How Game of Thrones Brings a Grown-Up Dragon to Life

Drogon, the biggest and baddest of Daenerys Targaryen's (Emilia Clarke) three dragons, is so much larger in Game of Thrones Season 5 that the Emmy-winning visual effects team–led by producer Steve Kullback and visual effects supervisor Joe Bauer–had to use two new methods to bring him to life. "Drogon is twice the size he was last year. He's about 40 feet long and 20 percent bigger than the other two dragons," Bauer says. "He's also the alpha, so his way goes. He's still affectionate with Dany, but he's got his own mind and needs her less, just like any child growing up."

To create this wily beast, Bauer came up with something that made executive producer David Benioff's jaw drop. "We had the world's one and only fire-breathing crane," Bauer says. "It looked like some kind of weapon from Transformers," adds Benioff.

The team began with a Technodolly–a motion-controlled crane with a 15-foot-high arm that moves in different directions while its base rolls along a track. The telescopic arm usually holds a camera, but instead the crew mounted a flamethrower that could shoot as far as 50 feet. "Standing 50 feet away from the dragon fire, you could get a nice tan," executive producer D.B. Weiss says.

The crane was then programmed with Drogon's movements, repeating the same sequence over and over again. This made it safer for the stunt team and more efficient for production, as both always knew exactly where the "dragon" and his fire would be.

After the segments that used the Technodolly were edited, digital artists sketched in the fine details of Drogon. His physical traits were modeled after real animals: Komodo dragons, iguanas, horned lizards, and crocodiles. His movements were derived from eagles and bats, and his takeoff from pelicans.

The other new method employed was the SimulCam system, where the appearance of the dragon was saved into the camera so that "everyone looking at the monitor could see exactly where he would be, and the scene could be framed properly," Kullback says.

Clarke, unfortunately, didn't have that advantage, often filming in front of a green screen. In Season 1, her scene partner was not a dragon but a tennis ball on a stick operated by a puppeteer. In Season 2, she had a stuffed dragon–a "maquette," in fancy film lingo–on her shoulder so the camera operators could see how the dragon would look and she could have a visual reference while acting. This year, it was soccer balls on two 30-foot poles.

"You have to give this object all your motherly love," Clarke says. "You think, 'Oh, God, people are probably laughing at the fact that I'm emoting over this big ball or doll.' But you get that out of the way and let your imagination take over."

Good thing, because in Season 5, we'll see more of Drogon's emotional range. "Drogon gets to perform more this year than ever and have more complex interactions with Dany," Bauer says. As long as she doesn't stand too close.

Miniseries: Dinosaur Revolution

Torvosaurus and Rhamphorhynchus in "Dinosaur Revolution"

Produced by Creative Differences. Executive producers, Dave Harding, Erik Nelson, Alan Eyres, Brooke Runnette; supervising producer, Richard Ross; directors, David Krentz, Nelson; supervising director, Ricardo Delgado; writer, Nelson; FX supervisor, Douglas Martin; senior editors, Randall Boyd, Paul Marengo; music, Mark Leggett. 60 MIN. Narrator: Rick Robles

 

 

The title notwithstanding, there's nothing particularly revolutionary about "Dinosaur Revolution," which lustily attacks everybody's favorite extinct beasts with for-the-most-part impressive CGI effects and a cheeky storytelling approach that owes a sly debt to the old Disney nature films. Produced with limited narration and talking heads, the filmmakers anthropomorphize the dinosaurs in what amount to mini-vignettes, a conceit that works fitfully, and improves in subsequent hours. Even with its flaws, given the enduring fascination with the subject matter, the results ought to exhibit considerable dino-might for Discovery.

 
In a way, "Revolution" owes as much to "Fantasia" as it does to "Walking With Dinosaurs," its most obvious ancestor. The main innovation here is trying to infuse individual dinos with a touch of personality, or at least get you mildly invested in their fates.


As for the "Revolution" part, it's really just a fancy way of saying we continue to learn surprising new things about the way dinosaurs lived (nurturing young, hunting in groups), and that far from an evolutionary dead end, their legacy continues within innumerable avian species.


Effectively using realistic backgrounds behind the animated beasts, the first hour of this four-part program (airing back-to-back installments on successive Sundays) promises "startling new conclusions" about how dinosaurs lived, but delivers relatively little.


Fortunately, producer/writer/co-director Erik Nelson and his team hit their stride in a second hour devoted to life around the watering hole -- where, much like modern Africa, the circle-of-life means predators hunt the plant-eating herds, with survival on the line. The most crowd-pleasing hour is probably a final installment highlighting everyone's favorite monster, Tyrannosaurus Rex, along with the meteor strike that eradicated dinosaurs. (Admittedly, that last aspect's kind of a downer and probably not terrific for young kids, feeling a bit too much like a big, scaly version of "The Road.")
To their credit, the producers don't sugarcoat the delivery, and challenge the audience to follow along by telling these stories visually (with periodic dollops of blood as limbs and heads get munched), as opposed to relying on the narrator or scientists to spell out every little detail.


Still, the most dramatic and comedic flourishes within the vignettes tend to take viewers out of the nature motif a bit by occupying an awkward place between animated "characters" and documentary that, pardon the expression, is neither fish nor fowl.


That disclaimer notwithstanding, even dinosaur aficionados will probably learn a few things, and there are enough solid moments of action to keep the program entertaining. Moreover, unlike Fox's upcoming drama "Terra Nova," there are no annoying teenagers in this world. (As a footnote, it's also nice to see anything scheduled during this window not related to the Sept. 11 anniversary.)


