Life After People: The Series--The Complete Season One (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)This is a great series. I saw the original show which has now been turned into this series (which has been shown on TV). What this does is to raise up your imagination to think on a larger scale about the future. What if so many of our leading scientists are right? What if we are creating a global disaster in environmental terms? This shows what the world will look like if all the human arrogance fails. You must remember that this series is not very likely from a scientific point of view. Sadly, humans will take a larger part of other living things with them if they really make a mess of things. However, what this series does do is make you think about time. The world, nature, is five billion years old. People have been here for a mere 30,000 years. The suicide of our species is a real possibility, although not in the exact manner shown in this series. You should also check out National Geographic: Aftermath - Population Zero as well as some DVDs I have on my Amazon Listmania list on Environment Films which may be in the Listmania section at the bottom of this page.


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What would happen if every human being on Earth disappeared? This isn t the story of how we might vanish it is the story of what happens to the world we leave behind. Building off the success of the HISTORY two-hour special Life After People, this series continues the exploration of a world wiped clean of humanity, in even more vivid detail. Each episode is a stunningly graphic examination of how the very landscape of planet Earth would change in our absence, using cinematic CGI to reveal in scientific detail the fate of every aspect of the man-made world. What happens to the millions of animals that supply our food? The chemicals stored in industrial complexes? Which animals take over subways? Do satellites fall to Earth? When does Mt. Rushmore wither away? Every episode will unfold in the hours, days, months and years after people disappear and will combine three to four different kinds of stories, from animal outbreaks to structural collapses, building to a unique visual finale. Welcome to Earth, population zero.

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Super Comet (2007) Review

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(More customer reviews)Super Comet - After the Impact is a Discovery Channel special that basically takes the comet that wiped out the dinosaurs and puts into modern times. They used the same type of cometary body assumed to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs, the same size, same impact location, and utilized all the computer modeling they have done on this past event to try to show what might happen (and to show what they think happened then). Not terribly creative and suggests that they really don't know all the effects of such an impact and are just putting things together from what little they have been able to figure out about that one impact, some (or much) of which may be just speculation, though I'm sure that there is some good science going on there.
The cheesiest part of this "docu-drama" was, of course, the depicted foibles of the humans experiencing the event. The show included some cheesy drama, following the struggles of several individuals or groups, before, during, and after the impact, to show how people would react to such a global cataclysm. Even though cheesy, maybe those depictions were useful. The one guy who simply couldn't grasp the nature of the event, kept traveling "home" (which happened to be the site of the impact) even when it was clear that there was no home left. His emotions and his ignorance basically drove him to his own death.
Other people continued to act as if the world was still the same place and suffered thereby, though they learned to cope. There's the typical dumb teenager whose inability to grasp the nature of what is happening (not to mention that her parents weren't very forthcoming with information), who goes running off after a dog. Her parents go after her, eventually find a car, and then the father and teen run off and leave the mother sitting in a running car like it was double parked at the bank! Like desperate people weren't going to steal it immediately with the sleeping mother inside?! Sheesh. Mainly, the characters all acted like they fell out of the stupid tree and hit every branch on the way down! What was clearly evident was that it was lack of knowledge about such events that was the chief problem for all of them.
There were a number of experts trotted out for the "docu" part of the docu-drama. I think I would rather have seen a show that was just about the science with the experts and special effects than the silly way this thing was put together.
One interesting item: at one point, one of the experts made the remark "WHEN it happens," as though he - and the rest of them - knew for a fact that this was on the agenda for our near future. The very fact that so many scientists are working on these problems, including a large number of them studying the possible human reactions and behaviors and how to deal with masses of people, should warn us that there IS something they aren't telling the masses in the headlines of our daily newspapers, though certainly they are "testing" public reactions with shows such as Super Comet - After the Impact.
If you want to know what is really in the future, read Victor Clube's The Cosmic Winter and Comet/Asteroid Impacts and Human Society: An Interdisciplinary Approach.
I had to make myself continue watching this one since I wanted to get up and leave several times. I kept thinking "I could be reading a good book..." But I stuck with it just to see if they had anything new to say. They didn't. It was weak and unsatisfying... cheese with no bread.

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Imagine a world cloaked in complete darkness. Food and water supplies disappear, tsunamis and fires rage, and scorching temperatures plummet to an Ice Age cold within months. Many scientists believe these cataclysmic environmental changes wiped out the dinosaurs after a gigantic asteroid struck the planet millions of years ago...and some say humans could be the next species to face extinction. SUPER COMET: AFTER THE IMPACT dares to bring the unthinkable to life in a fascinating look at how humans could adapt to a new world plagued by devastation on a global scale. You'll be riveted as you watch this unfolding of ultimate destruction that also celebrates the will of our species to survive despite incredible odds.

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Day of the Triffids (2009) Review

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(More customer reviews)I just received my copy of the Blu-ray "The Day of the Triffids Special Edition" from Amazon UK. The Blu-ray includes the 3 hour movie and more than 3 hours of extras for a total running time of 401 minutes (off the back of the case). I always liked the 1962 film starring Howard Keel and Nicole Maurey and was looking forward to seeing this BBC version of the John Wyndham novel. I enjoyed it very much. The image is very sharp and the CGI is very good too.
This Blu-ray is region free so it will play in North American Blu-ray players. The extras (standard definition) however are probably PAL and not NTSC so that could be a problem unless your Blu-ray player has a PAL to NTSC converter. My relatively old Panasonic DMP-BD10A apparently has one as I can watch everything the high definition movie and the standard definition extras with no problem
And apparently the 1962 film has been restored and hopefully will be released in the very near future.

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An epic adaptation of John Wyndham's best-selling iconic novel, which brings his terrifying creation of carnivorous plant species to life in a CGI extravaganza, supported by a sensational all-star cast that includes Dougray Scott, Joely Richardson, Brian Cox, Eddie Izzard, Vanessa Redgrave and Jason Priestley.In this electrifying thriller, social order collapses as humanity confronts a double catastrophe. The majority of people have been blinded in a freak solar storm leaving them at the mercy of opportunists who still have their sight. Meanwhile the Triffids are evolving and advancing on the towns in search of human prey.In the face of total human annihilation, it is down to a select few to take a stand against mankind's deadliest adversary, a foe with a fatal sting and an unquenchable taste for human flesh.

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