This Is What You Get For Trusting Newman

With Jurassic World soon to show up in theatres, I thought I would review the first two films in the franchise here. This is the first, of course, and it's in fact a fresh review (looking at the tags, I've reviewed this movie before!) 

“John, the kind of control you’re attempting simply is... it’s not possible. If there’s anything the history of evolution has taught us it’s that life will not be contained. Life breaks free. It expands to new horizons and crashes through barriers, painfully, maybe even dangerously, but, uh...well, there it is.” ~ Ian Malcolm

“God creates dinosaurs. God destroys dinosaurs. God creates man. Man destroys God. Man creates dinosaurs.” ~ Ian Malcolm 

“Dinosaurs eat man, woman inherits the earth.” ~ Ellie Sattler

“All major theme parks have delays. When they opened Disneyland in 1956, nothing worked.” ~ John Hammond  

“Yeah, but John, if the Pirates of the Caribbean break down, the pirates don’t eat the tourists.” ~ Ian Malcolm

“Well, the question is, how can you know anything about an extinct ecosystem? And therefore, how could you ever assume you can control it? You have plants in this building that are poisonous. You picked them because they look good. But they are aggressive living things that have no idea what century they’re living in, and they’ll defend themselves, violently if necessary.” ~ Ellie Sattler

“The world has just changed so radically, and we’re all running to catch up. I don’t want to jump to any conclusions, but look... dinosaurs and man, two species separated by 65 million years of evolution have just suddenly been thrown back into the mix together. How can we possibly have the slightest idea what to expect?” ~ Alan Grant

In 1993, director Steven Spielberg brought a big screen adaptation of Michael Crichton’s novel Jurassic Park to theatres, a film that got wide critical acclaim and huge box office appeal. The film brings visitors to a theme park island in the making, where cloned dinosaurs are the feature attraction, and of course things go badly wrong. With a wealth of special effects that looked convincingly real- the dinosaurs do in fact look like they’re occupying the same space as the human actors- the film was a landmark adventure tale that still managed to give us strongly written  and acted characters, and a story that grounded itself firmly in questions of ethics and science.

The film opens with a grisly death of a worker, though what it is that kills him is barely glimpsed. The park’s owner must bring in experts to sign off on the facility, and so John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) seeks out a paleontologist, Alan Grant (Sam Neill), and a paleobotonist, Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). They’re on a dig when we first meet them, and they’re a couple. Hammond persuades them to come to his island for a weekend, holding back what the island contains, but eager to have them see what he has in store. Hammond has to deal with a company attorney, Gennaro (Martin Ferrero), who’s brought in a chaos-theorist mathematician, Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) as an opposing voice.

The group reach the island, where they see what lives there- and we see as well for the first time. Dinosaurs, alive and thriving, 65 million years after their extinction, live on the island. Hammond reveals his method for their resurrection at the visitor’s centre, which troubles all three academics, each of them bringing up grave concerns about the ethics of cloning dinosaurs. Hammond’s grandchildren Lexie (Ariana Richards) and Tim (Joseph Mazzello) are also present, and the experts and the children end up going out on a tour of the park in full. It doesn’t take long before things start to go wrong.

Crichton and David Koepp adapted the screenplay, which differs significantly from the novel in places, particularly in terms of character personalities and fates, also cutting down on the exposition Crichton was notorious for. The method of explaining the process, for instance, is presented in an animated film, which flows much better than having a scientist lecture at length about genetic cloning. And while the story is very much an adventure with thrills and laughs... it’s also grounded in the question of scientific debate over ethics. Mary Shelley wrote about the ethics of creating life in the wrong way two centuries ago, and the questions she brought up apply today in real life and in science fiction. It’s an examination that looms over this film, and the experts brought in to sign off on the park are the ones raising those concerns most strongly. Malcolm points out that Hammond’s team didn’t do all the work- they co-opted the work of others, stood on the shoulders of others, and ended up going through with this venture more because they were consumed with whether or not they could do it that they never stopped to ask if they should. Asking that kind of hard question ends up making for a compelling story, and the film never backs away from it.

