Planet Earth: Fresh water * * *

Planet Earth: Fresh Water (link to DVD at Amazon)
Planet Earth is a famous series of 6 DVDs of nature and animal photography that is renown for its remarkable cinematography and rare footage. Episode 3 is called “Fresh water” and it shows footage of a variety of fresh water systems from around the world. I’m not sure this particular unifying theme really works, but whatever.

We start in at Angel Falls in Venezuela. Then off to Alaska where we watch some underwater footage of grizzly bears foraging on abundant salmon. Zip, off to India to watch superb underwater footage of smooth coated otters hunting fish. They work in packs and share their catch. A 4-meter crocodile comes along and the otters harass it as a pack and chase it away (no joke, it’s cool). Zip, off to the Mara River in east Africa. The wildebeest must cross in one particular place and here the Nile crocodiles wait. These beasts grow up to 5 meters and they show one taking a full grown wildebeest. Zip, off to Malawi Lake in Africa. These lakes are home to a huge diversity of cichlids. They show some night time footage of dolphin fish hunting for cichlids. The best part is the segment on the emergence of the midges. Zip, off to eastern Russian and Lake Baikal, the largest lake in the world. The lake is full of wacky and one-of-a-kind animals, such as the world’s only fresh water seal. But we don’t stay long at Lake Baikal. Zip, we are off to the Amazon River. Here we have a cool clip of fresh water dolphins, bofeo, hunting fish and performing mating ceremonies. Zip, off to Iguezu falls in Brazil and then to the largest wetland in the world. A short clip follows on some of the fish of this region, including piranhas. Short clip of a crocodile taking a pretty bird. Zip off to India and the largest mangrove forest in the world. Here we have some cool footage of crab-eating macaques that swim and forage under water. Zip, of to the Hudson River delta and some footage of huge snow geese flocks.

Overall, this episode has a few rare clips of rare animals and some cool waterfall shots. The cinematography is ok, but the format of a multi-location theme, in this case ‘fresh water’, leads to disjointed clips and the lack of a unifying story. This one is probably hard for kids to follow; it is very disjointed. You might want to have a globe handy and plan to pause to show where the footage is taken. Or maybe just use it if your kids are doing a report on one of the regions and would like to see some footage of the animals there.

Planet Earth: Pole to Pole
Planet Earth: Mountains

Rented from Netflix

Planet Earth: Mountains * * * *

Planet Earth: Mountains (link to DVD at Amazon)
Planet Earth is a famous series of 6 DVDs of nature and animal photography that is renown for its remarkable cinematography and rare footage. Episode 2 is called “Mountains” and it shows footage of animals from a variety of mountain ranges around the world.

We start in Ethiopia where we get see a day in the life of high elevation Ethiopian monkeys. Then off to the Andes where we see some nice night footage of pumas hunting guanacos. This is quite unusual; I’ve never seen this kind of night footage of pumas before. Then we are off to the Canadian Rockies with their striking mountain geology. We see a mama grizzly bear emerge from her den with two cubs. Later we see bears going after moths that hide under the high elevation boulders – a curious foraging behavior. Then in a very abrupt bit of editing, we move to the Alps and their glaciers. Then bam, off to the Karakorum mountains of Pakistan which have the largest glaciers on earth. In this region of earth also lie the largest mountains on earth. We get to see a few Himalayan animals. There is some rare and exciting footage of a snow leopard mother during a chase on the cliffs. We also see Himalayan wolves. Next we are off to the Chinese mountains (not sure which). We get a short clip of pandas which is later followed by cool footage of a mother panda raising her cub. These shots are followed by very short clips of some monkeys and the red panda. We get brief glimpses of some interesting birds and a musk deer with its fangs. We then get a long segment on the migration of Demoiselle cranes over the Himalayas to India. This is quite unusual since it shows how a pair of Golden eagles hunts down a young crane and we see how the birds struggle to cross over Mt. Everest.

Following the main episode, there is the diary about the photographers. These give you an idea of just how hard some of this footage was to get. The diary on this segment shows the photographer who captured the snow leopard on film. This fellow sat for 7 weeks and saw nothing. Finally they moved to a new location in steeper terrain with terrorists and lots of flying rocks.

Overall, this episode again has some very rare footage of rare animals. The cinematography is great, but the format of a multi-location theme, in this case ‘mountains’, leads to disjointed clips and the lack of any unifying story. Nonetheless, it is a must see if you like footage of wild animals as some of this is ‘first ever’ footage.

