Monster Movie of the Week: The Lost World Jurassic Park (1997)

THE LOST WORLD: JURASSIC PARK
Director: Steven Spielberg
Genre: Survival/Adventure

THE MOVIE

After the global phenomenon that was Jurassic Park, author Michael Crichton was pressed to write a sequel to his smash novel, on which the 1993 Steven Spielberg movie was loosely based. Crichton's sequel, "The Lost World" introduces us to Isla Sorna, or Site B, where the dinosaurs of Jurassic Park were created before being transported to John Hammond's theme park. It turns out that most of the labs and hatcheries on the park were just for show and the real dirty work of cloning dinosaurs was conducted on Site B.

"The Lost World" novel is a sequel to Crichton's book, not the Spielberg movie and and it does have an edgier tone and functions as a dark commentary on science and technology more than an as an awe-inspiring fun ride. That said, it does bring back Ian Malcolm who had been pretty much pronounced dead at the end of the "Jurassic Park" novel (after a long and rambling morphine trip). While the first book was concerned with how chaos theory predicted the collapse of the ambitious system that was Isla Nublar, "The Lost World" is preoccupied with extinction theory and the behavior of these animals which have been allowed to develop on their own for many years.

The movie adaptation is pretty loose and juxtaposes a lot of characters and relationships and even adds in some material from the first book, which was too technically difficult to achieve at the dawn of the digital age. It's a pretty light movie and has even less scientific commentary than its predecessor.

As in the book, the movie focuses on Ian Malcolm's return to the island, although this is the more cuddly Jeff Goldblum version of the character. His motivation for going back in the movie is to rescue his paleontologist girlfriend who has already gone to the island on a secret documentary exposition. He even has an annoying tween daughter who stows away in the equipment. Much like the movie's T-Rex, The Lost World is very much about showing that Ian Malcolm can be a responsible and nurturing parent and mate. Both were sort of unpleasant and roguish in the first movie, and are reformed by the end of this one. That parallel is a nice emotional throughline in the movie.

Malcolm's team is competing with a group from another wing of InGen who are there to capture dinosaurs to display in a scaled-down San Diego version of Jurassic Park. Soon both teams are forced to work together to survive the island and its ferocious inhabitants. Perhaps the most notable addition to the original story is the last act, which features a T-Rex running loose in San Diego. This bit is a nice homage to classic monster movies and even features a group of Japanese business men running for their lives.


THE MONSTER/EFFECTS
Probably one of the appealing aspects of doing this movie for someone like Spielberg (who had already won an Academy Award by this point) was to play around with his cool toys some more. Jurassic Park pushed special effects technology to the breaking point, and there were still plenty of things that they were unable to do in that movie. The Lost World, no doubt, offered the opportunity to take advantage of the advances that were made in the intervening four years and make a bigger and more spectacular movie with more dinosaurs and set pieces.

The movie features not one, but three T-Rexes. There are two adults and one infant. Sadly, there is very little difference between the adults. It would have been nice to see a little sexual dimorphism, which was alluded to in the book. The infant is mainly seen injured and is realized by an animatronic, and later CGI. The male Rex even gets a scene which was cut from the original novel, in which a Rex attempts to snatch some people from behind a waterfall, complete with dino tongue.

The first dinos we see are a herd of Stegasaurs, including adults and juveniles. It's almost as though someone had a checklist of popular dinosaurs that didn't make it into Jurassic Park. They achieve something you didn't see in the first movie: a good medium shot of a bunch of large CGI dinosaurs. They look really great in this movie. There is even a baby, which seems like a nice nod to the baby Triceratops cut scene from the first movie.

Speaking of Trikes, we get to actually see on in motion in this movie. If you remember, the only Triceratops in Jurassic Park was the big prone one with a tummy ache. Here we get to see one go all Cretaceous on the InGen camp.

There is also a "round up" scene, straight out of The Valley of Gwangi which features lots of sauropods and hadrosaurs. There are even some dome-headed Pachycephalosaurs. There is a wonderful scene during the round up in which we follow a motorcycle as it drives under the belly of sauropod, which is one of my all time favorite dinosaur moments.

