Notizie

Triplett, N.C. — The way Eustace Conway sees it, there's the natural world, as exemplified by his Turtle Island Preserve in the Blue Ridge Mountains. And then there's the "plastic, imitation" world that most other humans inhabit.

But the border between the two has always been porous – uncomfortably so these days.

When Conway – known today as a star of the History Channel reality show "Mountain Men" – bought his first 107 acres in 1987, his vision for Turtle Island was as "a tiny bowl in the earth, intact and natural, surrounded by pavement and highways." People peering inside from nearby ridges would see "a pristine and green example of what the whole world once looked like."

Since leaving his parents' suburban home at 17 and moving into the woods, Conway has been preaching the gospel of sustainable, "primitive" living. But over the past three decades, those notions have clearly evolved.

Conway has ditched his...

San Sebastian International Film Festival

SAN SEBASTIAN, Spain -- Alistair Fothergill and Mark Linfield, two veterans of the BBC school of natural history docus (Deep Blue, about life under the waves, and the BAFTA-nominated Life of Mammals), tell the story of global warming with state-of-the-art high def cameras and spell-binding photography yet spare us a storm of statistics. Earth does not relate anything not already known about how the globe is heating up, but the ingenuity of the filmmaking should connect with global audiences.

Earth goes through a year on the planet, examining how global warming affects the migration patterns of humpback whales, the hunting abilities of polar bears, the migration of cranes over the Himalayas and the long march the elephants across a parched Africa to reach a seasonal flood in the south.

Fothergill and Linfield follow the stories of a family of polar bears, a mother humpback whale and her offspring and an elephant and her calf. If the krill that feed the humpback die off, so will the whales. If the Polar Bear has no ice to hunt upon, it will die too. Even the great white shark is important at the top of the feeding chain yet, according to the filmmakers, merciless hunting has their numbers in "freefall".

Fothergill and Linfield make an unabashed appeal to audience weakness for cute animals. They delight at watching duck chicks launch their maiden flights in slow motion or baboons churlishly crossing a marsh in Africa. The birds of paradise in New Guinea preen better than any Hollywood star on the red carpet.

Patrick Stewart in an informative but friendly tone provides the narration. The statistics involved in the filmmaking are mind-boggling: 4,500 days of shooting with 30 camera teams in more than 200 locations around the world at a budget of $47 million.

EARTH

Lionsgate

Greenlight Media AG, BBC Worldwide

Credits:

Director: Alistair Fothergill, Mark Linfield

Writers: Lelsie Megahey, Alastair Fothergill, Mark Linfield

Producers: Alix Tidmarsh, Sophokles Tasiouslis

Directors of photography: Andrew Anderson, Doug Anderson, Doug Allan, Paul Atkins, Barrie Britton, Richard Burton, Simon Carroll, Rod Clarke, Martyn Colbeck, Justin Evans, Wade Fairley, Ted Giffords, Mike Holding, Mike Kelem, Simon King, Toshihiro Muta, Justin Maguire, Didier Noiret, Andrew Penniket, Rick Rosenthal, Adam Ravetch, Tim Shepherd, Andrew Shillabeer, Peter Scoones, Warwick Sloss, Paul Stewart, Gavin Thurston, Jeff Turner, Nick Turner, Jon Waters

Voiceover: Patrick Stewart

Music: George Fenton

Editing: Mark Elsbury

Running time -- 99 minutes

No MPAA rating...