Planet Earth: Fresh Water
Planet Earth: Mountains

Planet Earth: Pole to Pole * * *

Planet Earth: Pole to Pole (link to DVD at Amazon)
Planet Earth is a famous series of nature and animal photography that is renown for its remarkable cinematography and rare footage. . DVD #1 is called “Pole to Pole” and does just that – goes north pole to south pole with some great cinematography. To appreciate this movie, you might want to watch the DVD extras so you know how hard and rare some of the footage is – like that of the Amur leopard, birds of paradise and African wild dogs.

This episode begins in the Antarctic with the, now much photographed, emperor penguin males and then switches somewhat incongruously to the Arctic. Here we see a mother polar bear emerging from a den on a steep slope. The scenes of the little cubs trying to traverse the steep snow is impressive and humorous. Then we move a bit south to the Arctic tundra and see the migration of the immense arctic caribou herds – the herds number 3 million strong. These animals make the longest land migration of any animal, and they are followed by packs of arctic wolves who hunt the newborn calves. Then we travel 500 miles south to the boreal forest that circles the globe and where 30% of the worlds forests are located. Then a little further south to the temperate forests of the Russian Far East where we see footage of the Amur leopard, the most endangered of the big cats. Only 40 of these cats are left. Then a bit further south to Japan, where we watch the cherry trees bloom is fast motion. Spring passes in the north, summer is skipped over, and we jump into fall. We see briefly the huge flocks of Baikal duck as they prepare to migrate south.

We head then to the equator and see some never before recorded footage of a male bird of paradise displaying for a female. It is very cute. So it is kind of shocking that we next move to South Africa and watch huge great white sharks lunching on seals. Then we head over to the Kalahari desert to watch herds of elephants as they migrate to find water during the dry season. We watch as the first rains comes to the Okavango delta which is formed from rains 1400 km away. This is a regular Noah’s art of animals – birds, ungulates, fish, wild dogs and hyenas. There is some especially unusual photography elephants swimming underwater.

Then we end back in Antarctica with the emperor penguins. Unfortunately it’s hard not to tune out at this part. After seeing March of the Penguins, I’ve seen enough footage of emperor penguins to last a lifetime.

Overall, I found episode 1, Pole to Pole, beautiful but not jaw-dropping. It was not like Deep Blue for example. Also the film has no “plot” at all since it is a sequence of cool shots taken from one latitude after another.

Planet Earth: Fresh Water
Planet Earth: Mountains

Rented from Netflix

Little Dieter Needs to Fly (1998) * * *

Little Dieter Needs to Fly (link to DVD on Amazon)

This is a documentary about Dieter Dengler, who was born in Germany shortly after WWII started who grew up to be a bomber pilot in Vietnam. As a young boy, he watched the Allied airplanes bombing his village and flying in low to the ground to strafe the houses. Watching the planes inspired in him a strong and life-long desire to become a pilot. At 18 he managed to emigrate to the U.S. and immediately joined the Air Force, where he peeled potatoes for 2 years but never got close to an airplane. He realized that he needed to go to college to become a military pilot, and so he went to California, lived on the beach in his VW van with his surf board, went to college, and joined the Navy R.O.T.C. He finally got his wings shortly after the Vietnam war started, and he was sent to war to fly a bomber plane. After a few months, he was shot down over Laos. He spent 6 harrowing months as a prisoner. First he was marched across Laos to a prison camp in Vietnam and was tortured repeatedly. Then in the prison camp, he met 2 other American and 4 Thai pilots. The camp was pure hell and after a few months the men staged a break-out. Of the 7 men that escaped, he was the only one that miraculously was rescued—after many days struggling barefoot through the jungle towards Thailand.

When the film was made, Dieter Dengler was in his early 60s. He narrates the film and is an engaging and charismatic story-teller of his incredible life. He tells the story of his imprisonment without emotion or self-pity. He recounts how they would torture him with a tone of voice that suggests admiration for the inventiveness of his tormentors. He voice carries no ill-will towards them. Part of the film is reenactment. With a group of young, heavily-armed, Laotians, he reenacts how the drove him through the jungle. He lets himself be hand-cuffed or tied to the ground to show how they restrained him. At the camp, he shows how they would shackle their legs to the ground, and describes the torture. All in the same voice of ‘wow, isn’t this an incredible story’. His descriptions of his mental state after his rescue tell better the true horror of the experience. For many years, he would be unable to sleep and could only sleep in the cockpit of his airplane. When he built his house in California, he made a bunker for food and stored 6 months of staples there. I sleep better knowing I will never be hungry again, he said.

