I’ve been into nature documentaries lately, been watching a lot of stuff from NFB lately and some other random stuff. Our national tv channels don’t really show that many nature documentaries and those that are shown get repeated a thousand times.
What are your favorite documentaries?
There’s one documentary that I couldn’t find that dealt with age old forests in Japan that was really great, it was called “Mysterious Giant Trees”, anything similar would be great too.
And in case anyone knows any, generally documentaries dealing with plants and birds (also the human brain/ neurology) would be great
What Darwin Never Knew (produced by NOVA) is quite possibly the best documentary relating to nature I’ve ever seen… but Charles Darwin and the Tree of Life has quite a bit more in the way of scenery shots.
A lot of people are highly rating Home at the moment.
Released under some fairly open license, can’t remember exactly what. Most versions out there seem to be the HD rip off Youtube though. Personally I found it quite nice to watch but lacking any real substance.
It should be noted that this documentary delves heavily into recent discoveries in the field of genetics, and explains a lot about how we came to be a big-brained species.
not-off-but-also-not-really-on-topic: My favourite isn’t really about nature, but about what humans do to animals. Hey wait, now that I think about it, that’s about nature too… but still it’s not what you asked for I guess, I just mention it because it’s hardcore and important IMHO - IF you can stand it. It’s gut wrenching, hate inducing, and I didn’t enjoy watching it at all… the title is “Earthlings” and it can be found on google video.
Now seeing a documentary on television about how we push our pets into a human role, land them with all our neuroses and in the end want to cure them with petpsychiatry! Hallucinant!
haven’t been watching much lately but this is my all time favorite!
with my twisted mind i can easily rank it under the name of Nature Documentaries.
its story about cancer…
I like those with no voiceover. Makes the whole thing a lot less obvious, and allows you to get into it and actually hear “sounds of nature”.
Documentaries with little or no voice-over are few and far between, but they do exist. Microcosmos (IMDB link) is one of the best
On a sidenote: anyone else noticed that these documentaries must offer a steady income to many foley artists around the world? You can’t watch a penguin jump into the ocean without a noticeable splash, and very often it sounds suspiciously like someone dropping a rubber duck into a bathtub? Worst example ever was this otherwise nice deep-sea documentary that added digital sound effects to yellyfish. I mean, WTF?! And it also suffers from “overblown symphonic score”, which just makes me want to turn down the volume and put on some proper music.
PS: don’t miss the battle at kruger video (youtube, 10mins), it’s a pretty unique thing that’s happening in that video.
Wow! Just looked at that Earthlings trailer on their website, and have to admit it made me feel physically sick!
Don`t know if I could stomach the whole thing, but motivated me enough to make a donation to an animal charity when I normally stick to the human ones.
edit: +1 for “Planet Earth” on the tamer documentary side.
PETA euthanizes most of the animals surrendered to them. In 2005, PETA euthanized 1,946 companion animals in Virginia, out of 2,138 animals (or 91%) surrendered to them or picked up as strays.
PETA is against pet ownership, as they see it as slavery… they’d rather see pets spread disease and die on the streets then be a “slave” to a human, getting as much free food and attention as they wish.
PETA has funded the Animal Liberation Front, a violent radical organization that “liberates” animals and vandalizes the facilities containing them. In the past, the ALF has released all sorts of animals into the wild, some of which are dangerous to the local ecosystems, others which were naturally sick animals who were previously receiving experimental treatments which could have saved their lives.
There’s other things that just make them plain despicable… they use nasty advertising, and target young kids in many of their advertising campaigns, which are basically guilt trips telling kids their parents are murderers. They’ve stated that even if animal testing led to a cure for AIDS, they’d still be 100% against it. They deliberately work against other non-radical animal rights organizations.
In short, they’ve put the animal rights movement in the dark ages.
getting as much free food and attention as they wish?!?
speechless… o_O
I’m not into PETA, but yeah, I think it’s backwards to kill pets, too. We should start killing pet owners.
… some of which who were suffering horribly for no good reason. Funny how you leave that out, as if only the two types you mentioned exist. That’s pretty sick, yo.
Just recently on the BBC I heard someone who didn’t have anything to do with PETA say that animal testing is just a huge, cruel waste of time in 99% of the cases, and he had the numbers to back it up… 90% of stuff isn’t applicable to humans PERIOD, half of the stuff that is leads to drugs with side effects that have to be taken back… oh, and every time a pharma corp wants to make a copy cat drug (i.e. every single time something makes money because it does something), they change a minor detail and then have to go through the testing again. He called it me-too drugs.
That’s not despicable at all, to the contrary, it beats 99% of what ANYBODY else is doing. It also happens to be true.
Again, so what? Lots of interesting stuff was found out in the concentration camps of the Japanese. Stuff you can’t just easily find out any other way.
When was the last time we tested something on humans to find a cure for an animal disease?
How about… NEVER?
since you obviously can’t add 2 and 2 together, let me do it for you: We’re stronger, so we take what we want. THAT IS ALL.
Fuck nazi scum - lock and load.
Reminds me of another quote from that BBC thing… we’re not looking to make child abuse or rape more “humane”, and similarly we shouldn’t look to make animal torture and slavery (no quotes there, you unfunny, heartless fuck) more acceptable.
I for one can’t wait until they start putting people in caskets.
And if you think I’m a PETA nut, I wasn’t until I read your post. Fuck you and the slaves you rode in on.
Let’s test stuff on the children of heartless people. BECAUSE WE CAN.
) and astronomie related
