Tag: Nature

399: Queen of the Tetons was watched as part of the Seattle International Film Festival 2024! It had its showing on Sunday, May 12th as part of the festival, and it was the Seattle premiere of this film!

Bears Bears BEARS! Who doesn’t love a bear? Presumably someone who is not lost in the woods and surrounded by them. As long as the bear doesn’t have cocaine on its brain, you are threatening it, should be cool, right?

This documentary is about bears, but also a famous bear. 399 is her name. Given to her from whatever research study tagged her with that number at some point the past. She lives in Wyoming, and she is a GREAT mother bear. She has been popping out cubs for over a decade, and everyone knows about it. Why? Well, it turns out the greatest threat to a bear cubs life is…adult male bears. Because when they want to mate, if they see a lady bear with cubs, they will try to kill those kids. Because the lady bear has mother duties and doesn’t have time for sex. But, if her kids die. Then she will go to heat, and he can score. Life is really fucked up sometimes.

Bears don’t like strangers though. Or people. Or traffic. So they will avoid things like roads. But 399 realize that she can go next to the roads with traffic, and people, and male bears will leave her and her cubs alone. She can protect her cubs, by just being by people. Wild. So she does that. And has for years.

So 399 has become the most famous Grizzly bear in the area, and has hundreds of fans, who hang out and take pictures of her and her children, post hibernation, eating running playing and learning. And this has been true for a long, long time. However, when hanging out with people, and cars. There comes its own danger. And when cars and people gather and grow, to see the bear, that can put a lot of things in harms way, and be bad for the bears overall.

RAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHH BEEEEEEEAAAAAAARS!

Now, what this documentary, eventually, is about is the want and need to keep Grizzly Bears on the protected species list. Because there is growing movements in these states to give them an official bear hunting season. And no one is going to argue that bears shouldn’t have their population maintained, but most groups want to wait for these two distinct groups to start spreading their genes out more, which has not yet occurred. The other issue is: Once bears get a hunting season, then the famous bears that like people and become well known, are going to be the ones who have to pay the price.

Imagine a famous bear for 18 years or so, and then someone just comes along and legally shoots her. When people have their whole career and focus on that bear and nature photography and bringing along conservation practices. That would be a kick in the gut, or, maybe a shot.

Now I am a big fan of not killing bears until their population levels are much higher. But I can’t do anything about those states who vote on this. I don’t think the documentary spent nearly enough time on this topic, since it seemed like the main goal. Instead, we get a lot of time on 399, sweet bear shots and videos, and interviewing some of her bigger fans. Which is fine. But I wasn’t a fangirl before, and don’t think I will suddenly rush off and join the bear cult now. (Too far away, give me a local bear cult and we will see…).

Although I do think I need to point out, that one rancher interviewed, who wanted to be able to defend his property from bear attacks by killing them, decided to say it in a way that is reprehensibly racist towards asylum seekers coming to America. It was wildly inappropriate, and you can tell it is something he says all the time, without realizing how dehumanizing he is being at all. And so of course I cannot ever be on a side with someone like that.

In conclusion. 399 bear is great. Documentary is just fine. Even better if you want to see bears running around.

In trying to watch at least one documentary a week, I get a bit excited when I get to see a newer documentary, freshly released and ready to take on the world.

Mission Blue came out mid August as a Netflix Original Documentary, which of course meant that it was immediately available to watch. Not running around the indie markets and festivals for a year first.

And hey. I like Netflix original stuff sometimes. Or at least I think I would, if I had seen anything outside of Arrested Development or House Of Cards (just season 1, shh).

Mission Blue is the new Orange Is The New Black.

Mission Blue is a very very simple documentary. It is about Sylvia Earle, a woman marine biologist from the mid 1900s and on who helped change the science around the world. She was certainly a pioneer in the field, being at one point the first person to go beyond a specific depth in the ocean, and even living in an underwater research facility for a few weeks.

And where is she now? Still doing science job stuff. Yay old people!

More or less, this documentary was made after a TED Talk in 2009 of the same talk, where Sylvia had a very simple idea. She wants to set up protected ecosystems and environments around the world’s oceans where no commercial development or farming can occur. No bullshit, just fish and fish accessories.

And hey, it is a good idea. Sure. Why not. Like national parks. As long as I can still eat my fish and power my car, then you know I am definitely fine with that.

Outside of this novel idea, we just get to see a lot about Sylvia’s life and accomplishments, what she is doing now, and bad stuff happening to our oceans.

Overall, Mission Blue was interesting, but just felt like a bio piece on a person. I guess documentaries can be used for that purpose, but it makes most of this feel like an hour episode of some show that probably exists on the Biography Channel.

Nothing about this was super elite quality wise or showing me that much that I haven’t seen before. But it was exciting seeing James Cameron, because James Cameron raises the bar significantly by being in this documentary.

Bears.

Bears Bears Bears? Yes, Bears.

Okay, Bears.

We got a Disneynature film here, and they have been doing this for a few years. The only other movie that they did that I saw was African Cats, and man, did I love it.

So why not Bears? Why not a short movie in Alaska about a year in their life? Yeah, let me get some bears.

This is about a bear named Sky, and her two kids, Scout and Amber. They are new born cubs, and it starts with them in the den waiting for winter to end. We then get to see their journey from the mountains, to the coast, to salmon season, to hibernation. According to the movie, only half of all bear cubs survive the journey in their first years. Well, shit. There are two cubs here. Which one will it be?! The adventurous Scout, or the mama’s bear Amber?

Maybe one will take the other out in a fight well ahead of time.

They have to face avalanches, scarcity of food, big mean adult bears who want to eat them, foxes, raging rivers, and more.

We also get John C. Reilly as the narrator. He does an okay job. I get kind of annoyed, because he decides to “speak” for a lot of the animals, which has him then carrying on a conversation with himself. It is meant for humor, to add to the story and all, but I don’t remember African Cats having that bull crap in it, but still enjoying it.

I do find parts of the film questionable. I really don’t believe the avalanche scene happened as shown. I think some splicing went on there.

I am happy that during the credits, they showed a lot of the behind the scenes filming. So they had someone filming their camera man a lot, meaning it would show them filming, and then right after, what they filmed, to get it all into perspective. That was my biggest question with African Cats: How? And they kind of answer it! Really cool to see what they had to do to try and make this as natural as possible, without interfering. Although, you know, I doubt it worked out. Just by being there, they naturally interfere.

Overall though, this movie had a TON of awesome shots that are really hard to see, with great high definition. Even the salmon were exciting. Watching all of that shit was cool. I am glad they did it.

Come for the Bears, stay for the Bears. Unless your Stephen Colbert. He will probably hate this movie.