Customer Reviews

Walking with Dinosaurs (VHS)

5 star:		(133)
4 star:		(28)
3 star:		(14)
2 star:		(1)
1 star:		(2)

 

 

I work for the Dinosaur Natural History Association in Brooks, Alberta. We support Dinosaur Provincial Park. Because of this I started receiving phone calls from the UK, from friends and family asking me if I had seen "Walking with Dinosaurs". Everyone was raving about it, however, I had at this time no idea what they were talking about. Luckily I was sent a copy for Christmas and what can I say. This is one of the most fascinating and incredible set of programs I have ever seen. My mouth was open in amazement most of the time! The animation was beyond belief. Basically "Walking with Dinosaurs" is 6 part series made in documentary fashion. The producers worked with palaeontologists and animators to take what we know about dinosaurs, with what we think we know to come up with six incredible programs of a documentary style that would make you believe you were actually walking with dinosaurs. Narrated by Kenneth Branagh in a way that you would expect to see on the Discovery Channel while watching a documentary on a pride of lions. My nine year old daughter watched this too and was totally caught up in it. Never have I watched such an amazing creation. The animation matches that of the dinosaurs in "Jurassic Park". The story lines are believable to the point that you get emotionally involved with the Iguanodon herd risking attack, or the Apatasaurus caught up in a forest fire trying to escape. You want the T-Rex to 'get it' after the way she treats her man! To top it off at the end of the series there is a 50 minute "Making of Walking with Dinosaurs" (at least there was on my copy, I hope you all get it on the DVD) Which leaves you with feelings of nothing but admiration for Tim Haines's team, who worked hard at their research and quest for fact, the conditions they had to create in their heads to film landscape with no dinosaurs, from the footprints they had to make in sand to trees swaying and splashing water... WATCH THIS! It is hysterically funny in parts and you will be amazed. If you watch no other movie or series in your life .... watch this one because you will feel totally fulfilled, amazed and be on the phone to your friends telling them about it. It is truly brilliant and you will want to watch it all over again immediately afterwards... I know I did!

Please feel free to email me

"Walking With Dinosaurs" is the kind of documentary that digital and other high tech methods of animation were made for! Granted, Spielberg used some similar methods to good effect in his dino-films "Jurassic Park" and "Lost World," but "Walking With Dinosaurs" is the current apex of animation technology for exctinct animals, and used for education, too!

I sat in awe as I watched these six wonderful segments on the natural history of dinosaurs produced by the BBC. I was particularly impressed by the segment on marine reptiles -- a group that receives relatively little press, since they're not dinos, and since they don't interact with most peoples' favorites, like T. rex, Allosaurus, or Stegosaurus, etc.

Never had I seen recreations of dinosaurs that were as life-like and convincing (except for the occasional animatronic effect) as the ones in this video.

Watching these segments about different time periods, places, and groups of dinosaurs I was once again reminded and impressed by the long reign of these animals on the earth. I also thought that many aspects of their biology and ecology were interestingly presented. No one was, of course, around to see what these animals actually did, so the way dinos are presented in the video are unavoidably informed guesses about how we think that these now extinct animals lived. I applaud the author and producer for their fine efforts!

Viewers should be aware, however, that there is a large and convincing alternative body of information (backed by a significant number of paleontologists) that suggests that carnivorous dinosaurs like Allosaurus, T. rex, and even Utahraptor did not run down their prey, bring them down, and kill them like a giant lion would -- i.e., overpowering and killing their prey immediately. The alternative proposal about how the meateaters did their business is akin to the way that monitor lizards, like the Komodo Dragon, bring down their prey. Dragons inflict a slashing bite, even a relatively small one on their prey. When they do that bacteria that live on their teeth are introduced into the prey's body. After a while the prey animal succumbs to the bacterial infection and the dragon can eat at will. Granted, this method of attack and subjugation is less dramatic than the hunt and kill method portrayed a couple of times in this video series, but it's an equally if not even more convincing story about how large meat eaters may well have done their business.

Those kinds of academic debates aside, this is a wonderful, brilliant series. The imagery is excellent, the soundtrack is supportive and enhancing, and the narration is outstanding! I will watch this series again and again.

5 stars all the way!

Alan Holyoak, Ph.D., Dept of Biology, Manchester College, IN

Walking with Dinosaurs is, quite simply, a dinosaur documentary presented in the same style as a Discovery Channel documentary on lions or other modern wildlife. It fills the viewer, not with a sense of loss at their passing, but with a sense of wonder in that they truly lived. Walking with Dinosaurs uses 6 loose "stories" to flesh out its subjects but focuses less on the speculative details and more on the overall picture of the three eras of dinosaurs.