The Lost World also introduces us to Compies, which are small chicken-sized dinosaurs which travel in packs, picking off weak animals. Compies were present in Michael Crichton's first novel and even had the privilege of finishing off that version of John Hammond. Here, they have a similar scene in which they gang up on one of the the hunters brought to the island by InGen.



Jurassic Park's most memorable dinos, the Velociraptors are back and get a large action sequence in the movie's third act to themselves. The raptors chase Malcolm, and his girlfriend and daughter into an abandoned InGen facility, which has a cool Life After People vibe. There is even a follow-up to a series of shots in the kitchen scene from the first movie in which Spielberg juxtaposes human hands and raptor claws. Sadly these raptors are vanquished by a combination of their own foul tempers and tween gymnastics.



MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE
The dino round up is a really exciting piece of filmmaking, and probably Spielberg's whole reason for wanting to do the movie.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY
Widely available in many different DVD configurations. The whole trilogy is rumored to be out on BluRay in the near future.

TRAILER




Patrick Garone
www.patrickgarone.com
twitter.com/patrickgarone
facebook.com/cityofthegodsnovel

The (Possible) Candidates, Part 3: Ron Paul

While other candidates are offering a variety of weak tea in the 2012 Republican primaries, there is at least one who is the real deal. Ron Paul is, in many ways, the godfather of the Tea Party movement. This Texas congressman is at the Libertarian end of the Republican Party and, until recently, he has been treated derisively by the GOP establishment. However, with the power and popularity of the Tea Party movement, voters will be taking a fresh look at Dr. Paul, should he decide to get back into the race. With his ideological purity and his incredible ability to raise money, Ron Paul could play a much larger role in the 2012 elections than he had in previous races.

The Tea Party in its most pure form is about strict adherence to the U.S. Constitution, small unobtrusive government and low taxes and spending. There is a strong Libertarian influence on the movement and while most potential Republican presidential candidates are recent converts to this cause, Ron Paul has an unassailable record of fiscal and constitutional conservatism. For his consistent record of voting against government spending, Paul has earned the nickname "Dr. No" from his congressional colleagues. In short, Paul was Tea Party before Tea Party was even fashionable.

Ignored by the Republican establishment, Ron Paul has developed a strong grass-roots campaign structure. His previous presidential runs have also shown Paul to have a very committed and web-savvy group of supporters who have been able to raise phenomenal amounts of money for him. He is perhaps the only Republican candidate in recent memory who has been able to attract passionate younger voters. There is no doubt that a considerable chunk of 2008 Paul supporters spun off into the 2009 Tea Party movement. It will be interesting to see how he factors in this new electoral equation.

Paul's Libertarian leanings often have put him at odds with the leadership of the Republican Party, which had become dominated free-spending, interventionist Neo-Conservatives. Aside from adhering to fiscal conservatism and strict constitutionality, his major departure from modern Republican orthodoxy is advocating a foreign policy that some have called "Isolationist." Paul has famously voted against such Republican-led disasters as the Iraq and Afganistan wars and he even opposed the detention center in Guantanamo Bay and the Patriot Act. In one of the debates from the 2008 elections, he correctly referred to the 911 attacks as "blowback," for which he was openly mocked, because many Republicans simply do not publicly acknowledge the existence of a complex real world in which there are consequences to our foreign policy.

What effect will a Paul candidacy have on the restless Republican electorate? Will they be able to look past the many tea-soaked candidates for the real thingl? In light of the many Neo-Conservative foreign policy catastrophes of the Bush years, will they be able to embrace a Paulian worldview? If nothing else, Ron Paul is the most authentic and consistent candidate in the field and that fact may resonate powerfully with Republican voters this cycle. He's very much the anti-Romney.

THE BOTTOM LINE

PROS: In a time in which the Tea Party is influential in the Republican Party, Ron Paul is the only serious candidate with a long and trust-worthy record. If he's going to run, he won't ever be able to have a better showing than now. If nothing else, he may be able to wrest the Tea Party away from the corrupting influences of the Republican Party establishment. He can raise some crazy money.