My overall impression of the film was that this was an interesting and entertaining documentary of a remarkable but in some ways contradictory life. It was amazing to me that someone could come through this kind of experience mentally unscathed. That is if you don’t count his various obsessions, like open and closing doors multiple times and that he was reminded of the experience every day even 40 years after the experience. It was also strange that he grew up seeing the destruction and horror brought by Allied bombs, and yet he grew up to be a bomber himself. He says early on that when he was bombing, he saw the landscape as a map and did not connect the explosions on the ground to real suffering. The images from the sky he could not quite imagine from the ground. It was only after he was a prisoner and was on the ground that he appreciated the horror that the bombs brought. This seemed an odd thing to say given his childhood.

Mad Hot Ballroom * * *

This is a documentary on a 5th-grade program in New York that teaches ballroom dancing to inner city kids. This ethnically and culturally diverse group of kids study ballroom all year and at the end there is an all city competition. On the surface, this seemed to me a little like watching sheepdog trials. Curiously mezmerizing even though, you know, you're just watching kids take ballroom classes. The kids are all in this gawky 12-13 stage when the boys are generally smaller and younger looking than the girls. That creates some visual humor. Also the kids are just starting to not think 'ICK' when they think of the opposite sex. There is a funny sense that all the kids are worrying about cooties. One especially funny scene is when the instructor tells the kids to look into their partner's eyes. They can't do it. Simply can't. By the end, the kids are heating up the floor doing the merenge, tango, swing and foxtrot. That is something to see. Karina (9yrs) was engaged the whole time and liked it. Jake (5yrs) watched but didn't think much of it.

Nature Documentaries

The following is a summary of the nature documentaries I have watched with my personal ratings of the cinematography, educational value, entertainment value, and scare factor. I also include my, Karina's (8 yrs) and Jake's (5 yrs) three-word reviews. C -- denotes cinematography rating E -- educational value P -- plot strength (strong story line or not?) G, PG, PG-13, R -- scare factor, i.e. is it disturbing for young kids

• Planet Earth:Fresh Water C*** E* P* G
  Mom: There is some interesting footage if you want to see the specific animals it shows.
• Planet Earth:Mountains C**** E** P* G
  Mom: Good for footage of cool animals.
• Planet Earth:Pole to Pole C**** E** P* PG
  Jake: I liked it. Mom: Good for footage of cool animals.
• Beavers (IMAX) C*** E*** P***** G
  Jake: I like it. Karina: I liked it. Mom: You'll gain a new appreciation for beavers.
• Deep Blue C***** E* P* PG-13
  Jake: oh too scary! Karina: Cool. Mom: Very cool!!!
• Coral Reef Adventure C**** E** P* G
  Jake: Lot's of fun. Karina: Fun and I like the music. Mom: I hate the cheesy over the top music and the way-too-good-looking, painfully happily married marine biologist couple irritates me. Honestly, did she order that man in a catalog or something. Oh, the movie, good cinematography.
• Dolphins (IMAX) C**** E*** P* G
  Jake: Love it! Karina: I've watched this a million times. Mom: I couldn't watch in one sitting, but it's good.
• Eyewitness Nature series C** E*** P* G
  Jake: Love them! Karina: Double love them! Mom: Can't watch them.
• Great White Bear, The C**** E*** P*** PG
  Jake: Fun, but poor birds... Karina: Cool! Mom: Great photography! Good location shots.
• March of the Penguins C***** E***** P***** PG
  Jake: Too scary! Karina: Cool, but I cried. Mom: One of the best, but I find penguins too cutsey.
• Survival Island C*** E*** P* G
  Jake: Yawn. Karina: Cool! Mom: Fun, but too short.

Survival Island * * *

South Georgia Island is the site of many long-term studies on albatrosses and penguins and I have worked with much of this data as part of my work on estimation of population status for long-lived species. However, I have never actually seen any of these animals. So I was very interested to see this IMAX dvd shot on South Georgia Island and featuring some of the animals I have known only as data points.

South Georgia Island is the sole available breeding location in a huge part of the southern ocean. It is off Anarctica about 9 days steaming time from the Falklands. Normally it is an inhospitable place, but for a few months in summer, it is teeming with life. Pretty much every square inch of habitable space is occupied by some critter: King penguins, macaroni penguins, fur seals, albatrosses, and elephant seals are featured prominently in this dvd.

This dvd is pretty short, just over 30 min. It's pretty straight-forward wildlife photography -- there is no 'story'. There is a bit of education about the life histories of the species. The cinamatography is ok, but nothing spectacular like March of the Penguins or the recent Deep Blue dvd that I reviewed. Nonetheless it will be interesting to nature enthusiasts, and there are many interesting shots. The shots of penguins and seals traveling long distances like dolphins leaping out of the water was especially neat to me. Karina and I watched it twice. There is no disturbing animal-animal violence, although there is a kind of disgusting scene of skuas eating a dead seal.

