Word: tallness
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Dates: during 1990-1999
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...they took a little artistic license. Velociraptor, as described in the literature and in Crichton's novel, was a creature no more than five or six feet tall. But because the speedy, ferocious raptors are the story's star villains, the Spielberg team decided to make them half again as large. The choice was scientifically defensible, since so few specimens had been found that generalizations were hard to come by. Anyway, what did books know? Then a surprising thing happened. In Utah, paleontologists found bones of a real raptor, and it was the size of the movie's beast...
...Though the 11-ton creature is an intellectual lightweight, it senses the danger lurking in the surrounding forest. Suddenly, out from behind a tree lumbers one of the largest and fiercest carnivores that have ever lived: Tyrannosaurus rex. Although this beast is a mere adolescent, it is 15 ft. tall and armed with dagger-sharp teeth. The triceratops attempts a retreat, but the cold-blooded creature can only move slowly. It is too soon after sunrise, and the dinosaur hasn't had time to absorb the heat it needs to rouse its sluggish metabolism. While T. rex has the same...
...style transcend the basic story-line, bringing an element of theater to dance. In a spirit that combines a touch of Shakespearean drama with Hasty Pudding theatricals, the ever predictable evil stepsisters are not so predictable. In the first scene of Act I, the stepsisters enter the stage dauntingly tall, grotesquely covered in makeup, and shockingly clumsy, heavy and graceless. If this contrast to the traditional, petite, lithesome ballerina did not tune one in, the exposure of bulging arms and gigantic hands by the middle of the act confirm that these step "sisters", brilliantly performed by Todd Eric Allen...
...Short Tall Tales...
MARK O'DONNELL'S COLLECTION OF COMIC short stories, VERTIGO PARK AND OTHER TALL TALES (Knopf; $18), is like a literary version of Saturday Night Live -- a boatload of strained laughs mixed with a few great jokes that keep the whole thing afloat. Bright spots: "She didn't realize deliberate perkiness offended, the way the smell of ammonia becomes associated with the odors it's supposed to remove," and "Necessity is the mother of affection," and "Do you not be happy with me as the translator of the books of you?" There are pieces about Samuel Beckett, obsessed fans...