This wonderful documentary about cheetahs and lions in Kenya is almost as spectacular as Earth and Oceans, its predecessors from Disneynature. Once again opening on Earth Day, Disney is putting its vast resources to good use with eye-popping closeups of the eyes and fur of these creatures, their predators, and their prey. The director of Earth (and next year's release, Chimpanzees) Alastair Fothergill shares duties with zoologist Keith Scholey, who makes his big screen directing debut here (and uses stills from this movie as his imdb profile pix). Samuel L. Jackson (I listed my favorites in Iron Man 2) narrates, as he did in Inglourious Basterds, though he received no credit for the latter. The stars are the cats, primarily Sita the cheetah, and the lions Layla, Fang, Mara, Kali, and Kali's sons, the arrogant posse.
It's appropriate that Amy, Jack, and I saw this on Mothers' Day, as Sita and Layla are mothers devoted to their kids, er, cubs. Despite plenty of hunting and a little killing and eating, the camera ducks away from the gore--the 5-year-old girl sitting in front of us was not at all disturbed. In an interview, Scholey tells a little about the technology used and how the story came to be. Composer Nicholas Hooper's music is great, too, but I can't find any clips for you (you can listen to his work on Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix (2007) and Harry Potter and the Half-Blood Prince (2009), among many others, as well as in the trailer for this one, if that's his music). Here are some more production notes. Don't run right out of the theatre when it's over because there are some sight gags with shots from the movie (my personal favorite: "production runner"). Rated G for GOOD!
No comments:
Post a Comment