National Geographic: Ultimate High Definition Collection Blu-ray delivers stunning video and solid audio in this exceptional Blu-ray release
Treat your senses to the stunning, high-definition imagery of National Geographic’s
Ultimate
High-Definition Collection, a six-disc set that will transport you to the center of the
most
remarkable action and breathtaking scenery known to man.
Venture underwater and meet California’s blue whales, soar across sweeping
landscapes, and
meet the most magnificent creatures of Africa’s savannahs. From the mountain
peaks and
oceans that play host to extreme sport enthusiasts to the celestial wonders of our
universe,
this special anthology is an entertainment powerhouse.
Programs include: Atmospheres: Earth, Air & Water, Relentless Enemies, Kingdom of
the
Blue Whale, Rhino Rescue, Extreme, Journey to the Edge of the Universe
National Geographic | 2008 | 102 min | Not rated | Region A (B, C untested) | Jan 06, 2009
Sample the sights and sounds of three distinct environments with this exotic National Geographic program that takes you to the vast grasslands of the African savannah, the dense rainforests of the Amazon and the icy plains of the...
National Geographic | 2006 | 90 min | Not rated | Region free
| Mar 27, 2007
It is a spectacle few have seen firsthand. Two foes trapped on an island in a remote part of Africa - and a battle to survive captured in high-definition over two years by award-winning filmmakers. Now, National Geographic takes...
National Geographic | 2009 | 90 min | Not rated | Region A (B, C untested) | Mar 31, 2009
Big Blue sets out on an expedition to discover the secrets of the blue whale, and reveal its
unknown calving and breeding grounds. National Geographic has supported the research of
the worlds top blue whale scientist for...
National Geographic | 2009 | 46 min | Not rated | Region A (B, C untested) | Jul 28, 2009
This is the intimate story of hope in Africa, and it surrounds the up and down tale of rhinos in
Botswana. In the 1990’s the Botswana Defense Force launched a massive military action to
stop poaching and this marked the...
IMAX
National Geographic | 1999 | 45 min | Not rated | Region A (B, C untested) | Nov 18, 2008
An in-your-face look at extreme sports and the daredevil athletes that risk their lives for the
thrill of adventure. The cameras were rolling when Ross Clarke-Jones surfed through El Niño
tidal waves, when a ferocious twenty...
National Geographic | 2009 | 90 min | Not rated | Region A (B, C untested) | Mar 31, 2009
National Geographic presents the first accurate non-stop voyage from Earth to the edge of the Universe using a single, unbroken shot through the use of spectacular CGI technology. Building on images taken from the Hubble...
From my earliest childhood, hearing the strains of Elmer Bernstein's iconic fanfare for National Geographic television specials got my pulse racing a little faster. Always a bulwark against mediocrity, National Geographic was the gold standard of television nature documentaries during my youth, and that insistence on top notch quality has continued unabated to this day. National Geographic has always provided some of the most beautifully shot, intelligently written, and tightly focused documentaries on the market, and as they start to branch out into high definition they're going to be giving lovers of fare like Planet Earth several causes to rejoice. This six disc compendium of great titles offers a wealth of subject matters and a variety of styles, from up close and personal nature photography to some jaw droppingly gorgeous CGI. If the narration can sometimes seem a bit overly portentous (especially when voiced by such husky voiced men as Jeremy Irons or Alec Baldwin), the information imparted is almost always fascinating and the visuals are no less than consistently astounding in at least five of the six features.
Just one of the astounding visions awaiting you in "Journey to the Edge of the Universe." Because of its incredible visuals, the bulk of my screencaptures in this review come from this title.
Journey to the Edge of the Universe is virtually 100% CGI, aside from some brief live action bookending segments. This absolutely amazing 90 or so minutes plays out like the trippy sequel to David Bowman's hallucinogenic journey at the denouement of 2001: A Space Odyssey. This is some of the most consistently amazing CGI you've ever seen as Baldwin intones (yes, portentously) about our little corner of outer space, visiting all of the planets in our solar system, before journeying out into the great beyond, where a variety of amazing visions awaits. The colors of such things as gaseous nebulae shown in this piece are as vibrant as anything seen in, say, Speed Racer, and are always tied to compelling scientific facts. Journey to the Edge of the Universe provides a stellar (sorry) introduction to astrophysics, giving a wonderfully imagistic introduction to such phenomena as black holes, pulsars, supernovas and quasars. My recommendation is to watch this once with the narration and then return to it later with the sound off and your own "trippy" music of choice (Strauss' "Also Sprach Zarathustra," anyone?) as a homemade soundtrack. This is certainly one of the most visually audacious documentaries ever produced, by National Geographic or any other entity, and it is simply a wonder to behold.
