Mesozoic Mind

This series for this month is back, if a bit rushed. I apologise in advance. A Dinosaur Story (2008) Here is a story by  about a baby t. rex who finds an egg and knocks it down the side of the hill its on, but pushes it back up. It hatches into a baby  Brachiosaurus , the implication he has made a friend. The thing I note the most was created by alumni from Sheridan College, which is in my hometown of Mississauga, just down the street from where I live. I do admit I like the Tyrannosaurus model here, in spite of the blatant Jurassic Park influences. Maybe it's how the thin frame and short head evoke the real growth cycle tyrannosaurs had, based off fossil evidence. That said, A Dinosaur Story is another short student film, and there isn't much else to it; the CG don't even leave marks on the live action backgrounds nor has any music, and there aren't even much jokes in it. Its story is so short and simple its basically something you'd tell a toddler. If you watche...

  This trailer was released just a few days ago.  Talon is a cartoon created by one artist Heather Parra about a baby raptor with magic lightning powers who learns she and other dinosaurs like her will save their world from evil aliens, who if not stopped could cause a mass extinction (..... guess they failed), and they embark to do so. I have one word for it: fantastic! I love the idea of super powered magic dinosaurs, like Avatar: The Last Airbender meets The Land Before Time , and the designs are stylised yet accurate to a tee, which I always love. My only gripe is that generic fantasy wizard who it set up to be the mentor for the series.  It feels out of place in the Mesozoic setting, unless that's the point. I would have gone with a more avian or reptilian look. And also, Talon is mentioned as a Dakotaraptor , now regarded as an invalid genus (long story). I'm hyped for Talon , is what I'm saying, and so should you. I eagerlt wait updates, and urge you to support it...

Happy holidays everyone! What better way to celebrate the festive season at Mesozoic Mind then a christmas film about prehistory? Well options are VERY limited, so the only thing I can find is something from the time-honoured tradition of crappy, cheap animated christmas specials,  The Christmas Dinosaur (2004). Created by the sadly now-defunct PorchLight Entertainment, it tells the story of a young dinosaur-obsessed kid named Jason Barnes who decides sneak into the Christmas presents gifted to him, only to discover the one for him isn't the toy he wanted, but a real egg that hatches into a Quetzalcoatlus . Which is you know, not a dinosaur? Even the target audience knew better, not to mention the film keeps flip-flopping on calling it a dinosaur versus (correctly) a pterosaur. Anyways, he adopts it as a pet, and has fun with it as it grows up while having to dodge his parents and his nosy, grumpy neighbour to keep them from finding out about the flapling, but when Spot gets lone...

Today's subject was watched a lot by me as a kid on the mythical format known as DVDs, an animated film with the rather generic title of Dinosaur Island , direcyed by Will Meugniot of Exo-Squad fame and released by defunct animation studio DiC. Dinosaur Island 's plot is about four teens being selected for a competitive reality show to win a million dollars, but the plane taking them to their destination crashes, and where they land is a lost world wehere dinosaurs still roa, ans must survive it. Sound familiar? Supposedly this is is an adaptation of The Lost World  by Arthur Conan Doyle, the Camp Cretaceous to the latter's Jurassic World if you will. Let's get the biggest problem out of the way with DI'02 : the animation is not very good. DiC was infamous from its stiff and flat animation and art style, especially towards the end of its lifetime, and here the animation is very reflective of that. Everything moves relatively jerky, and the backgrounds aren't...

Ah, sweet young Gen X nostalgia Hello, and welcome back to Mesozoic Mind . Today, we're gonna be doing something different and try an epoisode of a show that normally doesn't feature dinosaurs or even focus on prehistory. Shows for younger kids do this a lot, mostly beccause of the errenonous assumption kids and only kids like dinosaurs (a topic I may discuss latter). Today, will be Nick Jr.'s classic, Blue's Clues . Yeah. I am going into a show for 5-year olds. Why? I just want to, and it's my show for 5-year olds, growing up with it. I’ve recently started watching Blue’s Clues out of nostalgia, and boy I love it. One reason I’m doing and like  Blue’s Clues  rather then say, its comtemporaies  Dora the Explorer or Go Diego Go!  or the more recent PAW Patrol because honestly, its a lot more watchable and peaceful then most of toddler shows, then and now, which other other are pretty hot garbage in my book due to talking down to them and having way too many stimul...