IGX

Wife & I watched Part One last night, but didn't get through it, for reasons stated below.
Beautiful cinematography. Beautiful country.
Narrated by Sam Waterston, if my ears tell me right**. He does fine.
I also enjoyed most of the score.
But I couldn't stand the script...it was smarmy, new-agey, preachy, and repetitive.

So many references to "cathedrals," "Eden," "holy," "sacred," etc., yet scarcely mentioning "God." Which makes it alright, because we're worshipping Nature here.
PBS would laugh out of their office any script that treated the traditional God of Western Civilization with such reverence. Too unhip.

JMO, YMMV.


**EDIT - Narrator is Peter Coyote. He does fine.

Wait, so you didn't like it because it was nonsectarian?

Burns has been going downhill since his failure with The War. He couldn't even come close to touching the quality of a thirty-five year old show.

vern wrote:Burns has been going downhill since his failure with The War.

Wow. First negative thing I've EVER heard about The War. I loved it so much I watched ever ep multiple times on the ol' DVR before just buying the box set. I watch more documentaries than any healthy American should and The War is #1 on my list.

National Parks?

SOCIALISM!!!

I hated The War; buncha PC crap. But The Civil War owned. I can watch that repeatedly.

Johno,

But see, that's history. It is the history of the Parks. We were basically in a situation where all public land was seen as an opportunity for commerce. In 1871, for instance, several Montana entrepreneurs had begun building fences around the beauty spots of Yellowstone to capitalize on geysers and the like. What stopped them --- what gave legitimacy to the idea of preservation --- was the transcendentalist vision of nature as a cathedral apart from the Nortre Dames of Europe.

Yellowstone became a Park in 1872.

So maybe people are still talking that way today, and it bothers you. I don't blame you. But the history of the thought is inspiring. An American doesn't have to go the church, but, god damn it, an American can acquaint himself with the wilderness. He has a church finer than any built by the hand of man.

He don't need no steenking Notre Dame.

I've been to Notre Dame and it sucks compared to Yosemite valley.

Ronald RayGun wrote:

vern wrote:Burns has been going downhill since his failure with The War.

Wow. First negative thing I've EVER heard about The War. I loved it so much I watched ever ep multiple times on the ol' DVR before just buying the box set. I watch more documentaries than any healthy American should and The War is #1 on my list.

Ron, watch The World at War and get back to me. Burn's film should have been called 'The War As Seen Through the Eyes of Housewives'. I couldn't watch it.

I agree with Fats that the Civil War documentary is a masterpiece and should be seen by every American.

Particularly galling is the full title: The National Parks: America's Best Idea.
Thankfully, Burns included Clay Jenkinson, who deflated that idiocy.

seeahill wrote: But see, that's history. It is the history of the Parks.

To the point that I stopped watching, Burns shows a preservationist bias. Not really an accurate or balanced history.

Does he give conservationism its due?

vern wrote:Ron, watch The World at War and get back to me.

On it just as soon as Demonoid is back up. Any other recommendations? I can watch documentaries all day.

johno wrote:

seeahill wrote: But see, that's history. It is the history of the Parks.

To the point that I stopped watching, Burns shows a preservationist bias. Not really an accurate or balanced history.

Does he give conservationism its due?

I imagine, though I haven't seen any episodes but the first. You can't talk about National Parks and not mention Teddy Roosevelt. Preservationists and conservationists have been playing tug of war with Park policies for over a century. Any history of the Parks is incomplete if that conflict is ignored.

Roosevelt was all over at least one of the episodes I saw of the series. Great stuff.