Conference bookie::movies

    I'm a dinosaur fan from way back, and am looking forward to this movie
    (if only for the amusement-park value!). The book was so-so; a really
    neat idea, but badly muddled with uninteresting characters and
    unnecessary plot devices - why mess around with all that stuff when you
    have _dinosaurs_??? But the book seemed to have been written with a
    screenplay in mind, so I wasn't surprised when word went out that the
    film was being made.
    
    Some previews of the film aired a few weeks ago on the
    entertainment-news shows, and while it's hard to tell from the
    segments, it looks... well, predictable. ("At least they can't get into
    the compound," gasps Cannon Fodder II. Cut to shot of door handle
    turning.) But the dinos, what was shown of them, looked quite good, and
    if they get enough screen time (and don't get anthropomorphized too
    much - that door-handle clip was a bit too reminiscent of Jack
    Nicholson in "The Shining"), could be very impressive.
    
    And if it turns out to be really bad, I'll have a fine time panning it,
    so either way I figure I'll come out ahead. ;-)
    
    -b

    Gee, the promotion reminds me of the publicity surrounding _Dune_ ...

    RE.2
    
    that it does!
    

    Yeah, but "Jurassic Park" (the book) isn't in the same galaxy as "Dune"
    (the book); turning the former into a movie won't cost them anything in
    character development or story line, because there was so little to
    start with. ;-)
    
    Whether the "Jurassic" effects live up to their billing is something
    else again...
    
    -b

    Stars Jeff Goldblum & Laura Dern
    Score by John Williams
    Dinosaur effects by Stan Winston

    Might be good!

    -=- Paul

    Also stars Sam Neill, Richard Attenborough and two unknowns (Joseph
    Mazzello and Arian Richards) as the kids.
    
    Also on the effects team are Dennis Muren and Phil Tippet.
    
    I read the book when it first came out and enjoyed it, even though the
    characters and situations echoed what you'd see in a 70's disaster
    flick.  As to the film, I expect it will look great; I believe it's
    budget is/was pushing $80M.  My biggest fear is how Spielberg will
    handle the kids.  It could be the difference between another "Jaws" or
    another "Hook"...
    
    But the movie comes out on June 11th so we're likely to get a lot of
    hype before then, but so far, it hasn't matched that of "The Last
    Action Hero".  In any case, grains of salt in large quantities may need
    to be appled...
    
    - Skip

    Actually, the screenplay came out before the book ... my cousin is a
    screenwriter and his agent called him with news that the writer of this
    screenplay, who was a friend of my cousin's, had sold it for $1M to
    Spielberg.  The writer was working as a behind-the-scenes camera man
    and had been working on this concept for years.  He's quite young and
    his future is VERY rosy at this point!
    
    Leslie

    I wonder whether there will be any tie-in between Jurassic Park and
    the opening night of Boston Pops this year.  It's Williams' last
    year as conductor and Spielberg's supposed to be involved in the
    concert in some way...hmmmmm.
    
    					cathy
    

    re: Williams and the Pops tie-in
    
    Well, this year Richard Dreyfuss will be emcee opening night at the
    Pops.  Seeing as Dreyfuss starred in three Spielberg-directed films
    which were also scored by Williams ("Jaws", "Close Encounters" and
    "Always"), a tie-in with Spielberg is very likely.  In fact, I believe
    part of the program will feature Williams' music from Spielberg films.
    
    And since Williams had wielded the baton in Boston, the Pops has had a
    recent Williams work as part of their program (often times to the
    consternation of some members of the orchestra).  This year should be
    no exception.
    
    Hmmm... kind of a long-winded way to say, "Yeah, they'll play something
    from 'Jurassic Park'..."
    
    - Skip

    
    ..This month's issue of Starlog, a Sci-fi mag has a 4-5 page spread on
    this, interviews & pictures etc.
    
      Dave
    
    

    I read something in the paper yesterday that said even though "Jurassic
    Park" is set to open June 11th, Steven Spielberg has yet to see the
    completed film or heard the film's soundtrack by John Williams.  No
    problem, Spielberg's now in Poland filming "Schindler's List" so he'll
    hear it in Paris this week when it's shipped over there...
    
    Sheesh.
    
    The article also referred to last-minute touches on "Sliver" (new
    thriller with Sharon Stone) and Arnie's "The Last Action Hero".
    
    - Skip

    The book started off great, and really flopped, IMO.  (I couldn't put
    the book down, based upon the exciting premise, and had the author
    force me to become annoyed...)

    I wonder how Stevie will handle the nastier scenes.  (Lots of
    disembowelment goin' on in the park)  If he totally wimps out and
    flashes away to splashes of red paint and crunching sounds, he may
    kill the flick.  If he doesn't, the kids won't come.

    If Jurasic was a horror/sci-fi movie it may stand a chance (with some
    plot rework), if its the newest "Goonies" he gonna get clobbered.

    Chip

    
    He better have somebody getting chomped by a dinosaur. Even the
    Godzilla and 60's sci-fi did that. Then again, they didn't have the FX
    of today.
    
    Dave
    

    According to a friend of a friend who is working on the special effects
    for the film, they've got lots of very grisly and graphic
    dino-chomping.
    
    Enjoy,
    
    - Dave

    Last night, "Entertainment Tonight" had a brief segment on "Jurassic
    Park" and they showed some short scenes of the dinosaurs, including the
    T. Rex.  They looked pretty damn good.  I only hope the rest of the
    film measures up...
    
    - Skip

    
    
    I gotta say they have hyped this movie SO much I'm already sick of it
    and it's not even released yet!
                                   Natalie

    
    
    I don't want to spoil anything, but don't go to this movie expecting to
    see the book played out on screen.  Effects were better than I
    expected.  Slow begining I thought, they had a tough time I think
    trying to get the scientific premise explained in layman's terms.  But
    once the real action starts, all I can say is hang on.  The main thing
    I did not like about the film was the way it ended....
    
    

    Well against all reason I went to the 12:15 sneak preveiw last night.
    I enjoy myself the movie kept interest for the complete 2 hours. The 
    dinosaurs were great. Don't go expecting the book. It starts like the
    book but, it looks like they figured the book ending would take too much 
    time so they cut the movie about half way through and rewrote the ending. 
    Then rewrote the beginning so the facts matched the ending. 
       The theme of the book is intacted in the spirit. Jeff
    Goldblum(sp) was great as the choasition and the others did a god job
    too. There are some funny points and great twists but the ending was
    stupid and left quite a few loose ends. Warning to parrent this movie
    was recut not to get an R for violence and blood it shows. This movie
    has the most blood and violence I have seen in a pg-13. 
                     Jeff Peters

    NPR critic Tom Shales says this is a fun movie.  Very well done
    technically and the two kids do superbly.  He wasn't so kind with most
    of the adults, and says the beginning is a bit ho-hum, but overall it's
    a great time.  Where there is blood and gore, he says, it's only there
    briefly and the show moves on.
    
      John (who hasn't yet seen it, so has no comment.  Yet.)

Hmm, I went last night, and saw only very minimal amounts of blood. 
Violence, yes, no argument there, but very little blood.

Incidentally, heartily recommended.

    When I said it was the most blood and violence I had seen in pg-13 movie,
    I was talking mostly about the violence and the quality of violence.
    There is no cartoon violence in this move. I agree where there is blood
    it is quick and the movie does move on.
                          Jeff Peters

Yeah, but did everyone notice that they shaved Laura Dern's chest and
back for the movie?  Usually very hairy, not sure I like that.

:-)

    Great dinosaurs, but...
    
    Dialog was often painful for me to listen to (speaches of the
    form "Man was not meant to know...");
    
    Acting a bit wooden;
    
    Human characterization minimal;
    
    Too much preaching ("It's not nice to mess with genes" multiple
    times); 
    
    Cute kids.  Not as bad as "Goonies", but they were on screen
    too much and did little but screech;  Bag the "he doesn't want
    kids" sub-plot, Steve!
    
    Dumb "suspense" set-ups (e.g., the kid is on the electric fence/cut
    to hands turning on the fences/cut back to kid/cut to hands/...);
    
    Clumsy exposition of the scientific background: even for a lay 
    audience I think it's wasted time--the PR has already done this;
    
    "Planet of the morons" actions _before_the_emergency_: we were told
    several times that the builder had "spared no expense", and saw 
    evidence that this was true--yet they had only a small number (2? 3) 
    self-propelled (gasoline) jeeps, and those had no more armor than
    roll bars.  Why was there no set of HumVees or prepared armored
    vehicles, given that the park keepers drove around inside the
    dinosaur enclaves routinely?  Why were there no major arms around?
    Why were there no passive barriers (who would _ever_ design a system
    that only worked when power was available)?  Why were the circut
    breakers in a different building from the main switch?  Why was the
    helicopter pad so far away (how do they expect to get people to the
    park)?  And how could the "secret" ever have been concealed so long?
    By internal evidence they'd been active for several years, and using
    local labor--and yet _nobody_knows_ about the dinosaurs--and the
    list could go on;
    
    Loose ends: what was the Jeff Goldblum character's function?  "Chaos"
    intro, mild flirtation, but otherwise he never lead anywhere plotwise;
    
    Stupidities: big things falling through trees don't go like that: they
    wind up being pushed away from the trunk as branches bend and break.
    Large animals are not safe to pet, even if they are herbivores;
    
    "Can't believe it"s: the kids outrun velociraptors.  The velociraptors
    were the "wolf" equivalent.  They wouldn't have been that slow.  Ditto
    the resort to "dino ex machina" at the end.  Yecch.
    
    Personal gripes: the dinosaurs weren't right--I've been convinced by
    Bakker and others that they had more muscle than we saw in the film:
    e.g. Triceratops looked more like a rhino, as that "frill" is the 
    attachment point for jaw and neck muscles;
    
    Best bit: herd of Gallimimus running.
    
    Bottom line: I loved the dinosaurs.  I wanted to see more, but the
    screen kept showing me human faces in close-up instead.
    
    		-John Bishop

         I saw it Saturday evening with my family and we all loved it.
    Believe it when they say it may be too intense for young children. My
    nine year old son nearly had to be taken from the theater. He was
    shaking and looking away but did peak occasionally during the most
    intense scenes. The special effects were terrific. The T Rex will scare
    the hell out of anyone.
    
         I thought it did justice to what I thought was a very good
    thriller book. The characters were not super heroes, just ordinary
    people, as in the book. Sam Neill, Laura Dern, and Jeff Goldblum were
    good selections for the characters. Richard Attenboro(sp?) and Jeff
    Goldblum were especially good I thought. And I also thought the kids
    were good.
    
    
         I am not usually a sci-fi fan but I highly recommend this movie.
    So go, relax (if you can keep from sitting on the edge of your seat),
    and enjoy. And remember--no little children or they will keep you up
    all night with nightmares.
    
            Mike
    

    Well here in England it comes out on the 30 july . From what people are
    saying about it , it looks like the people at the censorship dpt.
    realy screwed things up agine in a major way , it probabley would of 
    been a better film if they left it all in .
    Generaly Speilburg makes some good films , but then things changed
    escpecilly if there are kids pre-15 age who seem to be the target for
    these type of films . Lets hope they dont cut it even more for the U.K
    showing , if so then The last action hero would be on the top of my
    watching list .
    
    Can someone please put like a synopsis or teesers on the film .
    
    
    
       CHEERS .......ED..

    I really enjoyed this film with some reservations.  The beginning of
    the movie was great and showed a tremendous amount of potential, both
    for character and plot development, but when the film shifts gears
    about midway through, all that goes out the window in favor of thrills,
    and fast action.  Myself, my wife and a friend of ours all walked out
    and said about the same thing, it looked like a film written by
    technicians.   The effects were tremendous, the sets were gorgeous, and
    the filming was technically flawless, but they may just as well have
    sent grade school science teachers in as world class paleologists for
    all that aspect of the characters was exploited.  I also found it
    disturbing how Speilberg tells you what is going to happen, and how, long
    before it actually does; seems like he does this to lessen the shock on
    kids.
    
    I recommend this film with one reservation:  do not believe all the
    hype, go into the movie expecting an action/horror/thriller, not some
    voyage of discovery.  I enjoyed it, but was a little dissappointed that
    I did not enjoy it more.  maybe I just expect too much.
    
    Andrew
    

    Agree with most of the points in .23 - but I had a thundering good time
    at the movie despite the flaws. (I went to a midnight showing to "duck
    the crowds," but it turned out that a couple of hundred other people
    had the same idea; still, it was fun to see a movie in a _full_ theater
    with an enthusiastic audience.) 
    
    Basically, if it weren't for the dinosaurs, this would have been a real
    laugher - stilted and corny, loaded with "but why did they _do_ that"s.
    There were several popular Jiffi-Suspense techniques, including the "if
    it's not in camera range, the characters can't see it until the camera
    pans around to where it is," even when "it" is something incredibly
    vast that _must_ have been in plain sight; and there was the "monster
    demonstrates incredible strength and speed to show how dangerous it is,
    and then when it's menacing one of the designated survivors (anyone
    likeable and/or anyone under 18) it seems to run out of energy" bit.
    [This was most obvious in the final chase sequence featuring the
    velociraptors, which - despite a lot of action, neat effects, and a few
    "gotcha" scenes that had me leaning back in my chair - was the least
    satisfying of the whole movie for me.]
    