Deep Blue * * * * *

The Deep Blue (2003) is an amazing documentary about life in the ocean. It is filmed in multiple locations around the world's oceans. Polar, tropical, Atlantic, Pacific... Watching it we just couldn't stop say "Oh, Wow, WHAT is that? Whoa, that is sooo amazing!" over and over. Even if you study the oceans and have seen a lot of nature videos, you are guaranteed to see something new and amazing. Probably you will also see footage of something you have always wanted to see. As I write this I am watching night footage of a ray attacking a fish and white-tipped reef sharks tirelessly searching the reef for hidden fish in the dark. Seriously cool stuff. And it has the mostly amazing footage of fish schooling -- like a tornado under water. This ranks as about the best nature photography I have ever seen!! I've seen a lot of IMAX nature documentaries; this one blows all those out of the water (ha, ha).

So it's a MUST see for anyone into nature photography and documentaries. Note it may be a bit much for kids who have a hard time with animals getting eaten. There are some graphic scenes of baby sea lions getting nailed by by killer whales, a pack of killer whales working together to kill a grey whale calf, and other scenes of predators in action: rays, sharks, octopuses, etc. My 5-year old cried during these parts; we lied and told him the calf got away (he wanted to believe this so ignored the graphic evidence to the contrary...). Also the DVD is not exactly educational. It's mostly amazing photography with little dialogue. Kids probably should start off with some more educational DVDs and trips to the aquarium to really appreciate this.

Rented from Netflix, but it's available on Amazon.com too (they have a dorky Penguin cover; for the blog I used the cooler BBC one). Note that Deep Blue is basically photographic highlights from the 8 hr series Blue Planet (2001) also available on DVD at Amazon. Blue Planet

The Great White Bear * * * *

This is a National Geographic documentary from 1999 about a mother polar bear and her 2 cubs. It is set on the Svalbard archipelago, which is north of Norway just above the artic circle. This area is strikingly beautiful and the footage covers parts of spring, summer and fall. Although this documentary doesn't have the glitz of, say, March of the Penguins, nor its tight story-line, nonetheless it has some fantastic photography. You'll see the mother as she comes out of the den for the first time, fun scenes of mom and cubs playing ice-plunging in the mushy ice, and underwater footage of the bears swimming. The footage doesn't just focus on polar bears, you'll also learn about and see good footage of actic foxes, guillimonts, bearded seals, walruses, Svalbard reindeer, and artic gulls. The footage of the bearded seals was especially interesting and it includes hard to get and rare underwater footage. I recommend this film for anyone who likes nature photography and/or is interested in the artic.

I saw this with my kids (8 and 5 yrs). There is some old footage of a polar bear being shot, and this was a little too sad for my 5 year old. A seal is killed, but it's not graphic. Some guillimont chicks get eaten by foxes and gulls, but again it's not gruesome. Overall, there were a couple of places that my 5-year old hid under the covers, but it was not nearly as scary as "March of the Penguins" which my 5-year old was unable to watch. My 8-year old (who loves animal documentaries) was entertained throughout and enjoyed that it focused on the many different species living on Svalbard.

Run time: 55min

Control Room * * *

Control Room is a documentary on the Al Jazeera news station from just before the invasion of Iraq to right after the fall of Baghdad. We start with one of the lead journalists in his car in Iraq (I think), and he is talking about his incredulity about the impending war. The style continues like this as a fly-on-the-wall view of mainly Al Jazeera journalists, the US PR fellow, and the Al Jazeera chief, as to what they are thinking and feeling as the war unfolds. All these people are well-educated, erudite, and earnest. I was fascinated while listening to them give their personal impressions of what they are seeing on the TV or what they are reporting about right at that moment. The Al Jazeera chief is especially intriquing. Very sharp guy and very charismatic -- in a way that probably will be surprising for an American. At least it was surprising for this American. As the war proceeds, the Al Jazeera journalists and chief are visibly becoming more and more tired. They haven't slept for days. The day that the US arrives into Baghdad, we see the bombing of the building from where Al Jazeera is broadcasting. It's very sad, as one of the journalists is killed. The Al Jazeera folks are very affected, as you would expect, and basically you are watching as they find out what happened and then talking sort of woodenly about it and not really being able to comprehend it. The documentary ends as we watch the statue of Sadaam being taken down. The Al Jazeera journalists are watching and are dumbfounded -- 'Where is the Iraq Army? This is so embarassing...."

