Wednesday, December 28, 2005
By TERRY LAWSON
Detroit Free Press
It may have been the year of the humanitarian at Time magazine, but at the art theaters, it was the annum of the animal.
If you've already memorized every step of "The March of the Penguins," and give the characters pet names, two new, diametrically different and fascinating documentaries now have a DVD release to provide some natural alternatives.
The true story of "The Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill" (New Video, $26.95, rated G) is seen through the eyes of Mark Bittner, an aging musician and San Francisco street person who has been befriended one of the flocks of liberated parrots in his neighborhood and become a rather astute observer -- and interpreter -- of their behavior.
An even more obsessive devotion is recounted in "Grizzly Man" (Lions Gate, $27.98, rated R), a documentary by the acclaimed German director Werner Herzog. It's about Timothy Treadwell, a self-appointed protector of grizzly bears in Alaska's Katmi nature preserve, who spent part of 13 years filming the bears in their habitat and living among them, ignoring laws against taking residence in the preserve.
In Oct. 3, Treadwell and Amie Huguengard were attacked by a bear, and though the lens cap was on the camera, the event was recorded and is recounted here in disturbing detail.