Disney Nature Earth (Blu-ray / DVD Combo)

Disney Nature Earth (Blu-ray / DVD Combo)

Disney Nature Earth (Blu-ray / DVD Combo)

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DVD Cover Information

Actor: James Earl Jones, Patrick Stewart
Brand: Buena Vista Home Video
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language); French (Dubbed); Spanish (Dubbed)
Format: Multiple Formats
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 90 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2009-09-01
Audience Rating: G (General Audience)
Studio: Walt Disney Studios Home Entertainment
Product features:

An epic story of adventure, starring some of the most magnificent and courageous creatures alive, awaits you in EARTH. Disneynature brings you a remarkable story of three animal families on a journey across our planet -- polar bears, elephants and humpback whales. Filmed with spectacular clarity and beauty, EARTH is both majestic and intimate as it captures rare footage of nature's wildest and mos

Movie Reviews of Disney Nature Earth (Blu-ray / DVD Combo)

Movie Review: EARTH is a stunningly breathtaking release from the new Disneynature label
Summary: 5 Stars

To celebrate the launch of the new Disneynature label, Walt Disney Home Entertainment has released the 2007 documentary EARTH from award-winning filmmakers Alastair Fothergill (THE BLUE PLANET) and Mark Linfield (PLANET EARTH) and narrated by James Earl Jones. EARTH follows the stories of three groups of animals, a mother polar bear and her two cubs as they attempt to search for food in the quickly dissipating Arctic, a herd of elephants migrating across the Kalahari Desert in Africa in order to reach the only water to be found in the Okavango Delta and a group of humpback whales making the incomprehensible 4,000-mile migration from warm tropical birthing waters all the way to the krill enriched Antarctica seas. Filming on all seven continents over the course of five years, EARTH provides a sweeping look at the diversification of life on the planet, spotlighting various species, in addition to those that are the main focus of the picture, and providing an awe-inspiring and unparalleled look at the myriad of landscapes that comprise the planet.

What becomes readily apparent initially is the visual scope of EARTH, for through its groundbreaking cinematography, audiences are provided with amazing glimpses at every imaginable terrain, creating a stunning backdrop from which to let the animals' stories unfold. Not relying solely on cameramen using a stationary camera with a long zoom lens to fill the frame with extreme close-ups or on low to the ground helicopter shots that become intrusive and thus alter the animals' natural behavior, the team behind EARTH utilize a rich tapestry of cinematic tools to help them translate their vision to the screen. Infrared cameras are used to show lions at nighttime. High-speed cameras, running at over 1000 frames per second (the standard movie you watch at the theatre runs at only 24 frames per second), capture a cheetah taking down its prey on an African savanna and a great white shark going airborne as it captures a sea lion off of the coast of South Africa. Time lapse footage shows seasons transitioning in a rich symphonic of color. The myriad of cinematic techniques all blend together and help bring the vibrancy of the visual aesthetic of EARTH to life.

There are images in EARTH that are absolutely stunning, and that have for the most part, not been seen on film before. From a mother polar bear first emerging from her den after five months of hibernation with her cubs, to a scene of a pride of lions actively hunting a full-grown elephant, to humpback whales making a bubble net to entrap their krill, EARTH transcends the mere visually appealing and actually becomes didactic in the imagery it presents. Thus by working hard in the field to obtain footage that exhibits a behavior never before captured on film, the filmmakers of EARTH are able to establish their documentary as something extraordinary.

The most remarkable footage in EARTH though comes from the amazing Cineflex aerial camera. This gyro-stabilized camera, that mounts under the nose of a helicopter, allows the filmmakers to fly at a much higher altitude while providing a tremendous range of camera motion on each axis, and with this, some of the most unbelievable shots ever captured on film were recorded, providing a uniquely intimate viewing perspective for the audience that is generally not found in nature documentaries. From sheer landscape shots such as a keyhole ice formation in the waters near Antarctica, to a dazzling segment going over the edge of Angel Falls in Venezuela, these scenes help depict the rich beauty of nature and are magnificent in the high-definition of Blu-ray.