    But the good parts... oh, those were something wonderful indeed. The
    first sighting of the brachiosaur had me in awe; I was gaping just like
    the actors were, and actually got a little teary, it was so neat. And
    the tyrannosaurus! Oh, my! I want one, I want one - except that I bet
    they're hard to house-train, and expensive to feed, and they probably
    slip their leashes all the time and go eating out of the neighbors'
    garbage cans [or cars, or houses, or stockyards... ;-)]. And the
    "stampede" sequence was marvelous - the effects were such that they
    simply didn't show, as if the film crew had simply gone somewhere and
    found a herd of galli-whatevers and spooked them. I didn't even stop to
    think how it was managed until I read something about the special
    effects people using explosive charges to make the (real-life) trees
    fall over when the (animated) dinosaurs came charging by; the
    integration was great!
    
    In general, I found the outdoor dinosaur scenes better; once it got to
    the 'raptors-in-the-kitchen, not only did the effects look too
    "effect-ish," but the whole thing began to feel like "Disney Does
    Aliens". [There was a strong "Disney" feel to the whole movie, most of
    which was probably deliberate, though whether as homage or as a nasty
    crack I'm not sure; maybe both. ;-) The animated DNA film and the
    little "how we did it" ride could have been lifted from half a dozen
    Epcot tours, and there were lots of quips (verbal and visual) about all
    the merchandising and the behind-the-scenes maneuvering.]
    
    If I were to review this for "Parents" magazine, I'd put lots of
    warnings on it - younger kids might find the violence (most of it
    implied, to be completed off-screen, which of course merely heightens
    the suspense) nightmare-inducing [the _most_ nightmare-inducing
    sequence, though, involves no dinosaurs; just a Wagoneer and a tree],
    and older kids don't need to see yet another movie where the victims
    are carefully selected by degree of badness and unlikeability. [Note
    that the people we get to _see_ being killed are the bad guy - who's
    been set up to be incredibly annoying and unlikeable, in addition to
    being "bad" - and the less-than-likeable lawyer-cum-bean-counter; when
    some "good guys" are killed, it happens off screen.] Ticked me off, and
    it was so unnecessary...
    
    Nits: There's still room for improvement in the special effects
    department; while most of the outdoor dino-interactions worked well,
    some of the indoor ones didn't, and I seldom had the feeling that there
    were a couple of large, active predators bounding around - the noises
    weren't right, the tables they jumped on didn't bend or rattle or slide
    as I would have expected, that sort of thing. Minor, but it adds up.
    Oh, and a personal nit: the decision to make the rex's footsteps
    "thunder," whereas the brachiosaurs - who outweigh the
    roughly-elephant-sized rex by a factor of 8 or 10 - didn't "thunder"
    much at all, even when dropping back to all fours from a treetop lunge.
    (The rex didn't thunder consistently, either, and showed a remarkable
    ability to sneak up on people when the director thought that would make
    a better picture.)
    
    Good points: I thought Dern and Neill did quite well with some sparse,
    thankless roles. Dern got saddled with that awful "you really ought to
    like kids" bit, but Neill held out a respectable time; when he used his
    talisman 'raptor claw to scare the dickens out of an obnoxious brat
    early on, I jumped firmly into his camp. And both he and Dern never got
    into quibbles about who should or shouldn't be doing what; if the
    situation called for them to go seperate ways they just did it. And the
    kids, while a bit overly "spunky and cute," _did_ get to take some
    serious punishment, be scared and hysterical, and get over it in time
    to "be survivors" (though things got way too pat at the end). [They did
    not, blessedly, save the day all by themselves.]
    
    Following may contain spoilers re the ending:	[spoiler warning]
    
    
    Favorite goofy scene: the "dino-mobile" near the end. That felt a lot
    like a scene from "Bedknobs and Broomsticks," or maybe "Mary Poppins"
    (there were a LOT of Disney references here - intentional or "just me,"
    I don't know), and while it was so silly it rather broke the train of
    suspense, I kind of liked it anyway.
    
    Least favorite goofy scene: the lawyer-on-the-throne. Seemed like an
    effort at a cheap laugh, calculated to defuse what could have been one
    of the nastier moments had the film not been trying to avoid an R; it
    seemed to imply, "this is an unlikeable guy in a ludicrous situation,
    so what happens to him just doesn't count". Reminded me of a scene from
    "Baby," (a Disney dinosaur flick), wherein we make the audience of
    children laugh with glee at a violent death...
    
    Favorite credit: "Goat and Body Parts". 'nuff said.
    
    Absolutely favorite scene: toss-up between the initial brachiosaur
    sighting, the "brachiosaurs singing in the twilight" scene, and almost
    everything the T-rex did, especially lunging after the Jeep.
    
    Most puzzling plot point: 
    
    How the <bleep> did the rex get into the building for the (aptly named)
    dino ex machina ending? The thing's been demonstrated to be not very
    bright, so figuring out doors would seem beyond it, even if it could
    have fit through them. If it had simply knocked down a wall I'd have
    believed it, but of course somebody ought to have noticed something
    like that, even while swinging from the disintegrating fossil-mobile.
    [I did, of course, cheer when the rex grabbed the 'raptor, since the
    'raptors had never endeared themselves to me. They should have been
    like wolves, smart and swift; instead they came across like street
    toughs out for kicks.] 
    
    Speaking of kicks - how come the 'raptors didn't get to use their big
    claws much? After all the setup, via Neill's character waving that claw
    around and describing the damage it could do, I was really let down
    that it never came into play. Sure, with the ratings restriction we
    might not have been able to see the things disembowel something, but
    they could have slit chain-link or ripped open a wall or at least
    lashed out and narrowly missed somebody, just to remind us what they
    were capable of... But noooo. I don't know if the effect was too hard
    to do - I imagine something like a fighting rooster, leaping and
    kicking so fast it's hard to follow - or if it was just considered too
    nasty.
    
    Oh, well. There are plenty of flaws - but I think I'll go see it again.
    You know, when I got back from the first showing (it was about 2:30 in
    the morning), I stood at the edge of my back yard, looking down into
    the marsh that leads to the brook, listening to the night noises... and
    I halfway expected to see a long neck lift up from the shadows and call
    into the night. Shiver...
    
    -b

    RE: .24  by 17576::PORTER 
    
    >My nine year old son nearly had to be taken from the theater. 
    
    I was about that age when I went to the Capitol with Stevie and Paul to
    see "King Kong".  When the big guy first comes out of the jungle I went
    "to get some popcorn", got my dime back at the door and went right
    home.  It was a lot of years before I finally saw the rest of THAT
    movie.
    

    
    I thought this movie delivered. 
    
    I read the book and wasn't real impressed with it. It seemed to be
    missing the "deep" part. So I wasn't expecting too, too much from the 
    movie. Also I'm not a big Speilberg fan. He cheats, and his age range 
    is a bit low for my taste.
    
    But... this movie is a ride. That's all it is. Don't look, want, expect
    anything more and you'll enjoy the ride. It puts you on the edge of
    your seat and jerks you around. The FX alone are worth the ticket
    price.
    
    -James
    
    PS- I saw this at the Zeigfield Theatre in Manhattan. Huge screen, 1100
    seats, big, big, dinosaurs. I'm sure it made a difference.
                      

    I liked it.  I largely agree with beth's assessment of the 'dino ex
    machina', I disagree with her assessment of the raptors (I liked them
    better than the rex, although I wouldn't care for either of them to
    be after me at any given point in time), and I agree with the general
    feel of many reviews I've seen that the human stars sort of suffered
    from a movie about special effects.  Plus, I think one can tell the
    movie was hurried in the editing process to get it out on time -- the
    Hartford Courant said that it could have stood about 30 more minutes in
    length.  I agree--there were 'gaps' where you just had the feeling
    something ended up on the cutting room floor that would have filled in
    a narrative gap.
    
    Still, I liked it.  Nice SPFX, tense little story.  Haven't been that
    tense about animals since Jaws, actually.  Definitely not Barney the
    Dinosaur--don't take children expecting cute, helpful critters.  I left
    the movie being rather glad dinosaurs were extinct -- like Beth, I half
    expected to see something big and with a lot of teeth come out of the
    woods behind my house.  Always a good sign the movie 'took'.  :)
    
    ***.5 out of ****  
    
    
    kim

    What really annoys me about this film is that I have spent so much time
    since seeing it, thinking about what was wrong with it and how it could
    have been so much better than it was.  This is a sure sign that it has
    grabbed hold of me.  I really liked it and wanted to like it much more,
    I loved the premise and I watched the film with great interest,
    wondering how these paleologists would react to seeing their life's
    work brought to life.  Both Neill and Dern are good actors and I was
    really interested in watching what they did in this dream come true
    situation, unfortunately I never got a chance to see that because the
    film then switched gears and lost focus on the wonder of the situation
    and refocussed on the nightmare.  I agree that this film could have
    used some extra time to develop, there were many things that needed
    developing, I mainly hungered for character development, but there were
    several points of plot and background science that could have used some
    time.  I really did not find the kids too annoying, but, unlike the
    valiant Dr. Grant, I still do not have any intention to bring children
    into this world.  I figure that a courageous jump to a three hour
    format would have done wonders for this film as long as it was not just
    another hour of chase scenes, etc. but some real substansive story
    material.
    
    Again, it was a good movie, but not as good as I thought it could have
    been.
    
    Andrew
    

Read the book when it came out (years ago), and it
was good enough that I remember it well.  The film 
doesn't come close to the book -- storyline,
characters, suspense, or technical detail.  Michael
Crichton must have been bummed out by what he had to 
produce as a screenplay.

But Spielberg has really set a new standard for special
effects.  I found disbelief completely suspended in the
kitchen scene at the end.  As in "Roger Rabbit", I had
to remind my self that there were no dinosaurs on the
table.

I thought it was highly economical of him to shoot and
use all of the Hurricane Iniki footage that he did :-).

dcl

    Just remembered another gratuitous but very cute bit (that somehow
    slipped my mind in all the excitement). 
    
    [Small-but-cute-surprise spoiler warning:]
    
    
    
    When the folks are trying to flee from the T-rex in the jeep (with the
    entire audience trying to push their feet through the floor in
    empathetic accelerator activation), we get one quick shot of the scene
    from the driver's eye-view, as he glances at the side mirror. Said
    mirror reflects nothing but the fanged jaws of the 'rex as it bounds in
    pursuit - and, overlaying the image, the old familiar legend, "Objects
    in mirror are closer than they appear." [I think I made a very rude
    snorting noise about then, since trying to laugh while trying not to
    breathe *and* to "get that buggy _moving_!!!" was rather, um,
    difficult.]
    
    -b

    We saw the movie on Saturday and LOVED it!!!!  We also read the
    book this weekend - the story (on paper and film) is quite a ride
    indeed!

    One sorta funny nit (my SO noticed this more than I did, but we got
    a kick out of it once we started thinking about it some more)...

    

    When Dr. Grant and the kids were watching the herd stampeding, he
    started marveling at how they flocked in a pattern (or whatever)
    like birds - we're sort of wondering why he wasn't asking himself,
    "What are they all running from??????"  :>  I mean, it shouldn't
    have been a huge surprise to see a big T-rex having a snack a few
    seconds later.

    My SO said Dr. Grant's line should have been something like, "Hey,
    kids - let's watch all these animals run in panic from the really
    huge, scary predator who is probably approaching this field quite 
    rapidly!!"

    
    This was a great movie, it had some flaws. But didn't ruin it for me.
    The wildest ride I've had in a long time. A combo of ET, Aliens,
    and Jaws.
    
    Convinced that humans would have been extinct if they had lived with
    dinosaurs.
    
    Dave
    

    
    As great as the special (visual) effects were, the SOUND effects
    were spectacular, too!
    
    The big T-rex had an incredible roar - in the book, it was speculated (?)
    that when the T-rex suspected that prey was nearby but couldn't see it
    (since it could only "see" things which moved,) it would roar in a very
    frightening way so that the prey *would* move enough to be seen.
    
    It was easy to see that this 'strategy' would be effective in most
    situations.  <:-|  It was every bit as frightening as the T-rex looked!

    Well... I did the dumbest thing.. something I am ALWAYS saying NOT to
    do... I went into the movie theater hoping for at least half of the
    book to be on the big screen... and was VERY disappointed!

    The only parts that were true to the book where some of the names (a
    lot of them were missing, and I don't mean just the actors), and the
    part about the dinosaurs being on an island!

    If I hadn't read the book first, I probably would have thought is was a
    good film... but I ruined it for myself!!!!

    Soooo.... after all is said and done... take a little advise.....

    DO NOT READ THE BOOK FIRST!!!!

    M-L

    (but I will probably see it again, now that my preconceived ideas have
    been shattered.. maybe I'll enjoy it more the next time)
                                                    

    
    
    I agree with a previous noter -- this movie delivers. It actually
    accomplished something that the somewhat dry narrative style of the book 
    did not -- it scared the heck out of me.

