IMAX Beavers: Thanks for the Tip
I’ve studded my Netflix queue with your suggestions, and the Beavers
Whoa.
Stunning movie. The cinematography will knock your socks off. I kept thinking, this can’t be real, it’s like really good CGI…But it’s real. Up close, delightfully personal, and captivating. Rose and Beanie watched the movie three times, I think. (It isn’t very long, alas.) And I snuck in an encore viewing myself—I couldn’t resist showing it to Scott, you see.
There were beavers on the undeveloped land surrounding our old neighborhood; they had a big lodge downstream of the place the kids called the Rock Store, named after a splashy afternoon spent collecting and displaying stony wares on a big flat boulder where the creek ran wide. To get to the Rock Store, you had to hike through a field that had once been young woods. The beavers had turned it to meadow, and we marveled at the stubby, pointy tree trunks left behind, so exactly like pictures we’d seen in books.
As the creek wended its way toward the marshy basin where a bald eagle was rumored to fish, it gurgled past trees whose lower trunks had been wrapped with chicken wire: the attempt of a concerned neighbor to save our woods from the enterprising beaver clan. Undaunted, the beavers turned their attention to a location half a mile away, where slender trees shaded the small pond that welcomes people into the neighborhood. One by one, those trees began to topple.
The film’s narrator remarked that after humans, beavers wreak more change upon the landscape than any other animal.
They dance, too; did you know that?
Excellent tip, ladies. I hadn’t realized you could get IMAX films on DVD—you can bet we’ll be checking out a good many more. The whales movie, for starters…
*Link added per Brigid’s request…always happy to oblige our Brigid!
Brigid! says:
Now that we’re drooling, how about a link so we can get one of our own, please? Thanks!
On July 17, 2007 at 1:28 pm
sherry says:
I’m so glad you all liked it! Out of all the IMAX DVDs we’ve rented, it was our favorite. I have to say that the dolphin one was a let down after the Beavers 🙁 I haven’t seen the whales yet, so hopefully it is a good one!
Blessings,
Sherry
On July 17, 2007 at 4:25 pm
Patty says:
Jane might enjoy hearing some of Alice Outwater’s book, Water: A Natural History.
http://www.amazon.com/Water-Natural-History-Alice-Outwater/dp/0465037801/ref=sr_1_16/002-4035146-8712019?ie=UTF8&s=books&qid=1184813675&sr=1-16
The quote from the movie about beaver’s wreaking more change than humans really caught my eye! I read Outwater’s book for a college course and she makes the case that beavers, were stewards of the environment. A quote from a review…
Once, a tenth of the total land area was beaver-built wetland; the beaver’s decline caused the first major shift in the nation’s water cycle. The depressions buffalo made on the ground and the holes dug by prairie dogs collected rain and runoff that seeped down to the water table; our waterways have been transformed by the loss of these keystone species.
On July 18, 2007 at 8:02 pm
Patty says:
Excuse me, there’s an apostrophe and a comma that I’d like you to ignore in my previous post.
That’s all.
On July 18, 2007 at 8:03 pm
Jane Ramsey says:
Sounds great! Can’t wait to see it. Thanks for all the good movie suggestions; my Netflix queue was getting pretty low, too!
On July 19, 2007 at 11:42 am
Lisa says:
We love the Signing Time DVDs! And thanks for the link to the mommy speech therapy site; it looks very helpful.
On July 25, 2007 at 1:00 pm