Tag: Jurassic Park

Beyond Work – Hobbies and Talking Points

All Time Hobbies

So these are the hobbies that have been around long enough that I don’t think I’m at any risk of them going anywhere.

Writing – I want to be published. I have amazing ideas. When travelling I can come up with so many details and occasionally, I can exist in that mid-point between the watching the story unfold in my head and actually being able to jot down the happenings. However, making time, sitting down and writing it?! Not happening. (Weird thing I’ve found?! I can’t think standing up. Like, I’ve tried a standing desk )
I hope that once I’m medicated, I’ll be able to sit down and get them written.

Films – They’re my comfort. The cinema was my special place and I still enjoy going, it’s just that there’s always someone not there to actually watch the movie.
From a yearly birthday treat with my mum, my introduction to Jurassic Park with my brother and the odd journey to space, the final frontier with my Dad, cinema became the anchor to my fondest memories.
Even in more recent years I’ve been to a premier, I’ve experienced life as Rebel Scum inside an abandoned Newspaper factory, and been to preview screenings with the director (M Night Shyamalan and Terry Gilliam) and got to ask them questions.

I guess I love films so much because they’re worlds that I can be part of and engage with, without feeling left out. The cinema also adds the extra buffer of it being dark, loud and the screen fills the wall. It shuts down all the thoughts (Except for when I went to see The Day After Tomorrow and I could not place the face… I even dared to press the internet button on my Nokia 3330 because I could not focus on the film. Alas, it wasn’t until my key was in my door that my brain blurted BENVOLIO to me).
Films at home, don’t have that same impact and I do sometimes end up on my phone. On IMDB and reading the trivia and making cast connections.

Hell…. can’t quite believe that I’m revealing this, but at the age of 17, when everyone my age was out clubbing and being normal, I spent nearly 2 years watching Die Hard every Friday night after The Jonathan Ross Show.
While we’re at the over sharing portion, I should also point out that every Thursday night I got the tv to myself for 30minutes. I would watch the first 30 minutes of either Jurassic Park or Beauty and the Beast. I would even use some of the time to REWIND.
If someone could tell me why I did this, I am very interested because even for me, that’s fucking weird.

Reading – I do love reading. Between 2016 and 2019 I was averaging around 100 books a year. Mostly preview books and reviewed right here. However, since Covid I’ve probably only read four or five and I’ve lost my connections to publishers that would occasionally see beautiful books and additional goodies arrive at my doorstep.
It’s not that I don’t want to, it’s just that there’s nothing else I can do while reading and my mind wanders.

Hobbies and ADHD

Hobbies are activities that people engage in for enjoyment, sometimes as means of decompressing, unwinding, and relieving stress. Hobbies are generally synonymous with pleasure, and this can take place by the release of dopamine “happy hormone”.

ADHD Specialist

The Abandoned Hobbies

  • Knitting (more because I cannot do it… I was gifted this ‘save the princess kit’ and all I had to do was knit a creature. She’s still there because I couldn’t follow the instructions)
  • Nail polish and painting my nails.
  • Greeting Card making. (To be fair, back in 2001/2 and all the way up to 2008, this wasn’t just me)
  • Collecting books (I became obsessed with collecting the World Book Night books from Charity shops. Didn’t want to read any of them, but the dopamine of finding a new one I didn’t own was pretty awesome)
  • Collecting geeky tees (It started with a silhouette of Benedict Cumberbatch and the most recent spurt of Qwertee purchases has its own locker-style wardrobe. Yup, right after Season 4 of Stranger Things dropped, there was a flood of designs and I was compelled to get each one. I’m still a little too fat to wear them comfortably.)
  • Turning geeky tees into a blanket (When it was clear I owned way too many tees. I sewed it by hand, which anyone knows is a bad idea. I had thought about completing the other side with my dad’s collection after he died, only upon cutting the first to size I was dusted with his flaky skin that was engrained in the threads. They had been washed many times, but I guess due to his condition …. in the bin they went.’)
  • Collecting dvds of actors (Michael Fassbender, Mark Ruffalo, Benedict Cumberbatch and Tom Holland were just some of the actors that were the focus of this collect. I knew when I bought two copies of Avengers Assemble – one for Tom and the other for Mark – that I had a problem)
  • Collecting hippos (They’re just in a box now. They were in my classroom and actually meant that a kid would get me something hippo related instead of chocolate at the end of the year.)
  • Dechopatch (I made Christmas Dinosaur ornaments with dechopache in 2019. I bought more to make ones for Valentine’s, Easter and Halloween… but they remain un-patch’d)
  • Jurassic park card pack (God damn it! Such a problem. I spent so much on them to get a full set that I have a second almost-full set and a massive pile of spares!)

