Nature's Most Amazing Events
June 2009 Reviewed by: Rad Bennett Format: Blu-ray	(all ratings out of 5): Overall Enjoyment Picture Quality Packaged Extras Sound Quality

BBC’s Planet Earth was a benchmark for nature presentations in high definition. This "sequel" surpasses that standard. The photography is downright amazing and the stories are put together using careful research and imagination. Within a larger topic, the producers find smaller stories that we can relate to on an emotional level. There are six episodes in the series spread across two discs. After each segment is a diary that tells us about the filming of the segment. The amazing events pertain mostly to the change of seasons and how that affects millions of lives.

"The Great Melt" tells the story of the Arctic and its annual ice melt and how that affects the lives of permanent animal residents and migratory visitors. Polar bears are featured, and it is noted that the larger melts of late, due perhaps to global warming, are affecting the bear population dramatically. An unforgettable scene shows a bear and cub perched on the last remaining ice floe. Land is too far away, so they will probably not survive.

"The Great Salmon Run" takes place in the Pacific Northwest as salmon gather offshore and then travel upriver to reach the very same spot where they were born so they can spawn. They brave low water, rapids, and, most important, grizzly bears that eat a lot of salmon. The diary on this one is amazing as we watch how close to the bears the cameras are able to get. Some salmon swim 2000 miles to reach their birthplace and an average of four in a thousand make it.

"The Great Migration" chronicles the great migration of Wildebeest in Africa as they pursue green grazing lands to the north. A lion pride is left behind and the episode studies how they try to survive without their normal food being around. In the diary we find one photographer in a specially equipped vehicle who has shot all the footage and becomes very attached to a young lioness.

"The Great Tide": Off the coast off Africa, if conditions are right, sardines will migrate and provide food for a number of predators who follow their journey. The underwater shots are amazing, and the above-water shots of dolphin feeding on sardines with sea birds that dive bomb their prey after the dolphins drive it toward the surface are breathtaking.

"The Great Flood" is about the arid plains of Africa, which are turned into a lush paradise by yearly rains in the mountains a thousand miles away. Many animals’ lives depend on the greening of the desert. The focus here is on elephants, with one amazing scene of them skimming the surface of a stagnant pond with their trunks so as only to intake the freshest water.

"The Great Feast": Off the Pacific Northwest coast of America, herring gather in huge quantities to eat plankton and provide food for sea lions and other predators. The feast is so attractive that humpback whales come from Hawaii to participate. The diary contains an amazing underwater shot of one these huge mammals scooping up a whole bait ball of herring in one gulp.

As mentioned earlier, all the photography is splendid, and it has made it to Blu-ray in fine shape. The HD photography for this series seems a bit more consistently excellent than that for Planet Earth. The sound is only Dolby Digital stereo, but it seems to work just fine for the material. The title is being released on regular DVD at the same time as the Blu-ray -- on June 2.

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