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Summary: A dream come true for prehistoric nature buffs!
Review: These films are even more amazing than the original Walking with Dinosaurs. The animation is absolutly stunning, and Nigel Marven is great in the believable way he interacts with the creatures. True, adding a Human host does mean the Dinos get a bit less screen time than in the original "Walking" - but it's quality over quantity in this case, and there's still more Dino action to enjoy here than in all three Jurassic Park movies combined. This is by far the best, and most realistic portrayal of prehistoric nature ever, and I for one sincerely hope Mr. Marven takes on another prehistoric safari soon!
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Summary: Great prehistoric predator DVD
Review: This "Walking with dinosaurs" special DVD is full of information about the great predators that thrived before our existence and even before dinosaurs. It's exciting and new and Nigel Marvin does an awesome job taking you through time on his adventure to get up close and personal with everything on land, in the air, and under water. He brings you to the largest land animal to ever exist(Argentinasaurus), to the biggest predator to ever walk the Earth(Giganotosaurus). Nigel dives into the the seven deadliest seas of all time from over 400 million years ago with the Giant Orthocones to as close as a million years ago with Carcharodon Megalodon, the greatest shark of all time, and all the way to hell's aquarium. This DVD is a must have. There are few other prehistoric documentaries that can get better this.
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Summary: Great but late release.
Review: This is a great progarm and should be watched by people of all ages. The CGI has improved tremendously since "The Ballad of Big Al" ( or "Allosaurus" as it is called in the US) and "Walking with Beasts". The only dissapointment I had was that the episodes "The Giant Claw" and "Land Of Giants" were aired on BBC 1 on the end of 2002 and this Dvd is just being released on March 23 2004. I was stuck for a year with a video recording of these programs. "Sea Monsters" has an excuse for being released on this date because it was aired on November 2003. Apart from that and certain scenes, this progarm is one of the best CGI driven shows ever made and is a good documentary which follows in the foot-steps of Walking with Dinosaurs.
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Summary: Walking with Dinosaurs. If it were only that easy
Review: This is a new series created by the makers of the great Walking with series. The biggest and most obvious difference is the addition of a time traveling human into the world of the dinosaurs. That human is famous zoologist Nigel Marvin. He is famous for getting close to dangerous wild animals so him getting close to dinosaurs is appropiate. It never explains how Nigel, his crew, and his equitment go through time and doesn't have to. It is kind of like the Crocodile Hunter with extinct animals. Some would argue that a human takes away from the realism of Walking with Dinosaurs. This is true but it does add more suspense and a better sense of scale. The effects are great. Just as good if not a bit better then what we saw in the previous Walking withs. Chased by Dinosaurs puts Nigel into new places and time periods that Walking with Dinosaurs didn't go. One into Cretacious Asia and the other in South America. We get to meet the biggest Carnivore Giganotosaurs, the biggest herbavore Argentinasaurs, a 40 foot crocodile, and a giant big clawed creature. This is fun, informative, and entairtaining. The dinosaurs behavior is just as realistic as the effects and it really looks like Nigel and his camera crew are in the age of the dinosaurs. Only flaw no feathers on the raptors which recent findings (found before this series) show they had. Then there is Chased by Sea Monsters. This 1.5 hour series takes us to the seven most deadly seas of all time. Here we see giant scorpians, 30 foot jawed fish, 80 foot sea monster (by any definition of the word monster) Liplorodon, mososaurs giant sea snakes, Elasmasaurs, Megalodon shark, all kind of great prehistoric monsters you can't believe were real and make swimming today better knowing such monsters are extinct. Nigel, his boat crew, and his state of the art camera equitment go diving up close with these sea monsters and have a few close calls. Like all of framstones work both educates and entairtains just as much. This DVD is one fun 2.5 hours that I recomend to anybody. Most of the flaws are in the DVD. While the video is very good anamorphic widescreen (though Walking with Dinosaurs looked a bit better) the audio is only 2.0. Probably from trying to fit 3.5 hours of video on one disc. A series filled with such unusual sounds could have really benifited from a 5.1 track. Chased by Sea Monsters is broken up into three parts. Breaking up into half hour segments worked for Chased by Dinosaurs and the Walking withs but in Chased by Sea Monsters it actually stops in the middle of an action scene goes through credits and an intro before continuing. This is such an annoying flow disrupter that lessend a great series. The extras consist of trailers and a 48 minute documentary. This is a very informative peice on how its possible for big meat eaters to have hunted in packs. Problem it has little to do with the series. Nothing on this series is ever discusted. There are no extras on the making of this great series. Dispite this if you liked the Walking withs and Crocodile Hunter style action documentarys go buy this now. Its at a good price.