One of the most unique and baffling ecosystems in the world is explored in Relentless Enemies, a look at the interactions between lions and horned buffalo on the Duba Plains of Botswana's Okavango Delta. These so called Tsaro Lions are the only known species (or subspecies as narrator Jeremy Irons persuasively argues) to hunt only one form of prey, that being the buffalo. What makes this all so fascinating is that these two species are more or less marooned on an island (though they occasionally manage to ford deep rivers to reach the mainland on the other side). This island resulted from the freak repositioning of the river, leaving the lions, buffalo and a few other stranded animals together, left to sort out their pecking order sort of like a bestial version of Survivor. You might think the lions have easily the upper hand, but through their years of living (and dying) together, the buffalo actually manage to do amazingly well, and actually have the lions, especially the younger cubs, on the run a good deal of the time. This is an amazing look deep into animal psychology, as the lions have figured out the buffalos' grazing habits and are thus able to predict where they're going to be on any given day, making them supposedly easy prey. The buffalo have meanwhile learned that the lions tend to scatter when rushed, and watching these two species play somethink akin to a game of football is consistently intriguing. This episode does have some disturbing imagery of various animals meeting their fates, so parents with impressionable children may want to preview it before sharing it with the family.
As the subtitle to this documentary might suggest, Atmospheres: Earth, Air and Water is a trifold look at various wonders which surround us on this amazing planet, split into three fairly discrete segments focusing on one element. Atmospheres may have, in its title at least, seem to have forgotten the fourth element, fire, but as this piece starts with volcanic activity, you can see that, as the alchemists used to claim, each of the elements blends with the others, and so earth is wed to fire in this opening segment. Swirling panoramas of lava look almost like close-ups of a Van Gogh sun at times, with furious oranges and reds dissolving everything around them, oranges that make a neat transition to the similarly burnt rust look of the strange and beautiful rock formations of the American southwest. This region, made famous in many westerns directed by John Ford, is a barren yet compelling landscape, full of patently weird rock outcroppings which jut at odd angles against a stunningly blue sky. A lovely sequence featuring Africa follows, with some frolicking lions, including some adorable cubs, as well as some of the most patently weird looking birds you've ever seen (in fact, I wish there had been some sort of identification offered in the extras for some of these more exotic species). Monkeys and elephants complete our tour of wildlife before Atmospheres moves on to some stunning images of mist enveloped hills and some equally neat time lapse photography of various flowers coming into bloom. "Earth" closes its roughly 30 minute segment with a cute sort of mini March of the Penguins segment, featuring our favorite tuxedo clad creatures waddling and flapping about in all their glory. The "Air" segment opens with several impressive vistas of various cloud formations, and then moves on to some visceral storm footage that looks like it was shot in America's heartland. Even more cloud footage follows, but this time it's some very cool time lapse photography that shows a huge cloudbank "growing" over time, almost in fact like a volcanic eruption. After a brief sequence of slow motion birds in flight, one of the highlights (no pun intended) of this Blu-ray is offered in a truly stupendous longer segment featuring the Aurora Borealis. This cosmic lightshow is a wonder of blues and greens, with tons of shooting stars, and the shots here are simply magical. The final third or so of this documentary is filled with beautiful (and wonderfully clear) underwater shots of strange flora and various sea life. It's really amazing to see the unbelievably bright colors that exist beyond our everyday reality, hidden beneath the veil of the oceans. The final moments of this piece move above the water for some lovely shots of island landscapes, with sea lions and other creatures, before finishing off with Niagara Falls.
One of the glories of living in the Pacific Northwest as I do is our ability to travel to the coast every year and see the annual migration of the Blue Whales. In fact, Oregon's Newport is featured in Kingdom of the Blue Whale which focuses on the Pacific Coast "family" of the behemoths while also spending time looking at the eight other areas of the globe they inhabit. What becomes rather surprisingly clear throughout this piece is that despite the fact we are able to see the whales fairly regularly, we actually know precious little about them. The scientists in Kingdom of the Blue Whale set out to solve several mysteries about the creatures, things you really would have thought would have been long ago discovered, including where and how the beasts eat, how and where they mate, and where and when do they give birth. While Kingdom of the Blue Whale's intentions are certainly laudable, this is probably the least involving documentary of this set, due to its perhaps understandable focus on the scientists investigating the whales, rather than the whales themselves. Add to that the fact that while at least some evidentiary footage is captured, we're left with as many questions as answers by the film's end, perhaps leading some viewers to wonder what the point of it all was. That said, there is some really fascinating footage here, strangely most of it land locked, as in the analysis of one of the giant beast's eardrums, salvaged from a carcass which had washed up on shore. This particular documentary also suffers from some pretty omnipresent artifacting and a rather drab narration style by Tom Selleck. Kingdom of the Blue Whale does sporadically provide the goods, but it doesn't have the consistent tone and quality of Nat Geo's best offerings.
