Calendars out, all - Ken Burns' "The National Parks"

[Mark Sawyer]

Word...

Yo, what up dawg? You jiggy widdit?

[ASRafferty]

I just saw Episode One (the obliging PBS stations in NH and Vermont showed it this afternoon...maybe for those of us who will be in temple tonight?)...thinking of the sheer time and work it must have taken to get the film is as awesome as the film itself!

What a blessing this country is.

[John Bowen]

Amy,

Here in Richmond it is being broadcast every two hours from noon till midnight tonight. I caught the noon showing. A wonderful film. I can't wait to see the other five episodes.

[z_photo]

i caught it this evening as well. i was surprised to see an acquiantance from glacier NP appear.

[Jim Cole]

Episode 1 was outstanding!

Might have to own the DVD series.

[ASRafferty]

i was surprised to see an acquiantance from glacier NP appear.

That's exactly why I started this thread...to see what people are watching for and thinking when they see their special places in this context.

I spend a lot of time at the Marsh-Billings-Rockefeller estate in Woodstock, VT, where conservation/preservation is the theme, so that's my local "touch point" -- the house itself and what emanated from there, the paintings and the Watkins negatives kept there, and wondering what (or whom) I'll see in the film that I recognize.

But what always hits me when I'm at M-B-R is how different the scenes in the Moran paintings (for instance) hanging in the house are from the house in which they're hanging -- and yet both (and many more places equally different from either of those) are national parks. It's like Burns has gathered your guy at Glacier, the rangers at M-B-R, and heaven knows who else we'll see, together for a family portrait!

[Bill_1856]

Beautiful, yes. And a lot of history I was unaware of.
But I was nearly driven away by the "soundtrack by Musak," which is so unlike the complementary music in The Civil War and Lewis and Clark documentaries. In fact, I even tried turning off the sound and watching the captions, but that didn't work too well for me.
I look forward to seeing the rest of the episones, but I gotta admit to being somewhat disappointed with the first two hours (by comparison with his earlier work).

[mandoman7]

I believe Preston Reed is the guitarist, and although he's a great player, I would agree that his playing is somewhat of risky choice for this presentation. I took a girlfriend to a show of his once and she hated it. In general, however, I think we should be grateful for those instances when distorted electric guitar is not present.

[Bruce Watson]

I was sorta disappointed in this effort compared to his previous efforts. Mr. Burns' previous efforts set my expectations extremely high. And this is the first time I've seen one of his documentaries on HDTV. Still, this film has some flaws that I thought pretty egregious.

For example, that head shot of the Statue of Liberty was way out of focus, as was the immediate next shot of an old cannon against a nice sunset. There was a shot down the Grand Canyon of the Yellowstone that someone had walloped with the saturation hammer too -- I've never seen water in a river turn neon blue like that. That shot actually looked like it might have been stock footage from somewhere -- it actually looked like a smaller format (16 mm?) and a different, older, film stock.

And I'll second on the background muzak. It's almost like the background music was just an afterthought. Which seems to me to be unlike Mr. Burns' other efforts.

Maybe I'm just being overly picky. But these are issues that I don't expect from a guy of Ken Burns' stature and accomplishment.

All that said, it was still one of the best two hours of TV I've seen in ages. It may not be perfect, but it's still really quite good. I'm looking forward to the next installment tonight.

[Robert Hughes]

That shot actually looked like it might have been stock footage from somewhere -- it actually looked like a smaller format (16 mm?) tonight.

Yes, documentaries use stock footage - otherwise their costs increase astronomically. New 35mm production is measured in dollars per second - and when you consider the 10:1 shooting ratio common in documentary film production, that really eats into the budget. Unless you want to watch video camcorder footage exclusively, that is - about as interesting as watching the washing machine go around.