Re: Has anyone seen the movie 10,000 BC?

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

This page 
http://scienceblogs.com/pharyngula/2008/03/roland_emmerich_the_upscale_uw.php 
leads to a review and contains comments such as this:

"So from the review...boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl back 
after 1 and a half hours (plus adverts).
So hollywood please do explain why:
A: This is different to the 1 million other movies you produced
b: Why I should care enough to go see this.
c: Why some people seem to think thats its not the pirates that are the ones 
suffocating the movie industry but is in fact caused by some other possibly 
unknown force....hmmm..."

or this:

"Yup, I just got back from the movie. Terrible but lots of fun.

As an archaeologist, it's part of my job description to see these movies. I 
inevitably get questions from students who mistake them for documentaries so 
it pays to be prepared. In the next few weeks, I'm sure I'll have to explain 
that in fact there is very little evidence for mammoths being involved in 
the construction of the pyramids.

In general I try not to be too serious about these movies. If they're 
well-made and fun I'd rather they be absurdly inaccurate like 10,000 BC than 
subtly misleading like Apocalypto. Indiana Jones probably does far more harm 
to the reputation of archaeologists than this movie, but I still love those 
movies because they are fun and well made."

or this:

"[...] the Mammoths aren't that well modeled and are about twice the size 
they should be for Woollies and are even much too large for the earlier M. 
trogontherii. And they gallop! Ditto for the sabertooth I've seen in the 
ads. Hollywood it seems isn't satisfied with 9 inch sabers, they need to be 
a foot and a half to appear dangerous. Maybe all the people are supposed to 
4 foot 9? It still might be visually stunning."

The review itself says:

"It's a science fiction film in the most literal sense of those words. This 
flick takes the sciences of evolutionary biology and anthropology and turns 
them into fiction."

and

"Plus there's a lot of tribal ooga-booga where white people with dreads (who 
are somehow in charge of the brown people) talk about great spirits and 
generally act like a cross between the bad parts of Burning Man and the bad 
parts of the new agey 1970s. On the plus side, there are some cool CGI 
pyramids and the main character is almost killed by a sabre tooth tiger."

And one of the comments to the review is...

"At what point does MacGyver come through the Stargate and save everyone?"

I'll just leave it at that. :-)