Image Entertainment

“For the Egyptians, life was eternal. They searched the globe for ingredients to preserve their bodies and their immortality. With knowledge gained from centuries of practice, their priests have created the finnest mummies the world has ever known.”

Ever since Howard Carter first entered the tomb of the legendary King Tut, most of the world has had an incredible fascination with the mummies of ancient Egypt. Hollywood has done its best over the ages to create fear by making monsters of these preserved corpses. Universal and Boris Karloff started the ball rolling, and the recent Brandon Frasier films have added a funny/scary bent using the very latest in computer generated magic. From bandages to living sandstorms, we have been exposed to some fantastical mummies. Now IMAX brings us a look at what these wrapped ancients were really all about. Looking beyond the creatures of our nightmares this release captures the mystery of a long lost civilization in Mummies: Secrets Of The Pharaohs. There’s no talk of curses and monsters here. The real curse of these tombs is the litany of looters that have raped these places in the thousands of years since they were buried. Their greed has not only robbed the dead, but future generations from appreciating and learning from what they left behind.

“For more than 150 million years dinosaurs roamed every corner of the planet. Only a very few left evidence of their existence, their fossilized bones. And, those bones have never ceased to fascinate us.”

The box art to the new IMAX Blu-ray release of Dinosaurs Alive is more than a little bit misleading. The package elicits an image of thundering prehistoric beasts engaged in all sorts of primeval activities. And why not? It’s the stuff of our youth’s imaginations. Has there ever been a more fascinating true story than dinosaurs? But, if you’re expecting, or worse hoping, to get a high definition experience somewhat akin to the Walking With Dinosaurs specials, you’re apt to be more than a little bit disappointed. And that’s actually a bit of a shame, because there are wonders to behold here, just not that kind. Instead the documentary takes you to the places where these stories once unfolded so many millions of years ago. There you’ll encounter these beasts, though not in the flesh, but in the bone. Paleontologists invite you along to some of the most fruitful dinosaur graveyards. There the past is uncovered one brushstroke at a time. And while incredibly fascinating in itself, it’s not exactly the high drama I was expecting.