You certainly can't say that the Discovery Channel's spendy, visually
striking, made-for-high-definition travelogue “Discovery Atlas” looks
like basic cable. Five years in the making, this country-by-country
tour of the globe uses just about every camera shot imaginable -- from
the ever-trendy satellite views to intensely gorgeous close-ups -- in
order to convey the grandeur and significance of just living on planet
Earth, whether one is a humble farmer, a world-class athlete, a monk or
a nutty billionaire.
The first four installments begin with “Discovery Atlas: China Revealed” at 8 p.m. CT Sunday night, simulcasting on Discovery HD for those of you with hi-def TVs. In all, 30 two-hour movies will be produced for “Atlas,” making it “the most ambitious entirely-HD project ever made,” in the immodest words of Discovery chief and former BBC executive, Jane Root.
But after watching this week's film and previewing next week's on Italy, I found myself asking the Peggy Lee question, “Is that all there is?”
Discovery faces a tall task. As one of the most experienced high-definition producers out there, it is trying to advance the quality of HD beyond the level of IMAX, where instilling vertigo in its audiences seems a higher priority than telling them a story. We see the fruits of this effort in Sunday's episode, "China Revealed."
In between the dazzling electronic murals, the overhead shots of Shanghai and Beijing, the Wall, rice patties, a Buddhist monastery and other visual delights (all superbly filmed, as one might expect), there is the human element. Out of 1.3 billion people the filmmakers have zoomed in on a handful who will help, to use the marketing phrase, tell China's story.
We meet a window-washer who is toiling in this dangerous job in order to provide for his family out in China's impoverished rural heartland. We meet a 12-year-old gymnast working in that country's burgeoning Olympic mill. We meet Vincent Lo, a builder of buildings and, we are told, “China's answer to Donald Trump.”
All fascinating, no doubt, to the viewer who has absolutely no exposure to China. But does that describe even the casual Discovery viewer? I found most of the stories overly familiar, and as my attention flagged, even the segues to pretty pictures began to lose their impact. I found myself wanting narrator James Spader to stop telling us about the long-dead Cultural Revolution and more about the current regime's suppression of political dissent. When Spader said that China's government pursued “extraordinary” population-control measures in the 1980s and 1990s (“bizarre” and “eugenic” were the words I had in mind), I expected to hear about gender selection in the provinces, not just all of those only kids running around Beijing.
Here and at other points in the film, I was disappointed. Other moments offered genuine revelations. One segment followed a female drug enforcement officer who is compelled by tradition to go home after each exhausting day and do “what a daughter is supposed to do” -- care for her aging parents. (They don't seem to approve of her career choice.)
But such profiles don't occur frequently enough. And so, one must ask, could Discovery have done better?
Well, as it happens, at the same press event where TV critics first laid their eyes on “Discovery Atlas” this summer, there was another announcement: Ted Koppel was joining the Discovery Channel to produce news documentaries. I think Discovery needs to pay a visit to Koppel and ask him to lend “Atlas” the cultural and political heft that this ambitious travelogue clearly needs and deserves.
Daily Planet (Discovery Canada) goes to China ...
lots of new stories about China ..
http://discoverychannel.ca/dailyplanet/china/
Posted by: sanj | September 28, 2006 at 06:35 PM