Blu-Ray Deal of the Week: 64% Off Universal Classic Monsters

If you're a fan of classic movie monsters and some of the great horrors of all-time, then now is your chance to stock up on the works of Bela Lagosi, Boris Karloff, and Lon Chaney. This week's Blu-Ray deal is 64% off Universal Classic Monsters: The Essential Collection, an 8-disc set that includes Dracula, Frankenstein, Creature from the Black Lagoon, The Wolf Man, and more! This set can be yours for only $54.49, or less than $7 per disc, which is quite the steal.

Click on the above link or go here to order yours today! We appreciate the support you continue to show our sponsors. Punch Drunk Critics earns a small fee every time one of our readers buys from any of our links.

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Review: 'Jurassic Park 3D'

The year of 1993 was pretty awesome in terms of years in pop culture. Mighty Morphin Power Rangers started, Mortal Kombat II was released into arcades and politicians nightmares, and A Tribe Called Quest released 'Midnight Marauders'. But in film it should be of note that Steven Spielberg changed the game of film once again with Jurassic Park that summer. It was one of the most built up movies at the time from the release of the trailer at that point no had seen CGI that real before on screen or on anything else.  This film was a phenom, it was released during the times when a film would be in the theater for months on end and it wasn’t on home video in 10 weeks.  Now in 2013 on the 20^th anniversary of its release they are bringing it back in 3D.

So for those that might be a bit foggy on this twenty year-old film, Jurassic Park is a theme park owned by John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) CEO of InGen. After a mishap where a park employee dies on the job the investors wants experts to visit the park to certify if it’s safe. Hammond goes and finds paleontologist Dr. Alan Grant (Sam Neil) and Dr. Ellie Sattler (Laura Dern). The investors are being represented by attorney Donald Gennaro who brings mathematician Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum) who is also a chaos theorist to be the investors’ expert. The park is unlike any other park since its main attraction is that it has real live dinosaurs. As Hammond shows the scientists around and explains how they were able to bring dinosaurs back to life, Hammond’s two grandchildren join them in touring the entire park.

So really what do you say about this film that is a cinematic classic? What is there to critique now? Clearly the film stands the test of time and is also one of the most influential films in terms of the
history of special effects. The one thing that is very open to critique is the addition of 3D to the film. To tell the truth the 3D really adds nothing since it’s never consistent throughout the entire runtime. A lot of things that they tried to add depth to is really unnoticeable , as it's mostly in the viewer’s peripheral vision.

Another thing that’s an issue is that there are long segments of the film with really no noticeable 3D going on the screen. It makes it feel that this decision was rushed to do this and that even though it’s a quick money grab you’d hope that the people doing the conversion would take a bit more care to actually make it impressive and awesome enough to compare with the many other 3D conversions coming out all the time.

One great thing about seeing this re-released in 3D is the chance to not only re-experience it in the cinema again, or the first time for some people, is the chance to see this landmark film in IMAX. No
matter your feelings on post-converted 3D films being shown in the format it’s still really cool to see this film with dinosaurs on a screen that large. It makes something already larger than life even grander. This is a film that still holds up well after 20 years and even though the 3D really isn’t worth the price of admission the film itself totally is.

The film score

3D score

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