thit_cho

I watched the second hour last night, and I found it no more interesting than the first hour, and as equally repetitive. I also found the constant use of extreme close ups, where parts of the animal are cropped out of the scene, annoying. And thankfully, I Tivo'd it, since there must be 30 minutes of commercials in the final hour.

Other criticisms:

1) Way too much anthropomorphism -- the narrator attrbuted thoughts, emotions, plans, etc. to the lions and it seemed very silly

2) A subplot revolved around lion infanticide, but, notwithstanding the filmmakers' constant monitoring of the lions, there was no cinematic evidence (or, even worse, perhaps the video of the infanticide was edited out so as not to offend the National Geographic audience)

atravelynn

Thit cho's comment about reptitiveness made me chuckle. About 30 minutes into the program my husband retired to bed. He stumbled back out into the living room an hour later after only dozing and in a sleepy daze observed, "You're watching a rerun."

I liked the program and had a special interest since I'll be there this summer. But I agree it was less scientific and more Hollywood or Disney than I would prefer.

Still, stunning photography.

tioupine

Greetings

I'm trying to translate "Tsaro pride" and "Skimmer pride" in French. Do you by chance happen to know the origins of Tsaro and Skimmer ? I don't know whether I should translate them or not ?
Thanks for your help

Kavey

Interesting comments... hope the leopard documentary doesn't suffer the same treatment.

I haven't seen this yet - anyone have any info on UK timetables for showing?

jweis

If watching lions hunting and interacting in such a lovely environment and in broad daylight circumstances seems repetitive, then you might want to rethink your expectations...

IMO, repetitive might be better described as sitting in your vehicle watching a pride sleeping from 10am to 5pm, making sure you don't miss something and hoping they will wake and hunt while you are there with them instead of while you are taking a siesta or in the wee hours of early morning

I thought the film accomplished its purpose beautifully and this is what Duba is all about.

James

jweis

Hi tioupine,

Tsaro is the tswana name for the Wild Date Palms (Phoenix reclinata) which occur throughout much of the Delta. The pride is simply named after that plant, probably for no meaningful reason.

The Skimmer pride is named after the African Skimmer, a bird found in the Delta.

The guides usually name an individual or group of animals after something they saw when they first encountered the animal or perhaps after some behaviour exibited. For example, "Matata's pride" (lions) at Mombo is named for the old and very large female of that pride, who they call "Matata", because she gives others a lot of problems. She has a bit of a quick temper.

James

tioupine

Thank you very much for your answers. That's very kind of you.
Have a nice day

santharamhari

Just watched Relentless enemies last night. I liked it. I thought the photography was brilliant. Although, not as captivating as some of their prior films......i still enjoyed it.

To me, it seemed like......the focus of the movie was about the Tsaro Pride and it's relationship with killing the buffalo. The story based around the one pride and it's tactics.

Lots of us, who have been to Duba and know the history of the 3 prides and the duba boys and the interaction with the buffalo are probably a bit disappointed. But, i dont think the Joubert's were trying to tell us the same story.

I found fascinating the part where.....the other members of the Tsaro pride found the female from the pride who was killing off all cubs for no apparent reason.

All in all a good movie. My fav 2 would be Lions of darkness and Eternal enemies.

Hari

chris_r

I thought the movie was quite good. The video footage was great, but the commentary was pretty average. It definitely makes me want to go to Duba some day. You can download the movie from www.mininova.org for free; if you do, you need to download Utorrent (to download the movie) and a program to play the movie (I use Media Player Classic). The download will take about 12-24 hours.

Kavey

I've watched 2/3 of the film so far - I recorded it on Saturday and actually stopped watching it because of the repetitive nature mentioned by others above.

It seems so very fragmented to me - I don't know if that's because they have presented the clips in chronological order but it's part of what makes the whole thing less cohesive.

I'd much rather have a segment on hunting tactics and another segment on changing buffalo responses and another on giving birth and bringing up cubs and another still on incursions from other prides and interactions between prides. Instead it all seemed so very jumbled up to me.

Also, whilst I know the whole point of the film is the lion and buffalo interaction, every so often there are snapshots of other wildlife. I like these but they are literally so short that I can't even get a proper look before we've cut away from them. I'm sure, with all the repetition a few extra seconds per cutaway would be doable!

I'm enjoying the beauty of the footage itself, certainly - it's impossible (for me) not to enjoy well-shot footage of wildlife in Africa doing what it does.

But I can't say the film as a whole stands out from many other documentaries I have seen. It doesn't do very well at telling the story of this particular pride (other than that they only hunt buffalo, YES WE GET THAT ALREADY!!!) and it doesn't really provide any new insights.

Oh, by the way, the narration here is by Jeremy Irons. Am I right in guessing that it's narrated by someone else for the US release? If so, wonder if they have been given exactly the same scripts or not?

PredatorBiologist

Kavey: Jeremy Irons did the narration in the U.S. version too. He did the voice of Scar in the Lion King so I guess that was his tie in to lions.

I agree with all of your comments on the film.

Kavey

Yes, I figured that was the reason he'd been asked to narrate but wasn't sure whether they'd used a different narrator for a US release - I've come across this from time to time!

I watched the rest of the film tonight and it was just as disjointed as the preceding 2/3 though the footage was just as beautiful to watch.

I now understand the point about that rather odd point about infanticide - in one of the later sequences I watched yesterday they mentioned only that one of the lionesses had stayed back to guard the cubs but that they seemed to all be missing until a single dead body was found later by one of the mothers. And suddenly in the bit I watched today there was talk of the lioness that had killed all the cubs for the last two years or something! To make a point such as this on film (one of the more interesting things alluded to in the whole documentary) one really needs more specific footage and better linking. I have to assume they had more than we saw to go on but didn't present the case to us with their chosen footage at all.

Really rather odd all in all.

santharamhari

Kavey,

Oddly......after a week of torture from all my relatives at my cousin's wedding (WEEK LONG!!!) i deceided to relax last nite by watching Relentless enemies for the 100th time on dvd.

What i like the most is, i feel the whole documentary is a bit longer than most.

Hari

Kavey

Hari,
Don't get me wrong, I'd watch it again just for the footage but... for length I'd rather watch a number of episodes from a good series. I recently recorded and am currently watching series including Equator, Living Edens, Life of Birds and another one on jungles.

santharamhari

Kavey,

I love Living Edens......couple episodes that come to mind.....Bandhavgarh and Kalahari.

Equator i like also........

Hari

Kavey

I don't think I have a Bandhavgarh episode recorded - I'll check though. Would love to watch that before our trip there later this year!