Monday, January 28, 2013

Discovery's show "Monster Squid"

Well, Monster Squid: The Giant Is Real does ramble a bit, including some peripheral material to stretch it out and build suspense before the big  reveal - the first direct human observation and first video of Architeuthis.  Edie Widder told an interesting story, with very clear video, of filming a six-foot (1.8m) squid off Monterrey Bay that she "couldn't even place in a scientific family." There are good comments from Clyde Roper and Steve O'Shea, who have been after this thing for decades, and Richard Ellis, among others.  Then you get to the big video, and yes- it's everything you can want in a monster. Alien, big (over 8m if the long tentacles had been intact), rippling, flowing, not so much swimming as flying underwater. No creature created for the movies quite conveys the essence of this truly bizarre animal. (The promos for the new documentary Africa looked pretty good, too.) Amazing work!

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