Living Landscapes: Underwater Paradise Hawaii Blu-ray Movie

Rating summary

Movie		4.0
Video		4.5
Audio		4.0
Extras		0.0
Overall		4.0

Living Landscapes: Underwater Paradise Hawaii Blu-ray Movie Review

Spend a little time foraging through the exotic waters of Hawaii.

Reviewed by Jeffrey Kauffman June 26, 2010

We’ve put a man on the Moon, but the challenges of the deep continue to confound us, as the horrible tragedy of the oil spill in the Gulf of Mexico has so recently shown us. There almost seems to be something easier about shooting a satellite into the far reaches of outer space than there is about easily exploring even a mile or so beneath the watery mass of the planet’s oceans. Perhaps it’s for that fact that underwater photography has remained so curiously alluring. I know I wasn’t alone in thinking some of the most fascinating footage in the epochal Planet Earth series were the underwater segments, and indeed the same producers managed to craft an excitingly comprehensive standalone look at our planet’s waterways called Blue Planet.

Living Landscapes (which manages to squeeze more branding onto its covers than most labels, featuring the soubriquet Earthscapes as well as Digital Environments) is perhaps just a tad less ambitious here with Underwater Paradise Hawaii, a nice hour or so of subsurface looks at a variety of fish life and some gorgeous coral outcroppings, all set to some appealing music. It’s a familiar enterprise to those of you who have purchased or seen previous Living Landscapes (or Earthscapes) titles, though it’s perhaps just a bit more exotic than most due to its unusual locale.

Take a deep breath--we're about to go under!

Underwater Paradise Hawaii kicks off with some great footage of multicolored fish scurrying in and out of coral outcroppings. Soon we also catch sight of dolphins and the occasional stingray which floats by just so slightly ominously as the cameraman shoots its from below. An extremely odd looking sea porcupine (for wont of a better term) crawls across the sandy ocean floor, letting loose some fine granules. Huge tortoises also make an appearance before we get to less animated shots of sea shells and coral reefs, sporting some neatly alien pastel colors. Suddenly, just when you least expect it, an actual human in the form of a scuba diver, swims by to remind you there must be some homo sapiens down here shooting all this great stuff.

Several excellent segments follow, including a fun longer sequence with tortoises apparently playing in their own private oceanic water park. Huge waves takes these creatures on the ride of their lives and one can almost imagine seeing a faint smile on their turtle lips as they zoom in and out of wave patterns. This fun sequence has a great use of tabla music which makes it very effective. We also see swarms of small fish scurrying about like locusts of the sea, before there’s a short segment which starts in an underwater cave and then opens up to reveal a pod of whales, impressively huge against the glint of sun far above their heads. What quickly becomes apparent is that for every recognizable species like tortoise or whale, there are a host of completely odd looking fish swimming the waters in and around Hawaii, some with amazingly beautiful colors on them, even if their shapes are almost alien looking at times.

In fact it's the incredible variety of sea life, both fish and relatively "inanimate" scenes like the coral reefs and undersea flowers, that make Underwater Paradise Hawaii such an interesting entry in the series. While we do get a couple of longer segments, notably the tortoise sequence, and to a lesser extent, the whale footage which is next to last on this outing, Underwater Paradise Hawaii is an amazingly variegated trip through a world very few people have seen, especially this up close and personal.

Director Michael Heumann always does an impressive job in capturing these “real life adventures” for his Living Landscapes series. He evidently enlisted the aid of other filmmakers for the whale sequence, and he may have just slightly cheated on some of the fish school shots, as the closing credits reveal that some of the footage was shot at the Waikiki Aquarium. Be that as it may, this is an unusually calming and evocative trip through “ambient television,” one that does indeed turn a flatscreen into an immense aquarium in and of itself. With a varied soundtrack featuring a wealth of different kinds of music, this is one of the stronger “ambient television” releases I’ve viewed recently, with a wealth of gorgeous imagery set to appealing sounds.

Living Landscapes: Underwater Paradise Hawaii Blu-ray Movie, Video Quality 

This VC-1 encoded disc offers a 1080i "live" image in a 1.78:1 aspect ratio and is surprisingly sharp, especially considering its watery origins. Colors here are nicely varied and very well saturated, but it's the sharpness of the image that may surprise a lot of viewers. There's very little murky water here, and instead we get crystalline views of multicolored coral reefs, deeply blue waters supporting graceful dolphins, and some of the oddest looking fish you've ever seen. Occasionally when there are scores of fish swimming in unison, they evidently kick up a little "sea dust" by dint of their massed movement, and at those times softness does creep into the image, since we're viewing them through a fine haze of sand. But this is really one of the best looking Living Landscapes releases yet and augurs well for the future of the series.

Living Landscapes: Underwater Paradise Hawaii Blu-ray Movie, Audio Quality 

There's no lossless audio here, but the standard Dolby Digital 5.1 mix is quite appealing on its own terms. Music is presented by a panoply of artists, including Eric Montgomery, Stephen Kent, Kurt Kunzal, Paul Lawler, Craig Urquhart, Viktor, Inner Spa and Gary Malkin. Unlike some other Living Landscapes releases, there's no option to choose between ambient sounds and music. This is a very clear sounding soundtrack, with some robust low end (your subwoofers will really thump during the tabla sequence mentioned above), with a decent amount of surround activity with various instruments. This isn't a knock your socks off soundtrack, but instead is designed to be the aural equivalent of the "digital wallpaper" the images are supposed to be. It's a pleasant listening experience should you choose to really tune in to it, but not one that will demand your attention.

Living Landscapes: Underwater Paradise Hawaii Blu-ray Movie, Special Features and Extras 

No supplements are offered on this budget priced disc.

Living Landscapes: Underwater Paradise Hawaii Blu-ray Movie, Overall Score and Recommendation 

Underwater Paradise Hawaii does in fact turn your flatscreen into a very large aquarium. This inviting window on a largely unseen world sports a terrific series of images and a very appealing soundtrack. And the best part of it is you don't need to buy fish food. If you've been curious to check out one of these "ambient television" releases, this one comes recommended.