The film Arctic Tale aims to put a face on global warming. Read about it in this excerpt of a New York Times article:
THERE is something unnerving about watching a polar bear stalk across floating sea ice high in the Arctic and doing so from the frigid waters directly beneath the bear, the world’s largest four-legged predator.
Overhead, through ice so thin that it is transparent, plate-size paws set down, one after the other, as the half-ton animal pursues its prey.
Gripping moments like this abound in “Arctic Tale,” a new film exploring challenges facing polar bears and walruses, two familiar denizens of the icy, but warming, seas at the top of the world. But “Arctic Tale” is not a typical addition to a lengthening line of somber documentaries on dangerous or endangered wildlife.
Instead, Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson, a husband and wife who have spent the better part of two decades filming the Arctic’s hulking, reclusive and sometimes deadly mammals for television nature shows, sifted through more than 800 hours of their own footage and that of other filmmakers to assemble a fictional, family-friendly coming-of-age tale.
The film follows this unorthodox gambit to tell of the entwined lives and travails of two composite characters, Nanu, a young bear, and Seela, a walrus. Their stories are related, fable style, by Queen Latifah, and include scenes ranging from the wrenching, when a bear cub falters and fades in a relentless blizzard, to the comic, when a heap of basking walruses erupt into a flatulent chorus after bingeing on clams. (An adult can eat 4,000 a day.)
“Arctic Tale” is clearly aimed at the same audiences that flocked in unexpected numbers to “An Inconvenient Truth,” which chronicled Al Gore’s climate campaign, and “March of the Penguins,” which followed the life cycle of rugged inhabitants from the other frozen end of the world. But Adam Leipzig, the president of National Geographic Films, which produced the film, said the project was conceived two years ago, before either documentary became a hit. The idea, he said, was to make a wildlife film “that really holds up as a movie.” (Paramount Classics will release the film on Friday in New York and Los Angeles, and nationwide in mid-August.)
Overhead, through ice so thin that it is transparent, plate-size paws set down, one after the other, as the half-ton animal pursues its prey.
Gripping moments like this abound in “Arctic Tale,” a new film exploring challenges facing polar bears and walruses, two familiar denizens of the icy, but warming, seas at the top of the world. But “Arctic Tale” is not a typical addition to a lengthening line of somber documentaries on dangerous or endangered wildlife.
Instead, Adam Ravetch and Sarah Robertson, a husband and wife who have spent the better part of two decades filming the Arctic’s hulking, reclusive and sometimes deadly mammals for television nature shows, sifted through more than 800 hours of their own footage and that of other filmmakers to assemble a fictional, family-friendly coming-of-age tale.
The film follows this unorthodox gambit to tell of the entwined lives and travails of two composite characters, Nanu, a young bear, and Seela, a walrus. Their stories are related, fable style, by Queen Latifah, and include scenes ranging from the wrenching, when a bear cub falters and fades in a relentless blizzard, to the comic, when a heap of basking walruses erupt into a flatulent chorus after bingeing on clams. (An adult can eat 4,000 a day.)
“Arctic Tale” is clearly aimed at the same audiences that flocked in unexpected numbers to “An Inconvenient Truth,” which chronicled Al Gore’s climate campaign, and “March of the Penguins,” which followed the life cycle of rugged inhabitants from the other frozen end of the world. But Adam Leipzig, the president of National Geographic Films, which produced the film, said the project was conceived two years ago, before either documentary became a hit. The idea, he said, was to make a wildlife film “that really holds up as a movie.” (Paramount Classics will release the film on Friday in New York and Los Angeles, and nationwide in mid-August.)
Visit the movie website to sign up for a free screening in your area late July-early August.
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm
Interfaith Power and Light is a religious response to global warming with chapters in 22 states and Greater Washington, D.C. Find a link to your local chapter at http://www.theregenerationproject.org/State.htm
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