    My reaction to the first dinosaur scene was the same as Beth's. My jaw
    was in my lap, and I was saying to myself "They actually did it" meaning 
    that they actually succeeded in portraying what it would be like to stand 
    next to one of those huge creatures. I knew they'd try before I went
    in, and I was wondering if they would succeed. Every other dinosaur movie 
    I've seen to date looked fake in some way. This didn't.

    True, the plot did have holes, but I had read the book, so I knew what
    was going on when they failed to explain something. I don't agree that
    the movie wasn't true to the book. I thought they did what they could,
    given the time constraints that Hollywood seems to want to impose
    (probably because they can eek out more money since theaters can play
    the movie more times in a night).

    Being somewhat of a fan of special effects, I found myself stumped as
    to how they did the dinosaurs. Has anyone read anything, or have any 
    opinions as to how they were done? My best guess is the most realistic 
    computer animation I've ever seen. Failing that, my second guess would 
    be that they actually had trained dinosaurs running around on the sets 
    -- they looked so real.

    Which leads to one warning -- this movie is not for kids. Pay attention
    to the PG-13 rating. I would hate to have to convince a child that 
    dinosaurs don't actually exist after seeing this movie, since I half 
    believe in them myself now.

    mb

    Re .38: Of course dinosaurs exist! Heck, there are dozens at my bird
    feeders every day! [Only mildly frivolous reference to the "birds are
    the most direct descendants of dinosaurs left" theory. If you'd ever
    seen a great blue heron gliding over a misty marsh at twilight, looking
    very much like a pterodactyl, you'd believe in dinosaurs too...]
    
    And yes, the special effects were (mostly) computer animation, of a
    vastly superior kind. According to a recent Newsweek article on the
    subject, one of Industrial Light & Magic's henchmen kind of worked it
    up on his own just to see what he could do, demo'ed the resulting
    dinosaur to Spielberg & co, and they (after recovering their
    collectively dropped jaws) said, "Go for it!"
    
    -b

    	I thought the film was excellent. Maybe even Spielberg's best mainly
    because it was like something one has never seen before. 
    
    	I love kids, so there involvement in the film was fine by me. I
    thought the girl really handled herself very well!
    
      Best of the year, so far.

    re: animation
    
    Figure a mega-buck a minute for dino animation.
    
    But the price will drop, as it's a CPU and memory hog.
    
    Realistic dinosaurs in real time via VR are only a
    decade and some money away.
    
    		-John Bishop

re: .-<a whole lot>

Yes, it was a good, entertaining movie.  I did have some problems with it
though, given after the spoiler(s):


 1)  The paleontologists give very specific information about the hunting
     habits of the 'raptors in the beginning of the movie.  Later on we see
     the 'real thing' doing exactly that.  Given the information available
     to real scientists (bones etc), how could they possibly state that they
     know anything about the hunting habits?

 2)  When the T-rex breaks out of his holding area, we see the broken fence
     where s/he did so.  However, when s/he is smashing the car over the 
     wall, we see an enormous drop off (and since this is very close to
     where the break through occurred, how did the T-rex get up/over?).

 3)  When the kids are climbing over the perimeter fence, we see them 
     against the mesh of the fence.  It sure looked like they could just have
     squeezed through with no problems, without having to climb over the top.
     yes, I know it was for the suspense... Still...

 4)  At the end there is the scene of people flying away in a helicopter.
     The cameras pans around the cabin and there are cutaways to the pelicans(?)
     flying over the ocean.  However, during the camera pan a forest is visible
     out the window.  Supposedly they are out over ocean (yes, they MIGHT be
     close to show, but I doubt it).

 5)  I did not like the scene where the girl asks the paleo if it is ok if she
     touches the dinosaur.  He basically says yes, go ahead nothing to worry
     about...  What does he know about their temperment?  A related item is
     the lack of concern with being hit/struck by large, massive objects
     (such as limbs of the tricerotops (does anyone know why, other than for
     special effect, the first dinosaur reared up on its hind legs to get to
     the tree top that it had been happily munching on in the first place :-)?)

Well, enough of this 'griping' for now.  I'll read the book again and then go
back for another viewing anyway :-).

-Joe

    Well, I'll probably get my head handed to me, but ... I HATED this
    movie!!!  It was so cutesy in places that made me want to barf (like
    the kids "patting" the dinosaur because she was only a plant-eater) and
    saying "here, girl!" like it was a PUPPY for crying out loud.  And then
    everyone beaming at their new "pet" ... I agree with .23 wholeheartedly
    and found so many flaws in this movie it just made me antsy to sit
    through it.
    
    Dern was so positively, sickeningly sweet throughout the whole movie
    that even the one time she YELLED, she immediately softened it with a
    ditzy smile and proceeded to eat melting ice cream with Colonel
    Sanders/Santa Claus (didn't he look like that?) ... "good," she says
    after licking her spoon.  CS/SC: "sparing no expense."
    
    Sparing no expense?  How come only one man knew anything about shutting
    down or programming that whole island on the computer?  How come that
    man was given carte blanche anyway?  He was an obese spendthrift, a
    slob, and the movie spent so much time delving into his eating habits
    and his candy bar wrappers that I thought the point they were making
    was that he was going to die of a cholesterol stroke!!!  His antics
    were almost worse than anyone else's ... that drive through the
    rainstorm was positively annoying.
    
    I found this to be a VERY sloppy movie, surprisingly so considering its
    revered director.  He seems to be emeshed in "kiddy" world, so much so
    that he forgot the movie theme.  The two kids were okay, but why so
    much concentration on them?  Because Dern wanted O'Neill to be a
    father?  How convenient.
    
    I stopped liking the film once Dern and O'Neill and Goldblum (the only
    redeeming factor in the movie) got to the island and the first two
    stood around with their mouths open.  I could almost hear Spielberg
    yelling "look amazed!"  Everything was predictable.  EVERYTHING.
    
    I think this movie should have been renamed "Indiana Jones Does
    Dinosaurs" ...
    
    But I'll give it ONE star out of four for the dinosaurs themselves and
    their believable voices.  And throw in Goldblum for humor.  The rest of
    the movie?  Just throw it.
    
    Leslie

    
    Re .42
    
    
    
    
    
    I saw this over the weekend, and loved it!
    
    True, I could have done without the cutesy bits, namely the dino
    petting scene, that seems to have been a gagger for everyone. I
    think Grant showed an incredible stupidity in not only touching then
    brachyosaur himself, but encouraging the kids to touch it, too. After
    all, they all could have been mistaken for branches, albeit moving
    ones.
    
    
    Marilyn
    
    Other comments follow my version of form feed:
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Spoiler Warning:
    
    Another bit I could have done without was the actual electrocution,
    that seemed to me to have happened so that the kid could look and
    walk funny in the next couple of scenes.
    
     
    With regards to the hunting habits of the velociraptors, there is quite
    a bit you can deduce from just animal bones. Paleontologists look at
    the number of different animals found in one particular site, that
    alone tells them that the animals are social as opposed ot the lone
    hunters like the T Rex. If the animals are found with gnawed bones 
    of other animals at the same site/level, you can deduce that they also 
    hunted in packs. As far as the explanation of how two sneak up next to
    you while you are watching another, when Grant was scaring the
    obnoxious kid in the beginning, he was probably using the hunting 
    techniques of present-day animals to illustrate. I saw nothing
    inherently wrong with the explanation.
    
    The part I probably disliked the most was the end scene. In the book,
    as I remember they (or someone) left in a boat, and one of the smaller,
    chicken-sized dinosaurs (who were left out of the movie all together)
    gets on the boat too. That was a great ending, and one which could
    potentially lead to a sequel. The everything's wonderful ending in the
    movie did not feel real, after all, even though the dinos needed the
    hormone or whatever to keep alive, there were still a lot of them left
    on the island, and reproducing, as well. 
    

    Re .43: Hate to disappoint you, but no tomatoes today - I agree (though
    not as violently) with nearly all of your criticisms. I just loved the
    big lizards so much I was willing to overlook the rest. [And I bet, if
    I'd been there, _I'd_ have tried to pet the dinosaur, risks
    notwithstanding. (FWIW, I rather approved of the non-kid-liking
    scientist kept letting the kids take all these risks; felt like
    something I'd do. "Sure, kid, feed the alligator if you want to, just
    don't bother me.")]
    
    Gee, I wonder if the laserdisc will come out with a "dinosaur sequences
    only" track on it? Hmmmm...
    
    -b

    re "hormone"
    
    It was lysine, an amino acid.  The park keepers supplemented
    the dinosaur diets with extra lysine, as the animals had been
    "designed" to be incapable of making their own.
    
    On the other hand, lysine is available in a normal diet--so the
    real change may have been to raise the required minimum in the
    diet.
    
    		-John Bishop

    In the book some of the dinosaurs got out at the beginning of the book
    and ate animal high in lysine. strangely enough chickens were the
    animal highest in lysine.
                           Jeff Peters  

	The last several replies should be hidden behind spoiler warnings
	for those of us who have not seen the movie yet, nor read the book.

The film does not use this information at all.

    Good movie, 5$ out of 6$. The book was better but the dinosaurs were
    believable and fun. 
    
    John

    Spoiler on previous nits...
    
     
    Re-watch the film and you will see that Spielberg was quite good at
    explaining how the T-Rex got in the control center. As it it had just
    grabbed the raptor you can see the hole where it had come through.

spoiler on spoiler about previous nits
  
  <<< Note 165.51 by 3297::SAPP "It Takes A Village to raise a Child!" >>>

>    Re-watch the film and you will see that Spielberg was quite good at
>    explaining how the T-Rex got in the control center. As it it had just
>    grabbed the raptor you can see the hole where it had come through.

Earlier in the movie, Mr S went to great lengths to show water vibrating
when the T-rex was about.  In addition, there was heavy thumping (rather
ponderous) as it walked.  It seems that 'trait' got turned off several
times.  One of them was at the end.  True, there was a lot of 'noise'
going on, but from what we saw earlier its presence still should have
been detected... If not by the people, then by the raptors (who were
natural menu items for the T-rex).  I can see where the raptors MAY have
been intent on the hunt, but not to the exclusion of survival... And they
were supposed to be 'intelligent'.

    I don't agree spoiler...
    
    
    If one (people or otherwise) knew whenever A T-Rex was coming, what kind 
    of hunter would it be? Why can't a T-Rex be guile and sneeky as well?
    Hell, it would starve to death.

    In the "rationalizations 'r' us" department (skip this if you don't
    enjoy nit-picking):
    
    
    
    I've got it! The reason the rex made so much noise early on (the
    stomping, water-vibrating, etc.) was that it was just a baby; had never
    been out to hunt un-tethered prey on its own, and didn't realize it had
    to walk softly or scare the munchies away. But after most of those soft
    little human morsels escaped, something was triggered deep in that tiny
    brain, and the rex began to practice its "Move Silently" skills. By the
    time it got after the gallimimus herd, it had improved to where it
    could gallop cross country without making the earth tremble; by the end
    of the flick, it had even figured out how to sneak into buildings! [At
    that rate, it probably managed to beat our heroes to the helipad and
    smuggled itself onto the chopper for "Jurassic Park II".]
    
    So, like, does that explanation fly? ;-)
    
    -b

    Spoiler
    
    Having sought food even risking my own personal safety 
    I can understand the voliciraptors behavior, I thought it 
    a was a clever way out. 
    
    BTW: Does anyone know anything about the sequel?

    Talk of the nation (on most public radio stations across the USA) will
    be discussing Jurassic Park and recent science today on 'Science
    Friday' (2:00 pm on the East Coast, WBUR around Boston). 
    
    John

    re: "thundering" by T-rex
    
    If you assume that T-rex walks softly, setting its feet
    down gently, but runs more percussively, slapping its
    feet, then you can explain the way that sometimes there's
    the thundering effect and sometimes there isn't.
    
    But mechanically it doesn't make sense--to make a shock
    like that in the ground there has to be a similiar shock
    in the leg bones.  Bones wouldn't take that for long.
    
    I've run in places like second-floor hallways where even
    micro-humans can shake the floor and make thunder (as a
    child, and it wasn't appreciated by my parents, but it was
    fun).  It jars your whole body.  A fifty-pound child can do
    this for a short time, but a five-ton dinsaur probably
    couldn't.
    
    I'll recommend a book called _Predatory_Dinosaurs_of_the_World.
    It has chapters on stuff like locomotion and behaviour. It's
    recent and very much "new dinosaur" in orientation.
    
    		-John Bishop

    
    	RE: T-Rex noises...
    
    
    	I think it's clear why they didn't hear the T-Rex at the end of the
    film.  The soundtrack music was up too loud.
    
    	:^)

    I think the concern that small children shouldn't see this is ironic. 
    We've so isolated ourselves from the real dynamics of the animal
    kingdon - and re-inforced the misperceptions via media representations
    - that a special effects approximation (which was certainly not as
    bloody as, say, 'Alien') is too harsh!
    
    As to the movie itself, I found it totally lacking in suspense.  The
    only scene that grabbed me was the brief chase of the jeep and even
    then what stood out was the humor of the 'message in the mirror'. 
    While the effects are everything they say, they're not enough to carry
    the movie.

    I am surprised that There hasn't been THAT much promotion for this
    movie. God, every time I switch channels, I see another "Last Action
    Hero" commercials. But I see JP commercials only, say, every 5 or 6
    channles.