CONS: He may ultimately be too quirky to be broadly accepted. He has already been painted as a kook by other Republicans. Some of the constitutional justifications for his positions will seem weird and convoluted to mainstream voters. He may have solid logical and constitutional reasons, but he is still against things like Medicare, the Civil Rights Act, and sensible gun control, which are all popular with voters.

TRIVIA: Was punked by Sasha Baron Cohen into thinking that his gay character Bruno wanted to "put a hit" on him. Look for that to show up in a campaign commercial if he starts winning primaries

WHO SHOULD PLAY HIM IN A BIO PIC: Sir Ian McKellan.

Patrick Garone
www.patrickgarone.com
twitter.com/patrickgarone
facebook.com/cityofthegodsnovel

Monster Movie of the Week: Gremlins 2: The New Batch (1990)

-->

GREMLINS 2: THE NEW BATCH

Director: Joe Dante

Genre: Comedy/Horror

Country: USA

THE MOVIE

The original Gremlins was an uneasy mix of comedy, horror and holiday movie and was notable for its dark and violent moments. The sequel is more of a wacky comedy that mixes the occasional piece of sharp satire with an anarchic cartoon sensibility. It lacks much of the darkness and violence and the charm of the Capra-esque location of the original but makes up for it with its inventiveness and sheer lunacy.

This is a movie that manages to make fun of just about everything, including itself. I mean, you have to love a movie that features scene in which a pair of gremlins discover a cabinet filled with vials with labels like “ACID: Do Not Throw In Face” (being a Gremlin, he immediately throws the other’s face.) Unlike most sequels, which revere the originals, Gremlins 2 goes out of its way to mock the original movie with fun spins on Kate's dark Christmas monologue and even the illogical rules of Mogwai care ("It's always after midnight somewhere.")

Gremlins 2 continues several years after the original in which Gizmo’s elderly owner at the little Chinatown shop is in danger of being razed by millionaire and mega-developer Daniel Clamp (based on a pre-crazy Donald Trump). Gizmo escapes and is brought to a weird genetics lab (run by Christopher Lee!) in the ridiculously modern and automated Clamp Tower, coincidentally, where Billy and Kate also work, having moved to NYC to make it big. Needless to say Gizmo gets wet and wacky hijinks ensue. The Gremlins break into the genetics laboratory and all hell breaks loose. The movie has a lot of fun with all these weird mutant gremlins.

Unfortunately Gremlins 2 was not a big hit and the prospects of another entry in the series are remote. One reason speculated for the low box office of the sequel was that about seven years had passed between the two movies and “Gremlinmania” had died down. I was a kid when the first movie came out and let me tell you, kids went nuts for that movie. Those same kids were probably less interested as teens.

-->

I should also say that I am forever regretful that I did not see this movie in the theater as it has an infamous sequence that simulates a projection breakdown and the theater's subsequent take over by gremlins, one of many funny references to the earlier movie. For a few wonderful minutes you would have believed that the projector actually was broken. This effect was recreated for both VHS and cable versions of the movie, but the cinema version is the one that would have had the audience going for the longest.

THE MONSTERS/EFFECTS

The effects are a lot better than the first movie but the main improvement is the diversity of the gremlin designs. They don’t all look like clones of one another as they did in the original. Even the Mogwai are very distinct from one another and they start out with distinct personalities and looks. My favorite is the really adorable Daffy Mogwai. These looks even carry over to the gremlin designs, so you have about a dozen distinct "hero" gremlins that stand out from the masses.

The movie also exploits the Genetic Lab subplot and has the gremlins mutate into different forms such as the Spider Gremlin, Bat Gremlin, Veggie Gremlin, Electro-Gremlin, Brain Gremlin, and many more, even including a bizarrely funny transexual Gremlin, which shares a memorable moment with Robert Picardo.

-->

SEQUELS

None planned. Although, there are increasingly loud murmurs of a remake or reboot.  Please for the love of God keep Michael Bay away from it!

