Belliveau's reviews of National Geographic DVDs/videos

We LOVE National Geographic videos! Though not primarily designed as destination information for travelers, they seem to do a better job than many series targeted for this audience.

Note: Animal lovers will find these videos fascinating, but if you watch a good number of them, you will be struck (in a more powerful way than via the written word, perhaps) at the global catastrophe underway regarding habitat destruction.

Various locales

National Geographic Beyond the Movie - The Lord of the Rings - The Fellowship of the Ring (DVD)

Thought-provoking but scrambled look at several unusual places - idyllic prewar England and the battlefields of World Wars I and II, as processed by the interior mentalscape of J.R.R. Tolkien and melded to his studies of classic Finnish mythology and projections of "missing" Anglo-Saxon deep memory.

Some of the strongest sections look at the Shire, the Hobbit paradise, as imagined by Tolkien and realized by film director Peter Jackson. This gripped me, as I devoted an entire chapter of An Amateur's Guide to the Planet to "views of heaven," and in some ways the Shire resembles an earthly Heaven, lush and pleasant as islands like Bali. Also enjoyable, especially for the amateur anthropologist, is a look at the single elderly man who can still sing-chant the Finnish saga Kalevala, an influence on Lord of the Rings.

Critics on Amazon.com come at this DVD from all sides, saying either it is not enough of a look "behind the movie," or not sufficiently anthropological, or is a big ad for "The Fellowship of the Ring." They fairly attack a ludicrous closing segment depicting an Africa trekker as a modern-day Frodo, which did have Lamont and I scratching our heads as to the connection.

Friends at National Geographic, please replace the trekker's five minutes with more from director Jackson. We learn with nifty juxtaposition of war footage and a Rings clip how places such Mordor echo the dark hell of trench warfare -- as Jackson became Tolkien's visual interpreter, tell us, did he study the magnificent World at War series to get his imagery, or ... ?

Ultimately this DVD provides a good look at how to depict and represent fantasy worlds. Fellowship VHS VHS version

Cameramen Who Dared

National Geographic does a fabulous job of showing how its photographers carry as much climbing gear as any Everest-bound mountaineer PLUS a camera! We see staff cameramen receive fatal wounds in front of our eyes at an uprising in Thailand in the most gripping scene. Photographers also grapple with polar bears, sharks--and orangutans who attempt to undo the ropes that keep the photographers at treetop level in Borneo. You'll enjoy this and "The Photographers" (see next) immensely.

The Photographers (DVD)

Absolutely tremendous look at how photographers work their magic. Many of those interviewed decry the glamorous stereotype of their profession. Shots show them being eaten by flies and digging out worms from under their skin. Underwater photographer David Doubilet and the Jouberts, directors of many of the specials shot in Botwana, describe waiting years to get a sudden perfect image. We learn of these photographers' talent and artistry, how covering famine and disaster takes its toll, and how some of their shots, such as one of a Peruvian boy crying after his family's sheep were killed by a passing vehicle, led to outpourings of donations. VHS version

The Explorers: A Century of Discovery

Interesting footage of a trans-Asia vehicle journey that stalls in the Himalaya, nautical archeologists unearthing ingots from the world's oldest shipwreck off the coast of Turkey, the discovery of the sunken Titanic, and early balloon ascents. The first ascents of Everest by Sir Edmund Hillary and later an American team are chronicled. We watched a patronizing and quite revealing clip of early Africa explorers and documentary makers Martin and Ossa Johnson playing a phonograph record of jazz for a Pygmy tribe, everybody clapping and dancing in minstrel show fashion, used to illustrate the cliched views held by early explorers.

Last Voyage of the Lusitania

An engrossing look at the torpedoing of the luxury liner Lusitania in 1915, with skillful use of film, paintings and archival footage. This video is structured around the question of a mysterious second explosion after the torpedo struck. The survivor interviews, quite interesting per se, probably couldn't be done had the producers waited even another year or two, as all are well up in age.

