Movie Review: Walking with Dinosaurs 3D

This weeks Cinema visit was to see Walking with Dinosaurs in 3D, Now this film broke one of my cardinal rules when selecting a film to see - Being in 3D, Normally I will not go to see a 3D movie as I really don't find the technology adds anything whatsoever to the film, I am not entirely sure what it is supposed to give - other than headaches but I can assure you that at no point during the movie did I forget I was in a cinema and start to believe I was in fact in Cretaceous Era Alaska so no idea why studio executives think I would prefer to watch this film with big black glasses on instead of with my own eyes. But I digress the fact is that both my Wife and Daughter love Dinosaurs so I really didn't have much choice in this so I went to see it.

Now the first thing that struck me about this was that they took everything that was great about Walking with Dinosaurs the TV show/Documentary and after they had removed it filled it with endless rubbish, the beauty of WWD on the BBC was that it was a nature documentary showing us creatures that are long since extinct but in the style of the documentaries we had grown up with, in short it was a revolution, this movie however replaced all of that with a story staring a small dinosaur on an adventure and featured a cast of talking dinosaurs and a bird as a narrator. Now I don't want you to think that I disliked this film, it was an OK film my problem is that it is the complete opposite of what made the Documentary Series, books and the Live Show so great (And yes I have seen all of them - as I said my Wife loves Dinos) This film would have been better placed as a sequel to Disney's Dinosaur than a feature length Walking With Dinosaurs, But if you can cut off the absolutely pointless starting scene (With Karl Urban who I would assume has kids who like Dinosaurs as I can't imagine he saw this as a career progression.) and the ending when the humans come back what you are left with is a pretty light fluffy "Runt comes good" story.

My best advice for this film (Obviously other than my usual advice of watching it in 2D) would be to switch the volume off and just enjoy watching the Dinosaurs and the stunning scenery.

3D Printing could be the next big step into Piracy

Saw this article on the BBC today which if it comes to pass as they say could revolutionise the way we do, well everything.

the new range of 3D printers - Printers which can build a prototype of a product you see on line - have not just become much more advanced in the recent past, the used to be little more than a plastics moulding device which it would have seemed had little ability to affect the normal persons day to day life, the usefulness in the design and manufacturing industries seemed clear, being able to send a plastic prototype across to your business partners instantly would revolutionise those businesses.

However now they are claiming that they are closing in on the ability to recreate actual usable products, perhaps the most interesting change mentioned in the article however is the Price, down from north of £2,000 to around £300 which could definitely place it within the budget of most households.

I guess the only question now is that after my recent article in which I asked how many people would lose their jobs due to Google's new AutoDrive car, will the ability to have products manufactured directly into your home simply mean there are even fewer jobs available than ever before?

Toy Story 3

Went to see Toy Story 3 last night, we decided to watch it in 2D as I really can't get on board with the whole 3D/Real D revolution. Basically I can't see what it adds to a story other than a slight headache. I understand that the point of the Real D system is for added reality, although personally this seems a mute point when you are watching a film about the continuing adventures of a group of plastic toys.

Anyway we chose the 2D version, The film was reasonably good but the warning that you needed to bring lots of tissues was a little premature, The film follows the basic premise of all Toy Story films - Toys are accidentally separated from Andy and then battle to get back to him - There wasn't anything particularly original or ground braking in this film although the overly Camp Ken Doll plays for a few laughs and the Spanish Mode on Buzz Lightyear was almost worth the price of admission alone.