Product Description

Product Details

• Amazon Sales Rank: #222 in DVD
• Brand: Ingram
• Released on: 2007-04-24
• Rating: NR (Not Rated)
• Aspect ratio: 1.78:1
• Formats: Box set, Color, Widescreen
• Original language: English
• Subtitled in: English, Spanish, French
• Number of discs: 4
• Dimensions: 1.00 pounds
• Running time: 550 minutes

Amazon.com
As of its release in early 2007, Planet Earth is quite simply the greatest nature/wildlife series ever produced. Following the similarly monumental achievement of The Blue Planet: Seas of Life, this astonishing 11-part BBC series is brilliantly narrated by Sir David Attenborough and sensibly organized so that each 50-minute episode covers a specific geographical region and/or wildlife habitat (mountains, caves, deserts, shallow seas, seasonal forests, etc.) until the entire planet has been magnificently represented by the most astonishing sights and sounds you'll ever experience from the comforts of home. The premiere episode, "From Pole to Pole," serves as a primer for things to come, placing the entire series in proper context and giving a general overview of what to expect from each individual episode. Without being overtly political, the series maintains a consistent and subtle emphasis on the urgent need for ongoing conservation, best illustrated by the plight of polar bears whose very behavior is changing (to accommodate life-threatening changes in their fast-melting habitat) in the wake of global warming--a phenomenon that this series appropriately presents as scientific fact. With this harsh reality as subtext, the series proceeds to accentuate the positive, delivering a seemingly endless variety of natural wonders, from the spectacular mating displays of New Guinea's various birds of paradise to a rare encounter with Siberia's nearly-extinct Amur Leopards, of which only 30 remain in the wild.

That's just a hint of the marvels on display. Accompanied by majestic orchestral scores by George Fenton, every episode is packed with images so beautiful or so forcefully impressive (and so perfectly photographed by the BBC's tenacious high-definition camera crews) that you'll be rendered speechless by the splendor of it all. You'll see a seal struggling to out-maneuver a Great White Shark; swimming macaques in the Ganges delta; massive flocks of snow geese numbering in the hundreds of thousands; an awesome night-vision sequence of lions attacking an elephant; the Colugo (or "flying lemur"--not really a lemur!) of the Philippines; a hunting alliance of fish and snakes on Indonesia's magnificent coral reef; the bioluminescent "vampire squid" of the deep oceans... these are just a few of countless highlights, masterfully filmed from every conceivable angle, with frequent use of super-slow-motion and amazing motion-controlled time-lapse cinematography, and narrated by Attenborough with his trademark combination of observational wit and informative authority. The result is a hugely entertaining series that doesn't flinch from the predatory realities of nature (death is a constant presence, without being off-putting).

At a time when the multiple threats of global warming should be obvious to all, let's give Sir David the last word, from the closing of Planet Earth's final episode: "We can now destroy or we can cherish--the choice is ours." --Jeff Shannon

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Planet Earth on Blu-ray

Planet Earth on DVD

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Stills from Planet Earth (click for larger image)

Customer Reviews

Planet Earth - The Complete BCC Series [Blu-ray]

This is a film for all ages. It reflects the beauty of all life on planet Earth in brilliant, vibrant, illuminating colors. The animal world (in air, land, and water)in many ways, replicates the nature and nurture of mankind.

Fabulous.

In one word fantastic - everyboby must see this beautifull images
before he can believe that it is possible to make such a imagination.

Disappointing and disjointed
Planet Earth

We rented this entire series, hoping that it would be a hit like Life of Mammals or Blue Planet. It isn't. We hoped that it would be an ecosystem or geological approach to the planet because it is, after all, called Planet Earth and the programs are called Fresh Water, Mountains, etc. It isn't. Instead, it is an eclectic collection of camerawork taken from various locations around the planet showing unusual geological formations (10%), weather occurrences (10%), and life at the extremes (10%). The rest is pure cinematography and focuses on the camera crew and how they got the shots. Needless to say, we were disappointed.

What we hated:
-a lot of jumping around from location to location with no logical organization
-a lot of baby animal deaths
-a 10-minute section at the end of each 40-minute program called Diaries that focuses entirely on the camera crew
-repeat footage

What we liked:
-very little new footage that we havne't seen in other documentaries

I hesitate to recommend this to anyone in particular. My husband has an interest in geology, but fell asleep during disc 1. My kids and I love ecosystems and animals and we were bored to tears. We couldn't even finish the whole set and I had already paid for it. There just wasn't anything new here and the approach was too disjointed, like a table book with nothing but pictures. Great if you've got nothing to do, but we were looking for something educational. We own and love Life of Mammals and Blue Planet, as well as numerous National Geographic and Imax films, but we couldn't even make it through this whole set, although I paid for them. It was just too boring.

Highlights of disc 1:
From pole to pole--elephants swimming
Mountains--Ehtiopian wolves, gelado baboons grazing in herds of hundreds
Fresh water--river otters fighting a crocodile