Wednesday, December 14, 2011

Disney Nature Earth

  • An epicstory of adventure, starring some of the most magnificent andcourageous creatures alive, awaits you in EARTH. Disneynature bringsyou a remarkable story of three animal families on a journey across ourplanet -- polar bears, elephants and humpback whales. Filmed withspectacular clarity and beauty, EARTH is both majestic and intimate asit captures rare footage of nature's wildest and most elus
Where do we come from? Who created us? Why are we here? These questions have puzzled us since the dawn of time, but when it became apparent to Jon Stewart and the writers of The Daily Show that the world was about to end, they embarked on a massive mission to write a book that summed up the human race: What we looked like; what we accomplished; our achievements in society, government, religion, science and culture -- all in a tome of 238 pages with lots of color photos, graphs and charts. !

After two weeks of hard work, they had their book. EARTH (The Book) is the definitive guide to our species. With their trademark wit, irreverence, and intelligence, Stewart and his team posthumously answer all of life's most hard-hitting questions, completely unburdened by objectivity, journalistic integrity, or even accuracy.A visual odyssey that will change the way we see our planet, this remarkable book, companion to the acclaimed Discovery Channel/ BBC series, is an enduring and awe-inspiring record of one of the most ambitious natural history projects ever undertaken. Using the latest aerial surveillance, state-of-the-art cameras, and high definition technology, the creators of Planet Earth have assembled more than 400 stunning photographs of wondrous natural landscapes from around the globe, including incredible footage of the rarely spotted, almost mythical creatures that live in these habitats. Many of the images reveal inaccessible places that few ! have seen and record animal behavior that has never been filme! d or pho tographed before. With the help of this highly advanced technology and the world's premier wildlife photographers, the book takes us on a spectacular journey from the world's greatest rivers and impressive gorges, to its mightiest mountains, hidden caves and caverns, and vast deserts. Planet Earth captures breathtaking sequences of predators and their prey, lush vistas of forests viewed from the tops of towering trees, the oceans and their mysterious creatures viewed from beneath the surface, and much more--in a magnificent adventure that brings unknown wonders of the natural world into our living rooms.
Copub: BBC Worldwide Americas In the best-selling tradition of Smithsonian Animal, this extraordinary survey of our planet provides unrivaled insight into the forces and processes that formed our environment and which continue to influence its evolution. With thousands of breathtaking photographs and unique visual catalogues of the features and phenomena th! at take place on Earth -- such as rocks, minerals, and mountains to tropical rain forests and the different types of clouds -- Earth contains the most up-to-date ideas on how our world works, a compelling review on the health of the planet, and unbelievable images of the world's most stunning features.The long-awaited new novel by the award-winning, bestselling author of Startide Rising and The Uplift War--an epic novel set fifty years from tomorrow, a carefully-reasoned, scientifically faithful tale of the fate of our world. "One hell of a novel . . . has what sci-fi readers want these days; intelligence, action, and an epic scale".--Isaac Asimov's Science Fiction Magazine. Line drawings.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 c! larity and beauty, EARTH is both majestic and intimate as it c! aptures rare footage of nature's wildest and most elusive animals. From the landmark Disneynature collection, EARTH is an astonishing and heartwarming film filled with adventure, suspense and humor that will take your breath away.

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 so! me 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 a! nd ice outside their den. Viewers of all ages will raptly foll! ow 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 fo! rced 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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