I found Control Room a very interesting documentary. You basically have a bunch of intelligent and interesting people talking about their experience and interpretation of the Iraq War as it's happening. I did not find the documentary biased itself. Of course, the Al Jazeera journalists and chief are biased -- they say so themselves, but also argue that everyone is. How can you not be? I thought that was a specious argument since the point was they are VERY biased as opposed to not so very biased, but anyhow.... But the documentary itself did not seem to take their side or anyone's side. The US Army PR guy actually comes across very well: intelligent, honest, sincere, and compassionate, while at the same time holding his ground against the Al Jazeera journalists who argued that the US Army was invading Iraq to take over Iraq. Interestingly, I found I related most to this US Army PR guy. He had his own views, but he understood that the Al Jazeera journalists interviewing him had different views and different life experiences and he wanted to understand why their views were so different. For example, one of the things he mentioned was that Arabs he talked to always linked the Iraq War to Palestine, whereas an American never would. He talked about how it made him feel awful and ashamed that he was more affected by seeing the pictures of dead American soldiers on Al Jazeera than the pictures of dead Iraqis.

I had a hard time wrapping my head around the viewpoint of the Al Jazeera journalists and the other journalists too at times. I got the impression they wanted the Army to pinpoint troop locations for them to publish, and they were annoyed that the Army was being vague and probably even intentionally misleading them about troop locations. I was also frustrated that the Al Jazeera journalists could never allow that maybe Sadaam was a bad guy and that lots of Iraqis wouldn't like him. Their view was solidly that this was an occupying invasion. While I understand that view, I also felt like they put one spin on the stories and didn't address the going from the 'frying pan' into the 'fire' aspect (or the other way around, which is what the Army PR guy might have reasoned). War is awful. That is what Al Jazeera was clearly showing very graphically. The Army PR guy would have agreed, but he would probably argue that to get to something better, a war is necessary even if it is awful. That issue wasn't directly discussed by the Al Jazeera journalists, and the documentary would have been much more interesting if they had. Maybe they would say they felt war is never justified or at least, occupation is never justified. This is a defensible position, but they are never asked so we don't know. But then I suppose they might counter that that is beside the point. The real point is that we don't experience the real price and misery of war, and so we don't rightly put enough cost on that.

Bottom-line: I recommend this to anyone interested in listening to a group of moderate, well-educated Arabs talk about their views on the eve of the Iraq war.

How Arnold Won the West * *

How Arnold Won the West is a documentary about the recall vote in California that ousted Govenor Gray Davis a month after he had been elected to his 2nd term. It is an often hilarious look at the spectacle of this highly unusual election in a state that by itself has one of the largest economies in the world. The recall vote came about because of an obscure law in California that allowed a recall with enough signatures. After the Republicans lost to Davis, a rich Republican senator -- who made and makes his fortune on the ViperKing, a car alarm -- put up about 1 1/2 million to get the signatures. And the recall was started. The Democrats in this film spend a lot of time whining about the injustice of this senator buying the signatures, even Bill Clinton makes a speech about political leaders never being able to make hard decisions if they faced recalls -- which he knows is B.S. since most of the world's democracies are parlimentary and under that system leaders always are under threat of a no confidence vote.

There is no primary and anyone can enter the race. 135 candidates do. Many of these are real characters (that includes Arnold BTW). The best is the adult movie star -- she is campy, witty, funny, irreverent and completely uninhibited (there is nudity in unexpected places in the documentary; I'm serious, she is completely uninhibited). In fact, she and Arnold seem to be birds of a feather (that's not meant as an underhanded insult to Arnold). The director and narrator, Cooke, is biased towards Davis and her strident outrage at the recall (and that Arnold wouldn't talk with reporters) added yet another humorous character to the mix.

As a life-long Democrat, I was appalled by this film. Not because Arnold won. The Republicans ran a very intelligent campaign with a unified team effort. It was optimized to WIN. They put forth a candidate with the best options of winning, and importantly other good Republicans candidates withdrew. After settling on a candidate, they ran an optimal campaign. The Democrats come across, first as a bunch of boring ideologues. Gray Davis is dull, even his wife says so in a speech, no less. That someone with zero charisma could get elected is a true testament to the power of the Democratic party machine in California. Mainly the Democrats in this film seem to whine. Even as a Democrat, I felt like "Please lose already, you are really annoying and I'd rather vote for the adult porn star." This film captures one of the big problems with the Democratic party, in my opinion. The people behind the scenes in power put forward candidates that can't even inspire the base. Come on nerdy, political-wonks don't win anymore. Get over it!