Documentary Films .net

In the 1940s, The Walt Disney Company began to make full-length documentaries featuring nature as its subject. These films were billed under the title of Disney True-Life Adventures, and they won several Academy Awards for the studio.

Now, 60 years later, Disney is heading back to nature for a new series of films called DisneyNature films. Last year, the first of these films was released on Earth Day 2009, and that movie was Earth. Though the movie has been out on DVD for a while, I decided to finally sit down and watch it.

Earth opens with a stunning view of our planet from outer space. This first shot sets the scene for the rest of the movie, which is truly huge in scope. The movie chronicles everything from the thrilling chase of a caribou by a wolf, crane migration in the Himalayas and a slow-motion great white shark attack.

But the three main creatures the filmmakers follow in Earth are a family of humpback whales, a polar bear father on the quest for food and a herd of elephants making a long migration. Each story is told with surprising care and accompanied with stunning footage.

The man leading us on our journey is none other than the voice of Mufassa himself, James Earl Jones. Scenes of the African landscape are particularly moving when accompanied by Jones’ voice, but maybe that’s just the nostalgia of my Lion King days.

Some scenes in Earth might look familiar to viewers. The same filmmaking team behind the BBC/Discovery Channel series Planet Earth created the movie, so naturally some of the footage is similar. Regardless, the stories and scenes displayed in Earth are amazing.

One of the true highlights of the movie is the musical score from George Fenton, who also crafted the music for the Planet Earth series. His music is epic, and it definitely brought out the music geek in me. The soundtrack was an instant addition to my Wish List on iTunes.

Though the film is captivating, it does have its flaws. It seems that Disney was so intent on keeping this movie squeaky-clean and family friendly that it shows almost none of the harsh realities of the animal kingdom. Each time an animal gets ready to pounce on its prey, the camera conveniently cuts away. More graphic images have probably been seen in an issue of National Geographic Kids. This movie is about as G-rated as you can get.

Minor flaws aside, Earth is a great movie for anyone looking for an informative documentary, or even just a flat-out entertaining adventure. I wanted even more after it ended.

DisneyNature is giving its audiences just that with one new documentary film each year. Oceans was released last month on Earth Day and the film African Cats will hit theaters Earth Day 2011. Other future movies include The Crimson Wing: Mystery of the Flamingos, Hidden Beauty: A Love Story that Feeds the Earth and Chimpanzee.

By Bryan Newbury
March 9, 2010

Many say that America is a Christian nation. Among those claimants, there is a burgeoning ideology, which seeks to reclaim the historical record – the same crew have been marginally successful with this approach towards pure science, so there is little reason to doubt that history would be any less malleable – and put an image of snake handling evangelicals in the place of pragmatic deists. Dubious as their claims are, the Christian nationalists, for want of a better moniker, do have one bit of fact on their side: nominally, at least, the majority of Americans do identify as Christians. In Capitalism: A Love Story, Michael Moore poses the question, “So, are we?”

Not being a scholar in divinity or a professed member of any religious group, it isn’t for this reviewer to sit in judgment. Having a cursory knowledge of the Gospels as they are laid out in the King James Bible, it is tempting to come down with a thunderous No. The reader likely will refuse to take this verdict, or, for that matter, Mr. Moore’s. Luckily, Moore provides credentialed men of the cloth to posit that if we are a Christian nation, we are nonetheless governed by a profoundly unchristian economic system. (Should there be confusion as to whether we are governed by an economic system rather than a political one, there is an instructive dialogue with an editor at The Wall Street Journal to allay that head scratcher.)

As usual, Moore builds his case on whimsical educational films from more innocent times, cataloguing the avaricious transgressions of the ruling class and juxtaposing those iniquities with the inevitable inequities and how they play out in those locales that the populations of Washington and Wall Street couldn’t give a good goddam about. It is a bit of a departure, however, to see the Flint of twenty years ago becoming the template for contemporary Miami. Moore has documented the progression, and we should be thankful for it. At this point, we all know what we know to expect, but where does Capitalism fit in the Moore œuvre?

Peculiarly, though expectedly, as a sort of prequel.

While the chronology and scenery suggest the conclusion to a larger body of work archiving the devolution of our republic from free state to fiefdom, there is reason to consider viewing Capitalism as Part I. were one to introduce Michael Moore to an alien observer. (Begging pardon if the observation has been made here before on the last of Moore’s “last” films, but this installment supplants the whole order of things where a marathon Michael Moore viewing is concerned.) After all, the narrative arc from Roger & Me to Sicko, including as it does our propensity for gun violence and general distaste for actual democracy, to say nothing of our “medieval health care nonsystem,” in the words of Rachel Maddow, is informed by a devaluation of human life and functional liberty. What is the true exception in American exceptionalism? An ideology of individualism as manifested by callousness towards our fellow man seems to be at the root of it. How can we stand alone among industrialized countries in both violent crime and lack of health care access? Look no further than the fundamentally unchristian nature of our republic’s economic system. (more…)