Supplied photo
Jazz fans know the familiar English lyrics: “Oh, the shark, babe, has such teeth, dear, and it shows them pearly white.”
The tune — Mack the Knife or the theme from The Threepenny Opera — then slides into its most vivid passage about scarlet billows that spread “when that shark bites, with his teeth, babe.” Bertold Brecht & company tapped into a primal human fear, even though the song is not about real sharks. popular entertainment, such as the Discovery series Shark Week, is the real deal on sharks. Yet, while watching this TV show and others like it, I do hear Bobby Darin crooning Mack the Knife. Primal fears are hard to shake.
Follow QMI Agency’s Bruce Kirkland on Twitter!
That is why Shark Night 3D is coming to theatres Sept. 2. It is a horror movie about humans and sharks that exploits our morbid fascination with the magnificent creatures most people wrongly assume are all relentless killers.
In stark contrast, Shark Week: Restless Fury examines the truth of sharks, busts myths, acknowledges real dangers and takes a sane approach to the biology of this unique family of predatory fish. Restless Fury is new to DVD and Blu-ray. Both are two-disc sets. The Blu-ray has one extra bonus episode on board. otherwise, contents are identical.
I also recommend three companion pieces from producer Jean-Michel Cousteau and director Jean-Jacques Mantello: Sharks 3D; Dolphins and Whales 3D; and Ocean Wonderland 3D. obviously, each is a Blu-ray release in the 3D format (and they played in theatres as IMAX 3D presentations). Most underwater photography lends itself to highly effective 3D, because human vision is already distorted in the deep. but there is also an option to play each 42-minute doc in 2D, so you benefit from high-def even without a 3D set.
All four titles offer something that Shark Night 3D and similar scare flicks deliberately avoid. whether it is Steven Spielberg’s classic, Jaws, or Roger Corman’s hilarious horror comedy, Sharktopus, Hollywood is about fear-mongering. Biology and the entertainment of information is absent. I find reality more fascinating, even if I treasure the Jaws experience or chuckle over Corman’s mischief.
Shark Week: Restless Fury: Shark Week has been on air since 1987. With an audience spiked by social media outbursts, especially on Twitter, it has become a 21st century phenomenon. you easily see why when watching the Restless Fury collection. example: in one episode, Into the Shark Bite, nature cameraman Andy Casagrande teams with shark expert Mark Addison to photograph the inside of a shark’s mouth while it bites down during a feeding frenzy.
Crazy? oh yeah, because Casagrande and Addison free-dive with wild sharks, including great whites. Fascinating? oh yeah, because some science ensues as they share their footage with biologists. “Once you’ve looked into a shark bite,” narrator Matt Liston intones, “you’ll never see sharks the same way again.” in another episode, former U.S. Army Special Forces medic Terry Schappert intelligently (if theatrically) stages a shark attack survival school to show us how to maximize our odds in the event of real shark encounters.
Sharks 3D: Offers a whimsical approach, with narrator Geoffrey Bateman as the voice of a sea turtle who is both awed by sharks and wary of becoming lunch, especially for makos or great whites.
Ocean Wonderland 3D: Bateman is back as the turtle in the least effective and most generalized of Cousteau’s three IMAX titles.
Dolphins and Whales 3D: Tribes of the Ocean: in a pleasant shift, Daryl Hannah serves as the soft-voiced narrator who highlights a series of cetacean species. this is the most authoritative and scientific of these three Cousteau productions.
CANOE — JAM! Video DVD Column: Take bite out of shark DVDs
