Walking With Cavemen
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Movie Reviews of Walking With Cavemen
Movie Review: Very well produced...
Summary: 4 Stars
I purchased this for a college Historical Geology class a few years ago. Very, very well-produced and informative. Highly recommended.Movie Review: hope the DVD is better- TV is DISAPPOINTING
Summary: 3 Stars
I haven't seen the DVD version, but if Alec Baldwin is narrating it I won't bother buying it. He is living proof that every village does indeed have its own idiot, and that he should count for 2. He is living proof that devolution does indeed occur! For the money that he was paid, one would think that he would at least try to sound 1) interested and 2) somewhat able to pronounce the words he is paid to say into the camera. Why couldn't Kenneth Branagh narrate this episode of the Walking series? We know that he is an actor, and not a scientist, but he 1) sounds interested and 2) correctly pronounces the names of the creatures he is talking about. Branagh's entertainment background makes the series much more palatable and enjoyable. Baldwin comes across like the village idiot trying to read a primer aloud when he is known to be totally illiterate. His narration is tawdry and strained. Baldwin makes Branagh look like a Rhodes Scholar. What is so hard about saying "Australopithecus Afarensis" correctly? Apparently it was past Baldwin's obviously limited skills. At least he isn't reprising Hamlet! I really liked the material presented, even though Bobo the Chimp could have done it better than blithering Baldwin, and was quite pleasantly surprised that the BBC has made an often esoteric subject interesting and approachable. Both my children (both under 7) loved the previous Walking DVD's and I am looking forward to purchasing the latest one. My only other minor disappointment is that the producers seem to have rushed through this installment as it was only 2 hours in length. I think that when dealing with such an important area of the past of our species, more should be covered and in greater depth, and without the distraction of a has-been actor who hasn't enough professionalism to do his homework beforehand, and who appears as though he is narrating some seedy reality show rather than well researched and produced programming that directly reflects the past of humankind. As a teacher, I have used the previous Walking videos extensively, but am really leery about using this one, as I will have to narrate over the blithering one to correct his mispronunciation of every faintly relevant scientific term.Movie Review: Somewhat disappointing
Summary: 3 Stars
The BBC's "Walking With..." series has been very high quality since its inception. Great visual effects combined with clarity of exposition and just enough "story-telling" to enable most viewers to remain captivated while absorbing decent chunks of information. This latest addition to the series maintains the general format of its forebears but, perhaps inevitably, is the least successful.
It's difficult for humans to have any kind of realistic vision of themselves, so any series that tries to show how we evolved over the millenia (and some of the dead-ends along the way) is going to have problems. In this case there are simply too many gaps and too many leaps across those gaps with only the merest fig leaf of speculation to cover the chasm. And there are some fairly odd assertions about what aspects of adaptation had which effects.
Perhaps the most striking gap is that these episodes miss out on some of the most interesting conclusions we've been able to draw as a result of the last 6 years of genetic analysis. So this series has an "old" feel even though it is recently made. It also misses a lot of hard knowledge we've had for a long time, perhaps because it was too uncomfortable to include. For example, the ape-men are shown being monogamous, whereas we know that in all societies at all times known to us, dominant human males have tried to form and keep harems, either explicity or illicitly. Likewise we know a great deal about the necessity of violence in societies where wealth cannot easily be abstracted, and is thus easily stolen. Aggression is the only defence - and of course greater aggression is the main tactic for theft. Neither of these facts appears anywhere in the series, no doubt because we don't like seeing the uncomfortable truth about these aspects of our species.
Other than that, the makeup and imitation of pre-human gaits etc. is superb and one or two points are interestingly non-obvious: for example, that the development of enlarged and highly visible whites in our eyes is most probably to enhance signalling, so we can detect subtle emotional states in others.
All in all, worth buying but not watching more than once.
Movie Review: Alec Baldwin Explains It All
Summary: 3 Stars
When watching "Walking With Cavemen" which is a very-well produced educational film - I could not help but laugh every time Alec Baldwin appeared on camera. There's just something so goofy about him - that you half expect, at any moment, he will drop a 2 million year old skull smashing it into 10,000 pieces. And that hair of his! Can you imagine how much more entertaining this film would be if each succeeding proto-human species donned a hair style that was slowly, inexorably, evolving to look like Alec Baldwin's?
"And here's Cro-Magnon Man, whose demise would have come eons earlier had it not been for the fantastic hair styling technique they developed 200,000 years ago. A hair style that is still widely in use today...", as Mr. Baldwin winks at the camera.
The "Walking with..." series is ripe for parody - if it's not already a parody of itself.
Movie Review: Walking to the return counter...
Summary: 3 Stars
As usual, my kids loved it and that is what counts I guess. The production work was very well done. The story line was rather incredulous. I mean seriously.
For Hollywood, the approach taken would be fine. For a documentary, looking through a peephole at Lucy's day-to-day activities with such sentimental flare... Well, they used more artistic licenses than I could stand for this show. I would rather wax my inner thighs than see this show again. Clearly, this topic is difficult and clearly the producers struggled.