Giles

Disney's new production banner "Disneynature' will be releasing a documentary film: Earth on Earth Day of 2009

Disneynature's Earth

Earth (imdb listing)

essentially the trailer and film is the epic BBC Discovery Channel documentary condensed to under two hours (96 minutes) - basically the "best of" moments with a new narration track

looking forward to seeing this on the big screen, even if I have seen the series.

Quack

Just got back from seeing this at a promo screening. Excellent film...I really want to go buy Planet Earth on Blu-Ray right now. James Earl Jones does a fantastic job with the narrating. I would recommend it for anyone who has kids as well, not really anything too violent, you're going to see as James said, a few "harsh realities" when it comes to survival of the fittest. During the credits they had some making of footage and hopefully we'll see tons of it on a BR release. Also was a preview for Oceans coming out Earth Day 2010.

Bottom line, go see it.

starman9000

I will try to go to this, but will definitely check out Oceans. I watch Blue Planet a lot more than my copy of Planet Earth.

Ash Ketchum

Am I the only one around here who remembers when Disney used to make its own feature-length nature documentaries and release them to theaters? I remember WHITE WILDERNESS (1958) from when I was a child. It was about the arctic and all I remember from it are the polar bears. My siblings and I made a special trip to see that and I don't recall if it had a co-feature or not. An earlier one, which I didn't see but remember the ads for, was PERRI (1957), about a female squirrel. There was a whole earlier series of "True-Life" features by a director named James Algar (THE LIVING DESERT, THE VANISHING PRAIRIE, etc.) that usually clocked in at 75 min. The ones I most remember as I was growing up were the shorter ones (30 min. or so) that played with Disney features like SON OF FLUBBER, THE MISADVENTURES OF MERLIN JONES and assorted animated reissues. These had titles like THE LEGEND OF LOBO, CHARLIE THE LONESOME COUGAR, and FLASH THE TEENAGE OTTER and were generally narrated by former B-western star Rex Allen.

Quack

They also mentioned those True Life adventures shows Disney used to air back in the day.

dhmac

I'm a bit disappointed that Disneynature's Earth is basically just a severely edited-down version of Planet Earth (a great documentary which I already own in Hi-Def) with new "Disney-fied" narration (I'd prefer David Attenborough's original narration, thank you).

Is there any new footage in Earth at all?

The Bus

Like dhmac, I don't understand what's so cool about this.

dhmac

As great as the BBC's Planet Earth is, I think the BBC's Blue Planet (aka "The Blue Planet: Seas of Life"), content-wise, is even better! Now if only BBC's Blue Planet would just get a Hi-Def release in the U.S. (although it was shot mostly using Super 16 film, it was re-transferred in HD a few years ago so a Hi-Def master already exists).

Giles

just to see some of the series best animal photography on huge theatre screens is cool enough in my book.

woofman

kaze0

Would have sold me on a ticket with at least 15 minutes of new footage, but even watching the trailing nothing even seems new to me :/

RichC2

Guess this worked out alright for Disney. Considering it's using completely recycled material, the movie opened yesterday to $4m which is pretty impressive all things considered.

Liver&Onions

That baby duck jumping out of the tree gets me every time.

slop101

Unfortunately, since Blue Planet's OAR is 4:3, any HD version of it will have to be cropped, that is unless they pillar-box it (which I doubt they would).

As far as this Disney flick, I've seen Planet Earth multiple times, so I doubt this would be worth seeing.

Mr. Salty

Why wouldn't they pillarbox it? I have plenty of HD DVD and Blu-rays that are 4:3 OAR. HD has nothing to do with aspect ratio.

Giles

I must admit I was underwhelmed by 'Earth' yes, it's a condensment of the series, but nicely packaged to a 90 minute running time feels like a letdown knowing there's a lot left out, and also the fact that it tries to add to many things in such short amount of time, the flow of the editing feels forced. On the plus side the score is magnificent and the 5.1 soundmix suits the imagery, mass produced 35mm prints of the film though soften the picture a bit, so if you can see it digitally that'd be the route I'd go to see it in.

There's a preview for the next DisneyNature film for 2010 called 'Oceans' and it's footage is jawdropping.

dhmac

You might be thinking of the IMAX Blue Planet (1990) (which is Academy Ratio, or roughly 4:3) instead of the BBC's Blue Planet (2001) (which is 16:9 anamorphic on DVD). (I think one reason why the latter has the subtitle "Seas of Life" is to try to avoid confusion with the earlier documentary with the same title.)

fmian

Isn't there already a condensed version with Patrick Stewart as narrator??

dhmac

You are probably thinking of Deep Blue which was comprised of edited-down footage from Blue Planet - Seas of Life with new narration read by Michael Gambon (aka the 2nd Dumbledore in the Harry Potter movies). Deep Blue was released theatrical in 2003.

Here's the trailer for Deep Blue:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/7n_2A0kW1Uw&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/7n_2A0kW1Uw&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

And here's a clip from Deep Blue:
<object width="425" height="344"><param name="movie" value="http://www.youtube.com/v/Bn3bjowvCuM&hl=en&fs=1"></param><param name="allowFullScreen" value="true"></param><param name="allowscriptaccess" value="always"></param><embed src="http://www.youtube.com/v/Bn3bjowvCuM&hl=en&fs=1" type="application/x-shockwave-flash" allowscriptaccess="always" allowfullscreen="true" width="425" height="344"></embed></object>

Drexl

Absolutely, but for IMAX it's generally considered okay to crop because the image doesn't really have a set aspect ratio, but is supposed to fill your range of vision (or something like that).

This is not the case, of course, for titles like Gulliver's Travesty (er, Travels), Thunderbirds, Roy Orbison: Black and White Night, etc.

Giles

^ or even IMAX titles that while in native 4:3 are then cropped/stretched to 1.78, talk about back asswards.

Giles

actually as it turns out Patrick Stewart is the narrator in the international cut of the film, for the US release it's James Earl Jones

fmian

I knew it was Captain Jean-Luc Picards voice!!!

sauce07

This already hit $100 million worldwide. Kinda shocked.

Giles

well it was released in 2007:

Liechtenstein 14 July 2007 (Vaduz Film Festival)
Greece September 2007 (Athens Film Festival)
Spain 22 September 2007 (San Sebastián Film Festival)
France 10 October 2007
Greece 11 October 2007
Switzerland 11 October 2007 (French speaking region)
Spain 26 October 2007
Belgium 31 October 2007
Israel 1 November 2007
UK 16 November 2007
Netherlands 29 November 2007
Japan 12 January 2008
Germany 7 February 2008
Hungary 1 May 2008
New Zealand 21 August 2008
South Korea 4 September 2008
Japan 24 October 2008 (Tokyo International Film Festival)
Iceland 5 March 2009 (DVD premiere)
Argentina 22 April 2009
Brazil 22 April 2009 (limited)
Canada 22 April 2009
Italy 22 April 2009
Peru 22 April 2009
USA 22 April 2009 (limited)
Venezuela 22 April 2009
Brazil 24 April 2009