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Reviews
Cricket on the Hearth (1967)
Uggghh...please jump into the fireplace Mr. Cricket
What an awful piece of Christmas special history. Songs are horribly depressing (as well as the storyline). Animation is the worst of all R/B creations (IMO).
Let's forget it was made, shall we?
Dinotopia (2002)
Full of Crap-a-saurus acting...
Oh the misery of it all.
Acting so bad, I expected Hayden Christenson to pop out at any moment. Looking like they filmed the entire movie with the motto "just one take" on the director's lips, "Dinotopia" plods on with two actors who's personality was sucked out of them by "Zippo - the talking dinosaur" - actually trying to produce meaningful (i.e. emotionally engaging) dialogue along the way.
And yes, to answer your question - ALL OF THE MONEY WENT TO THE EFFECTS. The problem is that BBC (Walking with Dinosaurs), Jurassic Park, and Disney's Dinosaurs have all done it before...with greater success. To top it all off, Zippo the Talking Dinosaur had eerily similar appearance to that oft-slighted comic genius Jar-Jar Binks (who must be an early, early, descendant of 'ol Zippo).
While the effects are pretty convincing and impressive on some levels (umm..I can't remember an example right now...), by-in- large they were underwhelming. Used strictly to show that some money was spent on this thing (but not for actor's salaries). The human/dinosaur interaction was also unconvincing, with the actors predictably looking in the wrong area when speaking, or awkward shots when pulling certain talking-dinosaurs from the mouths of creepy croc-o-saurs.
I could not, for the life of me, shake the feeling that Hercules was the inspiration for the director. It had that same feel - minus the tounge-in-cheek humor that made Hercules likeable.
So basically to sum it up, DINOTOPIA was exactly like:
Jurassic Park - it had dinosaurs too. Star Wars - it had Jar-Jar the Talking Annoyance. Any Ryan Philippe movie - it had acting...without all that personality and quality to get in the way.
Antitrust (2001)
A decent thriller, but an obvious propaganda film...
As far as the movie itself (storyline, action, character development, etc.) is concerned, it was fair...about a 2.5/5 stars.
But on the message end ( yes, yet, another movie which does not seek to merely entertain, but to "teach"), it reeks of Mac/Linux/"Insert-any-open-source-guerilla" tactics.
It's not that the open-source debate should not go on; in fact, in many ways I agree with the premise and motivations of pro-open-source followers, but the movie came off as a very heavy-handed in it's approach to the issue. No debating, just bashing of anyone not making their code free for anyone.
One line spoke of how information should "be free to everyone...like Shakespeare and aspirin." I understand the implication, but it comes off as naive. Shakespeare made money off his scripts. His books have to be bought and paid for, at Amazon. Movie theaters certainly don't let you in for free, regardless whether MacBeth or AntiTrust is playing. And, when is the last time aspirin was given out by Bayer?
The Bill Gates analogies also came off a bit extreme. He may be cutthroat in his business practices, but by painting him as Satan incarnate, the creators looked more envious and bitter than anything.