A BBC DVD gift guide
5-Dec-2007 -
The Blue Planet - Seas of Life
Until now, we've only touched the surface...
Before creating the monumental Planet Earth, producer Alastair Fothergill and his team from the BBC put together one of the most breathtaking explorations of the world's oceans ever assembled, The Blue Planet: Seas of Life. The winner of two Emmy(R) Awards, The Blue Planet: Seas of Life is the definitive exploration of the marine world, chronicling the mysteries the deep in ways never before imagined. It is now being re-released in an all-new special edition, with an added 5th disc of bonus programming not included in the original DVD release. See it again, like never before!
BBC Atlas of the Natural World.
From the BBC's internationally renowned, award winning Natural History unit comes the second release in this extraordinarily ambitious undertaking. BBC Atlas of the Natural World is a unique survey of life on Earth in all its remarkable richness an beauty. This six-disc set brings together four landmark BBC series that combine to give one of the most comprehensive portraits of Africa (Wild Africa and Congo), the Mediterranean (The First Eden) and Europe (Europe: A Natural History) ever assembled. In over 12 hours of programming reaching back over three billion years, viewers will examine the birth of these vast continents from the dawn of time and examine how the rise of human civilization has forever changed the landscape.
The Snow Queen.
This staggeringly gorgeous interpretation of Hans Christian Andersen's classic fairy tale The Snow Queen began as a concert of the pretty music by Paul K. Joyce. The story is told in broad strokes: A mother (Juliet Stevenson, Truly Madly Deeply) and her daughter Gerda (teen soprano Sydney White, who's been tearing up the musical stages in England) take in a homeless boy named Kay. When Kay disappears, kidnapped by the vampiric Snow Queen (ancestress to the White Witch of Narnia, no doubt), Gerda sets off in pursuit and comes across helpful ravens, talking flowers, moving statues, and benevolent reindeer in the course of her hero-journey. The wholly digital world created for this film is astonishing; much of it looks like hand-painted Victorian photographs, each image suitable for framing. Ironically, as the story grows more magical, the imagery turns more conventionally "fantastic" (the Snow Queen's arctic lair is a bit like Superman's Fortress of Solitude). But the overall texture of the movie is engagingly stylized, with movement that seems staggered yet graceful, like a silent film. The Snow Queen demonstrates that digital technology can make a more ethereal aesthetic as vivid and startling as a slimy alien or a bigger explosion.
The music.
The score for The Blue Planet has again the fantastic music written by George Fenton. For BBC Atlas Of The Natural World more composers are responsible for the music. For the first 2 episodes, Christopher Gunning wrote the music. The episode Congo has music by Ben Salisbury and for the episode The First Eden is the music by Carl David.
For The Snow Queen, Paul K. Joyce did write the songs and the music.
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