BOOKS & ARTS NATURE|Vol 451|24 January 2008

FILM Bustamante has run a booth at the festival where attendees Science at Sundance leave video messages for the future that, she promises, The 2008 Sundance Film Festival, a global look at how water will be lovingly transferred ending this week in Park City, scarcity drives corruption from medium to medium as Utah, included a healthy handful and big profits for certain technology changes in the of science-themed films. Since corporations, a theme also coming 500 years. the successes of 2005’s feel-good explored in the science- Finally, a hip short film Antarctic birdfest, March of the fiction film Sleep Dealer. that is actually a preview for Penguins, and 2006’s feel-bad Al Meanwhile, The a forthcoming flash-based Gore lecture An Inconvenient Truth, Linguists documents two computer game, Gas Zappers, scientific documentaries have been researchers travelling the spotlights the goofier side in the ascendant — especially those globe recording languages of global warming. It depicts about the environment. that are about to become a polar bear (what else?) Among the documentaries angling extinct. “It points out a global crisis sex lives of , collectively defeating carbon-emitting villains for a screen at the local multiplex, that people may have only been titled Green Porno, sees Isabella with the help of such figures as or at least a slot on television, are vaguely aware of,” says one of the Rossellini — also the director Intergovernmental Panel on Climate two that tackle conservation issues. pair, David Harrison of Swarthmore — dressed as a dragonfly (pictured) Change chairman Rajendra Pachauri Fields of Fuel is a paean to biodiesel College near Philadelphia. in the mood for love. Another, — who is clad as Moses and uses starring the young activist Josh More upbeat fare is to be found artsy short, Untitled #1, imagines a his tablets to beat back waves Tickell. Flow: For the Love of Water is in the shorts. A series on the strange world in 2507. Creator Nao threatening to flood Venice. E.M.

PREVIEW don’t show it, you are so distorting reality that you are producing fairytales. If people saw what we put on the cutting room floor.” Revealing To him, animals are gripping enough with- out help. “They are unpredictable, very often , and might be less of new, extraordinarily beautiful, dramatic and television series written and presented a draw than meerkats and monkeys, but he they share something with us, which is life.” He by relishes the challenge. “In a way, it’s a great sees his programmes as restoring our childlike advantage because it means that a lot of their fascination with living things, allowing people stories haven’t been told. In my view, public- to “get back in touch, which is essential if they’re Ed Yong service broadcasting shouldn’t just be about going to take responsibility for nature”. “What do you think this is?” asks David Atten- making programmes about popular animals.” Attenborough doubts we will arrest the borough, handing me a heavy rock. Sitting in Only once does he pause, when I ask him if a decline in the world’s biodiversity. “The thing his London home, filled with wildlife paint- shoot has ever disappointed him. He describes that really appalls me is that there are three ings and tribal artefacts, I have been drawn a trip in 1955 to the Aru Islands in Indonesia to times as many people alive on as when into a game of ‘guess the fossil’. The specimen film of paradise. “We turned up in Jakarta I started making programmes. The space left turns out to be vertebrae from an ichthyosaur with a camera, didn’t speak a word of the lan- for other species has been eaten up. Just that is found in his neighbour’s garden. “I went over guage and didn’t have a letter of introduction enough to dampen any joie de vivre I have.” and there was this, just lying about!” from anybody. It was ridiculous.” The govern- He is equally modest about his fame. Attenborough is as expected from his on- ment accused them of being spies and refused Dismissing his status as the result of “doing it screen appearances — knowledgeable, elo- entry — even Attenborough can be defeated by forever and fairly regularly”. He recognizes the quent, a consummate storyteller and extremely bureaucracy. “We hastily thought of something tougher competition today, noting that an adver- excited about wildlife. He is as happy enthus- else and went off to film Komodo dragons but tisement for a researcher on ing about as he is about the grisly we didn’t get that either. It was hopelessly ama- attracted 3,000 applicants, one-third of whom habits of the , a burrowing worm-like teur and cack-handed but quite good fun.” had doctorates. “I feel almost guilty because I whose young feed by tearing strips Technology has improved since then, reduc- started when nobody wanted to do it.” of fatty skin from their mothers. The most ing the need for staged sequences. The question He regains his spark when talking of his fel- interesting thing he’s eaten himself? “Big moth of artifice in natural-history programmes flus- low film-makers. “There’s no shortage of talent. caterpillars in New Guinea. You put them on a ters Attenborough. He is incensed by an arti- All one asks is that they treat the animals with fire and they come out like Twiglets.” cle complaining that a spitting cobra sequence respect, and if they treat them with knowledge The turtle and caecilian sequences feature used a captive animal. “I am not making an and admiration then that’s a bonus.” As for him- in Life in Cold Blood, his new television series adventure programme ... I’m trying to demon- self, he has no plans to go quietly into the - about reptiles and . “These are the strate that there’s a that squirts [] set. He is scripting a programme on evolution last major classes of terrestrial animals that through its fangs like a hypodermic needle.” to tie in with Darwin’s bicentennial in 2009. ■ we haven’t given a series to,” he explains. The Attenborough is pragmatic. “I remember Ed Yong is a freelance science writer programmes are the culmination of the Life one woman who wrote in after watching a lion based in London. He blogs at http:// series, which began almost 30 years ago with kill a wildebeest and said that it was absolutely notexactlyrocketscience.wordpress.com. Life on Earth. Attenborough says that he wants scandalous. It would be much better to [train] to make a box set indexing every species and lions to eat grass!” Talking of the need for bal- A longer version of this story appears on network. topic covered. “I will be very pleased to be able ance: “It would be improper and disgraceful if nature.com. Life in Cold Blood is first broadcast on to put that on a shelf.” you just dwelt on the violence and yet, if you 4 February (BBC 1); DVD released on 25 February.

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