Life
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David AttenboroughBrand: WHV
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Box set, Color, NTSC, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
DVD Release Date: 2010-06-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Worldwide
Product features:
- DVD
- 16 X 9 LETTERBOX
- Slipcase - Digistak
- Multi Disc
- Dolby Surround 5.1 - English
- Life on Location - A collection of ten behind the scenes video diaries found at the conclusion of each episode showing the exhaustive efforts by the filmmaking team to bring this remarkable series to the screen.
Movie Reviews of Life
Movie Review: "Life"!
Summary: 5 Stars
Life is sort of a semi-sequel; you might call it, to Planet Earth. Again, it takes you all over the planet looking at various things, but this time instead of focusing on different climates and geographical regions of the Earth, it displays the living creatures that inhabit it. It is also, a condensed version of the 9 "Life" series by Sir David Attenborough. If you have not seen any of those, this would be a good introduction as it is narrated by David as well.
On that note, make sure you pick up this (the BBC) version and not the Discovery Channel title, which was narrated (atrociously) by Oprah Winfrey. In addition to substituting David's narration with Winfrey's, they have also re-written most of the original narration, the music has been redone, and the episode structure has been reformatted to better appeal to "an American audience". They were able to keep Mr. Attenborough's narration and George Fenton's music intact for the Discovery Channel broadcast of "The Blue Planet", (which was very successful) but for some reason, they think that Americans will no longer accept this. Why? I don't know. Let's forget about the stupid decisions of the Discovery Channel though, and move on to the program which is spectacular!
The episodes are arranged as follows...
Disc 1:
Challenges of Life
Reptiles and Amphibians
Mammals
Disc 2:
Fish
Birds
Disc 3:
Insects
Hunters and Hunted
Disc 4:
Creatures of the Deep
Plants
Primates
From the first sequence you are immediately hooked, while watching from a fantastic aerial viewpoint, a bunch of dolphins corralling a group of fish in a circle of mud. This behavior has been filmed before, but not quite this well before, and this applies to many moments in this series, you may have seen it before, but you'll be seeing it in a new light or from a different point of view. The whole program has a very fresh feel about it; it does not feel like a watered-down retread of previous programs at all.
There are also many, many completely new behavioral segments filmed for the first time in this series. The box says 54, and there were definitely at least that many. Over and over, I was saying, "Why didn't I know that?" and "How have I not heard about this before?" or "What the?!? No way!" I have never seen cheetah's hunt an ostrich before, or a pebble toad escape a giant spider, or knew that a mudskipper keeps its young under the mud and has to keep refueling their oxygen supply by gulping in some air, swimming through his underground chamber and then ex-hailing on the eggs! I could go on, and on.
As you would expect from the BBC Natural History unit, the footage is absolutely jaw-dropping and filmed in crystal-clear perfect quality. The close-up footage of chameleons, time-lapse footage of plants, and fantastic aerial views from a lamergheir's eye view are incredible and rich with detail. And I'm only talking about the DVD here; I can only imagine how spectacular the Blu-ray looks!
The sound is also full and very clear and there is a perfect balance between narrator and music, David is never drowned out. It's a shame that there will be no soundtrack as there was for "The Blue Planet" and "Planet Earth". The music George Fenton composed was as good as ever and I would have loved to hear it separately from the program.
Occasionally, sound effects are used that are obviously not natural that I know some people didn't like in past programs such as "Blue Planet". A good example of this is the Venus Fly-Trap sequence, when a fly's leg hit's a hair-like trigger on the plant and a ticking bomb sound is heard until the plant crunches down. There is even a burp when the plant opens up again, it's subtle but I think they may have gone just a tad bit too far with that one. I think that it can be easily overlooked though, and throughout the series, it's never really very distracting.
Again, this program continues the tradition of ending each episode with a 10 minute making-of feature, and I really hope they continue this for a long time to come. In these, "Life on Location" segments you see how they constructed a 2-year woodland plant-growth time-lapse shot (that only lasts about 45 seconds) and the work that went into it is just mind-blowing. You also get to see how they achieved the shots of monarch butterflies flying high above the ground at their wintering migration site. These are only a couple examples of the lengths that went into the making of this program, and they are easily as fascinating, and incredible as the program itself.
Overall, this is a wonderful documentary that I think, lives up to "Planet Earth" in every way. It's informative, and has some of the most spectacular wildlife imagery ever filmed. Really, with the BBC and David Attenborough on the box, this whole review wasn't even necessary. If you don't already own it, get it now, highly recommended!
Summary of Life
Four years in the making, filmed over 3000 days, across every continentand in every habitat, Life is the latest wildlife blockbuster from the BBC?s award-winning Natural History Unit, the producers of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet. Packed with excitement, revelation, entertainment, and stunning screen firsts, this breathtaking ten-part epic presents 130incredible stories from the frontiers of the natural world. Discover theglorious variety of life onEarth and the spectacular and extraordinary tactics animals and plants have developed to stay alive. This is evolution in action; individual creatures under extreme pressure to overcome challenges from adversaries and their environment, pushing the boundaries of behavior.This enthralling BBC series examines "the lengths living beings go to to stay alive," in the words of Sir David Attenborough (Oprah Winfrey narrates the Discovery Channel version). Aided by breathtaking high-definition cinematography, the makers of Planet Earth explore the more colorful strategies the world's creatures employ to procreate, evade predators, and obtain nourishment. Cameras travel though the air, under the water, and right into the faces of insects, like the alien visage of the stalk-eyed fly. Except for "Challenges of Life" and "Hunters and Hunted," each episode covers a different category, such as mammals and birds. Among the more memorable images: three cheetahs move with the relentless rhythm of mobsters, a school of flying fish glides through the air with the grace of ballerinas, and a Jesus Christ lizard skips across the water, like, well, you know. The strangest sights range from a pebble toad bouncing away from a spider like a rubber ball and brown-tufted capuchin monkeys pounding palm nuts with stone tools like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Witty writing and skillful editing, which distills thousands of hours of footage, make the learning go down easy (at one point, Sir David references Jurassic Park, which featured his brother, Richard).
If the sound effects seem overamped, George Fenton's score is always on the money, adding humor and suspense at crucial moments (martial drums for the mud skippers, woozy brass for the Darwin's beetle). Nonetheless, delicate sensibilities may find some sequences disturbing, as when Komodo dragons feed on a water buffalo or when a leopard seal dines on a penguin (according to Attenborough, the Komodo siege caused the camera operators "emotional turmoil"). More often, the filmmakers capture the moment of impact before moving on. The set comes complete with 10 featurettes on the four-year production. --Kathleen C. Fennessy
Stills from Life (Click for larger image)
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