earth

earth opens on Earth Day and will in fact become a series of sorts with Disney premiering the ecological twin Oceans on Earth Day 2010. The title is spelled lower case, not because it's a poem by e. e. cummings so much as to give it a uniqueness that it deserves.
earth comes from DisneyNature a division of the Mouse House that recalls their effort towards a series of nature films in the 1950s. The first one The Living Desert won the first Academy Award for Best Documentary. (Previous to that a documentary could've won an AA but as a honorary award rather than a specific category; for instance Rashomon won an AA but it wasn't for Best Foreign Film but for Academy Honorary Award.)
You have to make an impact with nature docus because there are so many of them. While I wouldn't put earth on the same level as Microcosmos or Winged Migration (my personal favorite) it certainly ranks with March of the Penguins and flies above the bevy of titles a person can't even remember. The hook in earth revolves around the cycle of life.
There are three animal deaths in earth although they edit right at the instant of the death bite. Technically four if you count a male polar bear who's starving and his attack on a crowd of walruses repulsed, but we don't see him die. The fact is on a studio or union movie set there are rules where any animal handling is done by professionals and no harm ever comes to animals right down to goldfish in a bowl. In the case of an antelope hunted by a hyena in earth the motion is super slow to where it was so hauntingly beautiful I couldn't look away if I wanted. (I don't know if it was shot at around 100 fps or if the effect was a digital slowing down of the film rate.) There's a herd of elephants that are stalked by a pride of lions. The nighttime footage is shot in infrared and instead of the green tinge it's grainy black-and-white. This sequence may be one reason the film may not be suitable for an adult or a child suseptable to nightmares. Kids understand what happens when a pet get hit by a car and the eternal return seen in earth only makes the film compelling and interesting for after movie discussion.
earth is narrated by James Earl Jones in that deep bass Vader/CNN voice. Jones also narrates an IMAX film Africa: The Serengeti (1994, partially funded by the local HMNS). I can never watch any animal documentary without hearing Jones from the film stating: "And on the plains of the Serengeti life is more powerful than death."