"No. Unless You Count Birds." - Let's Finish Reading _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today_!

Ay-yi-yi, we're almost done!



Here's that other strange-looking Triceratops I promised way back in the beginning.

The whole final section of the book may actually be the most brain-hurting.  It purpotes to be a "Question and Answer" section that intends to show some genuine non-speculative science in this otherwise very silly book. Well...



First off, that's a metaphysical question I never thought I'd see. Secondly, "Mammals are only here because there are no dinosaurs.  In the Age of Dinosaurs mammals were small... new meat-eating animals evolved -- first into giant flightless birds, and then carnivorous mammals."

So much wrong in one little rectangle of text, it boggles the mind.  And here is another unsuspecting human who looks like he was blissfully unaware of what they were going to use his photo for.



But then the answer is "Yes" isn't it? Anyway, at least Dixon is nice enough to elaborate on this. Kinda:



Yeah.



That's downright philosophical.  And what do people have against chickens anyway?



"I've always wanted to ride a Chocobo!"



Yeah, so who else has ever heard of this "Vivaporous Pachycephalosaurs" theory? I've only ever heard of live-birthing sauropods and that was long enough ago to feel like a childhood fever dream. Elsewhere, Dixon notes that since their eggs are always in pairs, a female Troodon must have had a pair of "egg tubes" in her body where modern birds only have one, which, if true, is news to me.

And then, there's this:



I feel Dixon stopped just short of screaming, "'Jurassic Park 3' is stupid, stop even acknowledging it!"  This is part of a brief listing of science fiction involving dinosaurs in modern times that mentions "Jurassic Park", of course, and The Lost World and Journey to the Center of the Earth and Pellucidar...  but NOT The New Dinosaurs.  Huh.

Anyway, it's time to touch base with an old friend:



Syntarsus sans Mohawk! Man, he looks strange without it.

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Sketch of the Day!

"Save the Ichthyosaurs!" - Let's Keep On Reading _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today"!

Clearly this book is a goldmine.

Today, we're going to explore how Mesozoic creatures of the air and sea would deal with modern times.  As we've seen, most Mesozoic animals, when suddenly transported somehow to modern times, make a big conspicuous show of themselves.  These guys won't be any different:



Dear Quetzalcoatli, please don't mess with airplanes. Just don't. I've seen you do this before and let me tell you, it will only end in tears. (By the way, obligate scavenger Quetzalcoatlus.)



... ... ... What?



DIVER 1: "Shonisaurus! Oh, how majestic!"

DIVER 2: "It's only a painting."

DIVER 1: "Shut up, you."

To be fair, the painted animals look awesome especially since the CGI animals look so goofy. The Photoshopping is still so very awkward. To wit:



This otter looks so happy to have caught a badly-Photoshopped-in painting of an Ammonite!

And this reminds me of another odd aspect of this book.  It happily ignores the fact that there were such things as fish, birds, small mammals, and such in the Mesozoic.  Scenes like this or the sight of a small pterosaur competing with small birds for food aren't quite as bizarre as the book makes them out to be.



Coming at this from a different direction, the book also ignores the fact that large predatory animals, giant sea creatures, enormous herbivores, and -duh- birds exist in modern times.  It's not so bizarre to see birds roosting in and flocking around the Statue of Liberty -- except they aren't as conspicuous about it. And dig the early interpretation of Microraptor. "We can be sure that it was brightly colored like the tropical birds of today," says Dixon, even though the Microraptors in the illustration are more subdued. Yeah.

And now, the second most-ridiculous image in the book.  Gaze upon it in despair:



There is absolutely nothing I could add to this. At all. Moving on...



"Birds is Birds!" Yes, but Microraptor is classified as a Deinonychosaur, so...? And then there's the strange assurance that if you're a bird you aren't a dinosaur anymore.  I cannot emphasize this enough: that is like insisting that whales are no longer mammals.

And finally, the most ridiculous, and my absolute favorite, image in the book:



I wonder if this person knew what they were taking her picture for?

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Sketch of the Day!

Yeah, what if dinosaurs were alive today?  Hmmm...   HMMMMM...

"No, What Are You DOING?!?" - Let's Continue Reading _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today_

When last we left off in the big barrel of insanity that was Dougal Dixon's If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today, we saw a monstrously huge and very 90's Tyrannosaurus attacking a herd of longhorn cattle. This brings us into the chapter about how Theropods would have to deal with modern times.