Spielberg has a gift as a director for spectacle (something that’s not that uncommon with the Hammond character, who at heart is something of a showman). His crew in this film worked wonders, and it’s the special effects from that side of things that really stand out. When he made Jaws, he was beset with technical problems with the mechanical shark used for the film, and shot a good part of the film with mere glimpses or from the shark’s point of view to compensate- and thus drove up the tension until at last we saw the shark. Some of the same elements come into play here. We don’t see the raptors at first- they’re mentioned in passing by Grant to scare an obnoxious child at his dig site, and we hear them in a pen when they’re fed, but not seen until it’s the right moment to show them. The same applies to the tyrannosaurus rex, which we don’t see when first expected, and then finally seen in a big way in a rainstorm. It’s one hell of an entrance.

Back in the day, Ray Harryhausen spent most of his time doing stop-motion creature effects in many films, particularly dealing with mythology. He was good at what he did, but when you look at those films, you don’t really believe the hero is in the same space as that gigantic thing. Computerized special effects had advanced in the late 80s to the point where that was about to change. Take a look at James Cameron’s film The Abyss, for instance, and the otherworldly alien beings in that film look completely unlike anything you’d find on Earth- and yet appear to occupy the same space with the actors. The same applied with Cameron’s Terminator 2: Judgment Day, which featured a terminator who could change appearance and whose shape could form liquids and solid weapons- the CGI was so good that the threshold had been crossed; there was no sense of disconnect between actor and special effect. The same qualities came across in Jurassic Park- the dinosaurs look so real, seem to occupy the same space as the actors, and behave and move like living organisms.

Spielberg’s touches as a director are clear throughout the film. He’s gifted in adventure films in particular, and that comes across here, both in how he shoots the film (location shooting was done in Hawaii) and how the story progresses. He’s given to the occasional use of humour- casting Goldblum gives a lot of that, while the fate of the lawyer, while grisly, is rather amusing (particularly if you, like most people, hate lawyers). Another director might well have dropped the kids out of the story, though Spielberg keeps them (and they’re not annoying kids, like you might get if, oh, Haley Joel Osment or Macauley Culkin had been cast) in the story, something we’ve seen in a number of his films. He’s also given to scaring the audience on frequent occasions, the right thing in a movie with out of control dinosaurs. His frequent collaborator John Williams came back to compose the score, a mix of excitement, awe, and terror through the music.

The cast were all well chosen. Martin Ferrero might be a nice guy in person, but here he plays the attorney Gennaro as something of a spineless weasel, a lawyer who gives lawyers a bad name. The character’s not likable at all, only seeing in shades of dollar signs and liabilities.  Samuel L. Jackson wasn’t quite yet known at the time, but on the edge of stardom. He was cast as Ray Arnold, the chief engineer of the park, and he plays the role with cynicism and yet also a professional sensibility. Bob Peck plays the chief warden, Robert Muldoon, something of a precursor to Pete Postlethwaite’s character in the follow up film. Muldoon is a serious hunter with an instinct for the behaviour of the animals in the park, a no-nonsense tough character, and Peck certainly plays him that way. Wayne Knight, who’s known primarily for this role and as Newman on the Seinfeld series, plays computer expert Dennis Nedry as a pure weasel, a sarcastic opportunist out for himself. Nedry is an unpleasant person, and he gets what he deserves- he’s not unlike Knight’s other famous role. It’s a sharp contrast, for instance, to a character he played in Kenneth Branagh’s film noir Dead Again, in which he played a genuinely likable character.

The kids, as mentioned before, are not at all irritating. The script changed things between the two from the novel. Ariana Richards plays Lex as serious minded and interested in computers, the big sister who’s wise beyond her years. Joseph Mazzello gets to be the over talkative Tim, fascinated by dinosaurs (all kids generally are, but this boy seems to know everything about them. He’s curious to the point of obliviousness to risk. The two characters are good foils to Alan, who doesn’t particularly care for children (I can relate to that), and yet finds himself protecting them when things go terribly wrong in the park.