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Widely available on DVD and Bluray.

TRIVIA

The original special effects man for this movie was Chris Walas who declined to work on the sequel so that he could direct The Fly II. Make up guru Rick Baker was lured on to the project with the promise that he could make the gremlins more diverse.

The toy company NECA has a robust line of Gremlins action figures including many designs from Gremlins 2.  They have a subset Mogwai line which is quite popular with collectors.

TRAILER







Patrick Garone

www.patrickgarone.com

twitter.com/patrickgarone

facebook.com/cityofthegodsnovel

The (Possible) Candidates, Part 2: Mitt Romney

Mitt Romney is an enigma, wrapped in a riddle, wearing an expensive suit. Of all of the potential Republican candidates, he is the one most loved by the elite party establishment. He is a photogenic ex-governor who has years of experience in the private sector. He is smart, articulate, business-friendly and the scion of a Republican political family. His father was George Romney, a high-profile and principled moderate Republican who served as governor of Michigan for two terms and ran for the presidency in 1968. Mitt Romney has run for office as a moderate in Massachusetts, unsuccessfully for the Senate and successfully for the governorship. He ran against John McCain for the Republican nomination in 2008 and actually won a good amount of delegates before bowing out.

Romney's main weakness in 2008 was that he had blatantly reinvented himself as a social conservative, flatly contradicting positions he had taken earlier in his career running for office in the ultra Blue State of Massachusetts. Ted Kennedy had famously quipped that Romney was "multiple-choice" on abortion. John McCain himself seemed to take great pleasure in pointing out Romney's numerous flip-flops during their debates in 2007 and 2008 (which is quite ironic in retrospect, as McCain has recently done some ideological acrobatics that rival any of Romney's position changes).

So what, then does Romney actually believe? Is he a social moderate in the vein of his father who is now pretending to be conservative to appeal to Republican primary voters? Was he a conservative pretending to be a moderate to win elections in Massachusetts, who now has to put on a big show of being conservative to win the nomination? Has he genuinely evolved his positions in such a radical way? How will he govern, if elected? All of these layers make Romney the Inception candidate, with whom you can never be quite sure what is going on.

This perceived in-authenticity is Romney's greatest weakness and it will hurt him more in 2012 than it did in 2008. Republican primary voters are now more suspicious of politicians than ever and when you have as much inconsistency in your record as Romney, it makes him a tough sell. The fact that he is also considered the "establishment" candidate doesn't do him any favors when much of the vitality in the Republican party comes from the Tea Party activists who seem to consider the Republican party a necessary evil.

If that weren't bad enough, Romney is the chief architect of a statewide health insurance program in Massachusetts that is actually quite similar to the "Obama-care" which is so passionately hated by Republicans. The fact that Romney's health care plan was considered mainstream and uncontroversial only three years ago tells you a lot about how much the party has changed since 2008. In fact, many of the ideas behind both Romney's plan and the national plan were originally conceived of by Republicans in response to Democratic attempts to pass "Universal Healthcare" in the 1990's. Both utilize the existing markets to address the uninsured and were considered solid conservative alternatives to "government run health care." However, this is not the case in the factually challenged and hyperbolic environment of 2011, when both plans are considered a government takeover of the health care system.

Romney's other vulnerability is that he is a Mormon, a religion that is considered little more than a cult by many of the religious conservatives that will dominate some of the early voting states. Soft support among these voters is possibly the reason Romney did not fare better in 2008. For this reason, Romney appears to be willing to cede the Iowa caucuses, where he had a weak showing in 2008 despite having spent large amounts of money in the state.

In the end, the real tragedy is that the Massachusetts Mitt Romney, the business savvy East Coast socially moderate Republican who established a clever and popular health care plan and was a successful governor cannot run as himself. That Mitt Romney might have made a good President. The one who is running in 2011 shows a lack of principle and leadership, unlike his father who stood up to the insurgent right wing of his party. The younger Romney is reduced to uncomfortable flip-flopping on any number of issues to win the nomination. He even downplays his connections to Massachusetts, where he had his single term in elected office. In all likelihood, he would not even be able to win Massachusetts in a general election.