Seeking to differentiate itself, Discovery has upped its ambitions in recent years with documentaries like "Life" and "Planet Earth." Even if "Dinosaur Revolution" doesn't quite rise to that level, it's a creditable stab at offering viewers a taste of life on a prehistoric planet.

By Brian Lowry

Film: Dinotasia

LINK

Bucking the dominant trend of nature docs, Dinotasia eschews anthropomorphism almost entirely. While contemporary wildlife films, exemplified by Disneynature titles such as African Cats and Chimpanzee, tend to make their non-human characters relatable by endowing them with decidedly human qualities, David Krentz and Erik Nelson's computer-animated look at the age of the dinosaurs refuses to falsify its subject by ascribing inaccurate motives to its players. 

This decision to avoid treating the dinosaurs as surrogate people for easy identification is both the film's boldest move and the source of much of its problems. As we watch the CGI dinosaurs enact what largely amounts to a vicious struggle for survival across a series of time-hopping vignettes, the lack of narrative gives the various episodes a certain shapelessness, even as they're held together by a pending asteroid-based apocalypse that the film keeps alluding to and by Werner Herzog's gleefully doomy narration.


Yes, the Grizzly Man director is on hand to intone, in his inimitable style, about "the savage indifference of nature," as if the constant scenes of tyrannosaurs ripping each other's heads off weren't proof enough. Herzog's role, though, exists less to advance the plot (except in so much as he delights in the coming of that fatal asteroid) than to provide thematic heft, discoursing on the Earth's cycles of life and death and chaos and order.


Despite the somewhat crude computer animation, at least by contemporary, post-Avatar standards, and the sameness of much of the episodes, Dinotasia has no shortage of memorable imagery, whether it's a one-armed tyrannosaur with a face like a death's mask running rampant or bright red raptors teaming up to take down larger prey. There's little sentimentalizing the creatures here; these dinosaurs are no cuddly creatures for kids. Instead, Krentz and Nelson present a vision of brutal violence that enacts itself senselessly and repetitiously, oblivious to the larger apocalypse that awaits.


It's a consistent worldview and probably an accurate one, but it results in a film that only excites in fits and starts. While some variations and side-trips keep things lively (including a magic-mushroom freakout by one dino), the doc's focus on the eternal struggles of life and death places definite limits on the sweep and diversity of the vignettes. By punting the more traditional narrative strategies of nature films, Dinotasia usefully de-sentimentalizes the genre, but by almost entirely avoiding any overarching plotting at all, the film becomes a stubbornly episodic exercise that frustrates nearly as much as it excites.

Dinosaurs: Giants of Patagonia (3D/2D)

This documentary-style narrative focuses on the history, evolution and extinction of the dinosaurs. In larger-than-life fashion, audiences will explore a subject matter whose mystique and appeal are unquestioned.

Dinosaurs are amongst the most fascinating animals to have ever walked the Earth. We are captivated by their enormous size and intrigued by the fact that they disappeared millions of years ago. DINOSAURS 3D will take audiences on an unprecedented and unique 3D journey into the world of the largest known dinosaurs and, in the process, explore some of the great paleontological discoveries of modern time.

Done in close collaboration with the foremost scientists of the domain, the movie will show never seen before computer generated footage of the Giganotosaurus and the Argentinosaurus to name a few. At the moment of initiating this extraordinary project, one question comes to mind: "Is the giant screen big enough?"

Alternate Title(s): Formerly Dinosaurs of Patagonia

Spinosaurus and Film

The fossil bones of Spinosaurus, a large theropod dinosaur of the Late Cretaceous, 95 million years ago. The type specimen was first described in 1915 near Marsá Matruh, Egypt, on the Mediterranean coast. Its most striking feature is a set of dorsal spines that probably supported a sail-like membrane.

The Spinosaurus is one of the most massive predators on land; more than 50 feet long and weighing over ten tons. The massive sail on its back only increases the terrifying impact of this creature. Fortunately, it is not as swift as some other large predators and is generally a scavenger rather than an active hunter.

If a Spinosaurus gets a hold of prey with its bite, it deals bite damage if it maintains the hold, as it shakes its prey violently in its long jaws. Creatures up to three sizes smaller can be swallowed whole

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While surfing channels last night, I had come across the second half of "Jurassic Park 3" on TV. It had reminded me of an often misunderstood point when it comes to Tyrannosaurus.rex sized or larger (only slightly though) or maybe only longer but not necessarily heavier (as far as I know for Spinosaurus aegyptiacus which in 2001,to my amazement, seemed to become the most hated dinosaur of every geek on the internet who, upon finding out that it would not only defeat Tyrannosaurus in battle in "Jurassic Park 3",but there would not be a second battle between the two species ending with a Tyrannosaurus victory.) The specialists,(movie versions, anyway)would point out continually that the Spinosaurus (Giganotosaurus would have been more appropriate for most of the Spinosaur's roles, but would likely have appeared to be just another T.rex lookalike to the movie-going public) was bigger than the T.rex, setting up the battle, really giving the impression that T.rex didn't stand a chance against it in any battle, at any time. I would really think of the Spinosaur (if really that big, remains are still too fragmentary to tell) as a potential rival to the tyrannosaur with any conflict liable to go either way. Not that it hurts my feelings to see a Spinosaurus take down a T.rex in an action movie that's not realistic anyway, (I prefer the Spinosaurus over T.rex any day!)I would have tried to make it more of a surprise to the audience if I really wanted the T.rex to get killed in battle, say against another incidental dinosaur like Triceratops, where the outcome of the fight is not important to the rest of the film.

