Where is the love for the bbc's Planet Earth series?

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I received the DVD's I preordered a while ago this week and it's easily the most impressive Attenborough thing I've ever seen (even though he's only narrating off-screen and not sitting in a corner of the screen whispering phrases that start with "Here, in..."), and this is about the 8th series with/by him I'm watching. The images are nothing short of breathtaking and the new techniques (high def slowed down or sped up, widescreen aerial footage) are awesome. Any other fans in da fake house? Holla! :-)

― StanM (StanM), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:44 (seventeen years ago) link

yes it is best thing ever.

altho that 'zombie slug' thing on youtube is a close second.

― sede vacante (blueski), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

zombie snail rather

― sede vacante (blueski), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:46 (seventeen years ago) link

I would love to love it, but the sad fact is that since it's not written by him, I find that it's little more than eye candy. It tells kind of the same story every time, and I'm not mad about the script.

It is gorgeous, though, and I'd happily watch some of the footage over and over again.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:48 (seventeen years ago) link

It's too swoopy.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:48 (seventeen years ago) link

"We've a got a helicopter and a big fuck off lens and we're gonna use it" gets a bit much after a while but it's still a great series. The slow-mo footage of the Great White leaping out of the water was jaw dropping.

― Blaze the Violet Flame (nu_onimo), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:51 (seventeen years ago) link

It is ruined by the obstructive musical soundtrack purveyed by Greenland melodics rock outfit Sick Of Ross.

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:54 (seventeen years ago) link

i am buying it for someone for christmas so that i can then nick and watch it!

― wogan lenin (doglatin), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:54 (seventeen years ago) link

oh dear you forgot to write Comstock there. the Sigur Ros music is only used on the overplayed trailer anyway.

agree about the 'same story' aspect. predator and prey etc. - and they seem to have covered a lot of the same stuff as in the first series in this new one, lots of retreading. you can never have too many polar bear cubs tho. the narration does end up superfluous half the time.

― sede vacante (blueski), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:55 (seventeen years ago) link

i don't really listen to narration. who cares if DA wrote it? they should remix it a la jaaaaaaaam.

― temporary enrique (temporary enrique), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:56 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah i'd be happy if it was JUST music playing over the footage. no narration at all. and why not kick the swoop up a notch while you're at it.

― sede vacante (blueski), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:57 (seventeen years ago) link

sometimes it can be really fucking grim. the lions eating the elephant etc. NATURE IS BROKEN etc.

― sede vacante (blueski), Friday, 8 December 2006 15:58 (seventeen years ago) link

SHARK!

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eYbCMdR38us

(best bit around 2:10)

― Blaze the Violet Flame (nu_onimo), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:02 (seventeen years ago) link

I saw one the other week (might have been Blue Planet? Can't remember) where the killer whales take off with a baby seal and just throw it around in the water for half an hour while it's still alive. QUite heartbreaking, and I'm sure it serves some KIND of purpose, but it's still v. harsh.

― Johnney B has zeros off the line (stigoftdumpilx), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:02 (seventeen years ago) link

It scares the hell out me - but I love it.

The parasite fungus stuff bursting out of insects made me ill.

― Rumps (Rumps), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:02 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah i'd be happy if it was JUST music playing over the footage. no narration at all. and why not kick the swoop up a notch while you're at it.

Really? I must admit I'm a bit of a sucker for the learning aspect of natural history programmes. God, I'm such a nerd.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:03 (seventeen years ago) link

Short version of SHARK PWNS SEAL

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=CVxEbmt57mE

― Blaze the Violet Flame (nu_onimo), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:03 (seventeen years ago) link

yeah i saw the whales/penguins/sharks/seals one, thought it was blu-planet or whatever. the great white be like damn.

― temporary enrique (temporary enrique), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:04 (seventeen years ago) link

Watch all that talk about predator and prey - you'll get Lex watching it! ("Nelly is predator! Then she is Timbaland's prey!" cont Plan B p 94)

― Marcello Carlin (nostudium), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:05 (seventeen years ago) link

The whales playing volleyball with the seal was Blue Planet, the flying Great White was S1 of Planet Earth.

― Blaze the Violet Flame (nu_onimo), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:16 (seventeen years ago) link

Did they show the "and here's how we did it" stuff on tv too? (the final chapter of an episode on the dvd's is "planet earth diaries" where they follow the film crew during one of the major scenes of that particular ep.)

― StanM (StanM), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:20 (seventeen years ago) link

I must admit I'm a bit of a sucker for the learning aspect of natural history programmes.

well i like learning things too but in Planet Earth's case it's more 'learn by seeing' perhaps. surely Attenborough conveys enough facts in his narration (without getting too bogged down in textbook quotage) anyway.

― sede vacante (blueski), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:20 (seventeen years ago) link

Yeah, the last 10-12min of each broadcast ep is the diaries section. Not included on the HD-DVD or Blu-ray releases, fact fans. (I'm doing a lot of work on this series and it's still pretty enthralling in the naff 250kbps compressed version I usually work off).

