March of The Penguins

This was a very interesting documentary, it shows the struggles in which Penguins go through in order to mate and create new life. In extreme temperatures, Penguins walk many miles to many different locations for different purposes. Mating grounds and areas in which they eat are many miles apart from each other, some Penguins do not survive the commute. The relationship between one penguin and another is brought up to be similar to how humans are, jokingly put that a male and female will sometimes act similarly. There were many nice visuals in this documentary and a lot of close-up shots that really show us what a penguin really looks like. For years we've seen penguins in cartoons and on post-cards and they never actually compare to what they really look like.




This doc was very nicely narrated by Morgan Freeman, his voice brings a story to all this footage of the arctic and creates a comfortable experience for the viewer. Unlike most documentaries I've watched, there isn't one thing I don't like about this film, it's very playful and although it shows the down sides of a chick being born and quickly struggling to survive (and in some cases showing death), the narration and musical composition quickly brings your mood back up. I've read more about this documentary on Wikipedia, and apparently other versions of this film outside of the U.S release have different soundtracks, one of them apparently being an experimental electronic soundtrack by Émilie Simon. Definitely worth checking out when I get some free time.

More detailed information about this documentary can be on read on wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/March_of_the_penguins



                          
                       

                             WikiRebels - The Documentary

This documentary is about a website called Wikileaks. It was created by a man named Julian Assange, and his goal is to have a world-wide movement in the publications of classified information in which him and his association believe are morally questionable and criminal. His team is made up of mathematicians, programmers and hackers, they seek to bring these criminals to justice in what they describe as a "cost effective political weapon". They believe that all publications on the internet should be protected against censorship.

This documentary has some very interesting segments and some very cool depth of field shots, which I never thought I'd see in a documentary such as this one. It has excellent sit-down interviews with Journalists, Historians and people associated with Wikileaks. They take camera crews in to behind-the-scenes sort of locations such as a building that houses all computer servers for the Wikileaks website. This location is somewhere in Sweden where their operation is protected by Swedish laws, most probably being a main reason why many government organizations have trouble shutting them down.

Although I do not agree with everything that is leaked, some pieces of information are real eye-openers and stir up debatable topics. This is a video I found on Wikileaks that show U.S military troops opening fire on two American photographers and on innocent children in Iraq. Whether they were trigger happy or just taking orders, Wikileaks decided that this should be freely available for the public to view:



All in all, this was a very informative documentary!