Wonders of the living world
This series should be required viewing by all inhabitants of Earth. Nearly every shot in this extravaganza 11-part BBC documentary is new, dazzling, and jaw-dropping wonderful. "Is that really on this planet?" you ask yourself. "How come we've lived here so long and no one ever showed us that before?" Because they didn't have 4 years and 25 million dollars. This fortune was well spent on ingenious high tech cameras (slow motion, night seeing, telescopic, high definition) placed in the hands of photographers of infinite patience who provide a view of this earth that will both warm you up and wise you up. As a celebration of where we live, this true film won't be outdone soon, if ever. And it is not just me who's gaga for it. This is the first item I've encountered on Amazon that had an almost unanimous 5-star rating for 280 reviews.
You have a choice of formats for the DVD. You can get it in regular display mode, or in true high definition TV mode. (If you've been waiting for something to warrant purchasing a hi-def TV, here it is.) You can also get it with American narration (Sigourney Weaver), or in the classic David Attenborough British version. I recommend the Attenborough narration for his discernible passion. The Amazon and Netflix links below take you to the Attenborough narration on ordinary DVDs.
-- KK
Planet Earth
David Attenborough
2007, 550 min.
5-Disc set, DVD
$54
Rentable from Netflix
Available from Amazon Amazon
Website
Amazing! Astounding! Utterly cool. Hi-tech photography makes this the best David Attenborough nature series ever. The subject is earth's invertebrates, or in other words, the creepy crawly things that fill the woods, bushes and undergrowth. Insects, spiders and their kin. The diversity of these beings is vast, and their bizarre stories untold. Attenborough and the BBC spend a lot of money and time traipsing around the world using really cool infrared cameras to see at night, or pinhole cameras to see up close, or ultra-fast cameras to catch wings flapping. The view they capture of these unnoticed critters is absolutely stunning. They invert the usual view of bugs by filming them from their level or below. It turns out that when you can place your camera so that you literally look up to an ant while seeing it in its environment, then you look up to it with new respect. The bugs seem more like the animals they really are. When all their hairs, scales, and whiskers are visible, their true animal nature can be seen. As usual Attenborough's very biological organization of what you see and his crisp insights make this journey unforgettable and an instant classic. I've seen it twice already.
-- KK
Life in the Undergrowth
By David Attenborough
2005, 250 min.
$26, DVD, 2-disc set
Rentable from Netflix
Available from Amazon
A maverick sculptor imprints baby goslings to follow his homemade ultra-light airplane as if it were their mother, and in so doing he gets the flock of geese to fly alongside him, where he can film them. Hollywood turned this true story into the family movie Fly Away, and the great documentary Winged Migration borrowed the same technique for other wild birds. But this is the original low-rent documentary made by the Canadian artist himself, wherein he films his journey of invention, with its many dead-ends, failures and ingenious solutions. You get the raw energy and details of an artist at work. It's an engaging tale, a brilliant achievement, and a marvelous act of imagination.
-- KK
C'mon Geese
Directed by Bill Lishman
1989, 28 min.
$15, VHS
Available from Operation Migration, a non-profit organization co-founded by Bill Lishman
Distributed by and also available from Bullfrog Films
Who knew that James Cameron, the director of the Alien films and Titanic, was a hopeless science nerd and submarine groupie? Cameron uses his extensive resources to hire four cute mini-submersibles, staffs them with good looking astronauts and exobiologists, and then sets off to explore the bottom of the ocean as if it were another planet. And it is! There is a weird world down there, entirely separate from the solar powered ecosystems on the rest of the planet. In the oceanic deep, this alien world is chemically- and heat-powered, which makes for very bizarre creatures, seen up close and personal. Cameron makes the controversial case that archaic life may have begun in this non-solar environment first and then later migrated to the lighted world. The drama of surviving bone-crushing deep dives is just a rehearsal for future expeditions to the other moons in our solar system that may have water and underwater alien life. The science is well done, very engaging, and very imaginative. It's done with such impeccable Hollywood filmwork that it feels like a science fiction film. Be sure to watch the extended, and not the short IMAX, version.
-- KK
Aliens of the Deep
Directed by James Cameron
2005, 47 min.
$30, DVD
Available from Amazon
Rentable from Netflix
An articulate and overeducated man, but a drifter and nearly homeless, finally finds his calling in life: to feed and befriend a flock of escaped parrots on a high-priced hill in San Francisco. Like Francis of Asisi, he gently delves so deeply into the lives of these exotic birds that he can identify them individually, and over time follows their saga through generations as they multiply and take over the neighborhood. Through him you get to watch a parrot soap opera -- who died, who's with whom, she said, he said. It's a wonderful natural history mystery, and as therapy, the parrots seem to liberate our saint from his stagnation. Enlivened by this wild bunch, he steps out and becomes an expert -- on parrots. In short, a man is tamed by wild parrots; and the parrots become as interesting as people.
-- KK
The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Directed by Judy Irving
2005, 83 min.