Richard Attenborough hadn’t acted in a film in years before this film came along, having had moved into directing instead. John Hammond is significantly different from the novel, in which he’s a callous businessman, and the film presents him as an amiable billionaire showman of sorts, big on dreams and oblivious to the ethical concerns about his project. He sees himself as a modern day Walt Disney, with ambitions for a theme park that’ll outdo anything before it. He’s so obsessed with the notion of the grand show that he doesn’t heed the warnings coming from others... but at least by film’s end, he’s learned a hard lesson. It’s a compelling character, this kindly old grandfather, and you can’t help but like him, even while shaking your head at his methods.

Jeff Goldblum gets some of the best lines of the film as Ian Malcolm. Hammond refers to him as a rock star instead of a scientist, and there’s something to that. The character’s cocky and has attitude. Ian is eccentric to say the least, a show off and a flirt. And yet beneath all that are solid principles and an ethical core. He voices his objections most strongly of the three experts brought in, and seems resolute in the face of danger. After a narrow escape from a rampaging tyrannosaurus rex, he asks if they might have that on the usual park tour. He delivers the line in a way that gets just the right reaction, something that occurs time and time again with his dialogue.

Laura Dern brings an innate curiousity to her role as Ellie. She’s a bright scientist with strong principles and a sense of humour, and even in the face of a situation going terribly wrong, she doesn’t panic. Ellie is a character who can take care of herself, and Dern plays to that. And her relationship with Alan seems grounded and real. These two love and respect each other (I have no idea why someone decided they should have broken up before the third film), and that shows itself in how they relate. They’re comfortable enough with each other to tease each other- Ellie saddling him with having the kids around when she knows he doesn’t care for kids is a good example.

Sam Neill gets the lead, and Alan’s a compelling character. He’s a bit gruff, doesn’t have much patience where kids are concerned, but also smart and is calm in the face of danger. Grant’s sense of ethics are strong too- like Ian and Ellie, he expresses grave concerns about the island and the notion of tampering with life itself. Put into life threatening peril, he comes into his own, showing how resourceful he is. And while he might have serious ethical concerns about the notion of cloning these animals, there’s also the enthusiastic side of him to actually be around these animals- his astonishment at seeing them for the first time and his reaction to being able to touch a triceratops convey that.

Jurassic Park set a new bar for adventure films when it came out. It’s a rousing adventure that still manages to bring forward questions of ethics when tampering with the building blocks of life. The film remains a pleasure to watch, giving the audience a hint of what it might be like to walk the same ground as a dinosaur.

Plus we get the distinct pleasure of seeing a dirtbag or two meet very bad ends.

My Welcome To Texas Has Been Revoked

Some links before getting started today. Norma had posts on burglars and artistry. Eve had a poem. Shelly had an update from the dog's point of view. Mark wrote about a writer's retreat. 

Now then, today I have something that will probably come back to haunt me someday (visions of Texas Rangers- and not the baseball team- kicking my ass come to mind). On the one hand, Texas has been suffering as of late due to the weather. On the other... more than a few Texans seem to think that military exercises equal an invasion, and are coming across as out of their minds. This image blog therefore is my response. Enjoy!

Four Scammers Of The Apocalypse

"Is it wrong to suggest a spammer should die a horribly painful death?  That depends on what a spammer is. We're in the glory days of the Roman empire here, people, and spam hasn't been invented yet." ~ Marcus Aurelius, AD 166, Rome

"Gustavo's, for all your going to the Colisseum needs! We've got comfortable cushions, fans for keeping cool on hot Rome days, the right way to dress if you want to catch the eye of the Emperor, and clothing that doesn't stain if some stray blood happens to spurt out into the audience from a dying gladiator. Remember, if it's not Gustavo's brand goods, you must be shopping in Pompeii, and that place has never been the same since Vesuvius blew its top." ~ Roman spam, AD 168

They are a foul pestilence on the globe. They are literally unable to take a hint and kindly drop dead (or not so kindly: drop dead whilst in a whole lot of horrendous pain). They are of course the spammers who keep trying to infest our blogs with endless crap they're trying to sell. Or their counterparts in the industry known in the trade as the internet scammer. Both are obnoxious on a level that makes the flesh eating disease look welcome (note to the flesh eating disease: infect a few thousand spammers and scammers). The following message turned up in my email not too long ago. My junk folders claimed it.