John Bridgman

As far as Jurassic park 3 went, the reason the Tyranosaurus-Rex/Spinosaur battle was so early, was to set the Spinosaur up as a stalking horse for the rest of the film (How a 45 foot animal sneaks up on you I don't know). It was then supposed to have a cataclysmic battle with all those US marines who appeared at the end of the film. But they ran out of money, and the film "just stopped".

The bit that annoyed me most was when the Spinosaur's neck was in the Tyrannosaurs jaws, and it shrugged the T-Rex off. I'd have thought with the bite strength that would have been game over.

David Craven

JOURNEY TO THE CENTER OF THE EARTH (2008 FILM)

Trevor Anderson (Brendan Fraser) is a Bostonian volcanologist whose 13-year-old nephew, Sean (Josh Hutcherson), is supposed to spend ten days with him. Trevor has forgotten that Sean is coming until he receives several messages from Sean's mother. When Sean's mother drops him off, she leaves Trevor with a box of items that belonged to Max, Trevor's brother and Sean's father, who disappeared 10 years before. Sean suddenly takes interest in what Trevor has to say after he tells him about his father, whom he never really had a chance to know. Trevor discovers in the box Max's old baseball glove, a yo-yo, and the novel Journey to the Center of the Earth by Jules Verne. Inside the book Trevor finds notes written by his late brother. Trevor goes to his laboratory to find out more about the notes. There he realizes that he must go to Iceland to investigate for himself.

He intends to have Sean flown back to Canada but relents at Sean's protest and brings Sean along for the adventure. They start by looking for another volcanologist and find his daughter Hanna (portrayed by Anita Briem), the scientist having died years earlier. It turns out that he and Trevor's brother Max were Vernians, a small group who believe the works of Jules Verne to be fact. Hannah offers to help them climb up to the Stag Mountain which has suddenly started sending data again. While hiking the mountain, a lightning storm forces the three into a cave that collapses, leaving them trapped. The group then explores the cave looking for an exit, and they find it is an abandoned mine which was closed after an accident that killed 81 people. They then venture deep into the mine until they reach the end of the tunnels and enter to the bottom of a volcanic tube which is full of precious gems. As they are admiring the gems they realize the floor they're standing on is actually muscovite, a very thin rock formation. Due to their weight, the muscovite breaks and the group falls (for about 2 minutes) thousands of miles through the volcanic tube to the center of the earth, surviving only because the volcanic tube eventually turns into something like a "water slide" which drops them into a lake. There they find that the center of the earth is actually another world but in the same planet, "a world within our world", and they set to explore the place.

Along the way, they find evidence that someone was there 100 years previous. Trevor remarks that the instruments found are Lindenbrook's (a character from the book), hinting that his views of the events of the book being real are changing. They find some of Max's (Trevor's brother and Sean's father) things as well. While Trevor and Sean are going through what they've found, Hannah wanders off and unfortunately discovers Max's body. They bury him on the beach of the underground ocean. Trevor reads a letter to Sean found in Max's journal; they say their goodbyes and embrace.

Trevor figures that they must find a geyser that can send them to the surface, which is located on the other side of the underground ocean, or otherwise the temperature will raise up to 200 degrees, making it impossible to survive. They must reach the geyser in 48 hours or all of the water to create the geyser will have evaporated. They also figure that they must get out before the temperature rises past 135 degrees, which is the limit that the human body can withstand. They begin by crossing the underground ocean, and then the two adults become separated from Sean. Sean's guide is now a little bird who has been present since the trio entered the Center, and it takes him towards the river. After he goes through a path of floating magnetic rocks, he encounters a Tyrannosaurus and Trevor - who desperately is searching for him - finds him. The beast pursues him until he discovers that the ground beneath them is muscovite, the same type as earlier. The Tyrannosaurus falls through the muscovite, creates a massive hole and dies in the process. When they arrive at the geyser, it is all dried up. But they find water on the other side of a wall.

Trevor uses a flare to ignite the magnesium in the wall and causes a geyser to shoot them through Mount Vesuvius in Italy. When they destroy the vineyard of an Italian man, Sean gives him a diamond which he found earlier. Trevor sees that he has many more in his backpack, and he uses them to fund his brother's laboratory. Throughout the adventure, Hannah and Trevor gradually become close and even share a kiss. The film ends on the final day of Sean's visit with Trevor (and now Hannah). As he is leaving their new home, which was purchased with some of the diamonds Sean took from the cave, Trevor hands Sean a copy of the book Atlantis: The Antediluvian World by Ignatius L. Donnelly, suggesting they could maybe hang out during Sean's Christmas break, alluding to a possible sequel

THE LOST WORLD (2001 FILM)

Directed by: Stuart Orme

Written by: A. Conan Doyle (novel) Adrian Hodges

Starring: Bob Hoskins

James Fox

Peter Falk

Release date(s)2001

Running time: 150 min.

Country: U.K. / U.S.A. / Germany

Language: English

The Lost World is a 2001 adaptation of the novel by Arthur Conan Doyle, directed by Stuart Orme and adapted by Adrian Hodges. It was produced by the BBC and broadcast on BBC1 in the UK and A&E in the United States. It consisted of two 75-minute episodes which were first aired in the UK on the 25th and 26th of December, 2001, and in the USA on October 6 and 7, 2002.

Bob Hoskins played Professor Challenger and was supported by James Fox, Peter Falk, Matthew Rhys, Tom Ward and Elaine Cassidy.

