Rating: 
Summary: Magificent
Review: all i can can is "W O W" ! What a Awsome flim of anitimation and affects. I watched this show on Discovery Channel Sunday Night Dec 9 and found it fasinating what we evolved from over the millons and millons of years ago.
Rating: 
Summary: Discovery channel's edition is much better
Review: Although the graphics are amazing in the BBC version, the edition put out by the Discovery Channel is much better because they have added short sections interspersed throughout that have paleontologists explaining the fossil evidence that backs up the images. The narator is also different in the Discovery version - which is no great loss.
Rating:
Summary: A riveting walk through another age
Review: An imaginative feast of information and drama. I highly recommend this for adults and older children. It may frighten very young children, but I found it captivating.
Rating: 
Summary: The Best Beast Documentry Ever
Review: and the Woolly Mammoth. But how about the Leptictidium? A tiny early mammal. A tiny meat eater the size of a cat, who has to keep clear of the top predator of her time, the Gastornis, a flightless bird as big as a man and just as hungry!
Or how about the Andrewsarchus, a five meter long wolf-like creature with bone crunching jaws over three feet long and related to the whale. In fact it BECAME the whales!
This is a two DVD set. The first holds six amazing episodes about six different periods of Earth's history, from right after the death of the dinosaurs to just before man starts to rule the planet. The second holds lots of fun extras: interviews, TWO 50 minute long behind-the-scene featurettes, photos, fact files and even storyboards.
Really helps fill in that space between dinosaurs and us. A must for any DVD library!
Rating:
Summary: Sure, you know of Saber-Toothed Cats...
Review: and the Woolly Mammoth. But how about the Leptictidium? A tiny early mammal. A tiny meat eater the size of a cat, who has to keep clear of the top predator of her time, the Gastornis, a flightless bird as big as a man and just as hungry!
Or how about the Andrewsarchus, a five meter long wolf-like creature with bone crunching jaws over three feet long and related to the whale. In fact it BECAME the whales!
This is a two DVD set. The first holds six amazing episodes about six different periods of Earth's history, from right after the death of the dinosaurs to just before man starts to rule the planet. The second holds lots of fun extras: interviews, TWO 50 minute long behind-the-scene featurettes, photos, fact files and even storyboards.
Really helps fill in that space between dinosaurs and us. A must for any DVD library!
Rating:
Summary: Walking With Prehistoric Beasts
Review: Another great education on Earth's history, there is alot of information in this video set that I never knew about. If you enjoyed watching Jurrasic Park then this is a must have along with "Walking With Dinosaurs". Reality and this series go hand in hand. I have alot of Prehistoric history and I enjoy watching this entire series again and again. The real-life images and the stories of the different times, the people are very talented that created this series.
Rating:
Summary: A Must-Own DVD!
Review: Another simply amazing documentary series from the BBC. This one definitely lives up to its predecessor- Walking with Dinosaurs, which was the first series to combine breathtaking digital effects with great scientific research and analysis, to create a lost world of creatures and times long gone. Walking with Prehistoric Beasts is actually just a continuation of where Walking with Dinosaurs left off, it begins right after the massive dinosaur extinction and ends during the ice age and the dawn of man. It looks mainly at the rise of mammals and the changing environment and earth. Some of the highlights of the series include: the first whales that actually walked on land, flightless carnivorous birds which were descendants of the dinosaurs, packs of saber-tooth cats killing and mating, huge pig like creatures that bully other carnivores, the first apes to walk on two legs, elephant ancestors that are four times bigger and really angry, herds of wooly mammoths, and much much more. And the computer graphics in this series may even rival that of Walking with Dinosaurs. The scenes and animals almost always look breathtaking and incredibly natural. Sometimes it was seriously hard to believe that these weren't real living animals. And all the sound effects matched everything perfectly, bringing it all to life. Also the music score is terrific, it really takes you on a great auditory journey along with the superb visuals. This series has brought to life a world that you could only imagine before and it does it with serious style, just like its predecessor. The 6 episode series alone packs a serious punch, but the DVD includes two 50-minute behind-the-scenes featurettes, along with some other goodies. The first featurette discusses how we know what we do about the ancient mammals, the second focuses on the evolution of man from ape and also looks at the Neanderthal briefly. Both featurettes contain informative interviews with scientists as well as behind-the scenes footage of the making of Walking with Prehistoric Beasts, and are very nice additions to an already excellent and worthwhile purchase. There are also interviews with the creators of the series, as well as fact files about the different ancient beasts (really cool), and the usual photo gallery and storyboards. You know it's exceptionally good, when you've watched all 300 minutes on the DVD in one sitting and still want more. I just hope this isn't the last we see of the "Walking With" series...