Shark Encounters

An enthralling collection of sharks shot in Hawaii, the Marshall Islands, Mexico, California and Florida, including the angel shark, which bursts from sandy bottoms to swallow fish whole (and spits out the ones it doesn't like), to the prehistoric-looking megamouth and aggressive grey reef sharks--which Polynesians had warmed me about on my trip to Rangiroa. You'll find the perfect video depiction here of the humpbacked, aggressive stance of a shark about to attack--described on page 126 of An Amateur's Guide to the Planet.

The Sharks

Sharks in Mexico, Japan and Australia, including the great white, are shown in this older video. This video well demonstrates how in the shark vs. man conflict, the sharks are losing by the million, as harmless nurse sharks are shot off Australia, Japanese fishing lines nine miles long reel in hammerheads, and Japanese fishermen shoot other sharks with rifles if they come near the catch.

One segment shows noted diver Valerie Taylor testing a protective chain-mail suit against a shark attack. She has to goad a shark into attacking, indirectly showing how many species are adverse to contact with humans. Additional footage showing a great white attacking a research boat's propeller illustrates not that these are dumb fish. Rather, they close their eyes during the final seconds of attack and then rely for guidance on their ability to detect the electric fields around every living thing--a sense found in no other creature.

The soundtracks tells you everything: This 1982 documentary features Jaws-type ominous music, while the later Shark Encounters, reviewed above, features New Age noodling. Both films correctly note how benign most sharks are, though the music in The Sharks undercuts its excellent message.

Afghanistan

Afghanistan Revealed: The Untold Story of a Land and Its People

Unusually journalistic video with a crew presciently working in what would shortly become a world spotlight and interviewing resistance leader Ahmad Shad Massoud (strangely, a Maury Povich look-alike) prior to his assassination two days before Sept. 11, probably by Al Queda operatives. This video features affecting interviews with refugees and women who suffered rather pitifully under the Taliban. I mentioned to Lamont that the common description of Afghanistan as "medieval" did not seem appropriate ... the country seems more of a dusty and downtrodden place not even on the most rudimentary rung of the European "stages of historical development" chart. He replied, "Yes, more Stone Age, though they do have metal implements." Kudos to Geographic for putting together such a timely video ... let's have more like this, please.

Alaska

Braving Alaska

A fascinating look at four families living in the spectacular Alaskan bush, most 10 to 50 miles from their nearest neighbor. Most survive by hunting and trapping. The children of these families stand out for their resourcefulness, though we see one family reluctantly move to Fairbanks because their oldest son needs more contact with other children. Real survivalist stuff!

Kodiak Giant Bears of Kodiak Island

Several things stand out in this documentary: the massive size of the Kodiak bears, cousins of the grizzly; the idiotic human behavior around them; and a muddled portrayal of Native Americans who live on Kodiak.

The 1,500-lb. Kodiaks are born as tiny cubs in the winter, and we follow their development through the age of 2, when their mothers reject them and they follow a tough solo life. Eventually the fearsome bears learn to feast on salmon and to call truces during mating season.

Picnicking visitors, panicky fishermen and dumpers at the garbage areas around Kodiak's three towns run into these bears, with the result of around 10 bears a year shot to death, and little evidence that those shot, often younger bears, were actually a threat. Some of the human-bear distance enforced at Yellowstone National Park seems to be in order here.

Also, the documentary's portrayal of the politics and economics of the island's Native lands seem a bit fuzzy. Most of the island is a bear refuge, and the remainder has belonged to Native Americans since 1970. We hear that the local people want a giant federal handout as compensation if they are to not develop their parts of the island. We also see apparently unapproved lodgings being constructed on bear habitat. Which is it: do the Native Americans revere the land and wild creatures, as the documentary contends, or do they love the dollar? Do they want the federal government around as long as it gives them both their land back AND millions of dollars, or do they hate the feds and have joined the Western land rights movement?

Yukon Passage

A quartet of men recreate the Gold Rush of 1898, fighting their way over 20 feet of snow on mountain passes to inland Yukon, fashioning a raft, fighting rapids and making their way to Dawson City. They push on to Alaska via dog sled. Though the fellas look at first like frail, spectacularly bearded hippies in flannel shirts, they reveal great strength, resourcefulness, fortitude and flat-out joy in the course of the arduous journey.