Plot

While on a journey through the remote regions of the Amazon rainforest, Challenger (Hoskins) has an animal shot, which turns out to be a prehistoric pterosaur. During a lecture at the London Museum of Natural History, he argues that it is genuine and that he shot it several months ago. The lecturer, Professor Summerlee (Fox) dismisses it as nothing more than a clever hoax, as do several others. Eventually ambitious John Roxton (Ward), a noted hunter and womanizer, and Daily Gazette columnist Edward Malone (Rhys) announce they will volunteer for the expedition.

On the boat, Challenger shows a sarcastic Summerlee and his expedition members a map, drawn up by a Portuguese man called Padre Mendoz who ended up in the remote, uncharted area of Brazil which Challenger claims prehistoric creatures thrive. Most notably, there is a plateau, which would supposedly isolate the inhabitants from the evolutionary mainstream for millions of years. Upon arrival, Roxton begins flirting with Agnes (Cassidy), the niece of Reverend Theo Kerr, a priest who disregards the idea of evolution.

They eventually find the plateau. They cross over a log bridge, which the Reverend suddenly pushes into a deep crevice in an abrupt mood swing, thus leaving them stranded. In the jungle, Edward makes 'friends' with a hypsilophodont, and the stunned group spot an Iguanodon, and then a group of pterosaurs who attack and injure Summerlee.

They retreat to the forest where Edward is scared out of a tree by an ape that, in his words "looked almost human". In the middle of the night, while they are gathered around the campfire whispering about "Who will miss them if they die" they are attacked by a large carnosaur, which is later identified by Summerlee as an allosaur.They then search for and find a large lake in the centre of the plateau which Malone had discovered while up the tree,and he names it "Gladys" while Roxton and the professors rest by the beach. Edward and Agnes walk off along the beach until the Allosaur from last night emerges from the forest and drinks from the lake, but soon notices them as they run into the forest. In the cliffhanger ending of the first episode, the carnivore pursues them through the borders of the forest until they all fall into a pit, where the Allosaur is killed after being impaled on two wooden spikes.

After making their escape, they find out that Challenger and Summerlee have been kidnapped by the ape-men. The apes take them to an enclosed sacrificial chamber, where they are placed on a thick sheet of rock which is covered with blood. The sun shines through a crack and the beasts place Summerlee's head in a groove on the plate of rock, about to smash his head with a large stone when Roxton and the group start shooting all the ape-men. Challenger tries to save the creatures, calling them "The missing link between animal and human" upon leaving the animals territory, the group also rescue an Indian chief's son. The tribe recognizes Challenger as Padre Mendoz - the Portuguese man that returned from the plateau and drew up a map of the area. They are also told of how a man, whom they thought was the Devil, came to visit them and then left, sealing off the cave that was their only route out of the plateau. The two groups cooperate very well together, with Challenger sitting by the chief's side, and Roxton marrying the patriarch's daughter. However, the presence of the ape-men disturb the tribes people but, with Professor Challenger's protection, they remain safe from harm and are kept in a wooden cage/construction on the border of the village.

However, two Allosaurs attack the village after weeks of harmony. After causing much death and destruction, the first Allosaur is killed by Roxton and his Elephant gun but the second, larger Allosaur kills the chief. In an act of kindness, Agnes and Malone set the ape-men loose and they flee back into the jungle. One psychotic ape gets its hands on a knife and keeps an eye on Roxton. Edward Malone eventually kills the larger dinosaur, but is a little late to save the chief and several of the Indians. He is critically injured, and dies in the arms of his son, who blames the white intruders. During the attack, Summerlee blows up the debris blocking their only escape route, and after the chief's son assumes command, the outsiders flee while Roxton stays behind to stall them. The ape with the knife stabs Roxton in the torso, injuring him while the son of the chief shoots the mad ape while it stands atop a rocky mound, growling. Outside, the Reverend comes to block the remaining group's way, intending to kill all of them and seal off the cave again, insisting that the plateau is "Not part of God's kingdom", and calling it "the work of the devil". While struggling with Summerlee, he accidentally shoots himself in the chest and dies.

The explorers go back to London, where the juvenile pterosaur that Challenger brings back escapes. Afterwards, Malone and Summerlee urge Challenger to end the whole affair so that the plateau and its inhabitants can exist in peace; the pterosaur is dismissed as an Amazonian vulture, while the articles Edward sent back are passed off as extracts of a novel he is writing. Edward confesses he loves Agnes, who tells him the same, and they kiss in the great hall of the museum where the crew have been exposed as frauds. In the final scene, Roxton is shown alive and well, and still happily married to Muree.

Bestiary

Allosaurus

Entelodont

Hypsilophodon

Iguanodon

Pteranodon summerlensis

Diplodocus

Brachiosaurus (seen at a distance)

Pithecanthropus challengeris

[edit]Differences from Doyle's novel

This article does not cite any references or sources. Please help improve this article by adding citations to reliable sources. Unverifiable material may be challenged and removed. (August 2008)

In the book, the plateau is in Venezuela. In the 2001 adaptation, it was in Brazil.

The prehistoric lake scene from the book is absent.

In the book, Edward Malone doesn't meet another love interest besides Gladys.

In the book, the Indians deliberately call the Allosaurus to the village, where they kill them and eat them for dinner. In the film, the ape men call the dinosaurs to the human settlement.

The characters Gomez and Zambo - indeed, any of the Indians - are not mentioned. They are replaced by Reverend Theo Kerr, and his niece Agnes.

