General: September 2003 Archives

I don't often go to the movies, and it's even rarer that we go as a family. There aren't many new films worth seeing on the big screen.

Tonight the four of us went to Winged Migration, which has been nominated for the Academy Award for best feature documentary. (The link will take you to the Internet Movie Database for all the details.) The photography is amazing, capturing the beauty of winged flight and the spectacular planet below -- a French village, a Saharan oasis, Arctic glaciers, the Grand Canyon, the Amazon. Here's a link to the official website, with a list of birds and locations in the film.

There were a few scenes that were a bit much for our three-year-old to handle, like when the geese were "getting shooted," and when a wounded tern was being mobbed by predatory crabs, the likeliest nightmare fodder in the movie. (I may have nightmares about that.) For the most part, the film would show an impending threat but did not graphically display the outcome. Some scenes depicted threats from man, but without being preachy. One such scene shows Canada geese in a pen on a farm, getting agitated as a flock of migrating geese passes overhead. Later, we see a boat carrying captured macaws, parrots, and monkeys traveling down the Amazon and watch as a macaw picks the crude lock on its cage and escapes.

This is a film that deserves to be seen in all its big-screen, surround-sound glory. It's showing three more nights -- through Thursday -- at the AMC Southroads here in Tulsa. An enhanced 35mm print for IMAX was released in late August and may find its way to Tulsa in a few months.

P.S. This film lost the "Best Documentary" award to Michael Moore's "Bowling for Columbine." There is no justice in Hollywood.