From the acclaimed team that brought you BBC's visual feast "Planet Earth," this feature length film incorporates some of the same footage from the series with all new scenes following three remarkable, yet sadly endangered, families of animal across the globe.
In INDEPENDENCE DAY Roland Emmerich brought you the near destruction of the earth by aliens. Now, in THE DAY AFTER TOMORROW the enemy is an even more devastating force: nature itself. Devastating tornados rip Los Angeles, a massive snowstorm pounds New Delhi; hail the size of grapefruit batters Tokyo; and in New York City, the temperature swings from sweltering to freezing in one day. In this special-effects packed, highly anticipated event motion picture, an abrupt climate change has cataclysmic consequences for the entire planet.
In this spoof of "March of the Penguins," nature footage of penguins near the South Pole gets a soundtrack of human voices. Carl and Jimmy, best friends, walk 70 miles to the mating grounds where the female penguins wait. The huddled masses of females - especially Melissa and Vicki - talk about males, mating, and what might happen this year. Carl, Jimmy, and the other males make the long trek talking about food, fornication and flatulence. Until this year, Carl's sex life has been dismal, but he falls hard for Melissa. She seems to like him. A crisis develops when Jimmy comes upon something soft in the dark. Can friends forgive? Does parenthood await Carl and Melissa?
Each winter, alone in the Antarctica, a truly remarkable journey takes place as it has done for millennia. Thousands of Emperor penguins abandon the deep blue security of their ocean home and clamber onto the frozen ice to begin their long journey into a region so bleak, so extreme, it supports no other wildlife at this time of year. In single file, the penguins march blinded by blizzards, buffeted by gale force winds.
They head for their traditional breeding ground where - after a ritual courtship of intricate dances and delicate maneuvering, accompanied by a cacophony of ecstatic song - they will pair off into monogamous couples and mate. The females remain long enough only to lay a single egg. The males are left behind to guard and hatch the precious eggs, which they cradle at all times on top of their feet. Subjected to subzero temperatures and the terrible trials of the polar winter, they face great dangers.
After two months during which the males eat nothing, the eggs begin to hatch. The chicks can not survive for long on their fathers' limited food reserves. If their mothers are late returning from the ocean with food, the newly-hatched young will die.
Once the families are reunited, the roles reverse, the mothers remaining with their new young while their mates head, exhausted and starved, for the sea, and food. As the weather grows warmer and the ice floes crack and melt, the adults march many hundreds of miles over some of the most treacherous territory on Earth, until the chicks are ready to take their first faltering dive into the deep blue waters of the Antarctic.
French language with latvian and russian subtitles.
From National Geographic Films, the people who brought you MARCH OF THE PENGUINS
and Paramount Classics, the studio that brought you AN INCONVENIENT TRUTH, ARCTIC TALE is an epic adventure that explores the vast world of the Great North. The film follows the walrus, Seela and the polar bear, Nanu, on their journey from birth to adolescence to maturity and parenthood in the frozen Arctic wilderness. Once a perpetual winter wonderland of snow and ice, the walrus and the polar bear are losing their beautiful icebound world as it melts from underneath them. Narrated by Queen Latifah.
Cast: Queen Latifah, Preston Bailey, Christina Robinson
Directed by Sarah Robertson