Re: WHY "LOST WORLD" MIGHT BE GOOD

["Ray McAllister" <mcallist@gate.net>]

Jeff, I fully agree that Crichton has written a movie script for Lost
World. I think anyone who read bothg books can see this. I am somewhat
ashamed of Crichton. He is undoubtedly a millionaire so should be able to
avoid crass commercialism. Good to see that someone else felt the same way.
I wondered if I was being too judgemental.  


Ray McAllister, Retired Prof. (Emeritus) of Ocean, mcallist@gate.net
Engineering, Dept of OE, Fla. Atlantic Univ., Boca 
Raton, FL 33064  (954) 426-0808


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| From: Jeffrey Martz <martz@holly.ColoState.EDU>
| To: dinosaur@usc.edu
| Subject: WHY "LOST WORLD" MIGHT BE GOOD
| Date: Monday, May 12, 1997 11:50 AM
| 
| 
|      The gripe I think most of us "Jurassic Park" whiners have with the
| film is just this; Jurassic Park the book payed close attention to
| technical and scientific detail.   It was an integral part of the
| storyline and plot.  Speilberg on the other hand makes flashy adventure
| films, valid enough I admit in their own right, but Jurassic Park the
| book was more then a flashy adventure story. I commend Speilberg on
making
| the first film to present dinosaurs more or less accurately as animals,
| and overall I give him an A- for Jurassic Park.  I just think Jurassic
| Park was a book that was SUPPOSED to be as technically correct and
| intellectually compelling as it was exiting ( and I don't buy into the
| line that a more or less accurate film must be boring). That is the sort
| of writing Michael Crichton does, so Jurassic Park didn't translate well
| to film under Spielberg's direction.
|      Which brings us to Lost World.
|      I think "Lost World" the book was crap.  Crichton was trying to
write
| a sequel for Speilberg that HE could use; in other words, a flashy
| adventure story.  He invented an alternate reality of science of bogus
| science, screwed up more facts, and had more unlikely absurdities
| involving animal behavior then I can count.  But his main goal was to
| write a purely exiting adventure story.  Lost World the book was garbage,
| but it is the kind of garbage Speilberg knows how to work with.  I think
| Lost World the movie will far surpass the book, and if Speilberg gives us
| a classic adventure story with some good acting, I am willing to ignore
| technical flaws.
|      I saw a cool thing of NBC the other night that showed a WHOLE BUNCH
| of great clips form the movie.  I recoreded it and watched it again and
| again in slow motion.  Is it my imagination, or were there TWO life-size
| robotic T.rexes?  They showed some glimpses of the T.rexes dismantleing
| the trailor, Velociraptors zipping out of tall grass and taking people
| DOWN, a bunch of people with long poles harrassing a Pachycephalosaurus,
a
| jeep chasing a bunch of Parasauralophus, Gallimimus, and what looked like
| some little Montanoceratops, a cute little Compsognathus jumping out of
| the bushes in front of a little girl, Triceratops crashing through a
| wall and taking out a jeep, and a herd of Stegosaurus. Cloning
| Stegosaurs, like cloning Velociraptors, apparantly involves massive doses
| of steroids; they are HUGE.  They also seem to have spikes that stick up
| vertically rather then horizontally, but the plates alternate.  There is
| also a scene that shows a T.rex ripping up a camp site, then chasing the
| whole camp, ON FOOT, down a gully.  You pan backwards in front of the
| campers, then you watch the T.rex come around the corner behind them and
| gradually gain on them.
| 
| LN Jeff
| O-                 
|