Dear Beneficiary,

Good day and may the peace of the most Gracious God be with you, please I have a problem and needs your help, I have decided that it's good a thing to write you for help.

 I am Emmanuel Yao, 19 years old, the only son of my late parents Mr. and Mrs. Edward Yao.  My father was a highly reputable business magnet (cocoa and gold merchant) who operated in the capital of Ivory Coast and Ghana during his days. It is sad to say that he passed away mysteriously in France during one of his business trip on 12th.September 2009. Though his sudden death was linked or rather suspected to have been masterminded by one his brother who traveled with him. But only God knows the truth!

My mother died when I was just 4 years old, I went to my grand mother's house recently and I storm into a deposit certificate he used to deposited the sum of Twelve Million, Seven Hundred Thousand United State Dollars. (USD$12.700,000) and 3 boxes contained personal effects in one of the leading security company in Ghana.

I am just 19 years old and a University Undergraduate and really don't know what to do. This is because I have suffered a lot of set backs as a result of the death of my late parents. The death of my father actually brought sorrow to my life. I don't want any of my family member to know this and I want you to take this inheritance and help me travel to meet you in your country to continue my education.

I am in a sincere desire of your humble assistance in this regards. Your suggestions and ideas will be highly regarded. Now permit me to ask these few questions:-

1. Can you honestly help me as your Son?

2. Can I completely trust you?
3. Can you contact the security company if I give you the certificate I have and transfer the fund to your country so that the gold boxes will remain for my future?

4. What percentage of the total amount in question will be good for you after the money is in your country.

Please, consider this and get back to me as soon as possible so that I can send you a scan copy of the certificate.

Thank you so much.

My Regards to your family,

Emmanuel Yao

Okay, let's go through our scamming scammer's message in turn. Our boy Emmanuel Yao (nice name to use as a fake cover) has his credentials in the Ivory Coast and Ghana (prime African scammer territory) and uses many of the same tell-tale signs of all African scammers. Bad grammar, punctuation, the sob story, the invocation of God to pass himself off as someone of virtue. Emmanuel (or whatever the hell his real name is) must be hoping I'm dumb enough to fall for the usual invoking God scammer trick. Note to Emmanuel: I'm not. I'd suggest sending this email to my idiot ex-brother-in-law, who really is stupid, but then again, all of his disposable money goes on booze and cigarettes, so you're not going to get far.

  He claims his father was a "highly reputable business magnet." While that might come in handy when dealing with steel and metal, Emmanuel, magnets aren't that handy in business. Come on, scamming scammer, try to keep up with the class, you're falling behind. You were obviously trying to pass off your totally non-existent daddy as a magnate. Which, for the record, I don't believe for a minute.

He then goes on to claim that his father bought the farm back in 2009 and hints that his uncle might have been behind it. Come on, are we talking about Hamlet here, or are you just putting a new spin on the African scammer trick?

"But only God knows the truth!" he exclaims! Well, no, if your non-existent evil uncle Claudius actually had offed your old man like you said, then Uncle Claudius would know too. Unless you're mistaking him for God. Wait a minute, we've already agreed this whole story is fake (well, you haven't, but you already know it is) and I'm now treading pretty close to blasphemy by comparing God to Hamlet's uncle. Though I'm sure Derek Jacobi wouldn't mind the comparison.

Still with me? I'm not talking to you, Emmanuel, I'm talking to my readers, who might be wondering if I'm galloping off madly in all directions.