We're going to ignore for the moment that, uh, there are theropods dealing with modern times, but we'll have to wait a while to get to them. For now, enjoy the above implication that if there were nonavian theropods around, we'd all be reenacting "Reign of Fire". Reason being that big theropods ate everything, including animals that hadn't even appeared in the fossil record yet:



Even the Hartbeeste is like, "I don't even know..."



Note: not an image from that one Animorphs book with all the dinosaurs.

This is as good a time to note that obviously Dixon isn't attacking the "what if dinosaurs were still around" premise from the same angle he did in the New Dinosaurs. New Dinosaurs is the "Primer" of alternate universe nonavian dinosaur survival fiction compared to this. With this book it almost looks like they started out with the basic idea, "Let's compare dinosaurs to modern animals" and then things went south.



I like how they just drop in the "warm-blooded" issue with no elaboration at all. Also, what?  No!  WHAT?!?



These "Gorilla suit" Troodons are all like, "We got your low metabolism dinosaurs right here!" More importantly, these guys are the first feathered theropods we see in the book. Brace yourself for a bunch of brain farts, including this strange looking "adult Troodon":



Sticking with the maniraptors for a bit, here's a small flock of badly rendered crab-eating Oviraptors:



This is a particularly strange Oviraptor behavioral theory that I've seen exactly twice; the other instance was illustrated by no less than Wayne D. Barlowe. I hate to be a spoilsport but wouldn't Oviraptor habitat be lacking in seashores and crabs?

And then we see this:



Alright, let's ignore the hilarious sight of a flock of Struthiomimids joining a horse race (like so many wild animals who like to run do today). "Struthiomimus resembled today's large, flightless birds... and were the ancestors of all modern birds."

What? WHAT? No. But... WHAT?!?

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Sketch of the Day!

"What in the...?" Let's read _If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today_!

Full confession: our dear friends at Love in the Time of Chasmosaurs already covered this book, but I happened to order my copy around the same time Marc did and since there is WAY more than enough WTF-ery in the book to go around, he said it was okay.  (I will try to come up with different funny things to say about the illustrations we both picked to show.)

The book we shall be exploring this week is If Dinosaurs Were Alive Today, written by our old buddy Dougal Dixon with consulting from Professor Mike Benton of the University of Bristol.  Illustrations by Simon Mendes, Andrew Kerr, Roger Harris, Leonello Calvetti, Franco Tempesta, Peter Scott, Frank DeNota, and... Luis Rey?!?  Why do I feel as though this may be an old shame for him?  Even though -and this is the strangest thing- it isn't all that old; the book was first published in America in 2007 by Running Press Book Publishers.  That's... surprising, given what we're going to see.

So.  This book.  To borrow a phrase, it sure is a book.  It has pages that are stitched together, and those pages have words and pictures on them.

Okay, seriously.  This is a book about how well animals from the Mesozoic era would be able to deal with modern times... hypothetically.  See, there are moments where the goofy-as-hell premise is taken seriously and there are many MANY more moments when it isn't.  This creates its fair share of mood whiplash.  There are also some deeply bizarre moments that have nothing to do with the premise.  Basically, every two-page spread in this book has at least one thing about it that will make you say, "Wait, what?!?" I wouldn't dare spoil the fun by posting every single illustration here, since the book is available for dirt-cheap on Amazon. It's worth it to have a copy of your own to gawk incredulously at.

The fun begins right on the Table of Contents:



So far this is the most recent book I have seen that associates Archaeopteryx with pterosaurs instead of other dinosaurs.  (I didn't mention it at the time, but Dinosaurs Discovered does the same thing.  It was slightly more excusable since that book is quite old.)  The weird thing is, now Microraptor is brought into the -ugh- "Flying Reptile" fold too.  Don't worry, there will be more brain-farts involving winged theropods later on.



For now, enjoy this herd of elephants chilling with a Sauroposeidon who suffers from a severe case of Shrinkwrap Face.  Behold!



"Dear sweet Littlefoot... Do you know the way to the Uncanny Valley?"

Now, to be fair, it's neat to see the scale of certain prehistoric animals next to modern animals.  And this image is appropriately epic.  If you ignore the eye-bleedingly awful CGI and Photoshoppery.



This might just be the nadir of "Pachycephalosaurs were just the dinosaur equivalent of bighorn sheep" paleoart meme.



