Life (David Attenborough-Narrated Version) [Blu-ray] at DVD Hills.com

Life (David Attenborough-Narrated Version) [Blu-ray]

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Blu-ray details

Brand: Warner Brothers
Narrator: David Attenborough
Blu-ray: Region Code 1
Audio: English (Unknown), DTS-HD High Res Audio; English (Subtitled); Spanish (Subtitled); French (Subtitled); English (Original Language), DTS-HD High Res Audio
Format: Box set, Color, Subtitled, Widescreen
Picture Format: 1.78:1
Running Time: 550 minutes
Blu-ray Release Date: 2010-06-01
Audience Rating: NR (Not Rated)
Studio: BBC Worldwide
Product features:

Condition: New
Format: Blu-ray
Color; Subtitled; Widescreen; Box set

Blu-ray Reviews of Life (David Attenborough-Narrated Version) [Blu-ray]

Blu-ray Review: Astoundingly beautiful - Another MUST-HAVE Blu-ray set from the BBC
Summary: 5 Stars

Without a doubt, this is a superb Blu-ray set and a MUST-HAVE for your video collection. Simply put, this series is about the struggle for life on planet Earth and the marvelous strategies that animals and plants have developed to survive, procreate, and pass on their genes. It features some of the most lavish and amazing nature shots ever filmed.

I watch a lot of nature documentaries and I am continuously amazed, surprised, and impressed by what the BBC cinematographers manage to do, the rare and beautiful sights they are able to capture, and the artistry, dedication, and attention they devote to their work. I loved Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series, but I think I love Life even more because it spends more time with a smaller number of subject so you get to see more footage of their behavior. Whereas Planet Earth went for breadth, Life goes for depth. For example, each subject gets 5 minutes of screen time or more devoted to it.

I would say what also separates this series from Planet Earth is that Life gets up close and personal, using a lot of macro shots and slow-motion photography whereas Planet Earth shows a lot of aerials, wide-shots, and panoramic vistas. Very often in Life is an extreme closeup, either in slow-motion, high-speed photography, or sped up in time-lapse, with the action all set to a perfectly orchestrated soundtrack. Within the first few minutes of Episode 1 (series overview/synopsis episode), you'll see the style of cinematography that runs through the series. For example, we see a chameleon in a tree stalking praying mantises and slow motion photography of its tongue shooting out to grab its prey. In another scene, we see a slow-motion hippo fight with gaping mouths and water artfully splashing around, set to dramatic music. In yet another scene (this time from Malaysia), we see another close-up of a strange insect swallowing in air and then forcing the bubbles up into its head to inflate its eyes like a balloon! This is the stalk-eyed fly, and I've never seen one in a nature show before. This is what characterizes Life: a continual parade of amazing photography and rare and beautiful sights, many of which have never been filmed before. It is also about the industriousness of animals and what they must do to ensure the survival of their young. The mudskipper, for example, is an extraordinary amphibious fish that digs a U-shaped tunnel to hatch its eggs. It gulps in air and brings it back to the eggs until they hatch, repeating the task thousands of times a day.

Each episode is devoted into a particular subject matter:

1. "Challenges of Life"
2. "Reptiles and Amphibians"
3. "Mammals"
4. "Fish"
5. "Birds"
6. "Insects"
7. "Hunters and Hunted"
8. "Creatures of the Deep"
9. "Plants"
10. "Primates"

There's so much to see and love here that no review can sum up the sheer joy of watching it all. "Fish", "Creatures of the Deep" and "Plants" are my personal favorites, but there's so much to love in every episode. Some of the subjects, however, may be a bit repetitive, especially if you've seen other BBC/nature films. For example, I've seen plenty of the "common", ordinary animals like cheetahs, hippos, and elephants from countless other documentaries, and they're in Life too. The lammergeier (also known as the bearded vulture) I've seen on Planet Earth. In Life, they're back and in more detail, in particular, how they drop bones onto rocks from great heights to crack them open for the nourishing marrow fat. There's also narration that makes references to Nature's Most Amazing Events [Blu-ray].

At the end of each episode is an On Location featurette that takes you behind the scenes and shows you how some of the shots in this series were accomplished. It also shows you the great lengths that the film crew go to and all hard work that goes into bringing you these wonderful shots, as well as some of the innovative filming techniques they used. For example, one camera man hid in a hut for 28 days just to get the mating ritual of the Vogelkop bowerbird of Papua, New Guinea, a shot that is maybe 2 minutes long. In another, we see how the crew measures out a portion of English woodland and recreate the entire scene in their studio for a time-lapsed pullback shot of plants growing that took 2 years to complete.

In summary, GET THIS BLU-RAY SET!! It is fantastic, and in my opinion, every bit as good as Planet Earth, if not better. If you don't come away from this series with a new appreciation of nature's ingenuity and the wonderful and fascinating creatures that inhabit our planet, you never will. Entertaining, informative, and genuinely fun to watch, this is nature programming at its very best.

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Description of Life (David Attenborough-Narrated Version) [Blu-ray]

From the award-winning BBC Natural History Unit, makers of Planet Earth and The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, this is the original UK broadcast version of Life, with narration by renowned naturalist David Attenborough and music by Oscar® and Emmy® winning composer George Fenton In Planet Earth, we brought you the world as you?ve never seen it before. Now, get closer with Life. Four years in the making, filmed over 3000 days, across every continent and in every habitat, with breathtaking new high definition filming techniques developed since Planet Earth, Life presents 130 incredible stories from the frontiers of the natural world, 54 of which have never been filmed before. Packed with excitement, revelation and entertainment, this remarkable 10-part blockbuster captures unprecedented, astonishingly beautiful sequences and demonstrates the spectacular and extraordinary tactics animals and plants have developed to survive and thrive.

This enthralling BBC series examines "the lengths living beings go to to stay alive," in the words of Sir David Attenborough (Oprah Winfrey narrates the Discovery Channel version). Aided by breathtaking high-definition cinematography, the makers of Planet Earth explore the more colorful strategies the world's creatures employ to procreate, evade predators, and obtain nourishment. Cameras travel though the air, under the water, and right into the faces of insects, like the alien visage of the stalk-eyed fly. Except for "Challenges of Life" and "Hunters and Hunted," each episode covers a different category, such as mammals and birds. Among the more memorable images: three cheetahs move with the relentless rhythm of mobsters, a school of flying fish glides through the air with the grace of ballerinas, and a Jesus Christ lizard skips across the water, like, well, you know. The strangest sights range from a pebble toad bouncing away from a spider like a rubber ball and brown-tufted capuchin monkeys pounding palm nuts with stone tools like the apes in 2001: A Space Odyssey. Witty writing and skillful editing, which distills thousands of hours of footage, make the learning go down easy (at one point, Sir David references Jurassic Park, which featured his brother, Richard).

If the sound effects seem overamped, George Fenton's score is always on the money, adding humor and suspense at crucial moments (martial drums for the mud skippers, woozy brass for the Darwin's beetle). Nonetheless, delicate sensibilities may find some sequences disturbing, as when Komodo dragons feed on a water buffalo or when a leopard seal dines on a penguin (according to Attenborough, the Komodo siege caused the camera operators "emotional turmoil"). More often, the filmmakers capture the moment of impact before moving on. The set comes complete with 10 featurettes on the four-year production. --Kathleen C. Fennessy

Stills from Life (Click for larger image)

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Life (David Attenborough-Narrated Version) [Blu-ray]