Distributor:
Universal Home Entertainment @ Video Ezy Certificate: M15+ | 125
Minutes Available to rent/buy Producer: Steven
Spielberg Extras: Yes
ANYONE
IN IT WE KNOW?
Julie Benz, Emily Bergl,
Dakota Fanning, Heather Donahue, Matt Frewer, Desmond Harrington, Elle
Fanning,
WHAT’S
IT ABOUT THEN?
Spielberg
takes event TV to the next level
with the super ambitious 10 part
mini-series, available
exclusively from Video Ezy
outlets, Taken tracks 50+ years
of alien abductions and
visitations seen through the
eyes of three families The Keys,
The Clarkes and The Crawfords.
SO
IS IT ANY GOOD?
The legendary Roswell incident in 1947 (when a crashed
alien craft in New Mexico was supposed to have been taken in by the US
Government) has sparked conspiracy theories ever since, whether we'll
ever know the truth about Roswell I don't know but something definitely
happened there that the government of the day didn't want publicly
known.
Steven
Spielberg's Taken uses this alien craft theory as true fact and runs
with it, touching all the alien signposts along the way, from the look
of the alien craft to the look of the aliens themselves (four feet tall,
grey skin, long necks, arms and fingers and almond eyes in an oversized
head) it's all pretty familiar - which is obviously the intention
though.
The
series hangs around the lives of three families, The Keys (young Allie
Keys played by Dakota Fanning provides a narrative to drive along the
story as it advances across the years), who become victims to numerous
abductions and experiments performed by the aliens; The Clarke family
are hiding a big secret - some of them are partially alien whilst the
Crawford family are something of alien myth debunkers and are determined
to uncover the truth about the Roswell Crash.
Each
of the 10 feature length episodes is helmed by a different director,
Tobe Hooper taking responsibility for setting the look and feel of the
whole piece; Taken is hugely enjoyable, combining old fashioned story
telling with state of the art special effects (the team built their own
visual effects unit to produce the 80 or so visual effects seen in each
episode), a lot of people will take every word of this as gospel truth
of course, not just the conspiracy theory obsessives but lots of people
from all walks of life, surely indicative of an increasingly secular
society still desperate for something to believe in.
The
look of the series is superb actually, enormous amounts of care taken to
get the period details right, for example only of the period lighting
was used throughout the production so that for the 40's and 50's
sections vintage giant tungsten light rigs were used to make the
episodes look "period". It's early in the year but it already
looks like Taken is going to become one of the major DVD hits of
2005.