After we get to see a Styracosaurus facing down a White Rhino, we get to see the first of two very odd-looking Triceratops. We'll get to the other one in a little bit.



Now this illustration is our first focus on the probably unintentional underlying theme of the book: modern day mammals are just better at everything. We're told that poor Plateosaurus (whose neck looks painful) wouldn't stand a chance against a tiger. Well, no kidding! It'd be no more fair to drop a tiger in the middle of the late Triassic would it? I'm giving the stupid premise of this book way too much thought, aren't I?



Oh God oh GOD, bad "Dinosaur" flashbacks!!!

At some point we're told that herbivorous dinosaurs would have a hard time of it in modern times since the foods they are used to are relatively rare and take many years to mature.  Even so, humans would domesticate them and not cows and pigs and whatnot.  This is a book that exists outside the land of logic.



Man, another sauropod suffering from the unspeakable heartbreak of Shrinkwrap Face.



Said Diplodocus (Seismosaurus in the book) is part of a herd that has wandered into a busy commercial airport runway, like you do when you are a very big animal. "They would not be disturbed by the movement of taxing aircraft," Dixon assures us, "as to them they would be just like other big sauropods to which they are accustomed." Yes, because airplanes are what sauropods look like.



I have nothing to add to this. Anyway, time for one of the most ridiculous pictures in the book before we pause for now:



90's as f***!!!

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Sketch of the Day

"Hahaha, oh wow..." - Thoughts on "The Adventures of Tintin"

Here comes the good news first: "The Adventures of Tintin" (aka "Tintin: Secret of the Unicorn") is overall entertaining as all get out. Steven Spielberg acts like a kid with a brand new giant bin of LEGOs in this movie, taking full advantage of the whole concept of a virtual camera and virtual settings. There's a stunning flashback to a pirate battle at sea where the camera spins and swoops and careens through space as the characters fly through the air and clamber over every inch of the two ships. Near the climax, that scene is topped by a chase through a city seen mostly from the point of view of a flying character. These scenes are hard as hell to describe adequately but, listen, they're well worth watching the movie for. The script is often fun as well and the story is a good old-fashioned wikkid fun hellzapoppin' globe-trotting adventure we just don't see anymore.

Visually, the film looks terrific. The cities, the vehicles, the effects, glowing treasure chests, sinking pirate ships, and fluttery pieces of parchment. All of them look varying degrees of fantastic.

The human and animal characters look good too, as long as they are not facing the screen and are sitting perfectly still.

Right. So let's talk about the motion capture.

Because this is what comes damn close to killing any good will I have for the film. Remember when the very first trailers for "Tintin" came out and they looked suspiciously reluctant to show the characters' faces? Well, surprise surprise, there's a reason for that. Now, to be perfectly fair, the characters look more appealing here than in most other mo-cap movies. But the filmmakers made the exceedingly odd choice of making the characters as utterly photorealistic as possible - while retaining their distinctive caricaturish features from the comics.

The result is, to say the least, jarring as f***. I have heard that there is no real evidence to support the theory of the Uncanny Valley, and yet I can confirm that there is a part of my brain that wigs out when confronted with the sight of a Creature That Looks Like A Man But Is NOT A Man, because it was going haywire every time a new character was introduced.

The weird thing is, this time it wasn't just the human characters who set this off. Snowy the dog (and best character in the movie) looks fine for the most part, probably since after decades of watching animation I am used to odd-looking dogs (what up, Pluto?) And yet it's unnerving when you start to notice his fluttery little tongue going in his mouth ALMOST -but not quite- like a real terrier. There's also a "falcon" that is, frankly, the worst-looking character in the entire movie. It looks, acts, and flies like no winged creature on God's green Earth. In twenty-one years, we went from Marahute to this thing. Yeah.

With all this in mind, and with the fact that Spielberg directed the ultimate (if I may repeat myself) good old-fashioned wikkid fun hellzapoppin' globe-trotting adventures we just don't see anymore as live-action films in the 1980's, I wonder what was even the point of making the "Tintin" films in motion-capture? I mean, if you're film is going to be essentially a live-action film with extensive animated effects populated with wrong-looking people, why are you even motion-capturing it? And notice I didn't say "why didn't you animate it", because this film very definitely has put me on Team "Motion Capture Is Not Animation" (Team MCINA? Team MoCapINAni? Whatever.) Now, Motion Capture is a very powerful effects tool. I rather liked "Avatar" (but mostly because of the world-building), and "Rise of the... Apes" made the water come out my eyes, enough said. But I guess if your entire movie is motion-captured, it just feels so... *pointless*.