THE BOTTOM LINE

PROS: Percieved as being a serious candidate and strong on the economy which will still be the number one issue on voter's minds in the general election, has a strong organization and support from the Republican establishment, a personal fortune with which he can support his campaign. The Republican party has a long history of nominating its also-rans from the previous election cycle.

CONS: Perceived as being a flip-flopper who will say anything to get elected. His religion is not popular with Christian Conservatives. Does not have a close relationship with the Tea Party. Is associated with a health care program that, while considered a success in Massachusetts, is very much like the Obama health care plan which is reviled by conservatives.

DIRTY SECRET: Speaks French! John Kerry was attacked just for looking French. No self-respecting Republican knows a second language. Let alone French.

Romney could very well win the nomination, but he will emerge a battered candidate of a divided Republican party.

WHO SHOULD PLAY HIM IN A BIO PIC: Jon Hamm.

Patrick Garone
www.patrickgarone.com
twitter.com/patrickgarone
facebook.com/cityofthegodsnovel

Monster Movie of the Week: Creature (1998)

CREATURE (1998)

Director: Stuart Gillard

Genre: Horror/Survival/Sci-Fi

THE MOVIE

This 1998 television miniseries is perhaps better known as Peter Benchley’s Creature, itself based on Benchley’s novel White Shark and delivers some solid monster movie thrills for a TV movie. Benchley was best known as the author of Jaws and had made a career of aquatic thrillers and his later book borrows some elements of that story such as a seaside community setting with its own internal economics and politics, a shark expert tracking a man-eater and some other specific scenes and plot points.

However, the novel differs from the movie in several important ways. In the novel, the titular monster is a surgically enhanced shark man created by Nazi scientists. The movie takes this very campy premise and changes the monster to be a genetically engineered creature bred by the U.S. Navy that is a hybrid of shark, human and dolphin DNA which, while still ridiculous, is not quite as silly as a razor-toothed Nazi shark man. The movie also exchanges a Jaws-like New England setting for a south Caribbean locale. These changes make the movie better and less campy than it otherwise would have been and they make for a more interesting monster.

Also, interesting is a change in point of view for Benchley himself, who made a fortune off of the novel and movie version of Jaws, a piece of popular entertainment that framed a whole generation’s perceptions of sharks. I have a “Shark Week”-loving friend who hates Jaws with a passion because he feels it misrepresents sharks. Benchley is said to have regretted the success of his novel and its adaptation and later in his life became somewhat of a shark crusader. This point of view comes across in the protagonist of Creature. Simon Chase, who throughout the movie goes to great lengths to protect a pregnant Great White shark that has been mistakenly believed to be preying on the islanders.

Ultimately, “Creature” is surprisingly good for a TV movie, most of which are notoriously bad. It features a unique monster and some unsettling and genuinely scary moments. The movie has a somewhat Resident Evil kind of feel to it. I’m not talking about the movie but the game series, which has a rich cinematic heritage but manages to create a feel of its own that often features eerie decaying laboratories, engineered human monstrosities, and convoluted stories of corporate experimentation. Creature has a lot of those elements going for it, so if you are a fan of the Resident Evil games, you may really like Creature. The Creature itself looks like something that you would see in a Resident Evil game (Incidentally, the original Resident Evil game came out in 1998 as well and both Creature and Resident Evil seem to bear a passing thematic resemblance to The X-Files, which was still very hot at the time.)

THE MONTER/EFFECTS

While the effects in Creature leave something to be desired the monster itself is pretty cool. It is very shark like at first but it is also mammalian and has the ability to breathe air and walk around which is cool and unexpected (although I couldn’t help think of the “Land Shark” sketches that they had on Saturday Night Live in the '70's, ). When we finally get a good look at the monster we see that he is a perhaps 8 foot tall hunchbacked creature with a head that combines features of a man and a shark with long arms that end in vicious claws. Good stuff.

HOME VIDEO AVAILABILITY

Recently released on DVD and available on Netflix.