    I've not seen the movie, but as to this T-Rex thunder discussion, one
    of the main factors in sound and vibration must be the environment.
    I would not expect a big animal to shake the ground as much on a
    concrete floor as I might on a wooden floor.  Out in the woods, I have
    felt the ground shake and make thumping sounds as folks walked by,
    probably due to the dense layer of roots underground.  By my house,
    where there's bedrock, you don't tend to feel or hear as much.  I
    realize that the movie maker probably exercised due artistic license.
    But, what's underground may well account for "thundering" in wooded
    areas with lots of roots and such underground and relative silence where 
    there may be concrete or rocks underground, such as near building 
    foundations.
    
    Steve

   All the psuedo-science and fake-philosophy utterances were there in the
   book itself. The Chaos theory crap and the contrived connections that
   things go wrong when they can were as banal in the book as some of you have
   observed here. Totally disjointed lengthy explanations about fractals
   with pictures and all in the book itself.

   Didn't figure out why the book was such a hit. I'd anyday
   have preferred a simple start to a disaster like a lighted match in a 
   high-rise building to this story line. When you read the book I got to
   feel Crichton's thought process " Here I should do a Spielbergesque thing;
   bring in a cute little boy that can hack; Guess what? he could save the
   adults later on with a little caressing of the keyboard....a little girl 
   that's a pest. How about that little girl that appeared in Exorcist?...No
   ...She's all grown up and appearing naked on magazine covers....Here I need 
   to bring in an old wealthy nutcase - How about Nicholson - Naaah...maybe
   someone with a German or British accent.....

   Yuck!

   I think folks (including me) would see it for the Dinosaurs special effects.
   That's all I expect.

   Nari

    If you apply a little imagination and try not to dig too deeply
    into the theory, since no one who works for DEC has figured out how
    make gold from clay, I'll work it from my imagination...   ;-)

    The sound/T-rex discussion;

    (spoiler)
    

    Every time the T-rex steps were heard (seen in water) the person was in
    complete quite.  (The kid in the truck and Malcom laid-up in the Jeep) 

    The sounds were pretty subtle also.   In the confusion of the final
    battle, those subtle sounds would have certainly gone unnoticed.

    (Plus, I'll allow some artistic license to Speilberg, too)

    I thought the movie was excellent, I personally don't know how many
    toe nails a raptor is supposed to have, or the color of triceratops
    dung, but they used the best minds in the fields to recreate the
    dinos so I'll assume they were as accurate as possible.

    As far as the Chaos theory...  They could have not used it for the
    movie and been fine with the plot.  Remember, things broke down due
    to the greed of the software hack.  It was done deliberately, motivated
    by money, by someone with the means.

    Certainly a plausible reason for the park to "break down".

    (I would have thought that someone would have built a moat in
    conjunction with the electric fences to contain the T-rex, but what the
    heck, artistic license again...)

    I loved it.  I thought the effects were at a level never seen by movie 
    go-ers.  I'll see it again.  A must see on the big screen with a good
    stereo system!

    Chip

    If you notice some parts of the park weren't moated so the people could
    get a better look at the animals.
                       Jeff Peters

    One word for the owner:  Monorail!   ;-)

    RE: .65

    Yabut, I still think discarding the moat for the less harmful animals,
    (i.e., everyone but T-rex basically) would be believable.

    (Especially since a person in the Explorer couldn't see more than 10
    yards into the pen, based upon the foliage)

    Just some observations, but I thought the movie was awesome.

Re the sequel:
<spoiler>


Seemed to me the hook for the sequel was the Barbisol can, which contained
embryos of a variety of dinos. They bothered to show it dropped into some 
pretty comfy-looking warm mud. Earlier they had been in cold storage. I 
guess they put them into a warm incubator when time comes to make them grow.
The trick is just to get the aerosol can broken open at the right time to 
allow the embryos to break out into the convenient nutrient-rich environment.

I thought the movie was a drag, in fact the friend I saw it with left halfway
through and took a nap in the car while I saw the rest. I had the same feeling
after reading the book--great premise, then 200 pages/90 minutes of repetitive 
chase scenes. Too blase about special effects in the absence of a decent yarn
to use them in I suppose. Just having the technology to make them look real
wasn't enough--the trick is to DO something with them!

Jeff Goldblum's great but the chaos theory in this case was just a 
pretentiously worded version of Murphy's Law. 

As was mentioned, many of the scenes added nothing--brushing bones in the
Badlands, brachyosaurs, running-ostrich-osaurs, climbing the electric fence,
dying triceratop-osaur sick every six weeks--what was that all about? 

Fat hacker's bumbling jeep trip could have been handled with one 30-second
shot too.

Eliminating this stuff would have left time for what I figured was going to be
the real story. The current being-chased-and eaten/not-eaten movie should have
been condensed into the first 40 minutes or so, before getting to the good
part, namely what to do when the dinosaurs reached and infested the mainland. 

Raptors loose in Central American jungle and heading north--worse than killer 
bees! There's a story!

Maybe that's what the sequel will be about.

    spoilers below
    
    
    
    
    
      
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
     spoilers
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    Actually, I thought the movie would have been much better without all
    that aliens style crap and more of the exploring the park stuff.  I
    would have liked to know what was making the Triceratops sick every six
    weeks and would have been real interested in learning about how they
    managed to deduce from fossil records, all the info about the
    velociraptors, not to mention info about T-Rex eyes and how, they
    think, they were motion sensitive rather than pattern sensitive.
    
    As for Dr. Grant touching dinosaurs and encouraging the kids to do the
    same;   I think it likely that a dinosaur paleontologist would be
    highly likely to try to touch an apparently docile dinosaur.  Think
    about it a minute.  You spend your entire adult life studying the
    bones, footprints, etc. of these creatures, never thinking that you
    would ever actually see one since they have been extinct for millions
    of years, then you walk onto an island and come face to face with your
    life's work come to life.  
    
    The great danger from a herbivorous dinosaur would be clumsiness, not
    noticing the dr. and the kids. etc.  I would think that they woud have
    pretty decent senses of smell and such in order to locate tasty foods
    of the right type, and since they don't eat meat, they would probably
    avoid anything that smelled "meaty".   Calling dinos like dogs is
    stupid; so is climbing a fence you could easily crawl through.   The
    Dr. still would have had to climb over, but that would have been far
    easier and faster for him than the kid.  I think the scene was thrown
    in to illustrate the growing attachment between Grant and the kids.
    
    The look on Grant's face as he lay against the side of the sick
    Triceratops was priceless.  Totally wrapped up in the pure pleasure of
    embracing one's dream come to life.
    
    I think I projected a lot onto this film, based on what I thought the
    movie could have been.  I also think I added a lot of subtext regarding
    character motivations, based on deduction rather than what was
    blatantly portrayed on screen.  I walked out of this one really wishing
    it had been better.
    
    Andrew
    
    
    There is lots of room in this movie for a sequel, since the beasties
    seem to have already begun side-stepping their genetic engineering to
    change sexes and successfully breed; why shouldn't this wild-card
    offspring mutate so that they produce sufficient lycine within their
    own bodies for their own purposes or so that they would not need as
    much.  Not to mention the barbasol can in that nice, warm, wet mud.  
    
    
    

    What I liked particularly compared to the book was that the kids
    were not such *awful* pests as they were in the book.  The girl
    particularly.
    
    Spolier stuff
    
    My wife suggested the can as the link to a sequel too, but if you
    recall at the beginning when fatso is getting the can, it only has
    enough coolant to last for 30 hours.
    
    The part from the book I particularly missed in the movie is when
    they come upon a family group of dinos hiding in a culvert.   This
    would come just after they find the eggs.
    
    Chrichton has been criticized for stereotypic charcters in his other
    books, so it is not surprising to see it here.
    
    The entire part about the government of Costa Rica's early suspicions,
    and role in the clean-up at the end, were left out.

    
    Re. 67 Keefe...
    
    If you thought the book wasn't that great, then why do you assume the
    movie would be any better?
    
    I didn't think the book was real good, either. It seemed to me, to be
    missing that *extra* element that would have made it special. 
    
    So naturally I didn't have high hopes for the movie. Yet, I like the
    movie for what it is. An exciting, visual, chase. Nothing more. It's
    just a summer fun thing, don't look for depth (especially since the
    depth wasn't in the book) - and you'll have a good time.
    
    -James                                                  

    Spoiler stuff:
    
    
    
    Re: .69
    
    I agree. I'm glad they changed the kid's characters around. I was
    getting very annoyed at the girl in the book. When everyone was in a
    life-threatening situation, and trying to be very quiet so a huge 
    dinosaur wouldn't hear them and eat them, more than once she said
    something loudly to her brother that got the dino's attention.
    
    I actually thought the movie was more enjoyable than the book.
    Chrichton's narrative style isn't to my liking. It just seems to take
    all the excitement out of the exciting parts.
    
    mb

Re .70--

>   If you thought the book wasn't that great, then why do you assume the
>   movie would be any better?

Yeah, you're right of course. I had forgotten why the book had irritated me
so. Seeing the movie brought it back--that a great premise was wasted.

To me, the interesting question was how civilization could deal with the threat
of clever, man-hungry creatures loose in Central America. That's where I
thought the book was leading. I expected the plot of the book to get the
creatures onto the mainland fairly quickly, so the "big picture" could get
underway. 

How would man's place in the world change if suddenly we had to share the place
with a collection of new species, including some that were aggressive and
brutal, and just as well or better adapted to survive here as we are? That bred
as prolifically as rats, say, and were as hard to kill, but were bigger and
carnivorous. And others that had huge appetites for, say, our grain stores.
And, that were natives, rather than aliens, and as such, had just as much
"right" to the place as we do. :-)  Imagine mankind losing its dominance
gradually over say a hundred years, as various plans to defeat this
"infestation" fail. Social order breaks down, food gets scarce, mothers eat
their young, etc. Neat!

At one point the mathematician says something like--You've created life here,
but without any appreciation of its significance. Seemed to me like this is
exactly what Crichton himself did--created a great idea, then dribbled it away
in favor of amusement-park style thrills.  Once you've gone to all the
trouble of resurrecting dinosaurs, might as well use the qualities about them 
that are unique in the story. 

The creatures on the loose in the park might just as well have been, say, 
tigers. The uniqueness of the dinosaurs in general and raptors in particular
was as I said before, the potential to threaten civilization itself, not that
they could chase a half-dozen people down a bunch of hallways, cartoon-style.

Of course this kind of story, though a more interesting book, would not lend
itself so easily to a two-hour blockbuster movie. It was fine as high-tech,
low-brow movie making I guess. But mere imagery is cheap and getting cheaper
every day. And a good story's still as rare as ever.

Neil 

    The book you described is "Chor" except it is aliens. This book and movie
    were about a man playing with what he didn't know and getting burned bad.
    Science uncontroled and nature unrespected meet to create an
    uncontrolible deadly problem.
                       Jeff Peter

    Re: .72
    
    I agree wholeheartedly with your reaction, which is why I was so
    disappointed with the movie (less so with the book).  However, I think
    the 'threat to mankind' premise was much stronger and more plausible in
    Crichton's 'The Andromeda Strain' than here so I wouldn't put much
    anticipation into a sequel.  As a species, our effectiveness in dealing
    with our competition - in this case large predators - is beyond
    question.  Wolves, tigers and alligators - to name a few - have been
    pushed to the brink of extinction; I'd doubt the dinos would fare much
    better in the long run.

    
    	A friend and I wanted to go to the 10:05 show at White City in
    	Shrewsbury on Saturday night, but that show and the 10:30 show
    	were sold out when we got there at 10:00.
    
    	I figured the crowds would have died down by now, but I guess
    	not.
    
    							GTI
    

    
    It was sold out in Tyngsboro last night, too.
    
    DFW

    The notes here basically echo exactly my sentiments after reading the
    book.  "Criteon killed the best premise to come along in a long time."

    
    I couldn't put the book down at first, my imagination was running wild.
    Yet, at the end, I couldn't believe the girl was that obnoxious, that
    the granddad was so cold blooded, leaving the only likable characters
    to be the lawyer and the game hunter.  (In the book those two survived
    instead of Malcom and the old man)

    But, taking the movie for what it was, I liked it far better than the
    book. 

    I also wondered why they mentioned the sick triceratops and panned to
    the broken eggs and never came back to them.  It was like they were
    trying to build Laura Derns character in a forced method.

    I can see a return to Jurassic, dino mop-up coming, and some
    dino-infestation going on too.

    In the book, they left room for allowing the Raptors to run wild on
    the island and elsewhere, it'll be a real stretch to believe the
    Raptors went on to reproduce, unknown in that small pen. 

    (Briefly, I agree with John Bishop's and Beth Rust's reviews.)
    
    *Loved* it, though plot & characters were dummied-down.  Nedry's deal-
    making scene was mumbled so as to be unintelligible.  (Did anyone
    notice that Nedry's an anagram for nerdy?  :-} )
    
    Reason for this reply is to add a nit from my indignant 8-year-old
    daughter.  Not-too-necessary spoiler:
    
    Alex's BS-detector went off as soon as the chopper-to-the-island scene
    started.  Anyone who's ever ridden in a chopper knows it's futile to
    try to TALK (without headset intercoms, anyway)!  OK, so maybe they
    "spared no expense" on soundproofing the passenger compartment.  (It
    was *silent*.)  But how 'bout them noiseless rotors the cast chats
    under (on the helipad, pre-boarding) at the end of the movie?
    