― Michael Jones (MichaelJ), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:38 (seventeen years ago) link

after seeing the Northern Lights footage i promised myself i would go somewhere to see them that vivid (not Scotland - no offence).

― sede vacante (blueski), Friday, 8 December 2006 16:40 (seventeen years ago) link

Learn by seeing, yes. You are right that this is the point of this show. Here is behaviour we were never able to see before, and now we can. I just wish for more. Maybe extra supplemental bits for nerds.

I think it's funny that out of all the Planet Earth Diary bits, the one that most made me think "what an amazing job it is being a wildlife photographer" is the one where he spent hundreds of hours trying to film birds of paradise.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Friday, 8 December 2006 17:38 (seventeen years ago) link

I think it reminds me of today's glossy Guinness Book of World Records, compared with the fact-filled editions of yore.

― Alba (Alba), Friday, 8 December 2006 17:42 (seventeen years ago) link

My favourite bit of the diaries was the really deadpan guy that kept crashing into baobab trees in a ramshackle balloon with broken propellors piloted by a completely menko French bloke.

I LOVE Planet Earth. Shark pwnage of seal was brilliant, but this (ducks jumping out of trees) made me properly laugh.

― ailsa_xx (ailsa_xx), Tuesday, 12 December 2006 16:49 (seventeen years ago) link

the style is the substance

― sede vacante (blueski), Tuesday, 12 December 2006 17:04 (seventeen years ago) link

the one that most made me think "what an amazing job it is being a wildlife photographer" is the one where he spent hundreds of hours trying to film birds of paradise

i would go for the bit where they are in the cabin with a polar bear peering through the window hungrily. terrifying but hilarious.

― sede vacante (blueski), Tuesday, 12 December 2006 17:05 (seventeen years ago) link

Bird of paradise dude ruined his bit by singing "Bird Of Paradise" by Snowy White a lot. Polar bear photographers were good, yes. In a "I'm glad that there are people willing to do this to make programmes like this, but no WAY was that person ever going to be me" kind of way.

― ailsa_xx (ailsa_xx), Tuesday, 12 December 2006 17:09 (seventeen years ago) link

Well, in fairness to him, he only did it because the stupid song came into his head. Then, after seeing the programme, it was in mine for days. And now it is again. Thanks, Ailsa.

― accentmonkey (accentmonkey), Tuesday, 12 December 2006 17:11 (seventeen years ago) link

You're welcome. It's stuck in my head now too, and has been popping in randomly for a few weeks now.

― ailsa_xx (ailsa_xx), Tuesday, 12 December 2006 17:18 (seventeen years ago) link

I've now seen 6 episodes and the amount of "I wish I could pause this, print a poster and hang it on my wall" moments in this series is astounding.

I haven't been bothered with any kind of overlap with Attenborough's earlier series, to be honest, they've made an effort to feature animals and locations they hadn't featured before, I think. Okay, some can't be ignored since they're so important/beautiful/incredible/rare/unique/etc (you can't do any sort of Polar thing without ice bears or emperor penguins, can you?), but still, even those were done in whole new ways.

― StanM (StanM), Wednesday, 13 December 2006 23:07 (seventeen years ago) link

How about that pack of lions hanging off the back of an elephant? Just astounding.

My favourite bit of the diaries was the really deadpan guy that kept crashing into baobab trees in a ramshackle balloon with broken propellors piloted by a completely menko French bloke.

YES! That French bloke's obviously a legend, someone should make a full-length doco about him.

― Chap (chap), Wednesday, 13 December 2006 23:19 (seventeen years ago) link

that pack of lions hanging off the back

Shhhh! That's on disc 3 I think!

― StanM (StanM), Wednesday, 13 December 2006 23:29 (seventeen years ago) link

ok, couple of episodes further now (OMG that bird of paradise dude in his hideout! respect!) and it's still visually awesome, the featured locations and animals are still interesting, but there's one tiny little thing I noticed that's seriously getting on my nerves, unfortunately: every time they use sped up or obviously megafuckoffzoomedin footage, there's sound to go with it. (e.g. fungi creeping across a dead tree: rustling noises, timed to the images (leaf falls off: louder sound, even though it must have taken hours or days do fall) - some kind of rare camel thing that's so paranoid they have to film it from like 500 miles away: mooing that sounds like it was recorded two feet away)

It all sounds great and stuff, but I can't unnotice it anymore :-(

― StanM (StanM), Sunday, 17 December 2006 17:24 (seventeen years ago) link

Oh dear, it's spoiled my fun at the moment, I'm quitting for a couple of days. (Once you start to wonder what underwater sound is real and what was done by a guy with a bucket on a sound stage, you're not listening to the Attster anymore)

― StanM (StanM), Sunday, 17 December 2006 17:53 (seventeen years ago) link

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