Following the attack on the campfire by the Megalosaurus in the book, neither Summerlee nor Challenger are immediately able to identify even the family of carnivore that attacked them, whereas Summerlee immediately dubs the animal an allosaur upon being asked by Lord Roxton. Also, the campfire attack is fairly different from the book. In the novel, the group spot the Megalosaurus, and before it has a chance to attack, Roxton scares it off with fire. In the film, the group are completely taken by surprise and the allosaur almost gains the upper hand, before being scared away with fire.

The ape men are present in both the novel and film, but the other humanoid tribe, rather than a prehistoric species, consists of the surviving members of a Portuguese expedition.

In the book, Edward Malone says he will join Roxton on the next expedition to the plateau. In the film, he tentatively offers to Professor Challenger, who says he'll be in touch.

Lord John Roxton escapes the plateau in the book. In the BBC adaptation, he is stabbed by an Ape Man, and supposedly dies. However, at the end of the second episode, we see him still happily married to Muree, the former patriarch's daughter.

The diamonds found in the blue clay in the book do not feature in the mini-series.

Warbirds (2008)

Reviewed by The Foywonder

Staring Jamie Mann, Brian Krause, Tohoru Masmune, Lucy Faust, David Jensen,

Directed by Kevin Gendreau

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Last year the Sci-Fi Channel gave us a movie set during World War 2 about American soldiers and pilots fighting gargoyles and Nazis behind enemy lines starring a cast member of the show "Charmed". This year they're giving us a WW2 creature feature about American soldiers and pilots battling prehistoric pterodons and Japanese soldiers on an island in the South Pacific, also starring a cast member of "Charmed". If the pattern continues then next year Holly Marie Combs should find herself starring in a Sci-Fi Channel original movie about American soldiers and nurses trying to save Pearl Harbor from an attack by dragons.

Warbirds tries to put a bit of a twist on things by introducing a heavy dose of girl power to the mix. That’s about the only twist it puts on tired material. This is just another movie about soldiers on an island battling a generic monster menace.

An all-female B-29 crew who sport military issued hair, make-up, and nail polish - at least that's my guess given the uncanny similarity of their appearances - are assigned a secret transport mission across the South Pacific; along for the ride is a handful of male soldiers under the command of Charmed's Brian Krause, giving a performance that screams "I’m collecting an easy paycheck.”

After something takes out one of their engines, they narrowly manage to put the plane down on a nameless atoll. They'll soon come to discover that this island is also the base of some Japanese soldiers and home to prehistoric pterodons that apparently didn't get the extinction memo.

At least I think they were supposed to be pterodons. Decent CGI, but they looked more like smaller versions of Q, The Winged Serpent than pterodactyls as we know'em. Had they called them dragons and allowed winged reptiles to spit fire most viewers would have never known the difference.

Heck, even the Japanese soldiers in this film didn't seem believably Japanese for the time. The Japanese commander at one point actually scolds his men for being too hasty to want to give their lives in battle? I kid you not.

In between griping and romance and plotting to escape the island, the ladies will occasionally take to the air, whether flying leftover Japanese Zeroes or their repaired B-29, allowing for some uninspired aerial dogfighting with the pteradons. Entirely too many cockpit headshots of the women pilots who, like all women on the telephone, simply cannot stop chattering amongst themselves over their radios, jabbering non-stop during their life or death air battles delivering stilted dialogue, damn near every line of which ends with someone saying "Over." It almost becomes comical after awhile - almost.

Writer-director Kevin Gendreau's seemed to be trying to capture the lingo of the era and even recreate some of the snappy banter heard in movies from the 1940's but neither he or his actors were up to the task; in part because everyone in Warbirds came across like they were just going through the motions, but also because nobody sounded authentic. It's not just the acting or dialogue that lacks authenticity, either; nobody even lights up a cigarette because, as we all know from having watched Saving Private Ryan, nobody smoked during the 1940s, least of all soldiers at war.

All in all, Warbirds is a nifty concept but not much of a movie. It's pretty mundane even by Sci-Fi Channel monster movie standards, not particularly bad, but very underwhelming and suffering from a serious lack of enthusiasm.

About the only surprise was my being wrong in my immediate prediction that the American and Japanese soldiers would be forced to work together in order to survive the pteradon onslaught. Not quite. Instead the Japanese soldiers end up being painted in a rather sympathetic light after it's discovered the B-29's secret cargo is the first A-bomb being delivered so it can be dropped on Japan. The movie kind of paints the US in a bad light over our atom bomb being a weapon of mass genocide. Harry S. Truman would disagree.

The most entertaining moment of Warbirds for me came not from the movie itself, but from a graphic that appeared on the bottom of the screen informing viewers that the Sci-Fi Channel is now available in HD. Yowzer! Now we'll all be able to view these great Xbox 360 cut scene computer effects in all their high definition glory. Call your cable company now!

Nessie Getting Nasty?

Bigfoot's been going on quite the cinematic killing spree of late, but what about the Loch Ness Monster? I don't think Nessie's killed anyone on film since 1981's Loch Ness Horror. And don't bring up 2001's Beneath Loch Ness, either. Nessie got killed by the even larger prehistoric predator that had taken refuge in the famed Scottish loch so that one doesn't count.

Dammit, we need a killer Loch Ness Monster movie! Get me the Sci-Fi Channel on the phone, pronto! What's that? They're already on it? Loch Ness Terror, you say? Hooray!

Ask and ye shall receive.