$18, DVD
Available from Amazon
Rentable from Netflix
It must be the two feet. Plenty of other creatures in the animal kingdom endure mind-bogging hardships, as do the stars of this movie, the empeoror penguin in the Antartica. But none look like little people as they do it. Waddling like overweight suburbanites in line for a concert, they trudge across 70 miles of frozen ice to search out their devoted mates, who, if all went well, have spent the last 3 months standing in 80 below blizzards holding an egg on the top of their feet without eating. These little being's lives are totally focused on that one egg, and they move heaven and earth to keep it alive. (Yeah for good parenting!) I've found that women in particular find this movie romantic, perhaps because once the egg is laid, the responsiblity for its survival through the harsh dark winter is passed 100% onto the fathers. There's plenty of other aspects about the penguin's life cycle which make it easy to project our humanity onto them. Whether you find these penguins sweet or pitifully trapped in a horrendous cycle of striving just to stay alive, this is remarkable film. It is expertly crafted to inform you and to touch your heart.
-- KK
March of the Penguins
Directed by Luc Jacquet
2005, 80 min.
$17, DVD
Available from Amazon
Rentable from Netflix
A quasi-documentary about a family of camel shepherds in Mongolia. The family almost loses a rare white camel colt because its mother rejects it and won't nurse the calf. Mom and child are re-united by means of a special ritual conducted by a local violin player who serenades the mother camel. Music cures what ails her. Mother camel weeps on film as she finally suckles her newborn colt. Yeah, it's odd and unusually haunting. The story is held together by the family's youngest boy. This unique film is as minimal as the desert, as melancholy as the sweetest nomad ballad, and as authentically detailed as hand-woven carpet. It is a really fine carpet.
-- KK
The story of the Weeping Camel
2004, 87 min.
Directed by Luigi Falorni and Byambasuren Davaa
$21
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
Animals that might be
A wonderful series of cinematic speculations on what animals could evolve into in the next, oh, 500 million years. The same skill and techniques that resurrected dinosaurs of old and made them seem real and natural (see Walking with Dinosaurs) are applied here to possible animals millions of years into the future. It's a fabulous job of scientific imagination and a great lesson in following the logic of evolution.
-- KK
The Future is Wild
2003, 3-Disc Series, 328 min.
$27
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
It begins as a small nod to the insects in your backyard, but soon becomes a wide-opened window into a previously unknown microcosm of insect-dom. How is it possible we've never seen this world before with this clarity? With scarce narration this better-than-usual nature film is more poem than documentary. Works for kids. Filmed by the same Frenchman who later did Winged Migrations.
-- KK
Microcosmos
Directed by Claude Nuridsany, Marie Perennou
1996, 80 min.
$18, DVD
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
Posted on September 22, 2004 at 2:53 AM
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An offbeat, kinky, tongue-in-cheek celebration of the monstrous cane toad invasion of Australia and of the people who love the poisonous creatures and those who hate them. A nature film with attitude.
-- KK
Cane Toads: An Unnatural History
Directed by Mark Lewis
1987
$22
Amazon
Netflix
Of all of David Attenborough's famous and fabulous surveys of life, this one on the life of birds is his best -- perhaps because Attenborough loved birds the most. His look at winged creatures is quirky, intelligent, deep, and memorable. It nicely serves as a brilliant short course in ornithology, or as a mesmerizing way to keep restless young tamed for hours because he reveals one amazing thing after another. You can find nature films round the clock on cable; this series is simply in a class by itself, worth re-watching many times. Extreme Birds is how I think of it.
-- KK
The Life of Birds
1998, 540 min. (3 disc series)
Presented by: David Attenborough
$52
Netflix
Amazon
Other kinds of creatures
You want life weird and strange? It's in the deep a mile down. You don't know life at all until you've met these spectacularly different creatures. I mean way different. Totally bizarre, totally awesome. Guaranteed to alter your consciousness. The filmmaking is superb and jaw-dropping. The disk you want is Part 2 of the acclaimed BBC Blue Planet series. The rest of the series is okay, but not extraordinary; the other episode on Part 2, "Open Ocean," is one of the better of the series; so you can order just this one disc (or tape).
-- KK
The Blue Planet
Part 2: Open Ocean/ The Deep
Narrated by David Attenborough
2001, 100min.
$13, DVD
Available from Amazon
Rent from Netflix
Presents the full diversity of life
This 8-part (4 DVD set) series is a National Science Foundation/PBS production that is the most taxonomic of any presentation I've seen. The Shape of Life addresses the 8 major categories of animal life -- phylum by phylum. Starts with sponges, heads toward round worms, and so on. You get the full diverse view of life -- all intelligently organized around a taxonomic framework (without the vocabulary), and expertly illustrated with great (mostly undersea) BBC-type footage. Despite the wonderful nature photography, the creators work really hard to convey the innovations offered by each phylum, and it works. This series cured me of a rather vague notion of animal diversity, despite my work at All Species. I'd love to ingest the same mind-opening treatment for the plant world, as well as the other 3 kingdoms.
The Shape of Life
Narrated by Peter Coyote
Four discs, $80
From PBS
An offbeat look at chickens and the people who love chickens way too much.
-- KK
The Natural History of the Chicken
2000, 60 min
By Mark Lewis
$23
Netflix
Amazon
Nature photography doesn't come much purer. Filmed over several years from and in a church tower in Norway, this unadorned film of hawk life, from birth to death, is seen from the birdsí eye view, with no human narration. Extreme filmmaking, extreme birdness.
The Kestrelís Eye (Falkens oga)
1999, 89 min
By Mikael Kristersson
$30 VHS
Netflix
Amazon
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