Product Description

See over 90 minutes of some of the most startling wildlife photography ever to have been shown on television! The Blue Planet: Seas of Life features amazing new discoveries and photographic breakthroughs in two episodes: "Open Ocean" and "The Deep." "Open Ocean": Endless blue stretches in every direction, this is the open ocean. In this marine desert there is nothing but the burning sun above and the blackened abyss below, yet here live many of the most spectacular predators in the ocean. Striped marlin, dolphin and the shearwater birds chase down large shoals of sardine and makerel. Survival in the open ocean depends upon, speed, cunning and agility. "The Deep": A place of mountain ranges, perpetual night, pressure extremes and cold and the weirdest life forms on our planet. Dive to the depths of the ocean, an eerie world where predators with teeth so large they can't even close their mouths, chase bioluminescent creatures of the deep. Discover the spectacular smoking chimneys of the hydro thermal vents. Go deeper down than you have ever been. 98 minutes

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #31413 in DVD
• Brand: Warner Brothers
• Released on: 2002-02-05
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.85:1
• Formats: Anamorphic, Color, DVD, NTSC
• Original language: English
• Number of discs: 1
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 98 minutes

Amazon.com
The BBC's acclaimed nature series The Blue Planet will astonish you from start to finish, and these two episodes are even better than those included in Part 1 ("Ocean World" and "Frozen Seas"). "Open Ocean" travels thousands of miles into the vast "liquid desert," where currents determine how the ocean's diverse life forms will assume their places in the food chain. From manta rays to spinner dolphins, hammerhead sharks, and a plethora of smaller creatures fending for their lives, the patient cameramen capture a movable feast with intense proximity, while narrator David Attenborough brings these forces of nature into eloquent perspective. Even more amazing, "The Deep" descends with a state-of-the-art submersible to the ocean's abyssal plain and beyond, filming such bizarre creatures as the fangtooth, bioluminescent jellies, transparent squid, the giant-mouthed gulper eel, and the never-before-seen hairy angler fish. The Blue Planet provides the privilege of visiting a truly alien world teeming with the rarest wonders of nature. --Jeff Shannon

Additional features
How did they film these awesome images? The DVD's behind-the-scenes featurettes offer tantalizing answers, along with informative photos and factual data. --Jeff Shannon

Customer Reviews

The finest of the four Blue Planet disks
This disk is easily the finest of the Blue Planet offerings. Maybe this explains why this disk alone has a green cover. Tackling two very difficult and hard to film subjects, you will be awed by the grace and motion of the storytelling and cinematography. "Open Ocean", the first chapter on this disk, will amaze you with a sense of the grandness of the oceans like no other documentary before it. Imagine a 10000 strong school of fish being attacked from the bottom by dolphin and tuna; and from the top by seafaring birds. Not an easy thing to commit to film. The "Making of" trailer states: "We looked at what has been filmed so far, and tried to film what hasn't been done." They succeeded in spades. After sitting through many oceanographic documentaries, I naturally expected to see a cage-bound cameraman awaiting the appearance of a Great White or Blue Shark... or some shots of a group of placid reef fish. Well, after viewing the first 10 minutes (and picking up my lower jaw off of the ground), I realized that the beauty of this film lies in the professionality of the production. The cameramen have a knack for angles and natural presentation. Never once do you see a diver's air bubbles or feel that a "Person" is filming. For a brief moment, you feel like a fish and you are introduced into a world where you cannot naturally go. The second part, "The Deep", is even more engrossing. Close your eyes for a moment and envision the oddest creature that you can imagine. Surprise! There are stranger things living in the depths. Captured on film are an amazing array of critters that can only make you shudder in horror or gape in wonder at the elegance of their existance. One unfortunate, yet understandable bit is that computer graphics are used to a noticeable extent in this chapter. Considering that some of the fish have never been filmed before, and the scarcity of ambiant light, a few man-made liberties can be easily forgiven. The highlights include the footage of luminous creatures and a wonderous underwater lake (if this sounds like an oxymoron, simply buy the DVD and you will see that our imagination is comparatively bland in scope and vision to what is constantly being discovered.)

Whoa!
The Blue Planet's two episodes on this tape are the very best I have ever seen on the ocean's bowels and surfaces. The best episode here is "The Deep", which alone completely trashes Steve M's film "The Living Sea!" The Deep is ten times more amazing than anything shown in "The Living Sea". This episode takes you
in a submersible down into the dark depths of the planet. The creatures shown are amazing, including: Gulper Eels, rodlike fish, Anglerfish, Sixgill Sharks, and many more! The submersible even passes over a trench 4000 meters down in the deep ocean. It is amazing and sometimes frightening. Very much worth the expense of the entire video!
"Open Ocean", is also very exciting. The real highlights of this episode are the battles between different fish. There is ocean footage almost every second of the 45 minutes.
You will have to view this for yourself and find out how excilirating it really is!

Wonder-full Viewing
...Truth be told, the second set has no episode as stunning as the Deep Seas in the first set, or as beautiful as the Polar Seas. However, the four episodes match the first four in the depth of information offered, beauty of their photography (how often did I oscillate between "How beautiful!" and "How...did they shoot that?"), and the marvelous narration and production values.

As with the first set, each disk has a ten-minute "making of" short, and an in-depth interview with a member of the production staff. Disk 4 also has an hour-long bonus program, "Deep Trouble", which describes how fishing is ravaging the seas. That alone is worth the price of the disk.

I cannot recommend the four Blue Planet DVDs too highly. Buy them. Enjoy. Share with your family. Marvel at the beauty they show - and the superb craftsmanship with which they were made.