I'd love to hear (well, read) other people's thoughts on this. But until then, "Tintin" is worth a look, though I don't know if I'll be on board with the next in the series.

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Sketch of the Day

While I was in the Uncanny Valley, I was asked by these friendly... people... to paint their portraits. (Seriously, I apologize for these.)

In Which Trish gives up and watches "Happy Feet"!

Yes, even though, ages ago, I said I didn't feel like I'd ever need to. Because this movie about a penguin who tap-dances to bad covers of popular songs can't possibly be a fraction as entertaining as reading the message boards and discussion threads where people, people who are probably reasonable adults in real life, have ridiculously intense arguments about (just as a reminder) a movie about a tap-dancing penguin.

As you may recall, the animation-enjoying population of the internet was essentially ripped asunder when this thing won Best Animated Feature. If you do not recall, or you want to relive the magic and wonder of that experience, here's the relevant Cartoon Brew thread. (Bring marshmallows. Lots of them.)

It was partially that and partially rereading this Onion AV Club review of "Babe: Pig in the City" that inspired me to add it to the ol' Netflix Queue. I rented "Pig in the City" as well and was able to watch both films back to back. (It is three-thirty in the morning as I write this fresh off the experience.) My reaction to "City" was nearly identical to that of Scott Tobias and his readers. It is a brilliant, criminally underrated, beautiful film that is also batsh*t insane in all the right ways; "the stuff of impeccably choreographed nightmares". The animals are better actors than most humans and, best of all, the voice-over acting is refreshingly understated with help from a witty, oddly moving script. Naturally, I was pumped for "Happy Feet".

As I mentioned, it is very early in the morning as I write this. I could probably just say that I can see why people were, shall we say, opinionated about this movie.

Let's get it out of the way: the Mo-Cap is ugly. There's something off-putting about human eyes and giant, humanlike mouths and tongues in an otherwise fairly realistic nonhuman creature. There's something off-putting about seeing a creature that is anatomically wildly different than a human move and act like a human. I never thought I'd ever feel like I was hit with the Uncanny Valley stick by a cartoon penguin.

The voices are downright surreal. Why hire Hugh Jackman and Nicole Kidman for your animated film if they're just going to do lame impressions of Elvis and Marilyn Monroe? What the hell is the point? Why not hire actual voice actors who'd do better imitations? And why oh why do we have to be hearing Robin Williams come out of the noise-hole of every other character? (OK, maybe it just sounds that way after a while. Still.)

The songs are beyond surreal. Sometimes you can tell, during a musical whose soundtrack is made up of pre-existing songs, that the people who compiled the songs were only seeking catchy beats and tunes or focused on one or two lyrics relevant to the story. This is such a musical. Boy, is it ever such a musical. There's a scene where an adorable/creepily humanlike baby penguin sings "The Message" by Grandmaster Flash, and I do not believe that it is possible for any living thing with breath in their body to watch this scene without going: 😨

As far as the story... Okay, WTF was the lesson here? Pick a moral, kids!
* - Animals are only interesting when they act like people.
* - If there is something new and different, everyone must eventually conform to this new thing or else.
* - If you are different and/or special, your life is going to suck. Hard. Even if you eventually save the day, you must expect to be banished at some point. Probably by your own family.
* - The last wild places in the world, those uninhabited by mankind, are worth saving. If they're amusing to humans. If not, f*** 'em.

The film also boasts a memorably awkward happy ending, the last moral on my list (I guess I was supposed to get "save the penguins" out of it but it sure doesn't come across that way) is delivered with all the subtlety of an entire season of "Captain Planet", and did I mention that Robin Williams voices more than one major character? I don't even know how to react to this movie. It is astonishing. Not the good kind of astonishing, but the "What the hell did I just watch?" kind of astonishing.

Overall, Best Animated Feature of 2006? Really? Really? REALLY?!? So the lesson I'm taking is that the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences obviously hates Richard Linkletter's animated films with the white hot fury of a thousand stars.

Oh, the well-loved Tex Avery short, "I Love to Singa" is on the DVD, and I find this ironic, funny, and sad because it owns the hell out of "Happy Feet".

Addendum: Albertonychus' review!