    Alex, BTW, spent most of the movie on my lap, but she only hid her face
    a couple times.  I'd read the book and explained who dies and who
    doesn't (Speilberg did me in on a couple of those!), and though Alex
    said later that it was scarier than she expected, she hasn't had any
    nightmares or other ill effects.  She loved it.  She's at an age now
    where she's testing her spook threshhold, and enjoying her developing
    courage.
    
    Leslie 

    I could not believe how poorly the sound was handled in this movie!
    I don't know whether this would be the fault of the sound recorder or
    the sound editor.  The sounds associated with the dinosaurs were done
    well.  It was the other sounds that were a joke - primarily the human
    dialogue.  How could such a basic element of a high profile movie be
    botched so badly?  My only guess is that so much attention, time, and
    money was spent getting the dinsoaur effects done well that everything
    else was done kind of slipshod.  Anyone else find difficulty with the
    sound of the dialogue?

    re: sound
    
    From what I hear, the ONLY place to see Jurrasic Park is at a theater
    with the THX sound system.  There's only 2 venues like this in Atlanta
    and when I went I "lucked into" going to one of them.  Only during the
    week did I hear the subject of sound come up (on a talk radio show). 
    They remarked that if you only heard it in Dolby you got a mushy
    muddle.

THX is a standard, not a product.

    
    Saw the moive lastnight in Leominster, I saw the 8:00 show and there
    was only 20 -25 people in the whole place :-)
    
    The moives was totally awsome!!!  I have not been so pleased with
    a movie since Daceing w/ Wolves (not that I am comparing the two)
    
    The movie kept me on the edge of my seat the whole time.. and it
    added laughter in just the right spot.  Very Very Very well done.
    
    Question:
    
    
    
    
    Was the sick rino looking dinosaur pregent?  or was she just sick?
    Why didn't we here what was wrong w/ her?  Did they explain this
    in the book?
    
    First thing I said when I saw the shaving cream can.. was "oh, this
    is how they will open Jurasic Park Part II.  Yes the can olny had
    coolent for 30hrs, but who's to say that some kind of ice age
    wont happen to that island..and in 200000 yrs, some diggers will
    find it and start this all over again. :-)  
    
    lkp

    Form fed indigestion ;-)
    

    Since the movie took about 18 hours to play out, who's to say someone
    won't snag the can before the 30 hours is over?

    But, since there were about 200 eggs in the main building with
    indefinite coolant, and a rival company out there who may think they
    could still make some cash off of the idea, I don't think a sequel
    will be hard to contrive...

    re sick Triceratops (spoiler?)
    
    I think the implication is she lays eggs every six weeks,
    and the "sickness" is part of the cycle.
    
    		-John Bishop

    **spoiler comment**
    
    re: -.1
    
    I agree. However, it would have been nice if the Sam Neill character
    had gone "Aha!" after find the broken egg shells.

	In regards to questions about a sequel:

	[spoiler warning]

	They don't need the shaving can, nor what's in the lab.
	The people all left the island, but the dinos were all
	still living when they left!  And there was no real indication
	that they would all die naturally.

	The sequel could revolve around another group of people going
	to the island to destroy the dinos and their well laid plans
	of course falling amok.....

RE the ending

SPOILER


BIG SPOILER


  At one point they mentioned that they had added a gene to the DNA that
would cause the animals to die if they didn't receive an enzyme every so often.
This was a safe guard designed to kill the animals automatically if something
went wrong (which of course it did). The "mad scientist" was horrified at the
thought of using this approach but in the end that's obviously what they did. 

  As for a sequel, they could do anything. I believe the normal thing for
this type of film is for "son of mad scientist" to recreate his father's work.
Then there's the foam can that was burried under the guck, the other scientists
might administer the enzyme, the new eggs might not need the enzyme, oops the
gene caused the T-Rex to become comatose, not dead, etc, etc, etc.

  George

	Re: .87 (ala the ending)

	[spoiler warning]

> At one point they mentioned that they had added a gene to the DNA that
> would cause the animals to die if they didn't receive an enzyme every
> so often.
> This was a safe guard designed to kill the animals automatically if something
> went wrong (which of course it did). The "mad scientist" was horrified at the
> thought of using this approach but in the end that's obviously what they did. 

	Yes, but remember that the dinos weren't supposed to be
	able to reproduce either.  Remember Goldbloom's character
	saying "nature will find a way".  What makes you think
	nature hasn't also found a way for the dinos to survive without
	receiving that enzyme from man? :-)

    Oh, come now, all this speculation is needlessly complex! The original
    plot has people successfully cloning dinosaurs from multi-million-
    year-old DNA fragments; whether the dinosaurs in the movie live or die,
    there's going to be tons of (relatively) fresh dino DNA lying around
    all over the place, in addition to Obvious Plot Device 1b. If anybody
    opts to do a sequel, they'll have no problem at all explaining things.
    
    Now, what I'd like to see is something a little more surprising. What
    if, for example, the scientists had successfully cloned the big
    sea-going creatures (mososaurs, plesiosaurs - maybe the skeeter bit one
    after it beached, she said, waving her hands), but they got out of
    their holding pen during the hurricane, and one of 'em turns up at Sea
    World to befriend a troubled young boy. (They could call it "Free
    Dinny".) And then, and then, see, this BIG shark shows up to menace the
    kid, but the mososaur swims to his defense, and...
    
    The seafood-restaurant-chain tie-ins alone would be worth _millions_.
    
    -b

answers to the triceratops and shaving cream can questions, 
spoilers involved....

The triceratops sequence was totally wasted in the movie.
It was a way to show off the puppetry and let the actors gape at a dino
close up.
Why she was sick was much better described in the book, and only hinted at
in the movie.  As Laura Dern's character pointed out, there were poisonous
plants around that the vet said they didn't eat.  But Laura found gizzard
stones, indicating that there was something the dino ate in the area.
The gizzard stones (rocks dinos and birds ate to aid food-grinding digestion)
wore smooth in six weeks, and had to be regurgitated and replenished.
(I've forgotten the details in the book, but the idea is that it's an area
of ecological complexity ignored by the management of the park.)

The shaving cream can seems to have picked up a lot of weight
as a sequel builder, but its falling down and getting burried is
just a dramatic crutch.  It symbolizes (gag! choke!) the end of Nedry's plans.
Those embryos are dead (soon).  They aren't viable anyway, they need eggs
to grow in.

- tom]

    I think Sam Neil is kind of a boring actor.
    
    Just thought I'd mention it.  Does anybody else think so?
    
    Lorna
    

	Re: sick dino, new question

	[mild spoiler warning]

	Did anyone else find the size of the pile of dino crap
	that the sick dino supposedly extremented to be
	overly large given the size of the dino?  Me thinks
	the movie makers made it an extra big pile to provoke
	laughter in the audience!

    Saw the movie recently with my 13 year old.  We were both disappointed.
    We both felt the plot was very weak, with numerous holes, which created
    a credibility gap; the FX were terrific, and will walk away with an Oscar;
    both surprised at the number of technical flaws for a Speilberg movie,
    which became distracting (not counting the Disneyland-1956 opening
    gaff.
    
    Overall, felt it was okay, the T-Rex attack on the kids was done well,
    but no desire to see it again.  Will decide on the sequel at that
    time.
    
    -Bill  

    RE:  .86:  Sequel plot
    
    I think it was done in Aliens; just substitute dinos for aliens.
    
    -Bill
    

    Yes, I agree, Sam Neil was boring and as far as I could tell
    only had two facial expressions; one eyebrow up and both
    eyes back in his head. 
    
    Jodi-

re: dino dung....

The triceratops dung heap was a collected heap, there was some reference
to "going to where it was."
We don't know how many triceratops there were, or how long the pile
had accumulated.  If you've ever kept a herbivore (a rabbit is a good example,
or even a horse), you'll recognize how much waste those guys pass.

Yeah, it was partly for effect, but as I said earlier, the whole sequence
was a waste.

- tom]

    Ooh, a dung rathole! 
    
    I'd wondered about the size of the dung-heap myself, but then I saw
    this _fascinating_ documentary on the Discovery channel, "The World of
    Dung". [I swear I am not making this up.] Among the many wondrous facts
    it revealed was that rhinoceroses - rhinoceri? - uh, that the
    rhinoceros has a habit of making piles of its dung by way of marking
    its territory, depositing several loads, so to speak, in the same
    location. I would think that triceratopses/topsii/whatever would have a
    similar lifestyle to rhinos, so that might explain it. [If you get a
    chance, do catch this documentary; it's a hoot. I especially enjoyed
    the hippopotamus sequence; seems they sometimes "clear the vents"
    underwater. I did NOT envy the photographer who was down there with 'em
    when they did so...]
    
    But enough about that; this is MOVIES. So what's all this about Sam
    Neill being boring? I rather like him, myself... Besides, you try
    looking amazed and awestruck when all you can see at the time is some
    stagehand waving a crude drawing of a dinosaur over your head on a
    stick. ;-)
    
    -b

    re -1  (she said sheepishly)  I saw the Discovery show, too!  Amazing -
    but puleezzzzeee don't tell my friends!
    
    -sandy
    

RE Dino Dung

  I figured right away that it was accumulated by the guys controlling the herd.
When I was a kid I lived on a farm and we had a similar pile of the good stuff
produced by cows right outside the barn. My Brother and I traded off each day
on the "honor" of taking the pitchfork and cleaning out the trench behind the
cow stanchions. 

  I guess you "city" kids never had the experience. Don't you wish you had
grown up on a farm?  :*)} 

RE Sequel Speculation

SPOILER


  Speilburg seems to like following the format of movies he saw when he was
a kid. This seemed like a traditional monster movie and Raiders of the Lost
Ark and it's sequels were suppose to be like serial cliffhangers he'd seen
as a kid while watching Saturday afternoon flicks.

  If they follow the form of films from that error, the 1st sequel will be a
follow on to this story in which the "mad scientist" decides I can do it right
this time and goes back to rescue his herd. He should end up dead.

  Following the form, the 3rd movie will be "son of mad scientist" where his
son (the kids father) tries to continue his now dead father's work. By the
4th, they will start having dino-good guys where some Dino comes to save the
day as a previous note suggested (i.e. King Kong eats Godzillia).

  Then again, maybe he'll do something different but I doubt it.

  George

    I got my money's worth out of seeing JP.  I'd read the book,
    so I knew what to expect, and I'd heard enough about the film so
    I knew what not to expect.  The dino scenes were great, this
    is a good (perhaps great) scary monster movie.
    
    But, I decided that what's wrong with the movie is that unlike
    the book, which is about a bad idea gone wrong, Spielberg
    thought it was a *good* idea gone wrong.  He'd start a real Jurassic
    Park in a  minute if he could.
    
    
    Richard

    The up to the minute dino news is that T. Rex might well have been a
    scavenger, not a predator. This based on dentition and the inadequacy
    of the forelegs for ... well, just about anything. I guess that would
    have diluted the impact of the movie a bit.
    
    There were many, many discrepancies in this movie, so many that my
    friends and I agree that the real discrepacies are where the movie got
    some fact *right* :). Nonetheless, go see this movie! At almost no time
    did I feel like I was looking at FX--these were *dinosaurs*!!! They
    were totally convincing, and made the movie worth seeing, maybe twice.
    I agree that there was a lot of lost potential in the story, so you
    have to resign yourself to just enjoying the dinosaurs.
    
    Some spoiler-type speculation:
    
    
    Among the discrepancies--how did they clone the *plants* of the
    Jurassic era? Remember, just before the first dinosaur sighting, Laura
    Dern held up a leaf and said that that plant had been extinct for
    millions of years. Were some of the Mesazoic mosquitos vegetarians?
    (In the book, as far as I've gotten, they used some plants which were
    around in the Jurassic era, but could still be found in Brazil.)
    
    On the topic of T. Rex's thundering footsteps: perhaps the grounds
    around the Tyrannosaurus area were *intentionally* enhanced with echo
    chambers to make the footsteps shake the ground? True, the power was
    out, but it could have been a passive system of some sort. This was an
    amusement park, after all.

    
    
    Jurassic Park opened in Britain last night.
    
    I thought it was fantastic and will go and see it again.  Here any
    age of child can go if they are accompanied by an adult and there were
    a few screams from the younger kids.
    
    Only complaint - Richard Attenborough's accent !!!!!
    
    

    
    I went to see the film last night.I thought it was hyped load of
    crap(although I admit the fX were excellent).
    It only kept my intrest for the first hour after that the film became
    boring and predicatable.
    I liked 2 million years BC more!!
    
    Rich.
    

    I also saw this film last night and I would give it a 9.5/10 .
    After reading the notes and not reading the book , I went in and said
    this film is a one mans interrpritation of another mans idea , like
    when jeff goldblum said to Hammond . " You hav'nt created this , you
    just copyed and added other peoples ideas ." Basiclly I wanted a film
    about Dinos. and that is what you get , but to make it interesting
    you throw in a plot device which may or maynot work , also remember
    that Mr.S had to make some cuts in the film for the PG rating and
    time factors. For more about this look at the book which is out called
    THE MAKING OF JURRASIC PARK , inside there are some good details of
    bits that were supposed to be in the film , but were'nt .
    
