Ben and I have been watching the BBC's fantastic series, Planet Earth. I can't recommend it highly enough. The footage is amazing and every 30 seconds or so has one or both of us exclaiming over some new, unbelievable fact.
Apparently, there's some controversy over the narration. The original BBC version is narrated by David Attenborough and he does a wonderful job. His narration is absolutely dynamic: reverent, playful and sorrowful, each in its rightful place. When a version was produced for distribution in the US, new narration was recorded. By Sigourney Weaver. This has led to a bunch of "Americans can't tolerate accents" sort of controversy. I don't know if that's true as a whole--I, for one, love them and wish I had half a dozen or more on any given day. But I have met people who are absolutely unwilling to put in the extra 3 seconds of effort it takes to listen through the lovely accents of some of my Indian, Jamaican and Asian business colleagues.
The series is worth watching no matter which version you choose. But I'd recommend the BBC version, if for no other reason than the following word-for-word transcription of a segment of the Plains episode. The line breaks represent Mr. Attenborough's dramatic pauses and the ellipses signify a few brief lines I cut for brevity's sake.
"Wild ass.
The males are fighting to win territories. Those that hold the best are most likely to attract a herd of females.
it's a frisky business. (...)
Female asses are mysterious creatures. They come and go as they please and much of their behavior seems unfathomable to an outsider. (...)
Wild ass are the most conspicuous pioneers of this wild frontier."
Seriously, people. I couldn't make this up.
2 comments:
ha! I am laughing out loud. Mark does this thing everytime I ask him to proof read something. He does a British accent and says it makes it sound better...anyway, he was doing that to my talk just last night!
That's so funny!
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