Okay, folks, now choke on this plot synopsis:

"James Murphey is a rugged cryptozoologist, who thirty years earlier, during a trip to Loch Ness, Scotland, had a fatal encounter with the fabled "Nessie" creature that killed his father, and left James with deep facial scar. Twenty years later, James is hunting for Nessie, when his search leads him to the sleepy town of Pike Island, Ashburn, on Lake Superior. Hiring Josh Riley as his guide, James and Josh bond over their mutual scientific interests and deceased fathers, while James tries to convince Josh's mother, Sheriff Karen Riley, that the 60-foot plesiosaur is killing and breeding."

I'm so confused. So the movie is called Loch Ness Terror but it's actually about a monster lurking within one of North America's Great Lakes? Did the Loch Ness Monster migrate to the US-Canada border? Does Champ know that Nessie has crossed the Atlantic and is trying to horn in on his "Most Famous Lake Monster of North America" status? It's like Nessie has suddenly turned into Microsoft and is hellbent to run all the competition out of business.

And what's the timeline on this again? Thirty years earlier? Twenty years later? Huh? Now I'm even more confused.

Something that loopy sounding can only mean it’s a Sci-Fi Channel original movie. Brian Krause, he of "Charmed" and Stephen King's Sleepwalkers fame, stars as the rugged cryptozoologist looking to unleash a little Loch Ness deathwish. Directing duties fell to Paul Ziller, a Sci-Fi Channel regular who was also at the helm for Snakehead Terror, Swarmed, and Android Apocalypse.

And, yes, Loch Ness Terror was shot on location in Canada.

Sci-Fi has yet to schedule a premiere date but I'll go out on a limb and guess later this summer or early fall. I for one am dying to find out what the Loch Ness-Lake Superior connection turns out to be.

- The Foywonder

2008 Will [WAS] be Dino-Rific!

What once was old is new again, especially if we're talking about rampaging dinosaurs - movies about rampaging dinosaurs, that is. To be more specific, Sci-Fi Channel original movies about rampaging dinosaurs. Sci-Fi will be unleashing the extinct predators by land, air, and sea for our viewing pleasure in 2008.

With a title that sounds tailor-made for a lucha-themed punk band, Tyrannosaurus Azteca looks poised to combine Ray Harryhausen's classic The Valley of Gwangi with Mel Gibson's Apocalypto by pitting gold-hungry Spanish Conquistadors against angry Aztecs and even hungrier T-Rex's. Set in 1519 A.D., Hernan Cortes leads a scounting party of thirteen fellow conquistadors through hostile Aztec territories just inland from the Gulf of Mexico into a remote valley that turns out to be home to some Tyrannosaurus Rex that the Aztecs worship as gods. If you know anything about the history of the land now known as Mexico and how Sci-Fi Channel original movies tend to play out then you can probably ascertain what direction things go in from there.

Directed by Brian Trenchard-Smith, he of Night of the Demons 2, Leprechaun 4: In Space, and Megiddo: Omega Code 2 fame, expect to see Tyrannosaurus Azteca on Sci-Fi sometime later in 2008. If you need any extra incentive to watch, what would you say if I told you they've grossly miscast former "Beverly Hills 90210" goofball Ian Ziering as a certain historically famous Spanish Conquistador? Yeah; the blonde guy with the toothy grin is playing Hernan Cortes. I guess being able to dance the "Pase Doble" on "Dancing with the Stars" convinced the producers he could pass for a 16th century Spaniard.

March of 2007 saw the Sci-Fi Channel premiereReign of the Gargoyles; that one pitting World War 2 pilots against demonic gargoyles unleashed by unscrupulous Nazis - a cast member of the show "Charmed" co-starred. Now the Sci-Fi Channel will be giving us another WW2 themed monster movie also starring a former cast member of "Charmed". Sometime in 2008 we'll get Brian Krause in Warbirds, from writer/director Kevin Gendreau, in which members of the greatest generation square off with a menace from the prehistoric age - pteradons, to be precise.

Set during the final days of World War 2, a band of WASPs (Women's Air Service Corps) are enlisted to ferry a top-secret weapon to an American airbase in the Pacific, only to get swept up in a violent storm that forces them down onto a deserted Pacific island. Not so deserted after all; they find themselves having to contend with pteradons, flying dinosaurs that devastated what was left of the Japanese Imperial Air Force. I'm assuming there are some male soldiers also along for the ride and a case of Brian Krause in drag.

But Mr. Krause can't seem to get enough Sci-Fi Channel dino flicks and so he's going to be kicking off the Sci-Fi Channel original movie year of 2008 with this Saturday's premiere of Beyond Loch Ness, the latest aquatic creature feature from Snakehead Terror director Paul Ziller. This time Brian Krause plays a cigarillo-smoking cryptozoologist hunting the Loch Ness Monster that he watched kill his father thirty years earlier. Somehow, for reasons I can only hope the movie explains, his vengeance-minded Nessie hunt takes him to a small town on Lake Superior where a 60-foot plesiosaur has begun killing and breeding. Well, technically speaking, going from Scotland to the US-Canadian border means they will be beyond Loch Ness.

A trailer for Beyond Loch Ness - back when it was originally titled Loch Ness Terror - has been up on YouTube for a couple months (see it below) and I must confess to being taken in by it. The CGI doesn't look too shabby for a Sci-Fi original and the pudgy little baby versions of the monster (that doesn't look like any plesiosaurs I know of) are quite funny to see in action - sorta like a homicidal versions of The Waterhorse.