    
    
    Now for the good bits.----  SPOILER
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
    
     The bit that made me jump and give me a great thrill , was when Neil
    and the kids saw the group of GALLIMINOUS(sp) were running towards them
    and your attention is focused on them then all of a sudden 'WHAM' out
    from the right comes teeth chomping cannon fodder factory , mr. rex.
    gets one of those creatures and stumbles over one to get the other , 
    and then the little kid saying " cool, look at all that blood."
    
    
    At the begining when they first see brachiosaurs and when it stands on
    its hind legs and when they look acrosse the pond to see more , it was
    like they were almost real and also when they a strande on a tree and
    the neil chara. starts to immitate the brachy. call then all of a
    sudden two more brachs. appear from nowere to start singing , brillent.
    
    
    And then the T.REX which would at the top of my get the ***k out of
    here catagory . A very nastie piece of work and like above almost
    looked realistic .
    
    
    Over all there were a few , well for me , scense that might be
    disturbing to a youngster , i.e  The cow at the raptor pit ,  the goat
    , and the Gallimimus chompping , it was more of the sound effects then
    the sight of the dis-embowlment .
    
    
    RATINGS OUT OF 10
    
    
    F/X     10
    
    SOUND   10
    
    MUSIC   9
    
    STORY*  9
    
    ACTING  9
    
    OVERALL  10
    
    
    * I havent read the book but this is based on the film and general idea
      of the film..
    
             

    RE: .101
    
    Good point about the plants...

    I just finished the book, and agree with previous comments that it is
    much like the movie: lots of promise, first half is very enjoyable, but
    it doesn't live up to the expectations. The characters, across the
    board, are less likable than their movie versions. I have a degree in
    mathematics, and so enjoyed the bits about Chaos Theory at first, but
    it became *very* tiresome after a while. And it was obviously written
    in order to be quickly turned into a movie screenplay--in fact, I can
    credit a previous suggestion in this note that the screenplay came
    first.
    
    Still, it was an enjoyable read, and it does explain some things that
    the book leaves hanging.
    
    More quibbles of the spoiler kind:
    
    
    My favorite moment in the book was when Malcolm suggested that the
    computer try to locate *more* than 238 dinosaurs in the park, and it
    came up with 292. It is an especially good point for a software
    developer: take into account *all* the possibilities, not just the ones
    which are *supposed* to happen. I especially liked Nedry's explanation
    of the fact that allowing the operator to input the "expected" number
    of dinos was meant to increase the efficiency of the search: i.e.,
    "it's not a bug, it's a feature!"
    
    However, as with the movie and the Cretaceous plants, the book has a
    scene in which dragonflies with six-foot wingspans fly past the group
    lost in the park. Did InGen clone them, too? If so, from what?
    Dragonflies eat mosquitoes; I haven't heard that they are bitten by
    them. And if they *did* clone them, how did they expect to keep them
    confined to the park?
    
    Regarding the movie: everyone agrees that, no matter what, the effects
    in the movie are totally awesome. That being the case, why did
    Spielberg put in cheap-shock scenes that you can find in Friday 13th
    Part 13 or any other slasher film? Two that come to mind are:
    - goat hoof thrown on top of the van;
    - the park security guard's arm falling on Laura Dern's shoulder.
    Such cheesy effects just detract from the otherwise brilliant job of
    instilling terror done by the all-too-real dinosaurs themselves. SS
    should be ashamed.
    

	Dinosaurs - extinct my ass.
	I want one, I want one.
	Go see it, the effects are amazing

	Now for some questions....


	When Sam Neill does his impromptu brachiosaurus (?) imitation, how
	did he know what he sounded like to the other dinosaurs. He could
	have been saying something along the lines of "Hey you, yes you with
	the funny head, did you just spill my pint ?" or, even worse, he could
	have sounded like the brachiosaurus equivalent of Julia Roberts. Imagine
	an aroused 40 foot dino speeding towards you. 'Veggiesaur' or not I
	wouldn't have risked it.

	The cloning/recreation of the dinosaurs -
	Why a frog ? Seeing the way that T-Rex sped after the landrover I
	would've used a horse and tried to re-coup some of my investment at the
	race track. If another horse did manage to get in front of the
	Horsiesaurus Rex it (the dino) would just eat the competition. Win a
	few classics then it's out to stud. Only snag is finding a jockey...

	Is it true that the T-Rex got payed more than the velociraptors, using
	the controversial pay-by-body-mass clause in her contract ?
	According to movie gossip the T-Rex is actually seeing the Triceratops
	(but only when it's moving). Rumour has it that the triceratops didn't
	want to get into a serious relationship but was too scared to say no.

	Were any of the animals mistreated during the filming ? The tether 
	around that goat looked a little tight to me. Also the stunt doubles
	for the dinosaurs were brilliant, I didn't even notice the difference.

	These questions bother me.
	Moderator, delete this note if you want I'm leaving in
	a few short weeks anyway. Free, free, free.

	Sean.

re                      <<< Note 165.107 by 41737::SDUFFY >>>
                             -< Dinosaur puzzlers >-

>	These questions bother me.
>	Moderator, delete this note if you want I'm leaving in
>	a few short weeks anyway. Free, free, free.

	Sean,

      Your questions indicate that you are a deeply disturbed individual,
in dire need of professional help............I like that in a person :-)

Regards

Barry_whos_last_day_will_be_Aug_20

                      <<< Note 165.107 by 41737::SDUFFY >>>

>	Were any of the animals mistreated during the filming ? The tether 
>	around that goat looked a little tight to me. Also the stunt doubles
>	for the dinosaurs were brilliant, I didn't even notice the difference.

  I read that there is some controversy because the real Velocoraptors are
still being held in that strongbox like cage which is too small for them to
move around. There is a movement starting to have them set free. 

  I believe the real cage is somewhere in Mexico.

  George

     I thought this was brilliant.The Special effect are superb...has to be
    the best SE ever.
    
    
    
    SCott

	In Mexico eh ?
	Do you reckon I might be in with a chance of getting one of these
	beautiful creatures. My cross bred pit-bull/rottweiller/poodle is
	a little behind the times in the fashion scene and I'm due a new look 
	for Autumn. But with the strict quarantine laws you probably would need 
	a pretty large suitcase to smuggle one of those suckers out anyway.

	Another question...
	If the T-Rex could only 'see' things when they were moving how on earth
	did they manage to procreate ? Did Mr. Rex say to Mrs. Rex (or vice 
	versa, I'm hip) -

	Mr Rex - "Hey honey, it's spring time, fancy going out for a quick run?"

	Mrs/Miss Rex - "Nope, I've got a headache Ralph, maybe next year."

	Mr Rex - "I wasn't on about sex dear....How about if you just sort of 
	wave about on the spot then? I've heard that's good for headaches ?"

	Sheesh it's no wonder they died out, the T-Rex's would have been too 
	tired to do anything anyway by the time they caught up with each other
	and the other dinos probably all died laughing at them. 

	Dino1 - "Going bowling tonight, John ?"

	Dino2 - "Naah, I'm going over to the plains to watch the 'Battle of the
	Rexes'. Old Ralph is at it again, it's a riot. Man, that Mrs. Rex - her
	and her stop/start tactics - she drives Ralph crazy. You should see him
	when she stands still, bellowing all over the plains. You should go too,
	we've got popcorn and beer."

	Just a theory, I might write a book, hmmmm....

	Sean.

    Saw it yesterday.  Still a lotta kids in the theatre.  Hint:  don't sit
    near the theatre door, the kid-traffic gets annoying.
    
    I was pleased by the acting in that I expected worse given the comments
    in this note.  And the FX were better than I had expected.  But that
    
    <SPOILER>

    jeep-in-a-tree bit was pure tripe reminiscent of Indiana Jones.  It
    would go fine in an "Indy" movie but was gratuitous in this one.
    
    Dinos-in-the-kitchen WAS a bit of schtik, but the whole scene was saved
    for me by the clever mirror-effects.  Dino sees girl trying to hide and
    lunges at her, warp factor seven, only to crash into a mirrored cabinet.
    
    I thought showing all the merchandise was "cute", especially at the end
    when the banner "When Dinosaurs Ruled The Earth" floated down in front
    of a bellowing T. Rex.
    
    Thanks to all for helping set expectations so that I got my money's worth.
    
      John
    
    p.s., I -don't- think the dinos were very bright and T. Rex would often
    sleep for a week or so after feeding.  Facts be damned, we got a STORY
    to tell here...

    
        Well...this was about the worse movie I've seen in recent memory.
    What plot?  What dialogue?  And they blew it on the technical stuff.
    Remember the electric fence? The kid never would have gotten blown off
    the fence for the same reason birds can sit on high tension wires
    and not die. The problem comes when a body part touches ground and
    another part is in contact with the fence. But because joe and sally
    average moviegoer know nothing about physics....I guess its O.K. to 
    be braindead for the kid flying through the air effect.
        Oh, and by the way was it really that difficult for them (the
    writers) to have jeff goldblum explain the theory of chaos? it was
    handled extremly poor! Truly "mindless" entertainment.
    
    -john

    re .113, hey, I don't know anything about physics and I still thought
    the movie stunk!!  :-)  You don't have to be a scientist in order to
    tell a good story from a bad one.
    
    Lorna
    

>       <<< Note 165.113 by 29067::J_KALINOWSKI "Forget NAM?....NEVER!" >>>
>                                   -< yuck >-
>
>    
>        Well...this was about the worse movie I've seen in recent memory.
>    What plot?  What dialogue?  And they blew it on the technical stuff.
>    Remember the electric fence? The kid never would have gotten blown off
>    the fence for the same reason birds can sit on high tension wires
>    and not die. The problem comes when a body part touches ground and
>    another part is in contact with the fence. But because joe and sally
>    average moviegoer know nothing about physics....I guess its O.K. to 
>    be braindead for the kid flying through the air effect.
>        Oh, and by the way was it really that difficult for them (the
>    writers) to have jeff goldblum explain the theory of chaos? it was
>    handled extremly poor! Truly "mindless" entertainment.
>    
>    -john

Actually, the kid was holding onto several different electrical wires...
so wouldn't he still get it? I could see if he was only touching 1 wire, 
but his hands and feet were on different ones... wouldn't that then
cause the same effect as touching the ground would???

I don't understand why some think so bad of this movie... the effects were
great it wasn't suppose to be "real"... 

I suppose you people were upset at how the spaceships in the Star Wars 
movies behaved too??? Come to think of it, the Star Wars plots weren't
much better then this one... they were pretty simple-minded too.

/Scott

RE              <<< Note 165.115 by STAR::MARISON "Scott Marison" >>>

>I don't understand why some think so bad of this movie... the effects were
>great it wasn't suppose to be "real"... 

  I believe that almost everyone agrees that the effects were great. There are
a couple exceptions. The biggest complaint was that the acting by the major
human characters was terrible. 

  George

    	I am sick of the insulting ratings system the movie dorks
    tag on films. There is absolutely no excuse for tagging this
    PG-13.....they cut the profanity out, leave out the obligatory
    "let's act like we're really having sex" intercourse scenes, and
    what's left?? PG-13, regardless of content. Come on now, didn't
    movies with this much gore get steep ratings......
    
    	Just another case of the ratings industry kissing the corpulent
    buttocks of the big studios.....

    
    	On the other hand, we've got the potential for a great drive-in
    movie rerun kind of deal.
    
    Laura Dern making the "My father is Bruce Dern, oh no!" face whenever
    she's scared...the fat guy that lusted after Sharon Stone during Basic
    Instinct, only she was making the sign of the three-petaled Lotus
    blossom at Berkely or MIT or whatever with Jeanne Tripplefluegelhorn....
    A kid that gets electrocuted and lives...a girl that says "I know this,
    it's a UNIX system"....Jeff Goldblum, who never once mentions Geena
    Davis....Sam Neill, who makes no mention of Winnebagos or Montana, but
    secretly lusts for a remake of Damien::Omen3, A dinosaur-surrogate 
    munching a guy in half while he sits on a toilet....Laura Dern, again,
    for wearing muscle shirts and not seducing the little boy who got
    electrocuted.....gee, I can't wait for this one to pop up at one
    of the three remaining Drive-In theatres in America....

    re .118, I don't remember the fat guy who lusted after Sharon Stone in
    Basic Instinct.  I don't remember him in Jurassic Park, either!!  :-)
    
    I think Jeff Goldbloom stopped mentioning Geena Davis after it became
    obvious to everyone that she had more talent than him, although he did
    look pretty good in the black outfit in Jurassic Park.
    
    I thought Laura Dern was very good Rambling Rose, and I still think Sam
    Neil is boring.
    
    Lorna
    

>   re .118, I don't remember the fat guy who lusted after Sharon Stone in
>   Basic Instinct.  I don't remember him in Jurassic Park, either!!  :-)
    
    Maybe you're thinking of the fat guy that lusted after Emma Thompson in
    DEAD AGAIN. He was the one in JURASSIC PARK.
    
