Dinotasia Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		1.5
Video		3.0
Audio		3.0
Extras		2.0
Overall		2.0

Dinotasia Blu-ray Movie Review

A new theory of extinction.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman November 20, 2012

There’s a certain segment of the population who believes one of two widely discredited ideas. The first of these is that all fossil evidence of bygone species like dinosaurs is “fake”, put there by some sort of Grand Deceiver Divinity to lure us into some sort mistaken belief that these species did in fact exist (why any God worth His or Her salt—pillar or otherwise— would want to do this is never really fully explained by many of these folks). Another equally discredited idea is that, yes, those huge dinosaur beasts did roam the Earth, but since the Earth is only a few thousand years old according to (widely disparaged) attempts to calculate its age by the “begats” in certain Biblical verses, then it’s intuitively obvious that Man and Dinosaur co-existed during the same era. Since the first set of people believe dinosaurs were a hoax, the evident demise of the species is a non issue, but for those in the second camp, I’d like to propose an exciting new alternative theory that completely takes into account the cohabitation of Man and Dinosaur, namely that the poor, hapless beasts were doomed by Werner Herzog’s narration on Dinotasia. Herzog, certainly one of the oddest directors to ever hit the big time, introduces each segment of this haphazard assortment of scraps from another Discovery channel series called Dinosaur Revolution with some hilariously flowery language and supposedly piquant commentary that may in fact lead some viewers to laugh out loud.

There’s a certain irony in that old phrase “the circle of life”, because what it seems to really refer to is the circle of death, and that seems to be the overweening focal point of much of Dinotasia. Dinosaurs evidently did not suffer fools gladly, especially other foolish dinosaurs that had the temerity to, say, howl (or whatever it is that dinosaurs did) at the moon. Dinotasia plays out in a number of short episodes that basically boil down to one species trampling, chewing or otherwise decimating one another. Oh, and of course, we get some hilariously poetic musings from Mr. Herzog, all in his inimitable (and extremely thick) accent.

Audiences have become so used to stellar CGI these days that anything less than top flight quality is usually met with critical brickbats. Rather incredibly, the original series that Dinotasia is more or less left over from (Dinosaur Revolution), took upwards of three years to produce, and yet the animation here is shockingly disparate in quality, perhaps at least somewhat due to the fact that these are in fact “leftovers” that were never aired in the actual series. Some elements, typically the dinosaurs more on the bird side of the equation, look pretty good, if occasionally ridiculously close to what someone like Chuck Jones or Tex Avery might come up with after a bit of a bender. But some of the more “traditional” behemoths look frankly ludicrous some of the time, something that works consistently against this being anything other than comedy relief.

The keepcase insert has a very telling comment, namely “the depictions combine the latest scientific thinking with stories crafted in a purely visual style not seen since the classic era of silent cinema”. Let’s just jettison the second half of that statement as press agent hype, but that “latest scientific thinking” element is really interesting. Do scientists really know what sounds some of these creatures made, specifically the almost human mewing that some young dinosaurs make in various episodes here when, for example, they’re separated from their parents or are mortally wounded? And is there some archeologist or paleontologist out there insisting that a hapless mother dinosaur would go decapitate a noisy neighbor so that she could get a little shuteye with her sweet offspring napping nearby?

Dinotasia is probably best seen as a sort of high tech cartoon than for any ostensible educational value. Over and over again, we get some fanciful narrative introduction by Herzog, followed by dinosaurs killing each other. Okay, we get it: these were not fuzzy little pets that you’d want to snuggle up with. But certainly something more insightful could have been imparted here. What it looks like more than anything is that the producers of Dinotasia (a consortium with the wonderful moniker Creative Differences) wanted to maximize their investment by not letting any scraps go to waste. But what is repeatedly apparent throughout this haphazard mélange is that stuff was left on the cutting room floor for a good reason.

Dinotasia Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

Dinotasia is presented on Blu-ray courtesy of Flatiron Films and New Video with an AVC encoded 1080i transfer in 1.78:1. This is one of the most schizophrenic looking high definition presentations in recent memory, one which ping pongs back and forth between crystalline clarity and awesome sharpness to muddy softness and murkiness compounded with aliasing that at times looks like it's actually built into the less than stellar CGI rather than the result of any compression artifacts. A lot of Dinotasia looks quite good, at least if you can accept some comically animated dinosaurs. There's nothing approaching the grandeur of, say, Jurassic Park here, and instead the animators whether intentionally or unintentionally repeatedly create comic characters, especially the birdlike creatures. The more traditional dinosaurs frequently have a sort of slapdash quality to them, as if they weren't quite finished being rendered. Some of the live action backgrounds pop quite well, with some lustrous colors and good fine detail. The image taken as a whole is well above average in terms of clarity and precision, but there are an awful lot of weird anomalies dotting this enterprise, many of which seem to be part and parcel of the shoddy animation.

Dinotasia Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

The lack of lossless audio on this Blu-ray shouldn't come as any huge surprise considering the slapdash nature of this entire release. Instead, Dinotasia offers two okay sounding lossy Dolby Digital tracks, one a 5.1 surround track that offers some good discrete channelization in the many sound effects that populate each episode. Generally speaking, though, there's probably less difference between the 5.1 and 2.0 outings than some might expect. Both tracks offer good fidelity and some appealing dynamic range, but lossless audio certainly could have provided more aggressive lows than either of these tracks is able to muster.

Dinotasia Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

• Rivals – Extended Cut (1080i: 32:50)


• Troodon – Tom de Rosier Animatic (1080i; 8:22)


• Mating Rights (1080i; 3:22)


• Forbidden Fruit – Performance Reference (1080i; 00:54). This is one of the most unintentionally hilarious things you'll ever see (I won't spoil it for you), and is almost worth the price of admission alone.

Dinotasia Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Younger kids will probably delight in Dinotasia, as it offers relatively brief, compact stories that feature fanciful looking creatures beating the living daylights out of each other (so extremely young tots who are impressionable should probably have their parents screen this first). But anyone looking to glean any worthwhile information out of this enterprise is going to be pretty hard pressed to do so. I frankly never caught Dinosaur Revolution on Discovery, but my understanding that even that more fully realized series wasn't especially lauded, so there's certainly no reason to accord this collection of outtakes anything other than that same lukewarm response.