French director, Luc Jacquet's March of the Penguins follows the mating rituals of the emperor penguin, one of the most resilient animals on earth. Each summer, after a nourishing period of deep-sea feeding, the penguins pop up onto the ice and begin their procession across the frozen tundra of Antarctica. Walking in single .. Read more
| Starring | Morgan Freeman |
|---|---|
| Director | Luc Jacquet |
| Genres | Documentary |
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French director, Luc Jacquet's March of the Penguins follows the mating rituals of the emperor penguin, one of the most resilient animals on earth. Each summer, after a nourishing period of deep-sea feeding, the penguins pop up onto the ice and begin their procession across the frozen tundra of Antarctica. Walking in single file, they are a sight to behold. Hundreds converge from every direction, moving instinctively toward their mating ground. Once there, they mingle and chatter until they find the perfect mate a monogamous match that will last a year, through the brutal winter and into the spring. During that time, the mother will birth an egg and then leave for the ocean to feed again. The father will stay to protect the egg through the freezing blizzards and pure darkness of winter, which would be deadly to practically any other species. Finally, with spring, the egg hatches and the baby penguins are born. Mothers return from the sea to reunite with their families and feed the starving newborns, while the fathers are finally relieved of their protective duties after months without food.
| Starring | Morgan Freeman |
|---|---|
| Director | Luc Jacquet |
| Studio | WARNER BROS |
| Run time | DVD: 1 hr 17 mins Blu-ray: 1 hr 17 mins HD DVD: 1 hr 17 mins |
| Certificate | |
| Genres | Documentary |
| Language | DVD: English, Audio Description Blu-ray: English HD DVD: English |
| Subtitles | DVD: English |
| Released | DVD: 08 May 2006 Blu-ray: 07 May 2007 HD DVD: 07 May 2007 Production year: 2005 |
| Format | DVD |
Middle America has embraced Luc Jacquets film for its purportedly pro-family-values depiction of the emperor... read more on Time Out
Spectacular.
This is better than any 1/2 hour documentary that appears on tv! Its got fabulous filming and focuses on the penguin's way of life and how they exist. Its a love story in a way because it focuses on the relationship bonds between mother, father and chick and how they rely on each other.
I am biased where penguins are concerned, because I think they are gorgeous creatures, but even my partner found this was an excellent well directed movie.
Pretty good if you like natural history and penguins. Beautifully filmed with an excellent score and Morgan Freeman doing an excellent voice over (as usual). Very informative and engaging and easy to watch. The film (obviously) shows a great deal of respect for the Penguin and its amazing struggle for survival in one of the harshest environments on the planet. But...somehow I've seen it all before and it's been done so much better. I found recent BBC natural history programmes so much more informative and more innovative in the way they are filmed - this seems a dated format to me. It doesn't take in any of the wider context or ecological issues concerning these creatures and I was left thinking that there should have been so much more. I've nothing but admiration for the emperor penguin, obviously, as a species, but if I were a rockhopper or a chinstrap penguin (yes, they exist) I might be a bit jealous about the lack of blockbuster movies about me...
It's a safe bet that, if not for the unprecedented popularity of March of the Penguins, we wouldn't be seeing this National Geographic nature film on the big screen. The photography is impressive. Husband and wife filmmaking team Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson have drawn on eight years' spent filming in the arctic. The nephew of screenwriter Irving Ravetch (Hud), Adam Ravetch is a marine biologist and cameraman whose footage has been used in dozens of TV documentaries, including the BBC's... Read more