documentary
cagapakis | February 3, 2010I'm auditing a really cool class at MIT this semester called "Documenting Science Through Video and New Media." In the first class, we watched some of the earliest science films ever made, microscopic vaudeville performances by cheese mites and flies, made into a little meta-documentary by New Scientist a couple years ago. The videos are really fun, combining a sense of wonder at the beauty and complexity of the natural world with a sense of the excitement and spectacle of moving pictures. Science and nature documentaries like these became a hugely popular hit, and still are today with series…
grrlscientist | February 3, 2010tags: Kitchen Science: An Offbeat Look at Water, water, documentary, science, BBC, satire, parody, humor, comedy, fucking hilarious, streaming video
A peculiar (scientific?) look at the three phases of water and how it affects living things ...
grrlscientist | February 2, 2010tags: Alone in the Shed, documentary, cultural observation, men, satire, parody, humor, comedy, fucking hilarious, streaming video
This video documentary captures a modern-day everyman's adventure: one man's extraordinary attempt to survive completely alone in his shed.
grrlscientist | December 31, 2009tags: Forest of Ecstasy: Vanguard, illegal drugs, safrole oil, ecstacy, XTC, X, methylenedioxymethamphetamine, MDMA, rainforest, Cardamom Mountains, Cambodia, conservation, endangered species, documentary, streaming video
Do you think that making and using illegal drugs are victimless crimes? Think again! Deep in a remote Cambodian rainforest, criminals are setting up illegal factories to produce safrole oil, the raw ingredient for the illegal Schedule I drug, ecstasy (methylenedioxymethamphetamine or MDMA). Adam Yamaguchi joins armed forest rangers on a search and destroy mission.
grrlscientist | December 25, 2009tags: Polar Bear Versus Walrus Colony, nature, global warming, climate change, BBC, Planet Earth, documentary, streaming video
This video documents an awesome fight for survival as a grown male polar bear takes on a walrus colony at the edge of the Arctic circle. This was a truly epic battle, phenomenally captured in high quality, from the BBC natural history masterpiece, Planet Earth.
What surprised you most about this footage? I was surprised that the walruses did not work together to defeat/get rid of the polar bear.
gregladen | May 4, 2009I just watched a movie that made me ROFLMAOOL about fifty times. Maybe a hundred times. You'll not want to miss this...
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There are a lot of reasons that I love my friend Ana, and I fully admit that one of them is that she give me things now and then that make me happy. Like cookies. And hysterically funny movies on DVD. And more cookies.
But enough with the cookies. Lets talk about the DVD.
On a recent religious holiday, Ana gave me a copy of "... and on the 7th day, God Rocked." Yesterday, I finally got around to watching it. It turns out that this film is a…
bioephemera | March 12, 2009You've probably heard about the man with the eyeball camera. Here's the most detailed (and sometimes graphic) video I've yet seen about documentary filmmaker Rob Spence (aka Eyeborg), who is working on getting his prosthetic eye replaced with a wireless eye socket camera:
I first encountered Spence in this writeup at Wired last fall. According to the new video, they've hit a few snags since then, but for some reason Spence is all over the news right now. And it's a safe bet he'll continue to be, if he becomes the first cyborg reporter with a bionic eyecamera!
More: a briefer AP video on…
grrlscientist | February 13, 2009tags: The Blue Planet, marine life, evolution, streaming video
Thanks to one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous, I have the great pleasure to own this fascinating BBC documentary, The Blue Planet [Amazon: $38.99], about those amazing creatures that live thousands of feet beneath the waves. I think you would love this series as much as I do. Narrated by the amazing David Attenborough [8:21]
grrlscientist | February 12, 2009tags: The Blue Planet, marine life, evolution, streaming video
Thanks to one of my readers who wishes to remain anonymous, I have the great pleasure to own this fascinating BBC documentary, The Blue Planet [Amazon: $38.99], about those amazing creatures that live thousands of feet beneath the waves. I think you would love this series as much as I do. Narrated by the amazing David Attenborough [10:17]
grrlscientist | February 11, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [7:16]
grrlscientist | February 10, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [8:34]
grrlscientist | February 9, 2009tags: Charles Darwin, nature, evolution, streaming video
The life and times of Charles Darwin -- a failed student from a rich family whose five year voyage round the world inspired The Origin of Species, a groundbreaking work outlining the theory of evolution. Dr. Chapman explains how Darwin's ideas caused outrage in polite society at the time. [9:08]
awild | February 8, 2009From David Attenborough's brilliant Life in the Undergrowth:
Incidentally, Ed Yong's interview with Sir David is worth reading.
grrlscientist | December 27, 2008Disney's new film, The Crimson Wing -- Mystery of the Flamingos tells the story of the birth, life and death of a million Lesser Flamingos, Phoeniconaias minor. Life at Natron is tough for the flamingos, with many predators threatening their daily survival. According to Aeberhard: "they have a number of predators such as Marabou Stork Leptoptilos crumeniferus, hyenas and jackals... The contrast here between life and death is very stark" [1:50]
grrlscientist | December 1, 2008tags: Ivory-billed Woodpecker, Ghost Bird, movie trailer, streaming video
This streaming video is a clip from an upcoming movie called Ghost Bird. This film is a documentary about the controversial rediscovery of North America's largest woodpecker species, the Ivory-billed Woodpecker, which went extinct early last century [3:29].
To learn more about the film, visit the Ghost Bird website. You might also be interested in reading this news article.
illconsidered | July 30, 2008Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy is a new film from scientist turned filmmaker Randy Olsen ("Rediagnosing the Oceans", "Flock of Dodos") and rather than being a film about global warming, it is a film about the making of a film about global warming. Sizzle is also a self described "novel blend of three genres - mockumentary, documentary and reality." Olsen, as well as directing, is the main character who sets out to emulate Al Gore's An Inconvenient Truth but this time featuring the actual scientists.
The challenge of combining three genres is avoiding failure three times. The film needs to…
grrlscientist | July 14, 2008tags: Sizzle, global warming, climate change, documentary, polar bears, hurricane Katrina, Randy Olson, film review
The new film, Sizzle: A Global Warming Comedy by Randy Olson that will be released in a few days, explores a topic that concerns me greatly, so when asked if I would review it, I was pleased to do so. Sizzle is advertized as a combination of a documentary, mockumentary and reality about global warming, and therein lies its problem : it has no idea what it is supposed to be, and as a result, the audience (me, in this case), doesn't either.
I wanted to like this film, really, I…
grrlscientist | June 20, 2008tags: Anthropologists on Mars, autism, mental health, documentary, streaming video
This streaming video is a short documentary that explores notions of happiness within the autistic spectrum. [4:56].
laelaps | November 1, 2007Yesterday may have been Halloween, but today I learned of a real horror story; the BBC is going to cut "a third of its 180 production staff, including 10 out of 35 producers, nine of 17 assistant producers, 23 of 33 researchers and 11 of 37 production manager jobs," from the Natural History Unit according to the Financial Times. The cuts are a result of the BBC attempting to make back about $4.5 billion due to a bad license-fee settlement, an estimated 2,500 job cuts resulting from the need to recoup the funds. As Julia has noted, this is especially shocking given the popularity, success, and…