Fossil films
Cinemas may be in danger of extinction but some dinosaurs are keeping blockbuster season alive: first the revived Top Gun; now the sixth Jurassic Park movie. This picks up four years after Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom. Original JP alumni Laura Dern, Sam Neill and Jeff Goldblum join Bryce Dallas Howard and Chris Pratt for this latest sojourn in the dinosaur cinematic universe (DCU).
In the genes
Leading man Pratt is married to Katherine Schwarzenegger, who comes from a family as embedded in US life as the fossils themselves. Her father is Arnold Schwarzenegger and her mother is the journalist and author Maria Shriver.
Running mates
Shriver’s mother was Eunice Kennedy: she founded the Special Olympics movement and was, you know, a Kennedy. Shriver’s father, Sargent Shriver, meanwhile, was George McGovern’s running mate in his landslide presidential defeat by Richard Nixon in 1972. Hunter S Thompson’s Fear and Loathing: On the Campaign Trail ’72 offers a wild account of that dismal election.
You’ll always have Nixon to kick around
Dick Nixon’s travails have inspired many film-makers. Recent miniseries Gaslit (StarzPlay) has Julia Roberts as the woman who first raised the alarm about Watergate, while Alan J Pakula’s All the President’s Men is an enduring paranoid classic. The 1999 comedy Dick, featuring Kirsten Dunst and Michelle Williams, reimagines the story with teenage verve, while Oliver Stone and Anthony Hopkins gave him the biopic treatment with bloated bellicosity.
Ron/Bryce
Peter Morgan’s 2006 play Frost/Nixon gave a somewhat sympathetic airing to the disgraced president in its account of his interviews with David Frost in 1977; the 2008 film adaptation was directed by Ron Howard. Ron’s daughter is, of course, Bryce Dallas, who has been walking with dinosaurs since 2015’s Jurassic World, which kickstarted the latest round of the DCU.
Pairing notes
Watch Dominion’s director, Colin Trevorrow, started out with a small indie. His 2012 sci-fi comedy Safety Not Guaranteed is “funny in a troubling, low-key way”, wrote Philip French.
Eat Chris Pratt was spotted as a young waiter at a Bubba Gump Shrimp restaurant. We can’t vouch for the chain, but for New Orleans-style barbecue shrimp, you’ll need a lot of butter, lemon juice and Worcestershire sauce.