Happy Earth Day everyone!
We know you’ve celebrated already with the Flaming Lips and all, maybe listened to our Earth day playlist and, if we’re lucky, you decided to not get that carry out bag from Baja Fresh that you will promptly throw out but just carried your lunch around.
Well, one more thing to do is go see Disney’s Earth movie which opens today (showtimes available here).
I was lucky enough to see the preview a couple of weeks a go (paired with a Q&A session with directors Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield who also made the BBC Planet Earth series that we all know and love and obsessively watch on DVD (right? right)) so let me tell you WHAT TO expect:
Unlike the 12 hours of PLANET EARTH, Disney’s Earth (narrated by James Earl Jones, who is the only person that should be allowed to ever narrate anything along with Morgan Freeman) clocks in at a neat 90 minutes and has a basic narrative structure of following 3 families of animals (polar bears, elephants AND whales) through 4 seasons of survival. The photography and footage are stunning (SHARKS remain the COOLEST THING anyone will ever commit to screen), the consequences both heartwarming (spreading the wings and learning to fly!) and heartbreaking (there is no doubt about the existence of the full circle of life out there and the nutritional totem pole) and the movie, while, I think, fully children friendly (I mean there ARE dancing monkeys in there) has been deemed a little too brutal by some.
The kids I saw the movie with loved it though, as did the adults.
My personal favorite thing (aside from tidy pacing and the ability to get me to cover my face with a scarf during the scary parts and open my eyes wide with 5-year-old wonder during the happy scenes) is that the movie, while celebrating the planet in all its (sometimes cruel) glory and subtly letting us know about some of the problems it is facing, is not overtly political, shoving the “green” message (DEEP) down your throat and holding it there.
As the filmmakers said during the Q&A “despite not being overly environmental in agenda, intended to be inspirational, since caring for the planet cannot happen unless people are in awe of what is out there and want to preserve it”.
Which is a great way of thinking about things.
Plus-it WILL make you want to go on an adventure for sure.
For sure sure.
Highly recommended.
Some more photos:
jumping bears:
swimming elephants:
super cool sharks:
Bonus:
Disney will plant a tree for every ticket sold to this film experience.
And the website:
http://disney.go.com/disneynature/
did sigur ros do the soundtrack to this? or were they just used in the trailer/commercial? i have a feeling it is the latter, but i thought i would ask.
either way, it looks beautiful!
April 22, 2009 at 3:38 pmI don’t remember any mention of Sigur Ros in terms of music but they did say they were very conciously picking non-traditional movie music for this (Armenian folk singers etc etc). It works remarkably well.
April 22, 2009 at 3:40 pmwell, i wasn’t super excited to see it before you wrote this. now i AM! thank you!
April 22, 2009 at 3:45 pmdancing monkeys? I’m IN
April 22, 2009 at 4:26 pmThis looks cool. Do they cgi the animals’ mouths to make them talk?
April 22, 2009 at 4:39 pmJames Earl Jones is the only thing that does any talking.
But all the Disney trademark editing is there with the dancing monkeys, the mating birds of paradise, the swimming elephants, the rolling down the snow hill baby polar bears…Thankfully no one bursts into “Bear necessities” mid movie otherwise it would be just too much.
you watch Planet Earth on dvd? i watch that shit all the time, but i watch it the way it was meant to be seen. On blu-ray.
now about this movie. i’m interested in it, but i’m worried some parts my be too sad and make me cry. also, there has been speculation by some that this movie may recycle footage from some other movies.
April 22, 2009 at 5:23 pmYou will probably cry. Animals die (in all sorts of ways) in it.
I don’t think anything is recycled.
Also-
I don’t have blu-ray and my TV is the size of a laptop screen so I don’t see anything the way it is supposed to be seen. I still love Planet Earth.
I’ve seen some of the Planet Earth episodes on DVD, then I stopped renting them when I saw they were avail on blu-ray. I don’t have a blu-ray player yet, but it’s the first thing I’m buying when I get one. (I’m waiting for the right model, I think one will come out that will fit my needs within a few months, and I don’t want to pay more than a PS3)
April 22, 2009 at 6:55 pmwhen i got my blu-ray player, Planet Earth was, in fact, the first thing i bought for it. (actually, i got the box set that had Earth: The Biography bundled with it.)
and i do still watch that shit regularly. if i ever feel the need to convince someone that blu-ray is the shit, i just put on the Shallow Seas episode in full 1080p.
April 23, 2009 at 2:53 amDon’t forget Blue Planet either.
April 23, 2009 at 8:35 amThis was a beautiful movie! I bawled my eyes out!
April 23, 2009 at 7:56 pmThere was a movie about a polar bear family out not too long ago where one of the baby polar bears dies, the mother and the remaining cub go their separate ways because there is not enough food because of the ice melting and the mother (i think) swims for days to find food. Is all that material used in this movie? IT looks like it may be.
April 25, 2009 at 4:13 pmI thought the photography was amazin also, but I can see it again on my Blu-Ray Planet Earth anytime I want – something Disney conveniently neglected to tell me until I bought the ticket (well, not even then – I just recognized all the footage). If their tagline had been “If you want to see Planet Earth a second time with large chunks removed and a really sappy narrative then this is the movie for you!” then I would have saved my money. Instead they tell you “Five years in the making” without mentioning that, oh, by the way, it’s the same five years and the same making that was put into “Planet Earth”. Kind of like saying that the instant dinner you’re making tonight was five years in the making because of the research that Swanson company put into it. Yes – SOMEBODY put five years into the footage that eventually became Earth, but it wasn’t Disney and it wasn’t for their movie. I feel ripped off.
April 29, 2009 at 6:53 pm
disney will plant a tree for every ticket sold THIS WEEK. which is cool, but kind of lame at the same time.
i can’t wait to see this.
April 22, 2009 at 3:00 pm