Our scamming scammer mentions "storm into a deposit certificate" and the grand sum of 12.7 million United State dollars (seriously, dummies, is it that hard for you to spell it United States? It's only the most powerful country on the planet, you dimwits) resting in a security company in Ghana. He laments that he doesn't know what to do and mentions his setbacks. To which I say it's such a shame he didn't have more setbacks. Enough setbacks that he wouldn't be trying to scam half the planet with the same message. And then he asks several questions. Here are my answers.

1. No, I can not honestly help you as my son. Why? Because I don't have sons, particularly scamming scammers like yourself who do nothing in this world but waste oxygen. There's a special circle of hell reserved for scammers like you. I suggest you go find it post haste.

2. You certainly can't trust me anymore than I would ever trust you. If this scheme was real (which it's not), I'd gladly throw you to the dogs, fit you for cement shoes, or hire someone to send you for a long walk off a short dock, and keep every bit of the twelve million for myself (compensation for having to put up with scammers and spammers endlessly). Of course, since that money doesn't actually exist, this is a hypothetical question.

3. I will contact no such security company, because, well, see my answer to #2, and we already have established that there is no fortune waiting.

4.  What part of we already know there's no fortune do you not understand? Were you dropped on your head a lot as a child?

Sigh. Is there no end of them? Are they like the Hydra monster of Greek myth? Cut off one head and two more will rise up to replace it? Can they ever take a hint and just go away? Unlikely, given that this very post will draw in spam. They are entrenched in their positions, always on the lookout for that one person in ten thousand sent emails dumb enough to actually believe them. And if that happens to net them a few thousand in easy money before a banker advises the mark that they've been had, well... that's part of doing business.

For those of us who have to put up with them, though... they are a plague beyond plagues. Moses couldn't have dreamed up a plague this irritating. If this had been the first plague of ancient Egypt, the Pharoah would have begged Moses to take his people out of bondage straight off. "Anything but that!" he would have said. "I am not interested in silver futures hidden away by a non-existent general in Nubia!"

Never Sleep Naked In California

Some links before we get ourselves started. Norma reviewed this same film at her blog today. Parsnip had a Square Dog Friday.Eve wrote about cool versus hot. Lorelei had a medium encounter. Lynne featured ducks. And Ivy had a true or false question.

Today I have a movie review.

Let it not be said that the Hollywood sign doesn’t meet bad ends in disaster flicks. San Andreas roared into theatres this weekend, unleashing an epic sized earthquake in California (the sort of quake that’s going to happen sooner or later, of course, and you might want to stay away from there when it does). It’s a big disaster spectacle, with lots of destruction, special effects that work quite well, and actors turning up in the required stock roles that disaster films insist on having. There’ll always be a dirtbag who deserves what he’s going to get, a wise scientist trying to reason with belligerent people, and a hero with family issues. And while it takes liberties with science and has a few plotholes you could toss a collapsing freeway through, it’s a big bang of a summer film.

The hero of the tale is Ray Gaines (Dwayne Johnson), an L.A. fire department helicopter pilot; a much more useful skill set than being an accountant in a disaster film. An early scene establishes him as a capable and calm under pressure pilot during a rescue. His family dynamics give the film its human touch- his marriage to Emma (Carla Gugino) is over, and she’s involved with a developer, Daniel (Ioan Gruffudd). His daughter Blake (Alexandra Daddario) is up in San Francisco and not on the best of terms with him.

Of course, it doesn’t take long before the state is hammered by that long overdue quake. The fault line gets cranky along the length of the state, putting millions into jeopardy, causing massive destruction, and making life difficult for pampered celebrities in Beverly Hills (no big loss). Ray’s called into action (sometimes seeming to be the only emergency responder in sight) and is determined to find his daughter and bring her to safety. What turns the genre around is unexpected- his ex-wife chooses to join in his efforts. From there, the film unfolds on a large stage of destruction, peril, and people caught between living and dying.

