Bring out your dead! Discovery channel has a fascinating look at the secret societies, ritual sacrifice, brutal religious edicts, macabre burials of ancient civilizations, which are all linked together revealing common human instincts. Enter one stunning Indiana Jones-esque Professor, replete with Jimmy Choos and a stacked pile of degrees in art, architecture and anthropolgy: Dr. Kara Cooney. Dr. Cooney was a hit at the recent TCA's in Pasadena, where she caught the attention of jaded TV critics with her adventures. This UCLA Professor of Egyptian Art and Architecture shared with us all her forays into tombs and temples around the world bringing an exciting new perspective to the most fascinating riddles in history. Her series is "Out of Egypt:...
- 8/22/2009
- by April MacIntyre
- Monsters and Critics
Four Torches (Out of Five) The Discovery Channel's new show, Out of Egypt, is an ambitious idea for a series: Kara Cooney, an Egyptologist at UCLA, uses her knowledge of that ancient civilization to try to make connections and find common elements between all civilizations, past and present. For example, "The Shape of the Gods" episode looks at the phenomenon of how so many different civilizations all over the world have built pyramids, despite having no contact with each other. Kara rejects supernatural explanations for why this may have happened -- alien visitors, for example -- and instead looks for plausible, scientific reasons, eventually drawing interesting conclusions about what this preponderance of pyramids tells us about what it means to be human. Even better is "Flesh and Bone," the second of two episodes the network made available for preview, where Cooney explores the notion of relics -- the idea...
- 8/21/2009
- thetorchonline
When I first heard the premise of the new documentary series Out of Egypt, airing later this month, I was intrigued: an Egyptologist uses her knowledge of that country's ancient history to try to draw connections between that civilization and other civilizations, including our modern world today. In the process, she'd come to some conclusions about just what it means to be human. Pretty ambitious stuff for a TV program, even one on the Discovery Channel. Then I previewed the first two episodes of the show (which we'll be reviewing soon) and discovered it pretty much delivers. Better still, I got a chance to sit down and talk to the host, Egyptologist Kara Cooney, quizzing her on the eternal appeal of Ancient Egypt, the "truth" about magic and ritual, and even the deep-seated reasons why many of us find science fiction and fantasy so compelling. I interview a lot of...
- 8/10/2009
- thetorchonline
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