Extreme, originally an IMAX release, takes a look at an assortment of adrenaline junkies and if that look is somewhat short (coming in at a running time of a mere 44 minutes) and at times quite disjointed and episodic, it does deliver the goods, at least partially, in providing a bird's eye view of what these people experience in their recreational lives. Extreme starts with two deep sea surfers learning to expand their lung capacity by carrying 80 pound rocks across the ocean floor for as long as they can hold their breath in furtherance of their love of "big wave" surfing, which entails being towed out by Jet-Ski's to take advantage of waves so large they couldn't be accessed by simply paddling out to them. We next switch elements and are greeted with some fantastic views of snowy alpine mountain peaks, across which two intrepid sports nuts set off on some truly astounding ice climbing, forging their way up the sheer frozen architecture of what, in warmer weather, would be a waterfall. It's some of the most visually arresting footage in Extreme. Next up is Francine Moreillon, World Extreme Ski Champion, who takes us on a whirwind tour of her sport, along with cohort Gordy Peifer. These intrepid souls are literally airlifted in to high altitudes on helicopters, dropped off, and then make their way down sheer cliffsides on skis in footage that has to be seen to be believed. They often set off avalanches which follow them like a boat's wake and which can prove deadly if they're not navigated successfully. (There's actually some heart stopping footage of a bad spill one of them takes after not landing a jump very well). Brandon Ruff and Victorial Jealouse vary the sport only by preferring a snowboard as their accessory. More footage follows their amazing quicksilver journeys down various steep mountain faces, accompanied by some of the better music utilized in this documentary. We're back to the ocean for windsurfing, featuring Bjorn Dunkerbeck, 11 time overall World Windsurfing Champion. Dunkerbeck literally flies at times, doing somersaults and other feats that show why he's at the top of his sport. The last sequence offers the mountain climbing exploits of Lynn Hill and Nancy Feagin, who ascend the sheer face of one of the amazing red sandstone columns that populate the American Southwest. They manage to utilize a tiny crevasse to make their way up a basically perpendicular rock face in a sequence that will have those with acrophobia checking their pulse rates. The aerial footage in this segment is amazing. Like most IMAX visual feasts, Extreme both benefits from and is hampered by the format itself. This is basically a hodgepodge of admittedly amazing footage, but, aside from the voiceovers where the individual athletes over articulate their "deep thoughts" about their various sports, there's really no through line here. With that caveat taken into account, Extreme is, well, extremely enjoyable. Visually, even with a large screen, nothing can approach the mammoth dimensions of what IMAX can offer, so some of the panoramas, while stupendous, hide the humans within them, making the filmmakers' putative point a little harder to discern.
Another shorter feature is the 46 minute Rhino Rescue, which nonetheless is one of the most personally involving documentaries in this set as it follows the progress of reintroducing white and black rhinos into the wilds of Botswana. Poaching had become so much of an issue in this African country that the endangered beasts had been moved to "safe houses" of a sort, large parks where they were protected and could regain a foothold on survival. After several years in these parks, private firms in conjunction with the Botswanan government and military took rather extraordinary steps to recapture them and transport them to the Okavango Delta, a sort of island paradise where they hoped the animals would find a peaceful home. This documentary is definitely not for younger children, starting with a disturbing scene of a rhino being shot by a poacher, followed by several pretty ugly shots of rotting rhino corpses. Then the pieces moves on to an ostensibly less malevolent, yet still very disturbing, segment featuring the "good guys" darting the animals with tranquilizers and using an almost mitre-like drill to bore into the beasts' tusks to insert a tracking device, as well as (more horrifying, at least to me) using large industrial scissors to carve out unique notch designs in each creature's ears so that they can be more readily identified from afar. Rhino Rescue is narrated by filmmakers Dereck and Beverly Joubert, with Dereck providing the scene narration while Beverly offers more philosophical entries often revolving around our fragile relationship with these huge beasts. This is a documentary full of both wonder and tragedy and exposes the errors that men make even when they have the best of intentions. Visually, this is one of the most impressive live actions offerings in this set, with some absolutely gorgeous shots of the African savannahs and its wildlife. From a rescue perspective, the piece points out something unexpected and less successful. The white rhinos who are airlifted to the Okavango ultimately defy tradition and traipse through deep water to forage out into unprotected land, something which completely confounds the experts. It turns out that rhinos have been so absent from this area for so long that the poor beasts were trying to figure out where their "territory" (which is often marked by dung piles) ended before settling down into their new home. Rhino Rescue offers a cautionary tale that years of mismanagement can't be easily solved, but that with the endurance of a devoted band of rescuers, there is indeed hope for the future.
