Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series
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DVD Cover Information
Actor: David AttenboroughBrand: Warner Brothers
DVD: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), Dolby Digital 5.1; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), Dolby Digital 5.1
Format: Anamorphic, Box set, Closed-captioned, Subtitled
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 550 minutes
DVD Release Date: 2007-04-24
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Model: E2938
Studio: BBC Worldwide
Product features:
- Condition: New
- Format: DVD
- Anamorphic; Box set; Closed-captioned; Subtitled
Movie Reviews of Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series
Movie Review: Spectacular and breath-taking
Summary: 5 Stars
This is an awesomely spectacular portrait of our planet. The cinematography will leave you breathless. You will view incredible landscapes and fascinating wildlife that will leave you mesmerized. And that's not an exaggeration!
The latest technology in filming was used to make this documentary. Special cameras mounted on airplanes or helicopters can film animals kilometers away in amazing detail and resolution, thus never interfering with their natural behavior. In fact, the wild life would not even know of the presence of the film crew. Cameras were also placed on gliders, balloons, special winches...in order to bring to us the spectacular imagery. The series were filmed in high definition, so if you have the right equipment at home, I highly recommend you purchase the HD version. You'll be blown away!
Some places on our planet are so remote that they are unchartered and untouched by humanity. There thrive animals and plants so diverse, astonishing, and beautiful that we get a first hand sense of the miracle of life. Many of the species and their behavior were never filmed before. Sadly, though, these places together with their wildlife are disappearing at an alarming rate due to the damage we are doing to our world. Many of the species encountered in this series might very well be seen for the last time. Snow leopards, living at the foothills of the Himalayas, are so rare now that only 40 are assumed to be living today. They are such beautiful cats, and very rarely seen. In fact, the crew of Planet Earth had to spend a few months searching for them in order to film them.
There are 5 DVDs in all, with each one containing three episodes. The theme song is beautiful, and appropriate to the grandiose imagery in this documentary.
You will travel to the North Pole and visit, among other species, the white polar bear. You will witness a polar bear emerging from hibernation with its two cubs. What a beautiful shot that was. Together with their mom, the cubs slide down, for the very first time, a steep snow slope and make their way to the sea in search of food. Not all cubs survive their journey to the sea. With food scarce, polar bears are displaying unusual behavior. Being excellent swimmers, they now have to venture far in deep sea in order to find food. With the icecaps melting, there is no resting place for the polar bears out in the open sea, and many end up drowning. As a result, polar bears are becoming extinct.
In Antarctica, you will visit the penguins, and spend a full season with them while they care for their eggs. Penguins have a peculiar habit. The female penguins lay their eggs, and then hand them over to the male to keep them in a pouch close to their feet. The female Penguins then travel out to sea to gather food for their soon to be babies, while the male penguins keep the eggs warm throughout the season until the eggs hatch. To keep warm, the penguins change positions, with those in the outer layer of the group slowly making their way inwards to the warmer areas in the center of the group, only to slowly make their way out again to make room for other penguins. In this way, all get the chance to warm themselves up. This behavior is quite fascinating to watch. The Planet Earth crew actually lived the whole season with the penguins in order to film that footage.
Watching the penguin eggs hatch was worth every penny of this series. Soon thereafter the female penguins return, their stomachs full of fish for their newborn. At this time, the male penguins reluctantly hand over the newborn to their mothers. The male penguins carried the eggs and cared for them for a whole season, and it is not easy for them to give them up to their mothers. These scenes show the love animals have towards each other. Many argue that killing animals is justified since animals are not intelligent beings. But how about love? Can we indiscriminately kill animals that display love? In animals, is intelligence more important than love for vice versa?
Mountainous areas are fascinating, with fascinating and unique wildlife. Some animals are better mountain climbers than the best of us, climbing and living on steep slopes that only a few climbers, with special equipment, can reach. Yet such animals are also becoming extinct as their habitat is slowly being destroyed by us.
