Eight Below (2006)
Eight Below (2006)
Full BluRay 1:1 CEE | 1080p MPEG-2 @ 19094 Kbps | 02:00:20 | 21,87 Gb
Audio: AC3 5.1 @ 640 Kbps - English, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Turkish
Subs: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Family | USA
Full BluRay 1:1 CEE | 1080p MPEG-2 @ 19094 Kbps | 02:00:20 | 21,87 Gb
Audio: AC3 5.1 @ 640 Kbps - English, Czech, Hungarian, Polish, Russian, Turkish
Subs: English, Arabic, Bulgarian, Croatian, Czech, Greek, Hebrew, Hungarian, Polish, Romanian, Russian, Serbian, Slovak, Slovenian, Turkish
Genre: Adventure, Drama, Family | USA
In the Antarctic, after an expedition with Dr. Davis McClaren, the sled dog trainer Jerry Shepherd has to leave the polar base with his colleagues due to the proximity of a heavy snow storm. He ties his dogs to be rescued after, but the mission is called-off and the dogs are left alone at their own fortune. For six months, Jerry tries to find a sponsor for a rescue mission while his dogs fight for survival.
IMDB
Perhaps you have to be a dog owner to be reduced to the blubbering mess that I found myself in by the end of Disney's Eight Below, but there you have it. Even with my sharpened critical faculties turned on high alert to detect every ounce of contrived tear duct manipulation, I was utterly incapable of not being torn to shreds and then lifted up again by the movie's portrayal of a team of sled dogs left behind at an Antarctic research station when the humans have to make a hasty exit before the winter storms arrive.
Eight Below (2006)
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This got me thinking on my way home about why dog movies have such power over people (by sheer coincidence, I also caught Old Yeller on television the night before, surely the pinnacle of the tragic loyal dog genre). After all, many movie goers have long since been inured to the sight of human death and suffering on screen, yet you do the same thing to a pack of well-meaning huskies, and it immediately moves to a level of tragedy that works directly on the heart. Perhaps it is because, in their idealized cinematic conception, dogs represent the very best traits that we humans like to think we possess: honor, loyalty, bravery, and pure, unconditional love. Perhaps those traits seem so much more powerful in our canine companions because they appear to spring naturally from dogs' very essence, while people struggle mightily against their flawed natures to do the right thing. It's virtue without the human messiness.
Eight Below (2006)
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The story in Eight Below derives from an actual occurrence that took place in 1958 in which Japanese researchers had to leave behind a team of sled dogs and found several of them still alive a year later (the two surviving dogs went on to become national heroes). The story has already been told in the 1983 Japanese film Nankyoku Monogatari, but it is clearly too good not to tell again, especially in a reworked, finessed, and Americanized version.
Eight Below (2006)
![Eight Below (2006)]()
Eight Below begins with Paul Walker as Jerry Shepard, a guide at an Antarctic research station who leads a scientist (Bruce Greenwood) on a mission to find meteor fragments. Walker's genial, handsome blandness is almost appropriate because he is not the center of story. As much as Dave DiGilio's screenplay tries to centralize him, primarily by giving him a forced romantic rekindling with an ex-girlfriend (Katie), Jerry is ultimately important only insofar as he functions as an audience surrogate to emote pain, frustration, sadness, and guilt about leaving the dogs behind.
Eight Below (2006)
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Perhaps because of the blandness of the film's human dimension, Eight Below works because it keeps its primarily focus on the dogs and treats these canine heroes with the right amount of respect for their fundamental nature. These are not anthropomorphized cartoon heroes or impossibly clever Lassies, but rather working dogs who do what they can to survive in the harshest of conditions for what turns out to be months on end (a painful title card comes up every time we see the dogs on-screen informing us of the number of days they've been on their own). We see them survive by organizing to catch birds and fighting off an unexpected attack by a particularly vicious leopard seal, but the adventure is always weighted by a sense of quiet melancholy because they have been deserted.
Eight Below (2006)
![Eight Below (2006)]()
The constant threat of death hangs in the air, which keeps the film from becoming either cutsey or vapidly sentimental. Director Frank Marshall, who oddly enough filmed Alive (1993), a similar story involving plane-wrecked humans who ultimately resorted to cannibalism, has a good sense of what touches our hearts without becoming mawkish. He understands the value of shots of the dogs licking each other's wounds or refusing to leave the side of one of the departed, but he uses such moments sparingly and with a sturdy emphasis on reality; never once do we doubt that what happens could really happen.
Eight Below (2006)
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The dogs are clearly strong and capable and have more survival potential than the fittest human being with thousands of dollars of North Face equipment, yet the emotion the film most clearly and consistently evokes is that of loneliness, which is driven home by Don Burgess' marvelous cinematography that captures both the stark beauty and the unforgiving bleakness of the Antarctic wilderness. Even with its groan-inducing double-meaning title, Eight Below is a surprisingly mature film in its balance of uplifting fantasy and sometimes brutal reality. Of course, for full emotional impact, it helps if you're a dog owner.James Kendrick, QNetwork
Eight Below (2006)
Disc Title: Eight Below 2006 Blu-ray CEE 1080p MPEG-2 DD5.1
Disc Size: 22,781,078,190 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: Yes
BDInfo: 0.5.6
DISC INFO:
Disc Title: Eight Below 2006 Blu-ray CEE 1080p MPEG-2 DD5.1
Disc Size: 22,781,078,190 bytes
Protection: AACS
BD-Java: Yes
BDInfo: 0.5.6
PLAYLIST REPORT:
Name: 00010.MPLS
Length: 2:00:20 (h:m:s)
Size: 22,465,609,728 bytes
Total Bitrate: 24.89 Mbps
VIDEO:
Codec Bitrate Description
––- –––- –––––-
MPEG-2 Video 19094 kbps 1080p / 23.976 fps / 16:9
AUDIO:
Codec Language Bitrate Description
––- –––– –––- –––––-
Dolby Digital Audio English 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps / DN -4dB
Dolby Digital Audio Czech 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps / DN -4dB
Dolby Digital Audio Hungarian 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps / DN -4dB
Dolby Digital Audio Polish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps / DN -4dB
Dolby Digital Audio Russian 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps / DN -4dB
Dolby Digital Audio Turkish 640 kbps 5.1 / 48 kHz / 640 kbps / DN -4dB
SUBTITLES:
Codec Language Bitrate Description
––- –––– –––- –––––-
Presentation Graphics English 16.428 kbps
Presentation Graphics Arabic 24.920 kbps
Presentation Graphics Bulgarian 35.544 kbps
Presentation Graphics Croatian 32.703 kbps
Presentation Graphics Czech 35.914 kbps
Presentation Graphics Greek 38.583 kbps
Presentation Graphics Hebrew 24.136 kbps
Presentation Graphics Hungarian 35.497 kbps
Presentation Graphics Polish 34.974 kbps
Presentation Graphics Romanian 34.694 kbps
Presentation Graphics Russian 37.969 kbps
Presentation Graphics Serbian 38.972 kbps
Presentation Graphics Slovak 36.881 kbps
Presentation Graphics Slovenian 32.837 kbps
Presentation Graphics Turkish 38.475 kbps
FILES:
Name Time In Length Size Total Bitrate
–– –––- ––– –– ––––––-
00275.M2TS 0:00:00.000 2:00:20.671 22,465,609,728 24,890
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