Disney's Earth Movie Revives Classic Tales of Animals

Remember those old Disney documentaries from the 1950s and 60s about animals as they go about their daily business of survival? They were quite entertaining with a musical score to accompany the scenes and antics of the "stars." Those movies made it appear that the animals were more human and had human-like emotions as they make choices.

Well, when we all thought those movies were long gone, we now have one inspired by the mid-1980s documentary series, Planet Earth, which was a hit with students and lovers of nature worldwide. Now, Disney, in cooperation with Greenlight Media and the Discovery Channel, is bringing back the spirit of its classic animal tale features with its own version of the Earth series in a full-length movie narrated by James Earl Jones.

Earth, which will be shown worldwide on Earth day on April 22, 2009, will take audiences on a journey with three wilderness families as they take on challenges in environments we would call harsh, but are otherwise home to them, no matter how cruel.

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J.J. Abrams's Vision of the Future in Star Trek

The starship Enterprise of J.J. Abrams's Star Trek movie wasn't exactly the first one in Gene Roddenberry's universe (there's Captain Archer's Enterprise), but the full-length trailer of the movie shows Abrams fondness for cinema flashbacks and establishing scenes that gives the main character his motivation for his actions later in the movie. It also gives us a hint as to how he envisions the future in a Star Trek setting.

In the trailer, we see an elder Spock with a young girl who appears to be sick or dying. We also see a young Spock and a young Kirk of about 10 who is apparently bent on going somewhere, riding an antique sports car with an Iowa license and being chased by a highway patrolman (or robot) who asks his name. That's actually the defining moment when we are made to realize that there are bigger things to come.

It's every fan's guess that it's to see the Enterprise in construction in some space shipyard. Later, we see an older but a still young Kirk (Chris Pine) on an antique motorbike stopping by and admiring the Enterprise in construction.

We can speculate how that part of the story is about how Kirk and Spock become friends after going through conflicts with the common goal of neutralizing the villain in the form of Eric Bana (who speaks with a Scottish, or Irish, accent for some reason), but it's still a question on what the elder Spock is reminiscing about the past.

This is the Enterprise that became popular in the original series. Take this one home where no starship has ever gone before!

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