The film comes from director Brad Peyton, whose work started with film shorts, and who had worked with Johnson before on the film Journey 2: The Mysterious Island. The story both deals with the larger scope of a massive quake and the personal story of people, as you might expect in disaster films, concentrating on the ordeals of this one family and generating empathy for them. Shot on location in Australia and California, the film brings in special effects in a big way, and yet centers itself in the humanity of that family.

And the special effects are well rendered indeed. Hollywood has seemed to have a thing for destroying itself in movies going back all the way to the Thirties, but the technology has caught up in a way that a magnitude quake of this size looks like it's being carried out on screen. Buildings are destroyed. Cities are leveled. One of the more spectacular sequences involves the Hoover Dam. The decimation of streetscapes appears quite real, more so then when you see the disaster films of the Seventies that dealt with quakes and other disasters. And yet at the same time, the film downplays the destruction- to fully convey the death toll of such a quake would end up in a film that wouldn't be a popcorn summer film, but would result in the audience throwing up and feeling nauseous. The effects do come across used right- it feels and sounds like the characters are in a massive quake (albeit with some scientific inaccuracies) and the dangers that presents both during and after are well rendered, if exaggerated.

The casting is nicely chosen. Ioan Gruffudd has played better men in films like Amazing Grace, King Arthur, and the Fantastic Four films, but here he's playing something else entirely. Daniel might seem superficially charming, successful as a developer, but there's a sleazeball and weasel under the surface, and that shows in the choices he makes and the actions he commits himself to. He's inherently selfish and underhanded, and that comes through Gruffudd's performance.

This is the first time I've seen Alexandra Daddario in anything, but I liked her as Blake. There's tension between the character and her father- given the family dynamics, that's to be expected. And yet when trouble strikes, she's not quite the sort who waits to be rescued. She shows herself to be entirely capable in and of herself. Her take on the character worked for me.

Paul Giamatti gets to be the Smartest Man In The Movie (a role often played these days by Michael Caine). He's the seismologist Lawrence Hayes, who has been part of a team working to understand and perhaps predict the behaviour of quakes. He's something of a narrative voice for the film, the wise sage who knows the sky's falling (unlike Chicken Little, who merely says the sky's falling) and only too late is his word heeded. Giamatti's one of those great character actors who elevates a movie just by being in it. Tied into his part of the story is a sympathetic and helpful journalist, Serena (Archie Panjabi, who's spent a lot of time on a show I've never seen, The Good Wife). This is the first I've seen of her in anything too, but she plays the character as calm under pressure. 

Carla Gugino has been in a great variety of film and television roles down through the years, and what I've seen her in, I've liked her work. During interviews for this film, she noted that she learned the hard way not to sleep naked in earthquake country. Her character Emma starts out in one place when we meet her in terms of relationship dynamics, and she plays to that, particularly in early interaction with her ex, Ray. And yet when the worst happens, she comes into her own and takes initiative, which I liked- another director would have been content to sideline the character and have her simply wish the hero good luck from some safe spot after being rescued. Instead Emma faces the danger, driven by a mother's instincts, and that shifts the dynamics and the way she and Ray relate to each other. They become partners in a shared cause, and in doing so mend the differences between them, and Gugino takes all of these elements into account in how she plays the character.

Dwayne Johnson is well cast as Ray. He's already got the tough guy aspect tied down in his work as an actor, but what I like here is that he conveys the professionalism, efficiency, and calm under pressure mentality you would expect out of a fire fighter and rescue pilot. The character is steadfast in the face of cataclysm, but also quite human too, both trying to do his job and also driven by family issues. I haven't seen everything he's done on film, though I did like him in last year's Hercules (which worked despite having one of the worst directors in the industry at the helm). He's likable on the big screen, and has the right kind of presence that we can relate to him.

San Andreas is not the kind of movie that wins Oscars (though it deserves it for the special effects work), but it's not the sort of movie that pretends to be. It's a thoroughly entertaining popcorn summer film, and while it might take liberties with seismology, it's a good reminder that one day a monster quake will hit the region. And perhaps do us all a favour and take Entertainment Tonight permanently off the air.