And still waiting in the wings is the sequel the world has been clamoring for: Planet Raptor: Raptor Island 2. This sequel to the impossibly lame Raptor Island (review) looks to have next to nothing to do with its predecessor, what with it being set in the year 2066 and all. Long story short: soldiers in space happen upon a planet populated by vicious velociraptors; you can insert the rest of the blanks. The cast includes the likes of Ted Raimi, Vanessa Angel, Steven Bauer, Musetta Vander, and Peter Jason. I do believe the film is currently available on DVD in some former Soviet republics. When we'll get to see it is anyone's guess at this point. But if and when we do, no doubt a Sci-Fi Channel premiere will herald its coming.

It will truly be a dino-riffic 2008 on the Sci-Fi Channel.

When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth (1970)

“Ooooga Booga…” Imogen Hassall as Ayak, Magda Konopka as Ulido and Victoria Vetri as Sanna in When Dinosaurs Ruled the Earth. “No dialogue, just a lot of grunts” said Ballard.

Reign of Fire

By Jeff Koyen

Note: This article originally appeared in issue 18 of the Prague Pill.

Dragons – not nukes – and the end of the world.

Reign of Fire

Directed by Rob Bowman

Written by Gregg Chabot & Kevin Peterka and Matt Greenberg

Starring Christian Bale, Matthew McConaughey, Izabella Scorupco

Reign of Fire is Mad Max by way of Dungeons & Dragons. Not Dungeons & Dragons the disgraceful kid movie released two years ago, but the original role-playing game. D&D: the ultimate symbol of smart-guy disenfranchisement. An evergreen punch line that calls to mind a particular breed of teen nerdboy spending his weekends rolling for damage. And Mad Max: second only to The Blood of Heroes on the list of best post-apocalypse movies, and one of the few movies with a sequel as good as its predecessor. Clearly, director Rob Bowman and his scriptwriters respect both the fantasy and post-apoc genres.

The high concept is thus: What if dragons are real and were reawakened in the modern world? The film opens when a construction team punches into an uncharted cavern deep beneath the streets of London. Quinn, the scrappy son of the forewoman, is on hand and asks to hop into the hole to investigate the dank, creepy HR Giger-inspired chamber. Inside: an honest-to-god, fire-breathing dragon. Quinn’s mother dies in this first dragon encounter, with a good portion of humanity soon to follow.

Twenty years later, dragons rule the earth, and Quinn (Christian Bale) leads a small group of survivors who have turned an old castle into a stronghold. In a nearby valley, they carefully cultivate food, with Quinn trying desperately to convince his starving community not to harvest too soon. Do not feed from the crop until the seeds are mature enough, else we will all starve to death next season, he warns. They are ever watching the sky, and have no hope but to outlast the dragons as they deplete their own food supply, i.e., humanity.

In some movies, you shouldn’t see the bad guys because it’s a letdown. Signs fell apart completely when the mysterious aliens appeared early as lanky men in green leotards. Or take the 1998 Godzilla remake. Almost every monster scene was jittery, dark and rainy because it’s quicker and easier and therefore cheaper to render the computer-generated effects with less detail; somehow, the new American Godzilla was no more realistic than the original Japenese guy in a rubber suit. The Reign of Fire dragons are not hidden in twilight; they are full-frame, day and night. They are as beautifully rendered and as concrete as the best dinosaurs in Jurassic Park.

They’re also bad-ass. These are not fat-bellied, bulky majestics, tossing riddles and verse to frightened hobbits. They are not regal and magical. They are lean and swift omnivores – fire-breathing locusts that feed on death. They killed the dinosaurs by burning them and eating the ash. They soon rendered the planet barren and starved themselves. The strongest went into hibernation.

Once awakened, the small brood reproduce like insects and spread across the globe, consuming everything in their path. The fall of mankind is told by magazine clippings from Quinn’s scrapbook. The first sightings were treated like UFOs, but soon cities were in ruin. The Eiffel Tower and Big Ben are shown swarmed by dragons like bats fluttering around a gothic cathedral. They are the ultimate plague.

Enter the foil: Matthew McConaughey as Van Zan, a brusque, arrogant, cigar-chomping American rough rider, come to British soil to track down the granddaddy of all dragons. He rolls up in a tank with a unit of commandoes and a talent for dragon slaying. The pumped McConaughey – known first for Dazed and Confused and more recently for being arrested naked in his house for playing the bongos a bit too loudly – is pure America. He’s the would-be hero who shows up without being invited, determined to rescue the locals and save the world. Van Zan and his team are heading to London to slay the only male of the species, or so they think.

Reign of Fire is imaginative escapism. At times, even intelligent and imaginative escapism. You’ll see a dragon and a helicopter in a dogfight. You’ll see a man with an American Southern accent wielding a halberd. You’ll see dragons perched on the crumbling spires of a destroyed London skyline. It’s a 100-minute, pure-hearted action movie that, for once, doesn’t take a dragon-sized dump on its audience.

It's really the dragons that are most interesting about this game. All the while players are defending or chasing dragons, they're circling and firing at characters. They appear in several forms. The smallest of them are called Jackals, and they are wingless little creatures resembling Raptors. Apparently, as the dragons grow in size, they evolve from land-based creatures to massive winged beasts, which doesn't make too much sense because there are larger land-based dragons than some of the flying ones. The second land-based character is a massive, fledgling, fire-breathing dragon that quickly crawls around and breaths deadly fire on gamers. There is a small, quick airborne dragon as well as a massive, monster vulture attacker as well. Players will find variations on all of them as they progress through the game, and all are well modeled and textured.

On the other hand, the dragon levels are more fun to play. They control relatively well, with a bit of a learning curve, and they revolve around destroying a whole lot of stuff. Dragons deliver straight lines of fire for closer range attacks or they spout out long-distance fireball attacks. Dragons can also pick up human vehicles, which is a blast. They pick them up and drop them, a tactic around which a few levels are built. The dragon levels are undoubtedly more fun, yet still not explosively great -- just moderately good entertainment.

