Mesozoic Mind

Happy holidays, folks! We're bringing out the big guns for this holiday special with a celebration of a great palaeo-documentary close to my heart and has turned 20 years old this month, Discovery Channel's Dinosaur Planet , from 2003! Dinosaur Planet is one of my all time favourite palaeo-documentary, and for good reasons. They were some of the first docs I saw as a kid, seen via Youtube and while I didn't watch them in full until much later, I loved the introes alone. Also, I had much fun with the Dino Viewer on Discovery's website, seeing both the run cycles and the "dun-dun" sound switching tabs on it made. Oh what joy it brought me, now lost to to mists of time as many a species through time were, an ironic fate considering the subject matter. As for the series itself, it's in the WWD-style format of being a nature documentrary presentation which I always love, building off the formula When Dinosaurs Roamed America did. The designs of the fauna crea...

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...