Antarctica

Antarctic Wildlife Adventure

Ostensibly this film is about the Poncets, a family consisting of a French father, an Australian mother and three towheaded sons, who each year sail in a steel-hulled yacht from their home in the Falklands to the Antarctic peninsula to observe a wide variety of penguins. Inadvertently, the film becomes some much more fascinating than just another penguin documentary. The family's cruises during the two months of Antarctic summer astound as the boys play in scientific stations abandoned for 30 years and finger the harpoon tips rusting in an aground whaling ship. The family really seems to be frolicking in the last unspoiled corner of the Earth. Yet as they sail along the peninsula, they encounter giant cargo ships bringing modular houses and tractors into nearby pristine islands, to further science and a search for oil. To paraphrase Poncet Senior, who says in heavily accented English, as he holds a squirming penguin, "Perhaps its feathers will be coated with oil, and it will become hungry, and it will die. Next will be our children." A video to beguile sailors and explorers, with many times the impact of more expensive IMAX movies on the last continent.

Australia

Australia's Aborigines

A visit to aborigines living outside Darwin in the Northern Territory of Australia. Tribal elders of the Gagudju people take the viewer to sacred rocks and demonstrate bark painting techniques. The material on aboriginal art is quite interesting, but overall, this video lacks the scope and depth of many other productions.

Aborigines Valley of the Kangaroos

A group of kangaroos is apparently called a "mob." This quietly charming film follows a mob in New South Wales, beginning with an embryonic-looking baby named Jaffe, who takes a blind journey through its mother's fur to her pouch. You'll see a riveting fight between two giant males, Ursid and Cedar, and how excellent mothering gives young Sunshade a giant advantage over the scrawny but energetic Jaffa. One can't help but wonder about the large-scale shooting of kangaroos in Australia after seeing the familial relationships sketched is detail by filmmakers Jan Aldenhoven and Glen Carruthers. (Valley of the Kangaroos

no longer seems to be available as a NatGeo video, so I am linking to Faces in the Mob,

the non-NatGeo version of this production.)

Bali

Bali: Masterpiece of the Gods

This will take anyone who has visited Bali back to their memories of dance, art, temples, courtyard housing compounds, celebratory cremations, gamelan music and beautiful rice paddies with volcano backdrops. And it will certainly inspire more trips to this Indonesian paradise. Woodcarvers in the village of Mas make elaborate masks, and an instructor guides his pupils with a firm hand on either side of the head to do the fluid yet disjointed moves of the classic dances. I learned that the Balinese language doesn't contain a word for art, so interwoven is art with daily life.

Borneo

Creatures of the Mangrove

Shows the saltwater wilderness of the island of Siarua off northwestern Borneo. We see proboscis monkeys, mudskippers, crabs and snakes live in a world between land and sea: the mangrove estuaries of Borneo. We applaud anything that provides information about this mysterious island, but still, this video lacks perspective: What about similar mangrove islands in Belize and off East Africa? What of the devastating logging of Borneo that has silted the waters of its rivers and coasts? This video clearly belongs to the earlier National Geographic generation of pretty images and Richard Kiley narration, pleasant in itself but lacking the enormous depth of the 1990s videos.

Search for the Great Apes

Also shows Rwanda

In the coastal rainforest of Borneo, we watch Birute Galdikas-Bindamour rehabilitate orphaned orangutans to life in the wild. The footage captures the green monotony of Borneo's remaining rainforest, for those contemplating a trip there. The antics of the orphans will raise a laugh. They sometimes launch sneak raids back on the camp where they were first raised and display their nimble minds by working the water pump to the outdoor shower. Birute sometimes has to fight the infants for her share of her evening meal--orangs seem much more difficult than even dogs in curbing the impulse to beg, and in fact, they have no concept of not sharing and sharing alike.

The second half of the film switches to the fieldwork of Dian Fossey with the mountain gorillas of Rwanda. We see her a decade before her murder at the hands of poachers, and watch the aware eyes of the healthy young Digit, whose death seems impossible to contemplate. The innocence of this video in light of subsequent events makes it both fascinating and sorrowful.