MICHAEL CRICHTON: SCIENCE INSPIRED HIS FICTION

“I don't want to just make it up": Author Michael Crichton, whose novels effortlessly blended science and suspense, died Tuesday after a battle with cancer. He was 66.

By Bob Minzesheimer, USA TODAY

He scared millions of us by cloning dinosaurs with prehistoric DNA in Jurassic Park and by unleashing a virus from outer space in The Andromeda Strain.

But author Michael Crichton, who died Tuesday November 4, at age 66, was more than just the king of the cinematic techno-thriller whose books and screenplays became 13 movies.

He also created ER, one of TV's longest-running dramas. As a movie producer and director, he pioneered the use of computer-generated special effects.

In best-selling novels, he raised contrarian questions about global warming and sexual harassment.

And all that after graduating from Harvard Medical School.

In a statement Wednesday, his family said Crichton died in Los Angeles after a "private" battle with cancer.

His books sold 150 million copies worldwide. He never won a Pulitzer or was even nominated for a National Book Award, but did have a newly discovered dinosaur named for him in 2002: the Crichtonsaurus bohlini.

At his best, he was a master at blending fact and fantasy. He was as much a researcher as a novelist who popularized technical topics and put the science back into science fiction.

"I don't want to just make it up," he told USA TODAY in an interview in 1996. "I'd rather have something with the awkward contours of real events."

In Twister (1995), he explored the violence of nature. Sphere (1987) dealt with black holes. Rising Sun (1992) was about international economics, back when Japan seemed to be a threat.

At 6-foot-9, Crichton was hard to miss. In 1995, Time crowned him "The Hit Man" in a cover story about his commercial success in books and movies.

His breakthrough novel was The Andromeda Strain (1969), but his biggest hit was Jurassic Park (1990). Both it and its sequel, The Lost World (1995), were turned into blockbuster movies.

When he was writing the original novel, he was asked what he was doing. He replied, "I'm writing the most expensive movie ever made."

"That was said as a joke," he said later. "I thought, 'Who can make this?' This was in the late '80s. A hundred and fifty million? Maybe. Two-year-shooting script? Ridiculous. Out of the question."

Directed by Steven Spielberg, Jurassic Park went on to make $915 million worldwide. With $357 million in North American ticket sales, it's the 13th-highest-grossing movie of all time. In all, Crichton's books and screenplays generated $1.3 billion domestically and $2.8 billion worldwide.

The adaptations lost some box-office steam late in his career (the $80 million Timeline, about time-traveling graduate students from Yale, earned just $19 million in 2003), but Crichton was one of the most powerful writers in Hollywood.

He wrote and directed 1973's Westworld, about a Wild West theme park gone haywire. It pioneered the use of computer-generated special effects.

He mined his own medical training to create ER, which made George Clooney a star and is now in its 15th and final season.

"One of the things that distinguishes that show from other television shows is the degree to which it is based on real stories," Crichton said. "Viewers can tell."

His novel Airframe (1996), a technological whodunit about a midair accident, was triggered when he noticed a crew struggling to close a plane's door.

That got him thinking: "This is nothing but a big machine that someone made. I had never thought of it that way before."

The novel, which questioned air safety, also attacks TV disaster coverage for its focus on emotions at the cost of information. And that prompted a question in an interview with USA TODAY:

Was it ironic that ER's creator was complaining about TV's superficiality?

"Where's the connection?" he snapped in response. "Because ER is successful, I should think TV is wonderful? ER is entertainment; I'm talking about news. Once, those were very separate things. Now they're not, and that's part of the problem."

He seemed to enjoy stirring up controversy with his fiction.

Feminists didn't like Disclosure (1994), in which a male executive sues his female superior for sexual harassment. It was turned into a movie starring Michael Douglas and Demi Moore.

Environmentalists attacked State of Fear (2004), which questioned whether global warming was a major threat. It was a novel, but it won The American Association of Petroleum Geologists Journalism Award and praise from President Bush, who hosted Crichton at the White House.

He was born Oct. 23, 1942, in Chicago and raised in Long Island, N.Y. His father was a journalist. "So it seemed like a normal occupation, to sit down and type something as your job," Crichton told the British newspaper The Guardian. "I was the weird kid who wrote extra assignments the teacher didn't ask for.

"I just did it because I liked writing so much. I was tall and gangly and awkward and I needed to escape, I guess."

His writing career began at 14, when he had an article published in the Travel section of The New York Times. He helped pay his way through medical school by writing mysteries, including A Case of Need, written under the pen name Jeffrey Hudson, which won the 1969 Edgar Award for Best Novel from the Mystery Writers of America.

He was known as a workaholic. He was married five times and divorced four. His fourth wife, Anne-Marie Martin, publicly complained after their divorce that his work habits left her feeling abandoned: "'It's like living with a body and Michael is somewhere else."

He is survived by his wife, Sherri, and only child, a daughter, Taylor, 19.

He cited his major influences as Arthur Conan Doyle, Mark Twain and Alfred Hitchcock. As a novelist, his plots were often better than his writing. But Crichton didn't seem bothered that he was more popular with readers than critics.

He said his primary goal in writing books or making movies or TV shows was to "entertain people. It's fun to manipulate people's feelings and to be manipulated."

As for critics, he said, "Every critic assumes he's a code-breaker; the writer makes a code and the critic breaks it. And it doesn't work that way at all. As a mode of working, you need to become very uncritical.