Sign up to add this to your collection
|
Sign up to add this to your favorites
|
|
50%
Overall Rating
|
|
Ranked #18,969
...out of 20,698 movies
|
Sign up to check in!
|
World Of Raptors is an intimate guide to American birds of prey that portrays the majestic power and beauty of North America's falcons, hawks and eagles in all their wild glory. Narrated by Academy Award winning actress, Joanne Woodward, and filled with spectacular aerial photography, World Of Raptors follows internationally renowned bird authority, Morlan Nelson, on an odyssey of natural discovery that will educate, entertain, and inspire.
--Amazon
|
Review by Crispy
Added: September 14, 2014
I'll tell you, I've never been more jealous of an animal than when I'm watching birds fly, and out of all the birds, the soaring raptors has always been among my favorites. With that in mind, tonight's documentary should have been a can't-miss, right?
Narrated by actress Joanne Woodward behind the camera and life-long raptor enthusiast Morley Nelson in front of it, World of Raptors is loosely organized by the four genera of raptors: falcons, accipiters, buteos, and eagles. In between each genus, Morley has a small segment on various aspects of raptor watching, including how to find their nests on a cliff-face, how to approach the birds for a closer look without scaring them off, and what to do if you find an injured animal. Overall, this approach didn't yield very satisfactory results on the educational front. Each genus consisted of a list of species with a single sentence about it, with the occasional species getting a few extra minutes devoted to it. The list is far too long to remember which fact is attached to which animal, and most of it is superfluous information anyway. It quickly became obvious that "raptor" was just far too wide of a subject to cover in a mere fifty-five minutes.
So, the documentary aspect was a bit weak, but the aesthetics it delivered were absolutely gorgeous. As I said before, these birds are absolutely breathtaking, and while the wide variety of species on display hurt the depth of the documentary, at least you get to enjoy the sight of close to forty species. Personally, my favorite footage was the young golden eagle trying and failing to catch both a jackrabbit and a rattle snake, and one of the birds (again, it's near impossible to remember what's what) with the ability to hover over its marshland home, before turning into a dive. There was also a buteo with a white plumage that I absolutely loved that I'd never seen before. Not being able to remember which species it was is incredibly frustrating, but I digress. Plus, Steve Eaton's score for this movie suits the visuals so perfectly. His music has something of a medieval regal slant to it, and it compliments these graceful birds beautifully.
While it's a bit too sloppily put together to be as educational as I would have liked it to be, it does provide some beautiful visuals for those who enjoy this sort of thing. 5.5/10.
|
|