TIPS

  • I will refer to films. A lot. It’s all I know.
  • I equally want, and not want, you to read my stuff. I feel like its the ultimate gesture, but on the other hand I’m so hyperaware that by offering you something to read is an obligation… and what if you don’t like it?!
  • Never get me to do origami. I hate it. I cannot do it and I will cry. (That said, I once spent three months mastering the art to make a lily for a Prometheus birthday gift. I messed up so many times that even though the lily was meant to be white, I used all that paper and it ended up being a weird brown colour with an apology note. So, yeah…. if I badly master origami for you, that means you’re special.)

Back to the Manual

Jurassic Park. Halloween Edition (1993)

Rating: PG

Length: 2hr 8

Release: 15.7.1993

About: In Steven Spielberg’s massive blockbuster, paleontologists Alan Grant (Sam Neill) and Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern) and mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) are among a select group chosen to tour an island theme park populated by dinosaurs created from prehistoric DNA. While the park’s mastermind, billionaire John Hammond (Richard Attenborough), assures everyone that the facility is safe, they find out otherwise when various ferocious predators break free and go on the hunt.

This is no normal review. In fact, it’s possibly not a review at all. Everyone knows this is my all time favourite movie and has been since July 1993 when it set me on my path to geekdom.

It’s a film I’ve watched so often, but I don’t think I’ve ever considered it as a horror, or a film to watch as a lead up to Halloween so the fear factor is never going to be there. I’m too amazed and in all honesty, I want to be there too.

So instead, I’m considering how many tropes and themes that come up in horror movies apply to Jurassic Park. I thought I was on a dud mission, but I was very quickly proven wrong.

Creature Feature

The creature feature is perhaps the most obvious genre this dinosaur disaster fits into. There’s narrative similarities within Jurassic Park and the Creature From the Black Lagoon, a tonal structure that Spielberg brings organically from Jaws and there’s even an audio/visual reference to one of the greatest creature feature: King Kong, just invade you were wondering what they might be keeping on the island. In the same way Black Lagoon has that embedded wonder, Jurassic Park is all smiles until things go very, very wrong.

One key trope from the creature feature (and arguably other horrors) that is seen multiple times is the Scream Queen. Both of our females give their lungs a good airing when found face to face with the prehistoric reptiles and join Faye Wray, Julie Adams and Susan Blackline as Hollywood Hollering Royalty.

Science, Bitches!

Science and playing God is a staple theme in many a horror movie. Frankenstein, The Fly and Jekyll & Hyde all have scientists take on the god-like role of creator. In much the same fashion as the previously mentioned films, the scientists of Ingen fails to understand the true nature of the monster in their captivity and they rebel against the creator.

Of course, this is on a much grander scale so the stakes are higher and the town at risk is bigger. While the revulsion for the monster isn’t present, it’s clear not everyone is happy with the creators.

The Slasher

Hear me out because yes, there’s no Freddy or Michael but some of the rules still apply. I am, of course, talking about the raptors and their story arc.

The fact that we don’t get a sighting of the raptors until the last 20 minutes or so is frightening in itself. All we’ve seen, is their destruction and lethal potential, much in the same way we don’t see the shark in Jaws or the knife break flesh in the infamous ‘shower scene’, our imagination makes quick work of filling in the blanks with scares and blood. The raptors are isolated, imprisoned separately, from the rest of the park. Too dangerous: they indeed claim the film’s largest body count.

Of course, like Michael Myers, when they find freedom the raptors set their sights on human victims which brings us to the glorious stalking kitchen scene. Replace the predatory reptiles with Ghostface and this scene could fit seamlessly into a Scream movie.

I’ll agree that there’s more than one, and there’s no motivation forthcoming but you have to admit, sometimes the explanation sucks and ruins the movie.

The Harbinger of Doom

A trope I only really became familiar with thanks to Cabin in the Woods. A meta horror that calls out all the tropes is perfect education for film.

So, there are two characters that fit the bill of a harbinger within Jurassic Park. The first is Robert Muldoon, who is vocal about the raptors and their dangers. However, the key role goes to Goldblum’s Ian Malcolm. Not only is his entire persona as a theorist of chaos an ideal fit, he has a passionate speech warning Hammond of his companies’ naivety in playing with Science, even going so far as call it ‘rape of the natural world’.

Both Malcolm and Muldoon give us some foresight into the horrors that are to be faced even if, as Malcolm puts it, he ‘hates being right all the time.’

Haunted House

So it’s an island, doesn’t mean the haunted house rules don’t apply. The clear trope that can be seen is the fracturing of the group, repeatedly. Those that do end up on their own; Muldoon, the lawyer and Arnold, die in rather painful and bloody ways.

Now you’ve read this, you may see Jurassic Park in a different way, or maybe you’re like Ian Malcolm and consider it …

Either way, go check it out on Netflix. There it isn’t butchered like a Michael Myer’s victim on Halloween (yup ITV! I’m looking at you)

Han x