The Cineflex camera though becomes much more important in EARTH, for it gives the audience images of the species being filmed within the context of their own environments. Instead of seeing polar bears running across the ice from the sound of a helicopter's rotors and its subsequent shadow on the tundra, animals are seen from the point of view of a detached observer, allowing them to exhibit natural behavior without outside interference. This is the key to the success of EARTH. The most iconic example of this is a tight aerial shot of a male polar bear swimming alone in the Arctic Ocean. At first many people may be amazed to learn that although polar bears do live on land, they are in fact very powerful swimmers, and are classified as marine mammals since they derive their food primarily from the ocean. As the camera slowly zooms out further and further though, the polar bear is seen to be swimming amidst an ice floe with no land anywhere in sight. With global warming, the ice sheets the polar bear utilizes to hunt from are rapidly disappearing, and without them, polar bears will cease to exist. This shockingly powerful image speaks volumes about the fragility of our planet and the adverse consequences society can have upon it.

EARTH is never heavy-handed in its approach to messages of conservation, but rather allows its breathtaking images to speak for themselves, reminding everyone the importance of protecting life on this planet.

For the Blu-ray release, Disney has once again proven that it knows what consumers want. Packaged with a DVD copy of the film as well, the Blu-ray release is a great value, meaning that you will not have to go out to buy another copy of the film when you upgrade your home theatre system. There is a very informative, and innovative, feature length "Filmmaker's Annotations" with pop-up facts and a forty-plus minute documentary "EARTH Diaries" documenting the enormity of the project and some of the challenges the filmmakers faced, including hungry polar bears wandering into camp and hot air balloons gone awry. Without a doubt, the premiere release from Disneynature is a must have for anyone's collection.

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Summary of Disney Nature Earth (Blu-ray / DVD Combo)

Studio: Buena Vista Home Video Release Date: 09/01/2009 Run time: 96 minutes Rating: G

A nature documentary compiled from the vast footage of the BBC's and The Discovery Channel's Planet Earth series and produced by award-winning British producer and director Alastair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, Earth is the first nature film from the newly formed Disneynature--a Disney independent film label dedicated to bringing high impact wildlife and environmental films to theaters. James Earl Jones narrates this US version of the 96-minute documentary film (the English and German version are narrated by Patrick Stewart and Ulrich Tukur, respectively) which follows families of arctic polar bears, African elephants, and humpback whales for an entire year. The film tracks the animals' migrations across the globe and through some of the harshest terrains and climates on earth, pointing out in a factual and remarkably non-political way the negative effects of global warming and habitat destruction on these animals and the planet as a whole. Selected from the over 4,000 days of cinematography that went into the making of Planet Earth, every image is breathtakingly spectacular (especially the first-ever aerial footage of Mount Everest) and Jones' concise narration is engaging and packed with information. What makes this film different from Planet Earth, besides the obvious shorter run-time, is the sense of story that permeates this film. While children and others disinclined toward factual documentaries or nature films might find Planet Earth overly long and somewhat dry, Earth views more like an entertainingly touching story about several animal families. The first story begins with an adorable look at two 2-month-old polar bears and their first encounter with the snow and ice outside their den. Viewers of all ages will raptly follow their long trek with their mother across the ice to the water's edge to find food. Danger looms in many places and the polar bears' father's desperate attempts to find food on the ice turn perilous when he ends up stranded in the icy water and is forced to swim to shore where he's outnumbered by fiercely protective walruses. Footage of over 42 kinds of strange and beautiful New Guinea birds of paradise is rich with their breathtaking sounds and colors as well as the trees, fungi, flowers, and plants of tropical rainforest they inhabit. In stark contrast to the moisture-rich tropical rainforests that cover a mere 3% of the earth's surface, but support about 50% of the planet's animals and plants, are the dry lands of the Kalahari desert of South Africa where we meet the African elephants. The elephants' epic quest for food and water leads a mother elephant and her baby across vast prairies, savannahs, grasslands, and barren desert to inland deltas and water holes where they are forced into a tense and fragile alliance with a variety of other animals including their natural predators. Frighteningly real (though not gory) footage of lions attacking the elephants may well scare or disturb young children and the faint of heart, but it serves as a poignant reminder of the natural circle of life. The humpback whales' long migration across half the globe is similarly fraught with danger, yet full of underwater beauty, just as the Adélie penguins' life in one of the earths' most inhospitable lands also features the unexpected beauty of the striking Aurora Australis lightshow. What tracking a year in the life of all these amazing animals demonstrates is not only the exceptional beauty and strikingly harsh realities of life in the wild, but also the resilience of earth's creatures. (Ages 5 and older) --Tami Horiuchi

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