DISASTERS DECONSTRUCTED: A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURA

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Product Description

Product Description

Every disaster has a story. Whether they are manmade, natural or caused by human error, the best way to prevent them from happening again is to understand them. This special collection takes a close look at some of the world's most cataclysmic events starting with Inspector America, where an infrastructure safety inspector travels the country to see what is up to code and what needs to be fixed. Titanic's Achilles Heel and Titanic Tech chronicle the tragedy from design and construction to its ill-fated voyage and its lasting legacy. Modern Marvels: Engineering Disasters uses on-the-scene footage, powerful reenactments, expert analysis and graphic reconstructions to present some of the most notorious disasters of the past 40 years. Finally, HISTORY presents three specials - The Hindenburg, What Went Down: Hindenburg and Tech Effect: Hindenburg - offering a complete exploration of the epic disaster that took a mere 34 seconds to shake the world.

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DISASTERS DECONSTRUCTED: A HISTORY OF ARCHITECTURA Review

I've sometimes been critical of the History Channel's DVD compilations because it can be extremely difficult to determine what is included with any particular release. Thankfully with "Disasters Deconstructed: A History of Architectural Disasters," the packaging does give you some idea of the contents. But that doesn't make this any less of a hodgepodge! You might think "Hey, is this a series that I missed?" or "Is it a number of interrelated specials?" In both cases the answer would be "no." Over six discs and approximately 16 hours worth of programming, this is a grab bag of seemingly random selections. There are portions of two TV shows as well as a number of specials that have aired and, in some cases, already been released in other DVD collections. So, I'm going to try to be as specific as possible about this set's contents because you may already own some of the included titles. I did!

The first two discs have the six episodes of a series entitled "Inspector America." This represents the entire run of the 2011 program. This is its DVD debut. Host Timothy Galarnyk is a infrastructure safety inspector, and in each episode he will travel to a new venue to deconstruct potential problems or explain where something has gone wrong or might spell future disaster. The six stops on this journey include Minneapolis/St. Paul, Los Angeles, Seattle, San Francisco, Las Vegas, and Detroit. As I am personally knowledgeable about and/or have lived in three of these cities, I thought the program was strangely fascinating, occasionally disturbing, but sometimes repetitive. While eye-opening, the decaying infrastructure of American cities is not a particularly upbeat or hopeful topic. Galarnyk all but assures us that there is imminent disaster around every road, bridge, waterway, building, and public utility. My favorite episode was in Las Vegas as we get an in-depth look at the Hoover Dam, sinking casinos, and the danger of the desert storm.

The third disc has "Titanic's Achilles Heel." Really, what discussion of disasters would be complete without our favorite unsinkable ship! This is actually the History special that I already owned. This 2007 presentation has already been released as a stand alone offering or I got it as part of this year's "Titanic: The Complete Story" compilation. Director Kirk Wolfinger's film takes on a theory proposed by naval architect Roger Long after "Deep Sea Detectives" (how do you get that title?) John Chatterton and Richard Kohler discovered new evidence when they inspected the Titanic wreckage in 2005. Long posits that perhaps the sinking was inevitable due to structural flaws within the ship itself. This film employs special effect recreations to make its points as well as archival footage from past and current expeditions. Fascinating, but not necessarily an essential film in the Titanic lexicon.

The fourth disc has three (yes, three) Hindenburg documentaries. Let's be honest here. There is a lot of repeated information about the Hindenburg overlapping in these films. I would not recommend watching them back to back for this reason, the topic becomes a little long in the tooth. The specials are "The Hindenburg," "What Went Down: Hindenburg," and "Tech Effect: The Hindenburg." The last two were from short lived History Channel series (2004's Tech Effect and 2009's What Went Down) while the first is perhaps the most comprehensive of the set. For a disaster that lasted only 34 seconds, this might seem like an overabundance of coverage. Interesting, but I was fine with only one presentation of the Hindenburg disaster.

Lastly, discs five and six are an offshoot of another TV series "Modern Marvels" with cherry picked topics categorized as Engineering Disasters. This original series has been on History forever (19 seasons and counting) and some of these episodes have seen previous releases such as individual DVDs, a "Best of" collection and a previously distributed Engineering Disasters Collection (which included 18 episodes). Here you get eight episodes of the technology based series that excels in dramatic recreations. I was going to attempt a list of topics, but each episode covers 3-4 major incidences and thus that's a lot to comment on. I liked these shows a lot but, again, it seems a rather random assortment.

Overall, this is not a bad value for so much content. But sometimes the lack of a unifying thread bothered me. I used the term hodgepodge in introducing the set, and I think it's an apt description. Some of this collection is terrific, some obtuse. While I thought most of it was fascinating, I'm not sure I'd ever sort through it all for a second viewing. KGHarris, 10/12.

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