Filmography of the Yellowstone National Park

By Alex Vong

The Yellowstone National Park is one of the world's greatest natural land and water formations. It is only natural that a lot of novels, movies and documentaries have been written about the park. The park is the subject or the location of some media exploring both its beauty and its hidden fictional and real sinister power.

The earliest known movies associated with the park were taken in 1897 and directed by Mr. Thomas A. Edison; these were reported by Filminamerica: two black-and-white mini-movies entitled "Tourists Going Round Yellowstone Park" (18 seconds) and "Lower Falls, Grand Canyon, Yellowstone Park" (26 seconds).

One of the many movie guides made from the park is that with an obvious title of "Yellowstone Park", which features the grandeur of the park's beautiful scenery. It was designed to promote the park by showcasing the different water forms that the park offers to the visitors: its beautiful geysers, waterfalls, hotsprings and reflective lakes. The film took 25000 hours to complete but it was well worth the effort of the team.

Other travelogs include the much acclaimed best travelog "Yellowstone: Imprints of Geologic Time", "Yellowstone's Amazing Wildlife", and "Yellowstone: The World's Most Amazing Park". "Amazing Wonders of the World: Kingdom of the West - Yellowstone, Yosemite & Glacier National Parks" also featured the park along with the two other natural parks of equal beauty.

A docudrama series shown in BBC and Discovery channel, the first part of which is entitled "Supervolcano", evolved around the park's volcanic caldera. The film's fictional characters struggled to contain the spontaneous eruptions happening all over the park which spread across the globe. The film featured stunning imagery of volcanic eruptions and showed computer simulations of how the earth might look like after such violent destruction. It all ends with the park and a large part of the US buried in volcanic ash. And like all the other doomsday movies, the whole earth was affected by the eruptions and turned into a crazy world with the upper part in volcanic winter and the lower part in ice age or in drought. The second part of the docudrama was more of a documentary that provides evidence to the authenticity of the movie. It was entitled "Supervolcano: The Truth About Yellowstone".

Departing from documentaries, the Yellowstone National Park is another one of Hollywood's favorite venues. Movies starring the best of the stars have dominated the box office. One such movie is the 1992 film version of the novel with the same title: The River Runs Through It, which grossed $43,440,294 based on the report of Boxofficemojo. Another one of these is "The Horse Whisperer", also an adaptation of a novel with the same title written by the renowned Nicholas Sparks.

Even NASA has some mini-movies dedicated to the park. In the Cool Cosmos website, short movies (less that one minute) were posted, all designed to show through infrared videography both the beauty and power of the "Earth's geothermal power". These include some geysers, hot springs and even some local wildlife, all captured in infrared. It shows an interesting and unique way to view the park.

These are just few of the numerous movies credited to the beauty of the majestic Yellowstone Park. We should be expecting more movies of greater caliber to be made of this awesome wonder of nature in the years to come.

Alex is the owner of YellowstoneRes.com. On his site you can find information about Yellowstone National Park and a Map of Yellowstone National Park etc.

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Movie Review - Sweeney Todd

by Misty Copher

Having never seen the stage version of Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street, I can't speak to the fidelity the film shares with the play. That said, let there be no doubt that Tim Burton has crafted a true piece of musical cinema from Stephen Sondheim's bloody masterpiece. To their discredit, early previews have hedged a bit regarding the singing in the film. In them we only see Johnny Depp canting some recitative as he prowls the streets of London. While this scene is certainly in the movie, it's barely representative of the actual film which contains at least a dozen fully-staged numbers and only intermittent dialogue.



As the former Benjamin Barker, Depp is magnificent as Todd. His voice may lack the thunder that would be expected on stage, but on the big screen it's more than suitable. Purists may find it a little ragged and flat at times--Michael Crawford needn't worry about Depp--but it's an ideal manifestation of the corrupting anger and rotting vengeance that fill Todd's soul. The same can be said for Helena Bonham Carter as the fiendish Mrs. Lovett. Sure she will occasionally descend into something approaching a hectoring screech, but consider for a moment that she's a baker who grinds people into meat and serves them up in piping hot pies!



Voices aside, both actors deliver rich, complex performances. The focus and intensity that Depp brings to his role is riveting. Within minutes of the film's opening there is no doubt that Depp will have his revenge and have it with gusto. Taking a step back from the film, realize that Todd is a thoroughly despicable character. He often kills indiscriminately, but Depp is so powerful as Todd that you eventually begin to relish his countless murders. Carter's Mrs. Lovett is, perhaps, even more of a psychopath. Slicing a throat is one thing. Butchering a man and then serving him up for dinner is quite another. Nevertheless, you delight in her, too.



As for the killings, Burton stages them in spectacularly gory fashion. The phrase 'geysers of blood' is often used casually when describing a violent film. In Sweeney Todd the phrase is explicitly correct. Depp is often obscured under the high-powered jets of plasma that repeatedly erupt from his customer's necks. Amazingly, these scenes aren't even the most disturbing. Once Todd finishes giving a 'shave', he dumps the corpse down a hole where it cracks loudly at the bottom as the skull splinters and the neck breaks cleanly. It's all completely over the top and, of course, wonderful, hilarious, inspired.



The same can be said for the film as a whole. In Sweeney Todd, Tim Burton has found material that meshes perfectly with his artistic sense. You could call it a horror film or a screwball comedy and you'd be right both times. The design is, as would be expected from a Burton picture, lavish and spectacular. The supporting cast, especially Alan Rickman and Timothy Spall, are superb. Only the love story between Johanna and Anthony falls a little flat. It's a minor quibble, though, in an otherwise outstanding film. Sweeney Todd joins Ed Wood and Edward Scissorhands as Burton's finest work. It may eventually even be considered his best.



You can find Sweeney Todd movie in our movie collection . In addition there are 124 movies of Mystery genre in our collection.



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