There is some amazing footage of great white sharks leaping out of the water at great speeds (breach) to catch seals. Seals are however very agile, and many escape. It is just amazing watching the great white shark trying to catch a seal. Those scenes are unique and will leave you truly mesmerized at the wonder of the planet's wildlife.
Forests are another wonder of our planet, with millions of life forms dwelling in them. With the destruction of these forests, the life they contain is also being destroyed. Many such life forms are still unknown to scientists, and will probably never be known. Many of these species carry cures to existing and yet unknown diseases. Trees also produce oxygen, lots of oxygen, without which, needless to say, we would reach the next life sooner than expected, and probably be very unwelcomed.
Caves also offer us a glimpse at some amazing creatures. It is likely that life on other planets exist, for on our planet, organisms survive in extreme areas such as in very hot temperatures underground near lavas or extremely cold environments like in ice caps or deep under the sea. Many of these places you will probably only see on your TV screen, for they are pretty harsh environments to visit. Being a couch traveler is sometimes necessary, and fun.
The episode on shallow seas was also spectacular, but that habitat too is being destroyed by overfishing and by tourists. When you visit your friend's house, do you throw garbage on the floor? Do you break his furniture, plates, and glasses? We should show the same courtesy and care while visiting the wild habitats of our fellow life forms. We are as much dependent on them as they are on us.
At the end of each episode is the Planet Earth Diary, showing how the episode was filmed. It is really an adventure to film these episodes, and the diaries are just as fascinating as the series. A lot of patience, I mean really lots of patience was needed to film some of the shots in the series. Staying three months outdoors just to film a certain species was not unusual. This patience also demonstrates how rare some of the species have become. Lucky are the ones who can actually see them.
The DVDs also contain three episodes on the future of our planet. There are some really interesting ideas on how to save the species on our planet form extinction. One such idea seems too science fiction: sending lions to the moon! Scientists are now collecting genetic material from different species in order to preserve them for a future time when it will be possible to clone them. However, by that time, their habitat would have been destroyed in order to sustain the ever increasing human population. Some scientists believe that it will be possible in the future to send the cloned animals to other planets to live in remote and unchartered wilderness like their ancestors! What a fascinating concept!
Some scientists though believe in a more realistic solution. One solution is to bring down the human population to a more sustainable half a billion to a billion people. Presently our population is 7 billion, and increasing. If the standard of living of the entire population of the planet were to be raised in order to equal that of the United States, three planets would be necessary in order to sustain us!
One solution to reducing our population is by limiting the number of children families can have and by the use of birth control and sex education. Interestingly, the largest families are in the poorest regions of the world!
Presently, 80% of the world population lives at under $2 a day. How can you ask these poor people to preserve their environment when they have barely enough to feed themselves? Will you destroy a forest in order to gather wood and clear land for animal domestication in order to feed your children, or will you preserve the forest and its wildlife but have your children starve to death?
If we do succeed in ending world poverty by 2050 as Muhammad Yunus, the 2006 Nobel Laureate, hopes to do (read Banker to the Poor), what will this mean to our environment? If we succeed in that target, we will have 80% of our population consuming at twice or more the present rate.
In Collapse, Jared Diamond believes societies collapse due to the destruction of their immediate environment. He cites several examples of societies in the past that collapsed due to the destruction of its environment. One such case is the Easter Island society. Its population destroyed all its forest in order to build huge monuments. As a result, the wild life that came with the forest also disappeared, leaving the population starving to death! The Mayan civilization was another example of a society collapsing due to damage to its environment.
Will such a fate befall our next generation? How can we make the poor richer but somehow ask them to consume less while we consume more? The series will leave you with many unanswered questions. Our planet is spectacularly beautiful, but can we save it, and thus save ourselves?
What makes these series unique is that many of the unchartered places and wildlife you will see will not exist for our next generation. Our generation will probably be the most vilified of all generations for having destroyed our beautiful and diverse planet!