    Catherine
    
    

    The chief programmer (Nedry) in "Jurassic Park" is the same guy who is
    a neighbor on the television show "Seinfeld", who (I believe) played a
    cop in "Basic Instinct" during the (in)famous uncrossed legs scene, and
    is probably the same guy who was in "Dead Again" (which I had forgotten
    about).  However, I can't for the life of me remember his name.
    
    - Dave

    re .118, there was a fat guy that lusted after Emma Thompson in Dead
    Again?  
    
    Lorna
    

    re .121, I can't even picture him.  
    

Wayne.......  help!  S**T!  I can remember the 
character's name from "Dead Again" - Piccolo Pete.
But I can't remember the actor's name.
He was also the hood who was attacked with a 
nutcracker by Kathleen Turner in "V.I. Warshawski".

    Re: a couple back.
    
    I forgot about him being in the interrogation scene in Basic Instinct.
    
    He was the photographer in Dead Again who was taking a picture of Emma
    Thompson for the papers. I'll run the credits tonight to see what his
    name is. I can't remember either.
    
    Catherine
    

I'm sorry but when watching Jurassic Park I kept expecting Jeff Goldblum to 
crack open a bottle of Holsten Pils ala the UK advertising campaign for said
product but thats advertising I suppose

Oliver 

    Not to confuse the issue any more then it is but someone wrote that the
    fat guy is the same guy thats on Seinfield I believe that you are
    incorrect.  I believe that he is the same guy who was on the TV show
    St. Elsewhere.
    
    				Bart

    
    	Whenever I see him I automatically think of the name Steven
    	Furst but I don't know whether I'm right or wrong.
    
    							GTI
    

RE         <<< Note 165.117 by 6181::SALZMANN "Don't mess with Texas" >>>

>    	I am sick of the insulting ratings system the movie dorks
>    tag on films. There is absolutely no excuse for tagging this
>    PG-13.....they cut the profanity out, leave out the obligatory
>    "let's act like we're really having sex" intercourse scenes, and
>    what's left?? PG-13, regardless of content. Come on now, didn't
>    movies with this much gore get steep ratings......

  I think that PG-13 is a good rating for this film. I can see where it would
scare little kids, but what harm would come to someone 13-17 for seeing this
movie? (put aside for a moment the fact that no one has ever proven that anyone
in that age group is ever harmed by any film)

  In fact, from what I've observed, boys in the 13-17 range probably handle
that type of gore much better than adults.

  George

re                      <<< Note 165.127 by 26523::LASKY >>>

  >  Not to confuse the issue any more then it is but someone wrote that the
  >  fat guy is the same guy thats on Seinfield I believe that you are
  >  incorrect.  I believe that he is the same guy who was on the TV show
  >  St. Elsewhere.
    
    Bart,

  I don't think so. He is on Fox TVs show The Edge, he plays the father in
The Armed Family skits.

Regards
Barry

    This is getting funny...who *is* this elusive fat guy?  :-)
    
    Lorna
    

    Stephen Furst played Dr. Elliott Axelrod in "st Elsewhere" and I
    *think* he's the same guy who is on "The Edge", Newman in "Seinfeld"
    and Nedry in "Jurassic Park."
    
    Richard

Now here is the $64 question.

Is he also the same guy who played Flounder in Animal House?

Thanks,
Chuck

    AAAAARRRRGGGHHHHH!!!!!
    
    Furst was in "Animal House" and "St. Elsewhere," among other things,
    but was not, not, NOT in "Jurassic Park". The JP guy (whose name I
    forget) was in a "Seinfeld" episode; don't know whether Furst ever was. 
    
    Can we talk about something else now???
    
    -b

>       <<< Note 165.132 by 11578::MAXFIELD "You are what you access." >>>
>
>    Stephen Furst played Dr. Elliott Axelrod in "st Elsewhere" and I
>    *think* he's the same guy who is on "The Edge", Newman in "Seinfeld"
>    and Nedry in "Jurassic Park."
>    
>    Richard

You are wrong here... Stephen Furst was on "st elsewhere" and "animal house"
and also the spin-off TV show of animal house, I think called "delta house".
I've never seen "the edge" so I can't comment on that, but I know he is not
the same guy in JP, "Seinfeld", "dead again", or "Basic Instinct"

This other fat guy is fatter then Furst, and has a very annoying voice,
unlike Furst who has a lighter friendlier voice then this guy.

I don't know his name, BTW.

;-)

/Scott

    Someone earlier mentioned they thought the actor's name was Wayne.
    Checking Maltin I find a "Wayne Knight" in both "Dead Again" and in 
    "Basic Instinct".  (And he is the actor in "Jurassic Park", and he is
    not Stephen Furst.)
    
    I think we can lay this to rest now, Beth.
    
    - Dave

  By the way, I thought that the heavy guy, who ever it was, was one of the few
adult male actors who did a good job in the film. In fact he did a really fine
job of portraying the sleazy turn coat engineer. 

  The only other adult male actor I liked was the foreman/hunter who seemed to
understand the Velocoraptors. Most of the rest of the adult actors were
terrible. 

  George

Which is why my brain kept saying Wayne Newton, even
though I knew THAT was wrong.

Thank you!

Just to try to complete this, filmographies.  First, Wayne Knight:

Dirty Dancing (1987)  [Stan]
Born on the Fourth of July (1989)  [Official]
Dead Again (1991)  ["Piccolo" Pete]
JFK (1991)
V.I. Warshawski (1991)  [Smeissen]
"Edge, The" (1992)
Basic Instinct (1992)  [John Correli]
Double Edge (1992/I) (TV)  [Tommy White]
T Bone N Weasel (1992) (TV)
Jurassic Park (1993) [Dennis Nedry]

Now, Stephen Furst:

National Lampoon's Animal House (1978)  [Kent Dorfman]
Take Down (1978)  [Randy Jensen]
"Delta House" (1979)
Swim Team (1979)
Getting Wasted (1980)
Midnight Madness (1980)
Unseen, The (1981)  ["Junior" Keller (The Unseen)]
"St. Elsewhere" (1982)  [Dr. Elliot Axelrod (1983-1988)]
National Lampoon's Class Reunion (1982)
Silent Rage (1982)
Off Sides (1984) (TV)
Up the Creek (1984)  [Gonzer]
If It's Tuesday, It Still Must Be Belgium (1987) (TV)  [Leo Fletch]
"Have Faith" (1989)  [Father Gabriel "Gabe" Podmaninski]
Dream Team, The (1989)  [Albert Ianuzzi]
"Bastard, The" (????) (mini)

    
    I *knew* that guy was in "Silent Rage".  I saw him there furst.
    

re           <<< Note 165.140 by 18583::LEBEAU "Boot to the head!!!" >>>

    
  >  I *knew* that guy was in "Silent Rage".  I saw him there furst.
 
 I *knew* Wayne was on "The Edge" I saw it on TV one Knight.

Barry   

    Well it seems that everything that could have been said about this
    crock of c*** has been so now it's time for a question aimed at all you
    would be palaeontologists out there.
    
    What is a Velocoraptor ?  Is it:
    
    a)  An alternative but equally valid name for a Deinonychus ?
    b)  A name cooked up by the director because it sounded more
        threatening than Deinonychus ?
    c)  Something similar but actually very different from a Deinonychus ? 
    d)  A spelling mistake ?
    e)  None of the above ?
    
    Regards
    
    Nigel
         

    There's quite a bit of discussion on this in NOTED::SF, topic 1005; as
    I recall, the gist of it is that yes, there were velociraptors, related
    to (or a more general class of, I'm not sure) deinonychus, and
    available in several different sizes.
    
    -b

    According to The_Dinasaur_Encyclopedia...
    
    Velociraptor
    vol-OS-i-RAP-tor
    means: Swift robber                
    order: Saurischia
    suborder: Deinonychosauria
    period: Late Cretaceous
    remains found: Mongolia
    length (nose to tip of tail): 1.8m (6ft)
    
    Velociraptor was a lightly built medium-sized meat-eater.  Velociraptor
    had a long low skull, with a very flat snout.  It had long arms and
    slender legs. One toe of each foot was large and scythelike, as in
    DEINONYCHUS and DROMAEOSAURUS. In 1971 a specimen of Velociraptor was
    found that had died while attacking a PROTOCERATOP.  Velociraptor had a
    firm hold of the head-shield of PROTOCERATOPS and was kicking at the
    belly with its huge foot-claw.
    
    The Dinosaur Encyclopedia by Dr. M. Benton, (C) 1984, Simon & Schuster
    Inc, Publishers, ISBN 0-671-51046-0
    

    Re: -1 and -2
    
    Thanks for that.  I think I can consider my question well and truely
    answered.  Unfortunately there are no prizes for the most comprehensive
    answer.
    
    Regards
    
    Nigel

    And supposedly Speilburg took liberties in making them larger than
    "real", but while the filming was being done, a scientist in Utah found
    a larger raptor, about the size of Speilburg's!  Utahraptor, I believe,
    is what I read.

    I read some where Speilberg made the raptors larger to be able to fit
    humans inside.  The article said it was easier and cheeper to use a
    human powered raptor verse a robotic one.  Considering how much screen
    time the raptors had in the movie it was probably the only economical
    way to do it.

    Re .148: They were. And human-powered. And models. And robot-operated
    parts. [The wonders of special effects take many forms, she said, as
    theramin music rose eerily in the background.]
    
    -b

    Re. last few
    
    For a close look at "how they did it" I refer you to the book "The
    Making Of Jurassic Park".  It is chockful of descriptions and photos
    about all the JP dinosaurs and is a wonderful read!  According to it,
    each type of raptor model had certain strengths (the suit-type was
    better for "body English" shots but the cable-driven robot could
    really spin its head around, etc.)
    
    It is to ILM's credit that it is difficult to distinguish from one
    dinosaur type to the next; let alone the fact that the computer-
    generated dinosaurs appear as real as the live models!
    
    						--Eric--
    
    P.S.  I just bought the soundtrack; it's over 70 minutes long and is,
    IMO, some of John Williams' finest film music.  There is much of the
    poignancy and wistfulness of "E.T." - as well as the spiritedness of
    "Raiders Of The Lost Ark".  Music lovers, enjoy!

    But don't let all this talk of modelmaking make us forget about the
    wonderful character development and fascinating plot!

   It's rumored that Spielberg uses a little program called 
   "The F.A.O. Schmuck's Cliche Character Generator". This is widely believed
   to be the same program used by the group of lobotomized writers who write
    all the sitcoms on TV. It's knowledgeable about all the stereotypes and
   cute characters (the ones that makes you go "Ahhhhh...." like you see
   on the laugh tracks). It picks one entry from each column in a table like
   this:

       Column 1              Column 2                Column 3
       --------              --------                --------
        Cute                  11 Year old            Boy
        Cuddly                 3 Year old            Girl
        Extremely Intelligent  Talking               Dinosaur
        Pesky                  Roller-blading        Dolphin
        Baby-faced             Mountain-biking       Whale
                               Computer-programming  Dog
                                                     Cat
                                                     Alien

     You can do any character like "Pesky Roller-Blading Girl" or
      "Cute Talking Dolphin".

     This is the Spielberg edition. The Michael Crichton edition is similar
     except for more intense characters such as "Short Pipe-smoking Muslim"
     or "Sinister Japanese Conglomerate-chairman".

     :-) :-) :^)

     Nari

    Re-1
    
    I have seen the same system to use on stereotype managers jargon
    somewhere.
    
    Jan.

	Goldbloom was on letterman last night.  He said the film has
	grossed $600million worldwide so far.  Closing in on ET's record
	$640 or so million (probably not adjusted for inflation).

	I wonder how many of the actors are getting a % of the profits
	(vs. just their salary)?

    elaborating on .154
    
    Be sure that it will rise cuz the movie is going to open in The
    Netherlands tommorrow in (hold on) 95 theatres. for a small country
    that is considered as a record breaker. With previous notes in hand 
    I'm going to see it. ;^)
    
    What film will beat this ultimate record in future? A gues, The new
    Star  war saga? Any updates on this?
    
    ;^) Jan.

>    What film will beat this ultimate record in future? A gues, The new
>    Star  war saga? Any updates on this?
    
    Haven't heard anything new about SW, though the previous incarnation of
    this notes file had a lot of speculation on when they would be out.
    That wouldn't get my vote, though. I predict that the sequel to
    "Silence of the Lambs" (which will be third in the trilogy when you
    include "Manhunter". I predict it will reunite Dr. Lector, Clarisse,
    *and* Graham, the part-time tracker of serial murderers from Manhunter.
    I also predict that, unlike JP, the writing will be impeccable!
    
    ANy news on *that* would be eagerly received.

Variety this week estimates that when you include merchandising and
such, Jurassic Park has already topped $1 billion in sales, and rising.
 Of that, Spielberg stands to get about $200 million, topping
Nicholson's $60 mil from Batman (the previous record single-player payment).

Variety also has a major front-page article about Indiana Jones IV
(Lucas, Spielberg, and Ford have all agreed, and a script is in the
works) and the next Star Wars trilogy, which will be filmed all at once
and released over a 4 year period -- but neither of these will happen
until Lucas is satisfied with the technology.  He's been working on
techniques for cheaper production, and they're good enough for TV (used
on Young Indiana Jones) but not for movies, yet.  Another year or so. 
In the meantime, Lucas has a few other small projects to keep busy.

