Life in the Undergrowth
|
List Price: Our Price: $25.59 You Save: $9.35 (27%) Availability: Usually ships in 1-2 business days Buy Used: from $21.00 (click here) Category: DVD See more DVD releases |
|---|
Buy this DVD movie at online store in your country
Canada
Canada
Movie Reviews of Life in the Undergrowth
Movie Review: Absolutely Beautiful
Summary: 5 Stars
Some people may not find insects all that majestic, but I usually find them to be vastly interesting creatures, as long as they're not crawling all over me! Despite my lack of interest in physically going to look at bugs on location, I am glad the BBC saw fit to bring the bugs onto my TV screen so I can view them there.
As is to be expected from a BBC production featuring Attenborough there is some top quality footage. Naturally they can't document all insects, but they give is a great variety across the five episodes between the two DVD's. This is a great introductory piece to the insect world if you are interested in using it for a biology class or something along those lines. They cover insects like moths, butterflies, spiders, aphids, centipedes, millipedes, ants and bees. Episodes touch upon aspects of how insects evolved and how they adapted to their specific locations in the world. They also go into detail about the insect's specific environment as well as how some insects develop symbiotic relationships with other insect species or the trees in which some make their homes.
As Attenborough points out, the only reason we are able to get some of this amazing footage is because prior to this we didn't have the micro cameras necessary to really capture some of these tiny insects in their environment. "Life in the Undergrowth" brings us into the burrows of ants and termites so we can see what goes on below ground. We also get an inside look on how bees interact with each other within a hive. The footage is truly breathtaking and we can view spiders making incredible webs in just a couple of minutes with the camera sped up. One of the most impressive footage is the night camera footage of a giant centipede hunting for bats at the top of a cavern. Truly an intimidating insect!
If you are looking for a wonderful introduction to the insect world then this is a superb place to start. While it may not cover the precise insects you find in your back yard, it will definitely touch upon some species variant of some kind. The footage is absolutely amazing and I learned a lot about the different insects shown here, since I am just starting to introduce myself to this kind of material. Honestly, I don't think you even have to be a major insect enthusiast to truly find this documentary interesting. Attenborough's narration makes this series very fun to watch providing wonderful anecdotes amidst the information he's trying to present to the viewer. A must watch in my opinion.
Movie Review: Creepy-crawly adventure... if you can bare it!
Summary: 5 Stars
This is the 8th entry in the David Attenborough Life series following The Life of Mammals. The groundbreaking first series Life on Earth was based on evolution and started with bacteria making its way up to modern humans over the course of 13 episodes. The Living Planet was 12 episodes long and dealt mainly with adaptation over a wide range of environments that also incorporated more Earth science along with the life science in terms of geology and environments. The Trials of Life was 12 episodes long and all about animal behaviour. Life in the freezer was 6 episodes long and specialized on the Antarctic. The Private life of Plants was another 6 episode series and focused entirely on botany. The Life of Birds was 10 episodes long and is one of the best documentaries about birds ever made. The Life of Mammals was 10 episodes long and featured some ingenious ways of filming mammals in ways never seen before.
With Life in the Freezer and The Private Life of Plants Attenborough made a new move to specialize instead of following the 12-13 episode discipline that started with Clark's Civilisations and Bronowski's The Ascent of Man and birthed other great series like Sagan's Cosmos, Attenborough now decides to detach from the shorter episode format of Freezer and Plants (an such as was in previous non-life series such as The Tribal Eye, The First Eden and Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives) and goes for a higher number of 10 instead of 6 instalments on another expert theme. Attenborough concentrates on part of the animal kingdom, the insects, for 5 episodes, and the result is some of the best micro-filming to date but also some of the scariest.
Major themes include how the insects evolved on land from the sea, how they adapted to flight, learned to spin silk, mating rituals and colonies.
