dern but bringing back Jeff Goldblum,
here with his stowaway daughter. Another scientist, Dr. Sarah Harding (Julianne
Moore) signs up for the ride as do Arliss Howard and Vince Vaughn
as potential dino fodder, the former playing Hammond's nephew wanting to bring
dinosaurs back to San Diego to form a zoo. Brit actor Pete Postlethwaite
appears as Roland Tembo, an idiot who thinks it would be a good idea to snare
a T-Rex and take it home. As Malcolm says, that is the worst idea in the history
of bad ideas.
However, the sequel fails because the dinosaurs don't look any different in
the main, thus they fail to impress and it feels way too much like a rehash of
the first film, so much so that there'd be more originality gained by watching
that again instead of this. The film's only highlights for me were one of the
tag-alongs getting split in two by two hungry creatures and the coach as it
goes over the edge of the cliff, complete with "cracking glass" scene as
Julianne Moore hits the window pane at the back when it's far from upright.
Now step forward the third film, in which there's no book to create a movie
from and Spielberg couldn't be bothered to direct so left it in the hands
of
Jumanji's Joe
Johnston. I have yet to see it at the time of writing but from what I've
read it doesn't sound good. A review can be found by James Berardinelli
at his Reelviews site by clicking on:
Jurassic Park 3.
The picture is remarkably better than I expected. Yes there are artifacts on
occasion and it's not always pixel-perfect, but other reviews I'd read of the
picture quality stated that many people were deeply unimpressed by it,
although it's very good to these eyes. Both films are presented in their
original 1.85:1 anamorphic widescreen ratio.
The average bitrate for the first film is 5.27Mb/s, briefly peaking above
9Mb/s. The second disc's figures are, respectively, 5.13Mb/s and 9Mb/s.
The sound pulls out all the stops, as you'd expect, with Dolby Digital 5.1
(English and German only, with Hungarians just getting the vanilla surround)
being put to good use throughout. Just a shame, though, that we didn't get
the DTS soundtracks the Americans have got used to. I won't bother to list
what's so good about the sound - it's the dinosaurs!
"Objects in mirror are closer than they appear."
There's a huge stack of extras on both discs. Disc 1 takes in the dino island
with a 49-minute Making of Jurassic Park taking in so many aspects of
the film that made your jaw drop first time round; six minutes of Early
Pre-production meetings between the crew; five sets of Storyboards
including the T-Rex attack and the original ending; two minutes of people
walking about Location Scouting and a piece of pre-production with
Phil Tippett Animatics: Raptors in the Kitchen, which is quite a laugh
to watch.
Foley Artists is another mini-featurette, this one lasting 90 seconds,
plus Production Photographs, a Dinosaur Encyclopaedia, Production
Notes, Talent Profiles for the cast and crew and three Theatrical
Trailers - one for each film, although No.3 had only just gone into
production at the time of this box set's release so it just featured someone
running about a fake jungle. Wow(!)
The extras on disc two follow pretty much the same pattern. We begin with a
53-minute Making of The Lost World, two Deleted Scenes totalling
nearly seven minutes, Illustrations and Conceptual Drawings, Storyboards
for even more scenes than the first disc, photos of some of the Models
used in the film, some pictures of dinosaurs in The World of Jurassic Park
and stills of the obvious in Industrial Light and Magic and Production
Photographs.
Marketing: Posters and Toys is a series of stills based on just that,
while there's more of the same to be found in Theatrical Trailers, Dinosaur
Encyclopaedia, Production Notes and Talent Profiles.
Just one criticism: rather than allow an uncut version of the extras on disc
2, 33 seconds have been cut from the deleted scenes in order to maintain the
PG certificate. The films remain unharmed though.
Both films each compromise of 20 chapters and there are subtitles in a massive
17 languages :
English, German, Polish, Czech, Hungarian, Icelandic, Hindi, Hebrew, Bulgarian,
Croatian, Turkish, Danish, Swedish, Finnish, Greek, Norwegian and Arabic.
The menus all contain sound or music, while only the main ones features
animation and those on disc 1 have more animation in the main menu.
JURASSIC PARK THE LOST WORLD PICTURE QUALITY SOUND QUALITY EXTRAS
DVDs reviewed by the editor are watched on a Panasonic TXW32R4 32" widescreen TV
connected to either a Creative Dxr2 DVD-ROM player or Microsoft Xbox and
played through a Sony STR-DB930 amplifier.
PC games reviewed by the editor are on:
Since Nov 2005: Intel Pentium D 830 3.0Ghz, 1Gb RAM, 128Mb nVidia GeForce 6700XL, Windows XP
Since Aug 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.66Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb GeForce4 MX440 graphics, Windows XP
Since May 2003: Intel Pentium 4 2.6Ghz, 512Mb RAM, 128Mb ATI Radeon 9600TX graphics, Windows XP
Since Jun 2002: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, 64Mb ATI Radeon 8500LE
Since May 2000: Intel Pentium III 600Mhz, 384Mb RAM, Windows 98 SE, Voodoo 3 3000 AGP
Back in 1993, a fantastic suspense film with some cracking
one-liners was created called Jurassic Park, based on the
novel by Michael Crichton.
The title stemmed from the name of a theme park showcasing dinosaurs having
recreated them from DNA samples found in mosquitos that had been trapped and
preserved all this time since picking at the creatures 65 million years ago.
Now step forward the sequel that was far from an equal, The Lost World: Jurassic Park,
in which a research team goes to take a look at Jurassic Park's Site B after a
holidaying family have a slight spot of bother when one of their children meets
some hungry natives.