I'm sure all this will be in the general press soon; the Globe finally
got around to mentioning it today.

>   <<< Note 165.155 by 51228::KWIKKEL "The dance music library 1969-20.." >>>
>    
>    What film will beat this ultimate record in future? A gues, The new
>    Star  war saga? Any updates on this?

An unanswerable question, I think.
What breaks the record is mostly novelty, and that is, almost by definition,
unpredicatble.

Star Wars had lots of new technology and special effects, and put a good story
inside that wrapper (part 4, anyway - part 5 was worse, 6 worse still,
and those two did not benefit from the novelty of 4, just the coattails).
ET mixed a genre with a new audience.
The early epics (Gone with the Wind, for example) had scope and scale.

JP is primarily special effects coupled with a popular focus (dinosaurs)
and a popular book AND conceiveable contemporary technology.

What's next?  I don't, what's new?

- tom]

Heard today that JP has surpassed ET in box office receipts.

Spielberg now has 4 of top 10 cashflow movies of all time (Jaws, Raiders,
ET & JP).

Lee

Saw this the other night in a second-run movie house.  They really packed them
in, I think with many people (lot of kids ) who were seeing it for a second 
or third time.

Special effects can't explain the success of this film.  It's much more
than Gremlins, or King Kong with a boost.  Spielberg has a notable interest
in children and if I were to sum up the theme of "Park" I would say it 
embellishes on the family vacation from hell.  More than anything, the 
film reminds me of National Lampoon's Vacation.

The family trek to Orlando or Annahiem is our nation's Pilgrimage.  Yank it
around with rides that malfunction, torrential rain, and a couple creepy 
neighbors back at the motel and what you got is a  blockbuster film everyone
can relate to.  ET with a flat tire.  

Brian

    .160 reminds me of my favorite line in the film
    
    
    
	    	"I should have built in Orlando."

Heard blurb on radio someone is making "..an X-rated version of Jurassic
Park."

Huh?

Lee

    re .162, it might spice it up little.  It needed something in my
    opinion.  :-)    
    
    Lorna
    

    There is or was going to be a Jurrasic porn film,but Speilberg took the
    maker to court and got them to drop Jurrasic from the title.The article
    I rad didn't say weather the film will still be made (in Europe).
    
    Tyrone
    

  That's weird. How do you control a word like Jurrasic which refers to a
period in time that lasted something like 20 million years?

  That sort of sounds like saying that "Behind THE green door" can't be shown
because people would confuse it with "THE fugitive". 

  George

>> How do you control a word like Jurrasic

The same way you control a word like "Alpha", which is nothing more than a Greek
letter.  But because other computer companies have used it in their product
names, we can't use it any more for "Alpha AXP".  Conversely, Digital can't
complain about a vacuum cleaner sold in the UK under the brand name VAX.

I think it's all to do with context; Spielberg coudn't stop me writing a book,
fact or fiction, about the Jurassic period of history and with "Jurassic" in the
title, but he could stop me making a film where my use of the word "Jurassic"
was clearly to try and jump on the bandwagon of his film.

Scott

  I suppose you are right, but it seems he should get docked something for
having mostly Cretaceous animals in his "Jurassic" park movie. 

  Then again, his idea of Chaos theory is having someone spout off Green Peace
philosophy so I suppose we shouldn't expect much.

  George 

    During the trial the Porn film maker stated that the word Jurrasic was
    "in the public domain" which I would have to agree with,but I think
    Spilberg made the pint that the film was obviously a send up of his
    film,and so was using a similar title to get more sales!
    
    Tyrone
    

    RE's:
    
    Great reading this topic. I'll be going with my kids tommorrow eve.
    Looking forward to it.
    
    ;^) Jan.(yup, a name for a guy)

    So,when's JP coming out on video? anyone know?
    
    Ken

    It's at the Lowell Flick right now for 99 cents!  Took my wife Monday;
    she didn't go when I took my two boys when it first came out.
    
    I enjoyed seeing it again; she liked it more than I thought she would.
    
    NAZZ

    But it didn't have THX, did it? Can't beat hat with a stick!

    This film had superb special effects but a crud storyline-It seems as
    though Mr Speilberg got so tied up in the effects deptartment that he
    forgot what the film was all about-and one of the most unexciting ends
    I have ever witnessed.This film has made so much profit because of the 
    PG rating and media not because it is a great film.IMO J.Cameron's
    Aliens was 10 times better(suspense,storyline,action and not too far
    behind on effects)-all in 1986!!!
    
                                     rich.

    so when's it being released on video?
    
    Ken

    the date has been set for around october 21st. I am not sure if that is
    the right date but i am pretty sure that it is in october. I just don't
    think it will be the same though. The special effects are what made the
    movie.  I will atleast need to watch it with suround sound to get the
    sound of the tyranasaurus roar.
    

    The book is way better than the book, but the movie was well worth if
    just for the spacial effects.
    As far as THX goes it was used because the movie was in CD sound.  If
    seen in a theatre with the capability to use the CD sound it was much
    better than THX, but many theatres showed it in two or more theatres so
    eveyone might have missed the extoardinary sound of the tyranosaurus
    roar through the CD sound.

    
    
       Will the date for the lazerdisc,be earlier that video?
       And will it be THX sound?

    I picked up a letterboxed video of JP for about $17 yesterday. [What
    with this _and_ "Schindler's List" coming out on laserdisc, I was
    tempted to go ahead and pop for a disc player, but then I chickened
    out. See, if I got a laserdisc player I'd want a bigger TV, and then
    I'd want a better sound system, and then - well, it doesn't stop, does
    it? ;-)]
    
    -b
    
    p.s. For the information of Nashua-area noters: I got it at the video
    store in Pheasant Lane Mall - I forget the name, but it's the only one
    that's all video. [The tape's probably at the department stores too,
    but I didn't check, nor did I comparison-shop. Impulse-buyer, that's
    me.]

>    p.s. For the information of Nashua-area noters: I got it at the video
>    store in Pheasant Lane Mall - I forget the name, but it's the only one
>    that's all video.

Suncoast Video, n'est-ce pas?

-- Nina

    Re .179: Sounds right. (It's definitely a Promotion with a capital P.
    The tape sells for $16.99, and comes with a rebate coupon for $5 if you
    can persuade yourself to buy a sufficient quantity of Jell-O pudding
    snacks.)
    
    So I watched it last night, and enjoyed it all over again. It's kind of
    funny how easily I can overlook the plotholes in favor of the dinosaur
    scenes; that first scene with the brachiosaur always makes me
    teary-eyed [admittedly, the score helps a lot, punching that rising
    lyricism at just the right moment]. While there's been a lot of
    criticism of the calibre of the acting and the shallowness of the
    characters, I found their wide-eyed wonder in this scene to be just
    perfect. Or maybe it's just because I sat there watching them watching
    the dinosaur and I thought, "I want this to be real..." [I've been a
    sucker for dinosaurs from _way_ back.]
    
    Anyway, I'm glad I got the tape. And that it's letterboxed. [There are
    non-letterboxed versions available too, for those of you who hate
    "those black lines at the top and bottom of the screen".]
    
    -b

    
    Most discount stores out here in So Calif are selling it 
    for $14.99 or so.
    
    I didn't notice if the box said letter box format. I don't really
    care for letterbox, but will adjust. Does it say on the box that
    it is letterboxed or not?
    
    Dave
                             

    
    Lechmere has it for $14.99 plus a $5 mail-in
    rebate.
    
    Kev --
    

    Re .181: Yep, the boxes are labelled "letterboxed" (if they are, of
    course!).
    
    -b

    
    Phooey!
    
    The laserdisc isn't out until next week. :-) :-)
    
    
    Tom
    ---
    Dictated using Dragon Dictate (Voice Recognition)
    

    
    yep, mine isn't letterbox. Guy at the video store said most copies
    aren't letter box. Top and bottom are labeled letterbox.
    
    I understand letterbox, but find myself annoyed by the smaller
    screen size and big black margins.
    
    Well tonight I'll crank up the surround sound, turn out the lights
    and let it rip.
    
    Dave
    
    
    
    
    

> I understand letterbox, but find myself annoyed by the smaller
> screen size and big black margins.

	But you don't mind missing out on 30-50% of the original image
	as seen in movie theatres?

	A non-letterboxed movie is like taking a family photo and cutting
	out those people on the side so you can fit it in your wallet sized
	album.

    
    Well I have rented letter boxed movies.
    Kept telling myself they are better, when only 20" of my 27" tv is
    filled up.
    And I have to explain to my family it's letterboxed and everybody
    complains. "Yep, but you see more of the real original." 
    
    Anyway...some friend advise me that letterbox reduces picture 
    resolution due to compression. So he never buys them.
    
    Anyway, I am sure I will enjoy my old crappie nonletter boxed
    edition that fills up all 27" of my tv screen.
    
    Dave
    

> Anyway, I am sure I will enjoy my old crappie nonletter boxed
> edition that fills up all 27" of my tv screen.

	Given the movie in question (ie. JP), your TV could have
	one gun broken and still not notice the difference :-)

    Replies .33 and .112 reference two scenes involving mirrors.  Does
    anyone know who and where one could contact to perhaps obtain slides
    or prints of these two scenes to use in a discussion of plane and
    convex mirrors?  Thanks for any leads.

    I got the non-letterboxed version at Osco Drug.  Same $5 discount
    if you send in the Jello labels.  I was disappointed that it was not
    in L-B, as I know Spielberg is a big fan of it, and I have "Always" in
    that format.  I thought for sure JP would be that way.   If I had known
    it came both ways I would have checked around.
    
    I found something missing, but maybe it is my memory.  I recall there
    being some early scene, perhaps just before we get on the ground in
    Montana, where you first hear the main theme music.  I remember in the
    theater hearing that music and saying to myself "this is gonna be
    great".  I even bought the CD of the music.
    
    But on the tape, that music is not there in that place.  Do I remember
    wrong?

    I also have just bought this video in the LETTERBOXED EDITION version
    (which is the perferred format for those who have an appreciation and
    respect for the director's intended presentation of the film).
    
    BTW the LB Edition is boldly labeld with a red band on top and bottom
    of the video tape carton; the 'cropped' version is minimally labed on
    the back of the carton waaaay at the bottom (in gray) informing the
    purchaser of the modification to 'fit' your television screen.
    
    					* *
    
    Yup, I, like most, will crank up the surround sound (with sub-woofer),
    whilst viewing this film.
    
    You all enjoy!
    
    T
    

>    respect for the director's intended presentation of the film).

The director's intended presentation of the film was for viewing
on a forty foot wide screen (with effective resolution of 4000-10000
pixels across the frame) in a hall with a couple of hundred people
and a sound system that would raise the roof.

Or he intended it for home video distribution for 25", 4:3, 525 line TV all 
along, and the theater was just a convenient stopover for an extra
few hundred million dollars.

- tom]

>>    respect for the director's intended presentation of the film).
> The director's intended presentation of the film was for viewing ...
> Or he intended it for home video distribution .....

	It depends on the director.  Woody Allen for example is
	commited to the art, Steve Spielberg however seems to be
	in it for the money .....

    Heard that there is a Director's cut version coming out sometime in the
    spring, with additional footage. Not sure what.
    
    janetb.

    $13.77 + $5. rebate offer at WAL MART 
    
    
    great deal I think
    

    how much jello do you have to buy to get your $5 ?

    
    Nearly 200 replies on JP?
    
    Not suprising. This was a landmark film for SFX. We saw it in the
    cinema and again, recently, on video. It's, as I suspected, one to see
    at the cinema.
    
    Favourite scenes? The initial dinosaur sighting, the stampede
    (absolutely the best scene for me), the ill Triceratops. So many 'How 
    did they do it?'s (but really I don't want to know).
    
    However, having read the book, there was so much scope for so much
    more. So many interesting ideas are skimmed or just plain left out of 
    the film, but cost and time always play a part (the old triangle - On
    time, in budget, all features - pick any two...), so it's probably
    unreasonable to expect a film with such good effects to be particularly
    strong in the story department.
    
    I came to this note, because someone commented on Golblum's casting in
    the film. He was excellently cast as the Chaos-therotician, as was
    Richard Attenborough as the park owner. Laura Dern and Sam Neill were
    a bit wasted, as their parts are distinctly weakened in the film
    compared to the novel (especially their romantic involvement and Neill's 
    anti-child feeling) and even the kids managed to avoid being cutesy,
    totally useless or 'Wesley-Crusher' clever (the comment someone 
    made about them shrieking a lot seemed particularly wide of the mark - 
    I'd scream if something like a T-Rex was trying to eat me!), but this 
    film isn't really about people, it's about Dinosaurs... 
    
    See the film and enjoy it and then read the book and enjoy THAT even
    more! Well, I (and my wife) did....
    
    Mark
                                         

.55> BTW: Does anyone know anything about the sequel?

	Jeff Goldbloom was on Tom Snyder's show the other night
	and said he goes to work for the sequel this Sept.

	Also FWIW, Goldbloom, in response to a call-in, said he is
	still dating Laura Dern, whom he met on the JP set.