Rating:
Summary: A great followup to the Walking with dinasours
Review: BBS surely has outdone itself again in Walking With Prehistoric Beasts, the followup to the Walking With Dinasours series. Just like WWD, it uses computer generated graphcis and other special effects along with real environements. It may not look as good as Jurrassic Park, but surely is close enough. The material is well written and organized. Too all dinasour fans, there are other hugh ancient beasts on earth and you will see them all in this DVD. It is highly educational and entertaining and will be a treasured DVD set for anyone to own.
Rating:
Summary: Terrific
Review: Before I say anything else -- please don't forget to look at my recommendations for further learning, toward the bottom of my review. This fascinating set of short films walks the viewer through animal evolution since the days of the dinosaur, and helps provide a sense of the appearance of some of the more interesting of the bygone creatures, long since left in evolution's ancient wake. We meet bird-sized horses, horse-sized birds, flabbergastingly colossal proto-whales, and pre-human hominids galore. The computerized animation is just unbelievable. (I mean that in a good way). Each animal has its own individual style of movement -- I can't even imagine how much time must have gone into developing the algorithms defining how these complex images move. An interesting feature of these films, is their stress on story-telling as a teaching device. Many people's eyes glaze over reflexively, whenever statistics rear their ugly heads. To offset this admittedly widespread tendency, the filmmakers here have constructed short storylines for each little film. These stories are roughly equivalent to a sitcom in terms of complexity, although certainly not in content! (A sitcom where a third to half of the characters are gorily slain in every episode? I just can't picture it.) What I mean in comparing the storylines to a sitcom is that there are a few "main character" amimals, faced with a few specific problems (mating, eating, not being eaten, etc.) We follow the odyssey of each creature as it warily makes its way through its own episode, cheering when it overcomes obstacles, and feeling for it when things don't work out. Also like a sitcom, there are often subplots that dovetail interestingly with the main story. Again, however, these films are not like episodes of "Frasier." The law of the jungle prevails, very frighteningly, in these often brutal films. If you appreciate learning about this general topic, I would really like to recommend a few books for you to look at. If you know a science teacher, and you'd like a hard copy of the kind of discussions embodied in this fine film, then I'd like to strongly urge that you try to track down a copy of "Our Continent: A Natural History of North America," published by National Geographic. "Our Continent" is good because it shows you how to actually SPELL the baroque, unnecessarily latinate names of all these long-lost critters. More importantly, it includes a number of really nice evolutionary development charts. The charts allow you to view chronological cross-sections, of various branches of the family tree of all Earthly lifeforms. The drawings of the branches are peopled with illustrations of the creatures in question, at various stages in their evolutionary processes. For example, following a single branch along, from left to right, you can see the Basilosaurus develop into the Physeter, and subsequently into our friend, the noble whale... If you are a parent who wishes to share your interest in prehistoric beasts with your children, or (probably even more likely) vice versa, try reading "How to Talk Dinosaur with Your Child," by Querida L. Pearce. If you are transfixed by the concept of evolutionary adaptations to sudden, violent climate changes, which are often alluded to in these films, then you may wish to check out "A Brain for All Seasons: Human Evolution and Abrupt Climate Change," by William Calvin. Finally, if you'd like to see a highly imaginative, fascinating series of artist's speculations, dealing with how animal life might evolve in future millenia, I'd like to recommend that you look at "After Man: A Zoology of the Future," by Dougal Dixon. Anyway -- this DVD rocks. Two thumbs way up.
Rating:
Summary: Not like walking dinosaurs
Review: Being a major fan of the Walking with Dinosaurs series, I licked this one up fairly quickly. The movie covers many fascinating animals from billions of years ago in a documentary style. While it is entertaining and educational at the same time, I was not nearly as impressed with this follow up. For one, the animals play too much with the audience (i.e. breaking the lense, splashing mud at the camera). While it would increase the idea of realism, it detracts from the seriousness of the documentary. Also, the concept of size is nonexistent. They say something is as big as three elephants, but on the screen, there's nothing to compare it to and it just looks like a little animal But special effects, you say? While some of the animals (like the mammoths) looked very real, others stood out way too much as CGI's (especially the monkeys). The Walking with Dinosaurs team got a bit sloppy here. I realize it's harder to animate animals that represent creatures of today, but I have no doubt the animals could have looked better because, well... I've seen better. My worst complaint about the effects is how, many times, they tried to copy that over-used Matrix sequence, which looks really dorky. Another annoying fact is how everything always goes into slow-motion. This doesn't add suspense, it takes away the excitement of a fast-paced chase and catch. -- All in all, a decent film to watch, but having come AFTER Walking with Dinosaurs and being, in a way, kind of sloppy, it falls short of an excellent movie.
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