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Life
David Attenborough's legendary BBC crew explains and shows wildlife all over planet earth in this 10-episode miniseries. The first is an overview the challenges facing life, the others are dedicated to hunting, the deep sea and various major evolutionary groups of creatures: plants, primates and other large sections of other vertebrates and invertebrates.
Release : | 2009 |
Rating : | 9.1 |
Studio : | British Broadcasting Corporation (BBC), |
Crew : | Director, Director, |
Cast : | David Attenborough |
Genre : | Documentary |
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David Attenborough's Rise of Animals: Triumph of the Vertebrates 2013
Rating: 8.5
Reviews
Surprisingly incoherent and boring
Good films always raise compelling questions, whether the format is fiction or documentary fact.
The story, direction, characters, and writing/dialogue is akin to taking a tranquilizer shot to the neck, but everything else was so well done.
Worth seeing just to witness how winsome it is.
Great documentary. I cannot say anything negative of this, it was simply amazing
I was expecting this film to have a creationist slant, but it does not. It is a bit like David Attenborough for children. It has first class nature photography, but it is aimed at children with a dumbed-down narration by Oprah Winfrey and somewhat Disneyfied music. It sometimes has an odd prudishness about fish reproduction.The creatures chosen are each bizarre and entertaining but ones I have seen before.Some of the principles of evolution are presented, but in a subtle way. The focus is on strange animal behaviour, not how it could have evolved. I learned something new, that the schooling behaviour of anchovies is indeed very effective against predators.It is not totally prettified. It shows flamingo chicks that died after they fell out of the nest.I think the insect segment was most interesting with the most material I had not seen before. The jousting tournament with the surprise ending really tickled me.There are bits of Disneyesque anthropomorphising, for example talking of insects "fighting for their dignity".This is first rate family entertainment. I am ready to see it again already.
I certainly take no issue with the overwhelming positive reviews that preceded mine: the series provided amazingly photographed and dramatically presented insight into the diversity of life on the planet. We watched the entire series, and wish we had kept track of the number of times that we said "Oh. My. God." or "That is so bizarre..." Very much like "Planet Earth", "Life" demands a renewed sense of wonder of all that surrounds us.Having said that, and to take nothing away from the indisputable positive attributes, I thought that the series fell something just short of 'absolutley perfect'.At the highest level, information, and video images (albeit amazing ones) are presented quickly and are short. I'd liken the effect to flipping through a NGM, as opposed to reading the articles. The effect is strong, but I was left thirsting for a little more hard information. I realize that one could probably do a 10 part series on any one of the many lifeforms that are touched on in any single episode. But I still felt somehow shorted...like I was being shown shots to maximize the 'wow!' factor and emotional response, rather than present information.which leads to the more specific criticism: over and over again, my wife wondered...where the heck is that, and what is the scale of that thing??? With respect to the former, general place names are given, but many aren't that familiar to me...some sort of mapping segue would have been nice. I fully acknowledge that such would need a really artistic touch in order to avoid a 'cheapening' effect, but would satisfy our curiosity. Perhaps even part of the 'special features' on a DVD set? With respect to the latter, many times, we were shown amazing pictures of bizarre creatures, but often with no sense of scale. Size or mass range was sometimes mentioned, often times it wasn't. Often times, especially with the amazing photography, one couldn't really tell of the subject was 1 inch, 1 foot or 1 yard in size.Notwithstanding these comments, I'm looking forward to buying the set when they come out, and look are hoping that they contain the sorts of 'making of' features that were included on the "Planet Earth" set.
This has to be one of the best documentaries I have ever seen. The cinematography is amazing, the narrator has everything down perfectly, and the wildlife they show throughout the series is very interesting and colorful. The film crew travels all over the globe to capture nature's greatest moments, and they pull this off with ease.I would highly recommend this documentary to anyone. It is quite comparable to Planet Earth or Animal Planet.Check it out and let us know via comments what you guys think of it.I can't wait to buy the BluRay 1080p versions of this series...10/10!