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Summary: Surprising and Fun Romp!
Review: This newest DVD addition to the BBC Walking With Dinosaurs series and is surprisingly good!Like the best of Jurassic Park but without all the subplots, Nigel Marven is a Jeff Corwin / Crocodile Dundee like character who time travels to prehistoric times (how he does it is never explained but that is really irrelevant) and brings us right with him into the adventure. He gets into all kinds of interesting confrontations with dinosaurs on land, air, and sea and tries stuff that no sane human would attempt. Although some of his bravado backfires on him, this makes the whole premise at somewhat more believable. The integration of live action, animation, and CGI is simply amazing. Taking some 21st Century technology with him, one scene has Nigel in an ultra-light flying amidst huge pterosaurs. Another has him actually catching a small dino in his "camp". This is certainly the lightest episode but at the same time perhaps most interesting one in the series. Highly entertaining and you might even learn something new too! A must see for dino-fans!
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Summary: Nearly As Good As the First!
Review: This thrilling DVD was a joy to watch. Nigel Marvin is great, and his filmed "adventures" in time seem extremely real. I had to sometimes tell myself that this was all scripted and not real. Amazing effects and good "acting" on Nigel's part really made you feel that way. I highly recommend this DVD, and would like to see more made. Let's hope if this happens, Nigel will return, and not be replaced by someone extremely irritating and dim-witted like Steve Irwin, a.k.a the "crocodile hunter".
Rating:
Summary: Great!
Review: This thrilling DVD was a joy to watch. Nigel Marvin is great, and his filmed "adventures" in time seem extremely real. I had to sometimes tell myself that this was all scripted and not real. Amazing effects and good "acting" on Nigel's part really made you feel that way. I highly recommend this DVD, and would like to see more made. Let's hope if this happens, Nigel will return, and not be replaced by someone extremely irritating and dim-witted like Steve Irwin, a.k.a the "crocodile hunter".
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Summary: Great entertainment and learning tool
Review: Watched this DVD with my son.He and I were most impressed with the way it is narrated and so real like.
This is a great learning tool, an introduction into prehistoric life.
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Summary: Oh no, talking heads enter the 'Walking with' series
Review: Why stray from a successful formula? First off, hats off to Framestore, the animation company behind Chased by Dinosaurs, their work is truly first rate, especially the intergration of human and CG elements. At times there work is so good it's totally real, just take a look at the Megaladon episode to see some of the best CG work anywhere in the world IMO. Flawless intergration, far better than ILM in the recent JP movies IMO. There are some pretty complex shots in this series and one could imagine they took a lot longer to animate than in the original series of Walking with Dinosaurs. The problem, and it's a big one... only around 1/3 of each episode is animation, the rest is Nigel Marvin talking or pretending to follow these obviously 'imaginery' animals Crocodile Hunter style. The novelty quickly wears off. Now each Walking with Dinosaurs episode felt short at 30 minutes of animation, now that they've reduced that by 60 percent to effectively 10 or so minutes an episode, the series really loses much of it's appeal and rewatchibility value. Nigel is entertaining enough and a decent actor, but let's face, we want to see the dinosaurs and this form of 'cheating' doesn't go unnoticed. It's akin to the trick's Spielberg used in Jurassic park - 3 seconds of animation - 1 minute of someone's face going 'wow'. It's not fooling anyone. The only good thing about this is that you can see the size of the dinosaurs relative to a human now, but again, I would have swapped that for an episode full of animation. Anyway, apart from that, this is first rate stuff, a must buy all the same for any dinosaur fan, these are the most realistic dinos and sea creatures created to date, and include some fascinating specimens such as the massive Gigantosaurus and the biggest Sauropod of recent times, the Argentinosaurus, fascinating creatures, i just wish they'd made the series in the form of 'Walking with Dinosaurs and Walking with Beasts', rather than introduce the talking head theatrics.
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