Documentaries & Biographies > M Documentaries & Biographies

March On!

Advantages: Wonderful scenery, very factual, cute penguins
Disadvantages: some sad moments

March of the Penguins is a film which I had been undecided about watching for quite some time. After finally buying it me and my hubby sat down last night to watch it. I was aware before the film began that it was more of a documentary but this did not bother me as I do occasionally like documentaries if they are on good subjects. The start of the film shows the amazing South Pole and the narration tells us that at one time people did live here as ...
...At Emperor Penguins march for days in single file with each taking turns to lead the way, unbeknown to us is how they remember the way as the ice is constantly changing to each year it is a completely different journey for them. When they arrive at their birth place they all huddle together to keep warm and await the female penguins who will begin their journey soon. The female penguins also begin their journey to their birth place which again takes ...

sewbizzie 06.02.2009 · Read full review
Ciao members have rated this review on average: very helpful
Review of March Of The Penguins (DVD)

The best documentary of the 90's

Advantages: A superb documentary. Amazing.
Disadvantages: None.

An epic documentary. Microcosmos is an award-winning French documentary directed by Claude Nuridsany and Marie Pérennou. It was shot in l'Aveyron, a département of the Midi-Pyrénées region in southern France, named after the Aveyron river. Microcosmos was the first documentary, back in 1996, to use high-technology camera equipment to capture the infinitely small world of insects. Nowadays, the same techniques are applied in most TV documentaries ...
...go deeper still... and finally Microcosmos begins. Wonderful. You will encounter the most exotic insects ever, as well as some common ones. These are Microcosmos's cast. The list is never-ending: Beautiful rainbow-coloured butterflies, long-tailed caterpillars, duelling Dung beetles, strange underwater spiders, swallow-tail butterflies, Burgundy snails, stag beetles, ferocious red ants, peacock moths... and many more. My favourite part (you can't ...

gantzgraf 19.08.2006 · Read full review
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Review of Microcosmos (DVD)

Man on wire - 1360 feet up over downtown Manhattan

Advantages: A compelling tale told with warmth and humour by those who lived it
Disadvantages: Unnecessary "reconstruction" scenes used over voiceovers

...my childhood however, of the man who got on a tightrope and spent 45 minutes walking from the roof of one tower to the other. This was big news back in 1974, when I was ten, and I well recall the iconic images of this man, who I considered to be a clown, walking on a wire 1,368 feet off the ground. Of course in childhood that number means nothing – in fact despite the TV coverage Frenchman Phillipe Petit’s feat received in 1974, it wasn’t until I ...
...became forever known as the man who walked between the World Trade Center twin towers. Petit, rightly, is the star of the show however for me it was the supporting cast who really helped to tell the story of “le coup” and I recommend this wonderful film to all. Finally, I also realised that the man I had considered a clown for so many years was something much, much more – when he was on the wire he was a dancer and what he did was, for me anyway, ...

rosebud2001 03.08.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Man On Wire

Elite Documentary about an Elite unit.

Advantages: makes you think, can be motivating
Disadvantages: none

...faced bunch of Royal Marine Commando recruits all the way through 32 weeks of basic training. With complete access to every part of the training process he follows the good times and the bad of each of the recruits and something that I felt made the documentary that little more exciting was that he also took part in the training himself, Chris Terrill was 55 years old. The Program was originally aired in 2007 for ITV; at the beginning you see the ...
...of becoming a Royal Marine Commando and receiving the coveted Green Beret so that they can become elite soldiers that look a million miles away from the guys that they were 32 weeks earlier. After the 32 weeks training Chris follows a few of the successful soldiers when they are posted to Afghanistan for a tour of duty, as well as a new officer who takes up his post in Afghanistan for his first tour with a mainly rookie company of men. I managed ...

sjp1966 17.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Commando - On The Front Line - Series 1 - Complete (DVD)

Eye level is buy level!!

Advantages: Cheap prices
Disadvantages: Cheap labour

With the slave trade debate raging last year during the 200 commerations its always important to note that not only is that particular trade is still alive and well in the third world but its as good as here in its modern form in companies like Wal-Mart. Well meaning and angry people may well protest alongside some vegetarians banging a drum in London about what happened 200 years ago but most of the labeled clothing we are wearing will have been ...
...the products piled high in the huge shopping arenas of Wal-Mart and the like are the products of cheap and exploited labor somewhere around the world and when the documentary explores those sweat shops in South East Asia our arguments of reparation begin to fragment. In one segment you see young Chinese girls living in cramped dorms in a grubby factory, the gates locked at night, weekly rent and utilities deducted from their meager pay packets, whether ...

thedevilinme 16.12.2009 · Read full review
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Review of Wal-Mart: The High Cost Of Low Price (DVD)