Thanks in large part to Jeff Green’s eye-opening review, I have been watching a film today made by the same folks which follows the killer whale and was filmed several years ago. It was complete with Native American stories of the fish’s grand ancestral history; brain sizes similar to ours with long memories, their young have 5 fingers on 2 fins in the womb, monogomous, warm-blooded mammals. They showed a birth where the mother, unfortunately, passed and then the ceremony of death following it. The family followed for a brief time as a sort of celebration of life; all the while, the mate pushed her along in the throes of an, obviously, grief stricken whalesong. The others eventually turned and left the mate to mourn as he pushed her to shore as is the practice of whalekind. They consider dry land a holy place and, therefore, want their fellow creatures which have died to live in what is known as “The Holy Land” for their eternity in the afterlife. Once the two reached the shoreline there, he said his goodbyes and rejoined his family.
It was narrarated by Richard Harris and Bo Derek. Richard’s accent and the trademarked feeling he puts into his movie roles made it all the more touching. Bo, while not the best actress, seemed to show a very paternal, caring side in her descriptions of these noble fish.
While shooting, however, one of the boat hands was adjusting a boom mic on the fishing trawler they were using so as to get some dusk and late night shots. Richard Harris was manning the spot light for these scenes himself so that he could that much closer to the subject he was describing for the film. The widower whale, literally out of the blue, leaped from the water and devoured the boom operator alive. I think his name was Novak or at least that was what Richard Harris kept calling him as the poor bastard screamed his way down into the murky depths. I had to turn it off at that point because it was the baby’s nap time. I did not want to wake up my 2 year old as the horrific event and Novak’s blood curdling cries were all caught on tape by the documentary crew and it was fairly loud.
I did not want to watch this one either Jeff, so I can identify. Having given blood at the mall today, I did not have the energy to get up and get the remote. I think this one was called Orca, BTW, if anyone wants to check the documentary section at Blockbuster.
Look Mr. If you do not like nature films, why did you bother to read my post. Jeff brought up a perfectly decent genre of filmaking which, like Flight Sims in the PC world, is 99% of the time boring and mind-numbingly so. I played Microsoft Flight Simulator 2000 one day while watching the Nature channel and passed out in a puddle of my own drool and woke up in a pool of vomit. Most people would prefer to watch the shaded potion of their roof grow algae rather than watch the Nature channel or play IL2-Storm over Vic Tayback.
We enjoy these documentaries and would like to broaden the horizons of others in the forum, you do not have to poo poo everything you do not enjoy as some others might.
Why wouldn’t they? After the implication of “equal intelligence” and “at least equal emotional capacity” combined with the implication of “watching them in order to learn from them” I was expecting Tyjenks to tell us next that shrines were being set up to honor the newly risen Whale God.
How messed up would it be if you were a whale, hell bent on going to the Holy Land, and then when you finally got there, a bunch of angels came down to meet you and pushed you back out to sea. Nooooooooooooo!
The most interesting thing about Winged Migration, the bird documentary that led to this thread, is that all the birds were played by Dana Carvey. (Except for one cameo by Benicio Del Toro as a penguin.)
