Here is a postcard from my Magic Grandad, David Attenborough. For reasons of meaningless and irrational internal politics, the videos posted on YouTube by BBC Worldwide itself are of unwatchable quality, but fortunately other people post the same clips in a decent state.
There is no point in me describing this sequence to you. You just have to see it. Don't forget to retrieve your jaw afterwards.
You can buy the series here, unless your DVD player is Region 1 (includes the USA), in which case, here.
Wednesday, 21 November 2007
At the bottom of the garden
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5 comments:
That really is extraordinary. Who would have thought slugs could be so beautiful? So alien, but so beautiful. It could inspire a really lovely contemporary sculpture.
Okay, my mouth really was open about halfway through the video.
Only the BBC and David Attenborough could make slugs beautiful and magical. If an American television company tried to do that, our televisions (and brains) would explode.
I don't have this dvd set yet. We have Planet Earth, The Blue Planet and the Mammals but I guess this is next on the shopping list. Thanks for the recommendation.
If I come to see you, will you introduce me to your Magical Grandfather?!
;-)
The bit with the blue globe really is a WTF Moment. ;)
In my opinion - and I've watched them all as they came out - none of Attenborough's series with one exception has been as good as the first one, Life On Earth (1979). And yes, I watched that in 1979 at the age of five - I watched it again at the age of 30 - and I was completely enchanted both times. It's also available on DVD these days and it's 13 episodes of wonder. They didn't have the technology they have now - the difference is the script.
The exception is Lost Worlds, Vanished Lives (1989), which is only four episodes and would make a nice Christmas present for the boy to get you. I think that's the series with the most of Attenborough personally behind it, and he really gives it something extra.
Yeah, that really was incredible. I wish more kids would watch that than Harry Potter stuff. The real world is so much more beautiful and magical than anything Hollywood can churn out.
I'll have to review my inventory. Now I'm not sure I have Life on Earth, either. Thank you for the guidance!
Carl Sagan was my David Attenborough. I could kick myself now for not going to Cornell. I hope you can meet your Magical Grandfather someday and tell him how much he's meant to you.
If you'd watched Life On Earth, you'd know. It's the one where he pioneered the lightspeed intercontinental ballistic sentence. Attenborough: "... They were looking in the wrong rocks, and in the wrong way." [Cut to Attenborough on the other side of the world]. "These are the right rocks."
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