universiy physics student... not doing reviews (or rating) for a while, I actually do work here at b...
universiy physics student... not doing reviews (or rating) for a while, I actually do work here at bath uni!!
Member since:19.01.2004
Reviews:140
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First released in 1993, Jurassic Park was one of Steven Spielberg’s most famous films. It was adapted from a book (which I have also read) by Michael Crichton and spawned 2 sequels so far.
------------------ The Story ------------------
From the film and book we are shown a slightly different world to the one we live in.
Biological research and cloning has become something of a costly but financially rewarding venture for corporations. Industrial espionage runs riot as companies try to further their own research before their competitors.
Here we see that Ingen, a company run by John Hammond, has managed to perfect the process of cloning. With this they have created living, breathing dinosaurs. Kept on an island (off the coast of Costa Rica), these dinosaurs are not only being studied but being contained ready to entertain the public. Something of a "prehistoric zoo" has been set up.
The dinosaurs are contained within electric fences and concrete enforced walls. Automated cars on electric tracks will take visitors around to see them and a full lodge with rides and information is provided for guests.
The dinosaurs are engineered so that they can't breed (they are all female) and need to be given a drug every day to survive.
The perfect security measures?
They were until a rather unfortunate coincidence and chain of events.
Firstly, the investors in the project were concerned about the safety of the island. This arose, in the film, when a worker was savagely attacked by a velocer raptor while unloading it. So two dinosaur experts (Grant and Sattler) were called in along with a Chaos expert (Malcolm - who's always been against the idea) and a representative from the lawyers to evaluate the island. They would see the whole island and could make their minds up as to whether it was safe.
At the same time, a rival company are planning to steal the research from Ingen. They need embryos. To do this, they have an insider (Dennis) who has to shut down the security systems in order to facilitate the plan.
With the dinosaurs able to escape, things start to get interesting.
The theme tune to Jurassic Park is classic and a fantastic addition to the film. The rest of the score is also pretty good.
John Williams (who composed the starwars soundtracks) has done another good job.
------------------------- Special Effects -------------------------
This film allowed the development of both animatronics and computer animated effects. ILM pushed the boundaries and managed to produce some stunning effects.
They were able to mix computer animation with sweeping camera shots. They almost perfectly recreated dinosaurs and scenery.
For it's time, the special effects in this movie were fantastic. Ok, so you can tell when it's computer and when it's animatronics and when it's live action. However, it doesn't change the flow of the story and to be honest it is sometimes still difficult to tell.
------------------------ Special Features ------------------------
There's plenty of standard special features on this disk. The animated menus are quite nice and they have lots of "making of" documentaries.
It's got plenty of stuff and it's pretty good stuff but nothing special over most DVD's nowadays.
This film pushed technical boundaries (and ILM's reputation) forward. It was a fantastic achievement from the technical front.
The storyline is also fantastic. Adapted brilliantly from the book. Yes, it's lacking in some content that the book contained but sometimes that's needed.
The performances are good and the film is entertaining. It can be watched by anybody, a true family film. Good action, good comedy, good story. Good film.
The park software is written in Pascal; a program is clearly visible in one of the monitor close-ups on the UNIX system. The graphical interface recognized as a UNIX system is Silicon Graphics' 3D File System Navigator.
In the egg-hatching scene, a new-born baby triceratops was originally supposed to come out of the egg, but it was changed to a velociraptor.
A baby triceratops was built for a scene where one of the kids rides it. Special effects technicians worked on this effect for a year but the scene was cut at the last minute as Steven Spielberg thought it would ruin the pacing of the film.
The first film to use DTS digital surround sound.
At one point Lex is hanging from a floorboard between stories. She looks up for a moment. The stunt double looked up accidentally while filming and the actress's face (Lex) had to be superimposed in postproduction.
Scenes of the T-rex attacking Grant and the kids while they ride down a river and through a running waterfall were cut before filming. They're included in Jurassic Park 3 though!
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Production Year: 2002 - Action/Adventure - Director: Vincenzo Natali - Original Language: English - Classification: 15 years and over - Starring:Lucy Liu, David Hewlett, Anne Marie Scheffler, Joseph Scoren, Matthew Sharp, Jeremy Northam
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Multimillionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) has a plan for a spectacular new ... more
theme park: a secluded island where visitors can observe actual dinosaurs. With the latest development in DNA technology scientists can clone brachiosaurs triceroto...
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![Jurassic Park [DVD] [1993]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78511563.jpg "Jurassic Park [DVD] [1993]")
![Jurassic Park [DVD] [1993]](http://picnicb.ciao.com/uk/78489603.jpg "Jurassic Park [DVD] [1993]")
Jan 19th, 2005
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