Summary of Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series
With an unprecedented production budget of $25 million, and from the makers of Blue Planet: Seas of Life, comes the epic story of life on Earth. Five years in production, over 2,000 days in the field, using 40 cameramen filming across 200 locations, shot entirely in high definition, this is the ultimate portrait of our planet. A stunning television experience that captures rare action, impossible locations and intimate moments with our planet's best-loved, wildest and most elusive creatures. From the highest mountains to the deepest rivers, this blockbuster series takes you on an unforgettable journey through the daily struggle for survival in Earth's most extreme habitats. Planet Earth takes you to places you have never seen before, to experience sights and sounds you may never experience anywhere else.As of its release in early 2007, Planet Earth is quite simply the greatest nature/wildlife series ever produced. Following the similarly monumental achievement of The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, this astonishing 11-part BBC series is brilliantly narrated by Sir David Attenborough and sensibly organized so that each 50-minute episode covers a specific geographical region and/or wildlife habitat (mountains, caves, deserts, shallow seas, seasonal forests, etc.) until the entire planet has been magnificently represented by the most astonishing sights and sounds you'll ever experience from the comforts of home. The premiere episode, "From Pole to Pole," serves as a primer for things to come, placing the entire series in proper context and giving a general overview of what to expect from each individual episode. Without being overtly political, the series maintains a consistent and subtle emphasis on the urgent need for ongoing conservation, best illustrated by the plight of polar bears whose very behavior is changing (to accommodate life-threatening changes in their fast-melting habitat) in the wake of global warming--a phenomenon that this series appropriately presents as scientific fact. With this harsh reality as subtext, the series proceeds to accentuate the positive, delivering a seemingly endless variety of natural wonders, from the spectacular mating displays of New Guinea's various birds of paradise to a rare encounter with Siberia's nearly-extinct Amur Leopards, of which only 30 remain in the wild.
That's just a hint of the marvels on display. Accompanied by majestic orchestral scores by George Fenton, every episode is packed with images so beautiful or so forcefully impressive (and so perfectly photographed by the BBC's tenacious high-definition camera crews) that you'll be rendered speechless by the splendor of it all. You'll see a seal struggling to out-maneuver a Great White Shark; swimming macaques in the Ganges delta; massive flocks of snow geese numbering in the hundreds of thousands; an awesome night-vision sequence of lions attacking an elephant; the Colugo (or "flying lemur"--not really a lemur!) of the Philippines; a hunting alliance of fish and snakes on Indonesia's magnificent coral reef; the bioluminescent "vampire squid" of the deep oceans... these are just a few of countless highlights, masterfully filmed from every conceivable angle, with frequent use of super-slow-motion and amazing motion-controlled time-lapse cinematography, and narrated by Attenborough with his trademark combination of observational wit and informative authority. The result is a hugely entertaining series that doesn't flinch from the predatory realities of nature (death is a constant presence, without being off-putting), and each episode ends with 10-minute "Planet Earth Diaries" (exclusive to this DVD set) that cover a specific aspect of production, like "Diving with Pirahnas" or "Into the Abyss" (the latter showing the rigors of filming the planet's most spectacular caves, including the last filming ever officially permitted in the "Chandelier Ballroom," a crystal-encrusted cavern found over a mile deep in New Mexico's treacherous Lechuguilla, the deepest cave in the continental United States.)
With so many of Earth's natural wonders on display, it's only fitting that the final DVD in this five-disc set is devoted to Planet Earth: The Future, a separate three-part series in which a global array of experts is assembled to discuss issues of conservation, protection of delicate ecosystems, and the socio-economic benefits of understanding nature as a commodity that returns trillions of dollars in value at no cost to Earth's human population. At a time when the multiple threats of global warming should be obvious to all, let's give Sir David the last word, from the closing of Planet Earth's final episode: "We can now destroy or we can cherish--the choice is ours." --Jeff Shannon
Stills from Planet Earth (click for larger image)
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