The sounds and imagry are simply wondrous. Whereas Spielberg's Jurassic Park used only a minimal of well-lit outdoor scenes and kept primarily to controlled indoor locations or night shots (which helps the special FX considerably), Walking with Dinosaurs is almost entirely bright outdoor shots and creates scene after scene of wonder at dinosaurs moving and living out their lives and the anamorphic widescreen puts them right in your living room. Only the close-up animatronic shots look artificial on occasion.

This version is somewhat different from the US Discovery Channel version. Both are 3 hours in length, but without commercials this version has included all the little "sub plots" that were omitted for time constraints and is uncensored (though only a couple of shots were cut for content). Though listed as 230 minutes, 50 of those are the "making of" documentary included on the second disc - which is equally worthwhile. Also, this version splits the 6 segments with opening and ending credits whereas the Discover Channel used commercial breaks to mark the intermissions. Also clearly marked is the Kenneth Branagh narration. I would've liked to have a choice of narrations on a second audio track (particularly for the imperial units of measurements which Avery Brooks used in the Discover Channel version - my older relatives were a bit confused by the metric system used in this version). And while this is no "Abyss" in terms of DVD extras, there's certainly more here than most.

If you have even the slightest interest in dinosaurs, Walking with Dinosaurs should be part of your DVD collection.

We bought this DVD for our 3 1/2 year old boy who is in the advanced stages of dinosaur obsession. He is very interested in all the particulars of each dinosaur -- names, diet, chronology, habits, etc. He was beside himself with delight when we first started watching the DVDs, literally jumping up and down yelling "Coelophysis! I love this! Diplodocus! Look, Allosaurus!"

As almost all others have mentioned, the overall production design is beyond impressive, and beggars the word "clever." Witty, thoughtful, convincing, and highly entertaining.

Unfortunately (for us), there is one dramatic trope that appears in literally every episode of this and the later "Walking With Prehistoric Beasts" series: eating babies. Sometimes creatures eat their own young for murky defensive reasons; sometimes predators pick off defenseless baby prey; sometimes territorial males eat their competitors' babies; sometimes giant ants eat cute hatchlings.

I can't fault the dramatic effect of these passages, and the continuing theme that competition is the engine of evolution is accurate and effectively presented. But it takes the air out of my little boy's enthusiasm when he constantly expects the cute baby dinosaurs to be messily devoured, and it makes me grimace to watch him watching it. Those scenes are not especially suspenseful, and don't seem to agitate him (he got a lot more anxious at "Finding Nemo"). But when his reaction to two Allosaurus eating a baby Diplodocus is "look, they're sharing!", I decided the infanticide just wasn't age-appropriate.

We put the series aside for now, and maybe we'll take it up again in a year.

Well, I've been bugging to my American friends to see this for the last half year so that people can realise just how mind blowingly spectacular this series is, make sure you get the DVD or Video as the Discovery Channel version is a really, really bad reedit that chops out a tonne of CG scenes as well as good old Kenneth and replaces them with totally annoying interviews.

What can you say, this show is so good that as a dino lover you feel that you've slipped into an alternate universe where people actually make shows you dream of seeing. I still can't believe this is a made for television production as it looks more impressive than virtually every cinematic film I've seen. As a CG buff I can say it's no exaggeration to say that the visual effects are on par or better than anything Hollywood and ILM can muster, they definetly make Jurassic Park and the Lost World look prehistoric, and we get nearly 3 hours of dinos, IN THE DAYLIGHT, long lingering shots on screen all the time, and made on 1/20th the budget. Hats off to the BBC, they know how to make the good stuff. You gotta love those snarling Utahraptors or those spectacular fly-by's of the Sauropod herds, it's just like being there.

In case people are interested two follow-up series are already in production! and the CG crew from WWD is working on the Dinotopia mini series as well as Jason and the Argonauts.

So, in summary, see it, preferrably on DVD for the Anamorphic picture (very useful in the Diplodicus scenes) and allow yourself to revel in the wonder of an age long gone, now faithfully bought back to life.

I ordered this title from Amazon based primarily on the customer comments I'd read about it in this section (a process which has failed me a couple of times in the past, unfortunately). The fact that it was worth over $25 (this is substantial especially for destination countries like the Philippines, where we also have to contend with high shipping rates) also prompted me to pursue a cycle of ordering it, then cancelling, then reordering it, and so forth - until I finally decided to "bite the bullet". Needless to say, and as one may see from the 5 stars I gave it, it was a choice I never regretted since...

"Walking with Dinosaurs" is a visually brilliant piece of documentary work, combining a dazzling array of computed-generated imagery and animatronics. The 2-disc set comes with bonus pictures such as PIP, a "making-of" featurette and subtitling. The main feature is divided into 6 main chapters, with each focusing either on a particular period (e.g. Late Triassic in "New Blood") or type of creature (i.e. a pteranodon in "Giant of the Skies", ocean-dwellers in "Cruel Seas").