MOST MEMORABLE SEQUENCE

While exploring a spooky, long abandoned and partially submerged navy research station, our heroes encounter the creature that chases them through the water and plops down on dry land where he undergoes a painful transformation to an air breather.

SEQUELS

None. Although, the idea is introduced that the creature can breed with a female great white…

SEE ALSO

Jaws 1975 Deep Blue Sea 1997

Patrick Garone
www.patrickgarone.com
twitter.com/patrickgarone
facebook.com/cityofthegodsnovel

The (Possible) Candidates, Part 1: Sarah Palin

As the 2012 election shapes up, I want to take a look at each of the potential candidates individually and evaluate their strengths and weaknesses in this historic wide-open contest for the Republican nomination. Let's start with Sarah Palin, since the probability of her becoming an actual candidate seems to be fading fast.

Former Alaska Governor Sarah Palin was first introduced to the nation when she was selected to be Senator John McCain's running mate in 2008. In that very first speech, Sarah Palin was came out swinging and showed an ability to be likable and to attack at the same time. Republicans fell in love with her, and Democrats were a little scared. She was incredibly impressive. In a lot of ways, that first speech was her finest moment on the national stage, for in the weeks that followed, Palin gave a number of embarrassingly bad interviews and gradually became less charming and more shrill. In the years since the election, Palin has shown herself to be increasingly petty and thin-skinned and has been involved in all kinds of childish media feuds. Her main method of communication these days is through her Facebook page.

Immediately after the election, Governor Palin seemed to have a bright future in the Republican Party. Many observers thought that if she spent the next few years preparing, she would be a front runner for 2012 nomination. Instead, Palin made some unexpected choices, such as quitting her governorship halfway through her term and producing a reality show based on her life with her family in Alaska. She has made large amounts of money capitalizing on her fame, all the while keeping the door open to 2012 run. She has cultivated a bizarre and antagonistic relationship with the media and has mainly kept her appearances to the safe-haven of Fox News (where she is employed as a commentator).

In the last year, even many Republicans have soured on her, partially due to her tone-deaf and self-serving response to the Tuscon shootings, to which she was remotely linked through her sometimes violent metaphors. Many Republicans are likely coming to the conclusion that Sarah Palin is now in the Sarah Palin business and may not have the appetite for an uphill run for the Presidency. She may only have been dangling the possibility as a way to keep alive interest in herself.

In the field of 2012 candidates, her poll numbers have been steadily declining while she mulls over a run. I suspect that this may be due to the fact that drawing out her decision feeds into the perception that she lacks seriousness, while other candidates are taking real concrete steps toward running. Possible candidate Michelle Bachmann is often spoken of as a smarter, more serious version of Sarah Palin, and seems to have stolen a lot of her thunder. However, when and if Palin decides to enter the race, people would likely take another look at her and she would still be a formidable force who would likely be able to have a strong showing in many of the primary contests.

While she has always butted heads with the male Republican establishment, she remains popular with kinds of very conservative grass-roots voters who turn out for primaries and caucuses. If nothing else, she has spent the last two years cultivating a close relationship with the Tea Party movement. However, a candidate who quit halfway through her first term may not be palatable to Republican voters who prize consistency and experience more than their Democratic counterparts.

The most interesting question for Brand Palin is how she will be relevant if she does not run for president. Much of the interest and excitement around Sarah Palin has been based on the assumption that she would enter the 2012 contest. Non-candidate Palin is a much less interesting proposition. The Palin phenomenon has always been based on emotion and passion, which are in a finite supply. She is certainly not going to be any more popular in 2016 than she is now. If she is going to run, now is the time.

THE BOTTOM LINE:

PROS: Still popular with the Republican base and would perform strongly in any number of GOP primaries, the most widely known candidate in the field.

CONS: A lot of baggage, the perception that she lacks seriousness and the polls show her loosing to President Obama by large margins. Also, she may not have the discipline or endurance to run.


Patrick Garone
www.patrickgarone.com
twitter.com/patrickgarone
facebook.com/cityofthegodsnovel