I must admit, this was not easiest to sit through, especially the silk spinners which has jumping spiders so for lots of people out there this could be behind the couch peeking out viewing. The final episode, supersocieties, has Attenborough describing ant interactions in unprecedented depth. This is probably the best ant filming you will ever see. The society is truly astonishing and how they interact is mind-blowing.
Movie Review: "Life in the Undergrowth"!
Summary: 5 Stars
Life in the Undergrowth continues David Attenborough's remarkable "life of" series. And with every one of his documentaries, I learn about some new animals, or behavior that I'd never heard of before. In that regard, "Life in the Undergrowth" takes the cake. The reason for that is that there are virtually no in-depth, comprehensive, large documentaries focused primarily on invertebrates.
Usually, when I would come across a documentary about insects or what-have-you, they wouldn't film them close-up in nature, they would film scientists talking about the creatures in a laboratory looking at them through a microscope. This series is completely the opposite!
The photography is spectacular; it's so close to the subjects that I forget that they're only ¼ of an inch long. And it's crystal clear; the quality of this DVD is superb.
And of course David Attenborough's commentary is completely engaging and informative. He's hardly looking his age; his enthusiasm hasn't waned a bit. So much work went into the narration of this program, which the interview with producer Mike Salisbury really showcases. They had to see a lot of biologists in the field to find all these stories that are brought to life in the series. Many of these sequences are completely new behavior and have never been filmed before!
The music in this documentary is included as a listen-only option on the second disc for good reason. It's fantastic, fits all the programs perfectly, and is very enjoyable to listen to on its own.
So, all in all, this is another cracking title in the "life of" series. Highly recommended!
Movie Review: Excellence on a Small Scale
Summary: 5 Stars
David Attenborough is probably the best around when it comes to natural history programs. His other series have always been outstanding whether they deal with birds, mammals, sea creatures, penguins or anything else. Particularly great was his LIFE ON EARTH series. This series is in the same vein of greatness.
Although it is mostly about insects, it is cot completely about insects. The theme is invertebrate life on the land. Due to sheer numbers, that reduces to mostly being about insects but there are some nice asides.
The series is divided into five programs, each with its own theme.
The first deals with the colonization of the land. This program has the most variety in terms of differing types of creatures.
The second deals with the development of flight and looks at the ways insects fly.
The third deals with the making of silk. While this is primarily the domain of spiders, other insects make this remarkable material as well.
The fourth looks at strange relationships between the "bugs" and other bugs or other life. Parasites and symbionts are the order of the day here.
The final show examines the great hive cultures of wasps, bees, ants and termites.
The quality of the ideography is outstanding throughout. Recent advances in lenses and electronics make possible this new view of the small scale world. As with all of Attenborough's work, this is a masterpiece.
Movie Review: Holy... Freaking... Cow.
Summary: 5 Stars
It was a long time coming. My all-time personal favorite documentary series, "The Blue Planet," has finally been toppled from its throne as King of Nature Films. From the second "Life in the Undergrowth" opens, you'll sit absolutely mesmerized as a gorgeous and wonderfully alien world unfolds before you.
From a ridiculously beautiful shot of a snail's eye to dragonflies filmed in super slow-motion; from bizarre bioluminsecent cave-dwelling grubs to a brutal war waged between a phalanx of African ants and their termite conquests, the five episodes span the history of land-dwelling invertebrates on Earth, each dragging you deeper and deeper into the bizarre microcosm living in the leaf litter in your backyard.
"Life in the Undergrowth" is simply beautiful. There's no other way to phrase it. A film revolving around the tiny multi-legged horrors that creep about largely unseen has no right to be this overwhelmingly pretty, but it is. I sat, jaw agape, through the entire 5 hours on my initial viewing, and have since rewatched the DVDs perhaps 15 times since my purchase.
It's perhaps not as long as I would have liked, nor is the coverage exhaustively comprehensive, but whatever this series may lack in terms of breadth, it more than compensates for with sheer eye-candy.
Buy it, watch it, love it. You will be transfixed.