Friday, January 15, 2010

Not So Blue

Got home reasonably early, before the evening had set in, and decided to bang on one of the DVDs from The Blue Planet, another goodie picked up back in Manchester. (It's easily available here in Singapore, but a lot cheaper in the UK.) We're now onto the third episode, filled with the satisfying knowledge that we can watch the first two, and all the subsequent ones, over and over and over again. The Waaahhhhh! factor for this series is off the chart.

And it, the experience of watching each episode so far, leaves me with a question: Is this Art? I mean, the images are frequently just about the most beautiful you imagine viewing, and when they're not they're usually powerfully dramatic, and when they're not that, they're still gorgeously relaxing. George Fenton's music is so 'right' (as the missus perspicaciously pointed out during one sequence of dolphins twisting nonchalantly, dizzyingly through the air to one particularly cheerfully, twisting tune) that it's almost as illuminating as Attenborough's inevitably unbetterable commentary. And like all great Art it makes you glad to be alive just for the privilege of being in the audience.

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