March of the Penguins

[elfs]

Yamaarashi-chan and I went out yesterday to watch March of the Penguins, which is a gorgeous documentary about the Emperor Penguin and the tough existence they lead throughout their breeding season. It's hard to imagine how both the male and female birds waddle 70 miles inland, mate, and then birth the egg, which the father then adopts as the mother goes for food, both for herself and the chick, another 70 miles. When she gets back, it's the father's turn to get food-- and he has been without a meal for four months. It was a brutal film in some ways, but amazing in others. The cinematography was beautiful and stylish, the voiceover (by Morgan Freeman in the English edition) excellent, and the overall story compelling enough to be interesting for the full 85 minutes without commercial interruptions.

About the only weakness of the film is that the narrative line didn't contain enough explanation. There's a scene where a predatory bird comes in, and we aren't told what kind of bird it is, where it comes from, how it gets to the middle of Antartica, where it goes in winter, or anything; we just watch its slow attack on a chick and are left to wonder where the mother penguin has dissapeared to.

But a good film all the same.

Comments

What we learned...

[norikos-author.livejournal.com]

Vel and I learned three things from this:

1) baby penguins are perhaps the cutest thing on the face of the earth
2) penguins are perhaps the silliest looking things on the face of the earth.
3) whatever you do, avoid being reincarnated as a male penguin.

White sheathbill, maybe?

[(Anonymous)]

White sheathbills attack and eat penguin young. For a look at real penguins in the Antarctic on cam (gentoo penguins, not emperor penguins), check out http://www.martingrund.de/pinguine/

Annoyingly, Martin's cam might not be back till October, when someone gets to the research station to fix it...

Hello from Europe!

[(Anonymous)]

Hi,
nice film, saw it yesterday here in Germany too. It was shown during a Open Air cinema festival and the weather was perfect. But strange to watch a documentary film about antarctic penguins under summer conditions ;-)


I found this entry by Google when searching for pages which link to my penguin webcam site (for the case you wonder how I found it ;-)

We hope to be able to configure the cam in such a way, that we recieve several short video clips with sound each day by an automatic upload. This could be a worldwide unique and very intersting feature, especially the additional sound! I hope that one of the scientists can change the camera position this year before the penguins come back. The plan is to fix the camera in a height of about 60 cm above the ground at an old wooden pole just in the middle of a larger group of nests. The camera will not disturb the birds in any way. But all depends on the cooperation of one of the scientists. I met him some weeks ago and he promised to do the job if he has some free time (but usually they have never "free time"...) He will arrive at O'Higgins at the end of october.

The new position of the camera could be really very thrilling because with the wide angle view we get impressions just straight from the middle of the small colony - with sound! Unfortunatly you can see the video clips only with a special viewer for MS Windows - and the viewer is not available for Linux systems.

All the best!
Martin

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http://www.martingrund.de/pinguine/

If you have any questions about the cam project or just want to say "hello" you can write into my very simple guest book. You find the link on the penguin webcam page above...

Some weeks ago the webcam made a nice picture of a larger group of kelp gulls (Larus dominicanus) -- here the link:
http://www.martingrund.de/bildgalerie_privat/data/media/30/2005_08_04_15_11.jpg