All but two of these features are encoded via VC-1, and those two, Extreme and Atmospheres feature an AVC codec. All of the documentaries sport 1.78 1080p images and, with the exception of Kingdom of the Blue Whale, are stupendously sharp and detailed with some of the most impressively saturated color you're likely to see. The most visually impressive feature in this set is, as perhaps is to be expected, the CGI-fest of Journey to the Edge of the Universe, which is quite simply a compendium of state of the art computer animation and offers so many visual delights it's impossible to overstate how amazing it is. One thing that Journey especially provides, courtesy of its CGI version of the classic Disney "multi-plane" technique is a truly astounding dimensionality. But, really, that same depth, if not quite as mind blowing, is available in at least four of the five remaining live action documentaries, all of which sport clear, precise images that give unmatched detail to wildlife and their environments. A butterfly which alights on a rhino offers a brilliant Rohrsach pattern on its wings. Each bristling hair of fur on a lion about to pounce on prey can be seen individually, as can the weird hairs of the fluffy tails of hyenas. The vistas captured here are similarly impressive, with some brilliantly red-orange African sunsets and gorgeous blues of oceans offering a full range of hues. There is very minor ringing around some of the foliage a time or two, but it's nothing major.
The one real disappointment here is Kingdom of the Blue Whale, which exhibits more than occasional ringing, as well as a peculiarly soft look for quite a bit of its running time. My hunch is that the small boats utilized only had space for SD cameras, in fact maybe even minicams, because a lot of this source material simply doesn't appear to have the resolution of native HD footage. Kingdom does offer good, well saturated color most of the time, with some impressively deep blues and greens, but it never rises to the heights of the other offerings in this overall very impressive set.
All of these features offer both Dolby Digital 5.1 and 2.0 mixes, and one of them, Atmospheres, which does not have narration, offers two versions of each track, one with natural sounds only and the other with natural sounds mixed with a sort of ambient music track. Audiophiles may wish for lossless fidelity here, but the fact is most of these documentaries are narrated with attendant underscore, with only passing ambient moments that provide a real sense of immersion. Once again, Journey, as patently "fake" as it is, offers the most immersive soundtrack here, with whoosing sounds zooming to and fro from channel to channel as Alec Baldwin guides us on our tour of the universe. Probably the next best in this set is Atmospheres, with surround channels utilized nicely in both the natural and music mixed offerings. The rest of these documentaries certainly have clear and crisp narration with well reproduced underscore, but they're not going to knock your socks off with wall to wall immersion. That said, there is always a moment or two that will make the hair on the back of your neck stand up, like the sudden, almost LFE-laden growl of a lion bursting from a rear channel, or the peaceful chirping of birds which surrounds a rhino back on its home turf after years of exile in a sanctuary. While not lossless, these are all strong, well crafted soundtracks that deliver the goods in an admittedly lossy environment.
There aren't a whole bunch of extras on this set. Each disc comes with an "Also from National Geographic" set of trailers. Rhino Rescue and Journey to the Edge of the Universe include a photo galleries. Kingdom of the Blue Whale offers a 6:51 featurette on whaling practices entitled "Wild Chronicles: Whales." Relentless Enemies has a longer, more interesting piece called "Cheetah Chase" (26:18), which has some impressive footage of the fastest of land animals who can get from 0 to 50 in less than three seconds. Finally, Extreme has a fairly pointless "Making of" featurette (23:22) that spends too much talking about the shots and too little actually showing how they were accomplished.
I may just be a kid at heart, but my pulse still races when I hear Elmer Bernstein's fanfare, and these wonderful documentaries prove why National Geographic is the standard bearer for nature information. If Kingdom of the Blue Whale is a bit of a disappointment, the rest of this set is a wonderful compendium of diverse subject matter and some amazing imagery.
Amazon's current Blu-ray Boxed Set of the Week is for the National Geographic Ultimate High Definition Collection (Atmospheres: Earth, Air & Water, Extreme, Journey to the Edge of the Universe, Kingdom of the Blue Whale, Relentless Enemies and Rhino Rescue), which ...
National Geographic in conjunction with Warner Home Video has announced that they will bring the 'National Geographic Ultimate High Definition Collection' to Blu-ray on September 29th, exclusively to Blu-ray. The set will feature six National Geographic Blu-ray ...
National Geographic: Ultimate High Definition Collection Blu-ray, Forum Discussions
