Never underestimate the age required to find good documentaries interesting. Both Microcosmos (also a French doc, this one about insects, and for heaven's sake don't be put off by the DVD's cover art) and Winged Migration have been among our daughter's favorite films since the age of three - the slow pace and ambient sounds of documentary done in this "verite" style (little or no narration, careful observance of what are often slow events) seem naturally suited to her. I also like to think they have helped train both her eye for what's going on in the natural world and her expectations regarding how stuff needs to be coming at her to be interesting (on TV and in life). Both of the above are also on sale - the first for about $16 and the other for about $11. Incidentally, Microcosmos also features the first sex scene we've allowed Z to watch, although she still has no idea what she is seeing, and we lie like dogs when it comes up.



Winged Migration is, technically speaking, even more amazing. Cameras fly with the geese.



You can also pick up March of the Penguins for $15, or $10 if you're trying to find a use for your more or less useless HD-DVD player. (HD-DVDs will not run on standard DVD players, and the company behind it, Toshiba, has admitted defeat in the format war and stopped producing HD-DVD videos.)

Maybe it's dependent on your child's temperament, but we''ll be picking March up for her based on our track record with docs like this. These films are pretty much the only feature-length films I can let her watch straight through and not feel guilty that I am training her to be a TV-saturated drone. It helps that I enjoy watching them with her, so we can have conversations around what is going on as I duck in and out of the viewing area while doing other things.

Here's a preview:



Here's a funny French commercial promoting the film. As the opener explains, in France the film was called the equivalent of March of the Emperor (they are Emperor penguins).


- Jeremiah