Wednesday, 1 February 2006

Arts

Film: March of the Penguins

The Oscar nominations were announced yesterday so it's time to start swotting up on the contenders. March of the Penguins is nominated as Best Documentary Feature and you don't get much more documentary than a nature film in part produced by National Geographic.

The picture itself is beautiful but completely let down by the dour, banal narration. The voice-over tries too hard to be poetic with curiously bad analogies such as "balancing their eggs like tightrope walkers". It also glosses over death, preferring to talk about penguins "fading into the white" or "disappearing".

I gather the original French soundtrack is very different in style which begs the question, which version is nominated for an Academy Award? If the film wins on 5 March I'm sure it won't have been the English one.

Posted by pab at 19:50 | Comments will be back later in the year. Please email me instead!