Professor Richard Fortey delves into the fascinating and normally-hidden kingdom of fungi. From their spectacular birth, through their secretive underground life to their final explosive death, Richard reveals a remarkable world that few of us understand or even realise exists – yet all life on Earth depends on it. In a specially-built mushroom lab, with the help of mycologist Dr Patrick Hickey and some state-of-the-art technology, Richard brings to life the secret world of mushrooms as never seen before and reveals the spectacular abilities of fungi to break down waste and sustain new plant life, keeping our planet alive. Beyond the lab, Richard travels across Britain and beyond to show us the biggest, fastest and most deadly organisms on the planet – all of them fungi. He reveals their almost magical powers that have world-changing potential – opening up new frontiers in science, medicine and technology. (docuwiki)
Tag: scientists
681 – Isle of Dogs (2018)
timespace coordinates: 2038 Japan
Isle of Dogs (Japanese: 犬ヶ島 Hepburn: Inugashima) is a 2018 stop-motion animated film written, produced and directed by Wes Anderson. Set in a dystopian near-future Japan, the story follows a young boy searching for his dog after the species is banished to an island following the outbreak of a canine flu. The film’s ensemble voice cast includes Bryan Cranston, Edward Norton, Bill Murray, Jeff Goldblum, Bob Balaban, Greta Gerwig, Frances McDormand, Courtney B. Vance, Fisher Stevens, Harvey Keitel, Liev Schreiber, Scarlett Johansson, Tilda Swinton, F. Murray Abraham, Frank Wood, Kunichi Nomura and Yoko Ono.
Anderson said that the film was strongly influenced by the films of Akira Kurosawa, as well as the stop-motion animated holiday specials made by Rankin/Bass Productions. (wiki)
674 – Secret Life Underground: Series 1 (2016 documentary)
Nature Documentary hosted by Geoffrey Bateman, published by Arte in 2016 – English narration. (docuwiki)
The underground world is so unfamiliar to us that you only have to dig down a few yards to reveal a totally unknown realm, just beneath our feet. Today, only a fraction of the rich biodiversity that inhabits the soil has been studied. Scientists estimate that the ground is probably home to 70% of the living organisms yet to be discovered.
The Skin Of The Earth
We know less than 10% of the organisms that populate the underground world and that, each in their own way, take an active part in creating the soil. We are just beginning to discover that plants form partnerships and create complex unions. Welcome to this subtle, surprising and secret world.
Hidden in the Depths
Take a journey alongside scientists into an underground maze with huge surprises in store. They lead us into monumental cavities, shaped by water and by time. They reveal to us mineral jewels of staggering beauty, and shed light on certain species of fauna that defy the imagination.
mineral trees:
667 – After Life: The Strange Science of Decay (2011 documentary)
If you have ever wondered what would happen in your own home if you were taken away and everything inside was left to rot, the answer is revealed in this programme which explores the strange and surprising science of decay. For two months, a glass box containing a typical kitchen and garden was left to rot in full public view within Edinburgh Zoo. In this resulting documentary, Dr George McGavin and his team use time-lapse cameras and specialist photography to capture the extraordinary way in which molds, slime molds, microbes and insects are able to break down our everyday things and allow new life to emerge from old. Decay is something that many of us are repulsed by, but as the programme shows, it’s a process that’s vital in nature. And seen in close up, it has an unexpected and sometimes mesmerising beauty. (docuwiki)
665 – The Botany of Desire (2009 documentary )
The Botany of Desire is a two-hour program broadcast by PBS based on The Botany of Desire: A Plant’s-Eye View of the World is a 2001 nonfiction book by journalist Michael Pollan. Pollan presents case studies that mirror four types of human desires that are reflected in the way that we selectively grow, breed, and genetically engineer our plants. The tulip, beauty; marijuana, intoxication; the apple, sweetness; and the potato, control.
The stories range from the true story of Johnny Appleseed to Pollan’s first-hand research with sophisticated marijuana hybrids in Amsterdam to the paradigm-shifting possibilities of genetically engineered potatoes. Pollan also discusses the limitations of monoculture agriculture: specifically, the adoption in Ireland of a single breed of potato (the Lumper) made the Irish vulnerable to a fungus to which it had no resistance, resulting in the Irish Potato Famine. The Peruvians from whom the Irish had gotten the potato grew hundreds of varieties, so their exposure to any given pest was slight.
664 – The Kingdom: How Fungi Made Our World (2018 Documentary)
Hidden from sight is a kingdom that rules life on land. It’s an alien world with the largest and oldest organisms alive today. It is the 5th Kingdom of fungi. (cbc)
“When we think about the evolution of life on earth, what allowed plants to move out of the sea and to have roots for the first time is fungi. And it’s fungi that services those roots as plants crept from that edge into what we now think of as that normal place that we all live.” Rob Dunn
mushrooms-can-create-their-own-air-currents
forestfloornarrative
0660 – Rampage (2018)
spacetime coordinates: 2017 San Diego / Wyoming / Everglades > Chicago
Rampage is a 2018 American science fiction monster film directed by Brad Peyton, and loosely based on the video game series of the same name by Midway Games. The film stars Dwayne Johnson, Naomie Harris, Malin Akerman, Jake Lacy, Joe Manganiello, and Jeffrey Dean Morgan. It follows a primatologist named Davis Okoye who must team up with George, an albino gorilla who turns into a raging creature of enormous size as a result of a rogue experiment, to stop two other mutated animals from destroying Chicago. It is the third collaboration between Peyton and Johnson, following Journey 2: The Mysterious Island (2012) and San Andreas (2015). (wiki)
It is the all-time best reviewed film based on a video game, according to Rotten Tomatoes.
TimeSpace Warps 