Genesis 2.0 2018

      Hunters travel to the remote New Siberian Islands in the Arctic Ocean.  They are searching for the tusks of extinct mammoths.  The thawing permafrost releases the precious ivory.  The hunters do find tusks and they find a surprisingly well-preserved mammoth carcass.  High-tech genetic scientists are on the lookout for DNA from a mammoth.  They would like to clone this extinct animal.  They believe resurrecting the mammoth is the first manifestation of the next great technological revolution.  This film is also about the secrets and mysteries hidden within nature.  There is the fundamental difference of creation and the role of man in a technical creation?

      There are ethical concerns and sustainability issues in bringing back an extinct animal!!  Personally, I wonder about the repercussions about recreating an extinct animal as large as this one?  A mammoth could be reintroduced into Russia where it may have a positive impact on Siberian permafrost.  Climate change is causing receding of this area.  Scientists as a group think that time and money should be spent on keeping the animals we have from extinction.  Researcher George Church has successfully constructed functioning Asian elephant cells with mammoth DNA inserted in them.  Genes associated with cold resistance including hairiness, ear size, subcutaneous fat and hemoglobin were prioritized.  I found all this information very interesting!!  The bottom line of this film (I suspected this fact already) is that the hunters only receive a couple of hundred dollars for their dangerous work in an inhospitable location!!!  3 ½* (I liked this movie)

112 min, Doc directed by Christian Frei and Maxim Arbugaev with Peter and Semyon Grigoriev, Woo Suk Hwang, Maxdim Arbugaev, Christian Frei.

Note:  Imdb 7.1 out of 10, Roger Ebert Simon Abrams 1*, Rotten Tomatoes 77% critic 82% audience, Metacritic 60 out of 100 with 5 critics 6.4 out of 10 with 5 reviews (2 positive, 3 mixed), Slant Magazine 2* out of 4* Chuck Bowen, The Epoch Times.com 3.5* Joe Bendel. 

Special Note:  Filmed in China, South Korea and Boston, Massachusetts; New Siberian Island and Yalutsk, Russia.  Woolly mammoths lived during the Pleistocene epoch (about 5 million years ago) and became extinct in the early Holocene epoch (about 4,000 years ago).  Various species existed in Africa, Europe, Asia and North America.  It is legal to sell mammoth ivory and it looks nearly identical to elephant ivory to the untrained eye.  Elephant ivory has been banned since 1990.