1998 Directed by George Casey
Alaska... Here, in this vast and spectacularly beautiful land teeming with abundant wildlife, discover the "Spirit of the Wild." Experience it in the explosive calving of glaciers, the celestial fires of the Aurora Borealis. Witness it in the thundering stampede of caribou, the beauty of the polar bear and the stealthful, deadly hunt of the wolf pack.
IMAX Alaska Spirit of the Wild, Alaska - Spirit of the Wild
AustraliaG
Australia
This was a documentary that I watched quite a bit as a kid, and I rewatched it again sometime last year and absolutely adored it. Rewatching it once again now, it still holds up incredibly well. The cinematography is absolutely incredible. The camerawork captures the true beauty of Alaska and there are quite a few moments in this film that give off the vibe of a Bob Ross painting/episode: a calming, peaceful atmosphere that sucks you in so much that you can even somewhat feel the cold all around you. This film knows exactly the right balance between wildlife, scenery, and history of Alaska to keep the documentary interesting and not repetitive. It's beautiful to look at and Charlton Heston's…
I ran out of the Disney True-Life Adventure series of nature documentary shorts to help me fall asleep so I tried this last night. (Perhaps worth mentioning that the free version on PlutoTV is missing Charlton Heston's narration, which makes it a much different film. After 7 minutes waiting for the narration to start, I instead watched a version hosted on Dailymotion of perhaps disputable legality.) The footage is incredible, and it made me wish I could see it on an IMAX as intended. But it absolutely still succeeded in relaxing me into being able to fall asleep, so you know, best of both worlds.
Hello, it's me again. Yeah, the guy who watched IMAX-movies on Youtube, to tick off Oscar-nominated short films.
And I am beginning to wonder whether they are all the same: Very pretty, but a bit dull. At least this one is.
Part of my effort to watch at least one short film per day. Here is the list I am currently working through, with a random number generator determining the film each day. I will take recommendations for everything that's 40 minutes max.
Charlton Heston narrates this wonderfully entertaining IMAX documentary that takes us to Alaska where we see it over the span of a year. We see the nine month winters, the three months of warm weather and the various wildlife that lives there.
I'm sure seeing this in IMAX would make it an even better experience but even viewing it at home it really does impress you. I really loved the structure of the film, which was basically to take you through a year in the wilderness and show us what the wildlife has to do in order to survive.
There's some terrific footage of the brown bears as well as their salmon feast. We get some terrific shots of polar…
This is a beautifully photographed film, originally shown in IMAX. It's a nature documentary about Alaska, reasonably educational but too short to go into any depth. It's straightforward and avoids anthropomorphism, so if you like nature documentaries and don't mind the short length, it's a good choice. The short length would make it an excellent choice for classroom use.
"A place shaped by ice and solitude."
The footage is good, but Charlton Heston's narration definitely elevates what is otherwise a pretty basic nature documentary about the last frontier.
I think I liked this better the second time around. Maybe it's because I watched some fairly mediocre IMAX films recently, but this one is beautifully photographed and makes really great use of the giant film format. It's a good overview of Alaska and its wildlife, though almsot exclusively the larger mammals. Still, for its length it's a very nice nature documentary.
This is a nature documentary, with all of the positives and negatives that come with that genre of film. It was originally an IMAX film, which means it's not very long, and it has absolutely gorgeous scenery.
If you like nature documentaries, you will find that this is certainly one of them. If you dislike nature documentaries, you'll find the same thing. The only thing I will say is that the movie does avoid most of the cutesy "people-ization" of animals that infests many nature documentaries....Charlton Heston is your narrator, and he keeps things relatively grounded. But otherwise, you're likely to know if you're going to like this before you even watch it.
