As always, Jack and I loved this year's Disneynature documentary, mainly about three animal families: a snow leopard with her two cubs, a cuddly panda with her one, and an extended family of hilarious golden monkeys. The last Disneynature doc that I blogged was Monkey Kingdom, and of the ten so far, we've seen the seven that were released on Earth Day weekends. John Krasinski (most recently in these pages for The Hollars) narrates with energy and humor along with Xun Zhou.
Chuan Lu is the director and co-writer along with David Fowler, Brian Leith, and Phil Chapman (all new to me) and five cinematographers do the honors on the ground and in the air. We've learned enough about the series to know that there are no digital effects--just hundreds of hours of film edited down to a short (in this case 1:16) feature.
The extreme close-ups of the animals are delightful, as well as the marvelous sound. I'm not sure how many speakers were in our theatre, but the birds were definitely chirping from over my left shoulder and not my right.
Lovely Chinese-inflected music is composed by Barnaby Taylor, who scored some other nature documentary series. Look at his website's home page for the paintings, and then listen to the music.
Because these movies take years to make, we were treated to a preview of next year's Dolphins. We're looking forward to the underwater photography.
My regular readers know that Jack and I always stay to read the credits. This time we stayed but didn't read much because there is so much added: film, stills, "making-of" clips, and a funny bit about a photographer commenting on his time lapse unit.
You can bring the children--although there's a bit of hunting, there is no blood. Rotten Tomatoes' critics and audiences are slightly less enthused than we are, with averages of 83 and 79%. They're dumb. See it on the biggest screen with the best sound system you can find.
No comments:
Post a Comment