Random paragraph I wrote for non-fiction class.
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The best place to hear the most absurd things people will say is on the bus. Two young men, probably in their early to mid twenties, dressed like typical skateboarders sat behind me on the number 20 bus. One was telling the other about this TV show involving a man owning a prison. One day, the warden made the prisoners change their uniforms to rabbit constumes, as it was around Easter time.
His friend quickly asked, “Is he gay?”
Everyone knows the solar system and the planets; we’ve all learned it in primary school. But this BBC series, narrated and hosted by professor Brian Cox, takes us on a voyage to the little known wonders of space. It’s not a general look at the planets, but more of the road less taken, the cool attractions in a city one doesn’t get to see. Again, it’s been a while since I saw the series so I’m not super familiar with everything, but there are 5 episodes total, all an hour long.
With Cox’s mellow narration and his simple constructed diagrams like bottles of condiments at a diner which make it easy for stupid people to understand (a good thing, btw), the series examines things from the beginnings of life on Earth in episode two, “Order Out of Chaos”, to volcanic activity on Saturn’s moons in the “Dead or Alive” episode. This is a fascinating, interesting, high-definition look at the rarely talked-about things in our solar system that is sure to make you wonder how complex, bizarre, and cool the world is beyond our planet.
The only thing that bugged me about everything was Cox’s pronounciation when it came to words that end in a “g”. It’s part of his accent, I’m sure, but for whatever reason, it kinda annoyed me whenever he would say words like, “thing-guh” or “thinking-guh”, always saying the “g”. Anyway, that’s just me and North American-ness.
Wonders of the Solar System
Swordfish and a shoal of fish
Following in the tradition of fantastic fascinating documentary series produced by the BBC is Life. After the worldwide acclaim for Planet Earth, Life stepped in after for those who want a high-definition look at our world. The series, ten episodes in total, covers various species and, well, life forms around our planet–from the first episode, Challenges of Life, to whales in Mammals, to even unique vegetation in Plants, this series is arguably on par with, if not better, than Planet Earth. The original British series is hosted once again by David Attenborough, while the US version is narrated by Oprah; I’ve read many comments about how bad Oprah is as a narrator so I’d stick with Attenborough’s narration instead.
There really isn’t much I can say about this series except that the images and cinematography are phenomenal and captivating. My favourite episode is probably Mammals (ep. 3) or Fish (ep. 4); there’s a sequence where the crew is filming flying fish and it looks like nothing I’ve seen before.
Though the episodes are an hour in length, the last 15 minutes are a unique behind-the-scenes/making-of documentary within a documentary, giving viewers a glimpse of the challenges of filming, the different and exotic locations they traveled to, and their interaction with the animals. In the second episode, Reptiles and Amphibians, the crew must get extremely close to Komodo dragons in order to film them, putting their lives at risk amongst the unpredictable animals. And in the Insects episode, the crew struggles to get their camera high enough in the trees with limited daylight to film monarch butterflies in South America (or was it Mexico?).
All in all, Life is definitely worth checking out especially if you enjoyed Planet Earth. I’ll admit that the first episode left me a little disappointed but the following episodes featured some pretty amazing, cool, and of course, bizarre things on Earth.
BBC Life
A long time ago when I was young, I was watching tv, presumably with another one of my family members. On the television was this strange program; it was in black and white and there was what appeared to be an escalator out of nowhere. But it was absolutely enormous, and was able to carry maybe a hundred or so people. The quality of the film itself wasn’t very good, as if taken a long time ago. The escalator was heading up — to what, I don’t know. Then suddenly, without warning, it stopped. People began falling down the escalator, slowly and silently. For some reason, this still haunts me to this day.
aaron's random musings 