Wait till WALL-E comes out in a few months.

"March of the Penguins" is visually stellar, and in that regard there is nothing wrong with it.  And it is inevitable, perhaps, that we will identify with penguins, or with any animals, when we concentrate on certain experiences common to all animals, such as procuring food, mating and reproducing, and, in many species, caring for the young.  But the voice-over soundtrack was simplistic and a waste of time; it was that, and not the photography, that made the movie look a bit like propaganda for right-wing family values.  As I wrote before, the same movie should be re-released, with a more scientifically sophisticated voice-over.

Possibly there is some of that inevitable identification with animals in the acclaimed "Beaver Valley."  I have not seen it; and unfortunately it seems not to be available through Netflix, which is how we get our movies now.

I also have never seen the popular reality series "Meerkat Manor," shown on the Animal Planet channel.  From what I understand about it, it sounds like the animals are presented in a very anthropomorphized way; the Wikipedia article says that when one of the meerkats was dangerously injured, the producers received criticism from viewers for not intervening.  I cannot judge.  The highly socialized lives of meerkats may indeed look like what is shown.

It would seem likely that in the projected Disney movie about chimpanzees, some anthropomorphization will be hard to avoid.  In fact, though, recent documentaries about chimpanzees emphasizing the aggressive and violent side to their nature have been quite alienating, imho.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.

seriously, that's pretty out there. so i weirdly respect that i guess. hey, wait, come to think of it, i do remember seeing some hovering black u.n. choppers in a few scenes . . .

disney doing nature docs. if they did it with classic disney characters doing the narrations, i.e., donald duck doing a show about ducks, i see a ratings champ.

Writer/creator www.lumpyland.com/blog

We can correct the science later. We need their heartstrings NOW.

If we give an anthromophized name to every endangered charismatic megafauna and assign 11 year old girls to monitoring their lemur or whatever on the web those creatures have a fighting chance. As species lost in the forest preserves overrun by civil wars they are dying off.

More "Meerkat Manor" and more shows like it. It beats the snot out of "Family Guy" reruns.

Put the Carbon Back

Notice how unrealistic it is, that the owl is a good and trusted friend of all the little animals on the forest floor!  Yes indeed; any real owl would those little baby mammals very very much ...

Also unrealistic: that Bambi, born in the Spring, is still a small fawn the following Winter; that when the animals reach sexual maturity, it is the girls who are the forward ones, and the boys are backward and shy; that the Buck, Bambi's father, should recognize his son, and seek to save him from the fire.

"The Lion King" is pretty hard to take too, in spite of excellent drawing of many kinds of animals.

Much more satisfactory, so far as Mythos goes, is "The Jungle Book," which does not pretend to be a real lesson about animals (though there are some good observations about wolves at least), and which manages to get us to think about the philosophical question, How are human beings like animals, and how are we different?

On "March of the Penguins" as religious-right propaganda: I did not make that up; and I would not have interpreted the documentary that way.  But it is a fact that a number of churches did recommend that movie for family viewing.

Chickens deserve our true friendship! So do fish! So do other sentient beings! Let us learn to be kind.