What can I say? It's a visually breathtaking experience, presented ala a National Geographic or Discovery Channel special, actual documentary. Some scenes are very graphic (i.e., when the velociraptor was feasting on a newly-hatched diplodocus, when a baby diplodocus was accidentally killed by the spiked tail of a stegosaurus). Some where hair-raisingly shocking (e.g. when the hige sea creature came out of nowhere to grab the unsuspecting raptor-like dinosaur). It's simply amazing, especially for one such as I (and I believe millions of other people) who grew up with a wide-eyed fascination for dinosaurs. It's like seeing them for the first time (check it out - the T-Rex' saliva even splashed onto the camera lens! Ughhhh....:)

Trust me, you have to get this. As an avid DVD collector (I have over 200 titles, including some of the better animal documentaries such as those by IMAX), I'd consider this a top 10, "must have".

Wow! What a tremendous video! This documentary has the scope and special effects more commonly found on big budget theatrical films. This six-part, you-are-there historical time travel film presents a number of suppositions on the life and times of many prehistoric animals - some well known, and others just as interesting but not as often mentioned in today's world. It presents key developments in the evolution of the dinosaurs. The narration of events as they unfold on screen is provided by the wonderful Shakespearean actor Kenneth Branagh, who's voice and delivery adds gravitas to the production. Whether the events presented could have actually occurred is a matter of some speculation among historians, but it doesn't detract from the sheer entertainment value and sense of wonder this video provides. Mother Nature's smorgasbord of early animal designs is truly impressive. And the kids will love it! As a bonus, the video is presented in letterbox, anamorphic format. It is truly a wonderful production. Hard to believe it was originally produced for television!

WWD is a splendid, well-crafted series. The DVD is actually the full BBC version, not the somewhat incomplete Discovery Channel version we saw in the US. Apparently the Discovery channel wanted to fit more advertisement time in and cut out the more "graphic" scenes for the kids. Kenneth Branagh's naration seems to have a bit more authority than Avery Brooks'(I hope I spelled his name correctly). Not that Avery did a bad job, it's just that Kenneth does an extremely well done job.... just watch CNN's Cold War series and you'll see what I mean. The effects are by far the best every done specifically for a TV show. No they're not as good as Jurassic Park, but then again they didn't have the budget of a JP either.... not to mention the dinos in JP had only about 20 min total screen time and WWD has about 2 hours. The long "eye of God" panning shot of the brachiosaurs is just beautiful. I've seen complaints that there is too much speculation but that's inherit in studying things that no longer exist with sparse physical data. People fail to remember that history in general is speculative by nature and is continually being reshaped when new information is presented. So stop reading this review and buy WWD.... you won't be disappointed.

I bought this DVD thinking it was going to be a good Dinosaur documentary, so I pre-ordered it. When it finally arrived, I was more than satisfied with the packaging, after watching it, no, not watching... experiencing this "documentary" I was really, really impressed.

Walking with Dianosaurs IS INCREDIBLE, it is magical. What this people (the creators of this title) did is nothing short of espectacular.

The title "Walking with Dinosaurs" is really appropiate, you actually feel that you are there, in the mesosoic, watching REAL ANIMALS.

The music was fantastic and the dinosaur noises were really delightful (even if it is just speculation)

I obtained in this documentary what I couldn't get in movies like Jurassic Park: PLENTY OF REAL LOOKING DINOSAURS IN PLAIN DAYLIGHT behaving like real animals and not monsters.

I really recommend this documentary to everyone interested in Dinosaurs. This DVD is like a jewel to me.

It is not a widescreen DVD due to the fact that this series was originally made for TV, therefore you are not losing any extra information on the "edges".

Walking with Dinosaurs does have some strong scenes (basically dinosaurs eating other dinosaurs), so it may not be appropiate for small children to watch.

Being a UK resident, I've seen this on TV and there is a BBC video of this. Walking With Dinosaurs is basically the story of the dinosaurs with narration using computer animation (with occational use of models). The animations are not as good as Jurassic Park, but on the budget given you cannot complain.

It's all put together to great effect and the programme picks dinosaur 'characters' from different species now and then and follows their life for an entire episode at times. One example is when a flying dinosaur is followed on it's mating journey with the trials and tribulations along the way.

This is the best Dinosaur documentary I've seen. The only flaw is it's not as scientifically orientated fact laden as it could be. It's primarily designed to come across like a 'The Living Planet' or a similar wildlife doumentary.

Very nice to have in your collection of DVDs, especially if you are interested in the dinosaurs.