Jacques Cousteau - Pacific Explorations [DVD]

What can you say about Jacques Cousteau that hasn't already been said? Well, you could say he's a 3 foot 6 inch homicidal dwarf, who walks with an artificial limp, and wears blue hats on every second Tuesday of the month – I'm sure that hasn't already been said. But that's probably because it's not true. So let's stick to the facts.To a lot of us - myself included – Jacques Cousteau is a water god of epic proportions who makes the mighty Neptune and Poseidon pale in comparison. (Though they were always a bit pale because they spent so much time underwater and never saw the sun much). This should be the Holy Grail for any aquatic fan and it doesn't disappoint. There's over nine hours of some of the best fish TV you will ever see.The footage is grainier than a very grainy thing who's just completed his PHD in graininess, but that just adds to magic, and gives it a really vintage authentic feel.This was so inspiring that after watching I went out and bought a scuba mask, an oxygen tank and some flippers. I spent the next day diving underwater and catching everything I could in a big fishing net that I'd brought with me. That's how I got barred from the local swimming pool.Don't be like me. Just watch these great videos and leave the diving to the professionals.

These are some of Cousteau's best programs, part of his, "Rediscovery of the World," which was broadcast on TBS in the late '80s and early '90s (environmentally aware Ted Turner reportedly made sure they made it on the air.)Five programs explore Australia: Fortunes in the Sea (about the Northwest coast); The Last Barrier; Out West Down Under; Tasmania; and Continent of Dreams (covering Kakadu National Park, Kangaroo Island, and Aboriginal deserts).Three are set in New Zealand: The Rose and the Dragon looks at the contrasts of the North & South islands; The Heron of the Single Flight is about the conflict between commerce on the one side, and Nature & the Maori on the other; while The Smoldering Sea is Cousteau's attempt to understand a major earthquake.The last three programs are an especially fascinating exploration of Papua New Guinea: Into the Time Machine retraces the 1930 discovery of a civilisation of more than a million people that had never been seen before that moment; River of the Crocodile Men is a journey up the Sepik River; and The Center of Fire explores the depths of World War 2 wrecks.These programs are wonderful. The lone caveat: the set is incomplete. Two amazing programs about Borneo, and one about Tahiti could have been included without adding more discs.

First off, Those who wrote reviews expecting to see HD or LCD quality in these videos, gimme a break please!! These are just how I remember watching them on TV every weekend when I was a kid. Juaques Cousteau is and will forever be the king of the oceans and seas. I loved watching these videos, took me back in time. I did NOT expect to see fully remastered picture quality....There's no such advertisement nor do they mislead anyone into thinking otherwise. So if you're a pampered baby and must have HD quality without whining then don't buy these videos, but if you can overlook that and have a lust for marine biology and oceanography then these are for you.

I used to watch Jacques Cousteau documentaries on TV as a kid. I'm lately looking for stuff my kids might enjoy watching.First of all, I have a great deal of respect for Cousteau as a scientist, inventor, and pioneering documentarian.That said, there is so much less nature in these shows than I remembered. A Jaques Cousteau documentary spends a lot of time above water. A lot more mundane running-a-ship business than you probably want to pay good money to be watching.Endless footage of the crew hanging around, shaving, eating, putting away equipment, joking and laughing in French, waking up and putting boots on. Really uninteresting scenes of Cousteau speaking in French to someone other scientist and pointing at charts and ship's logs, and you can't hear what they're saying, because an English speaking narrator is narrating over it; not that you'd enjoy listening to a mundane conversation about charts and log books and engine problems, or whatever they are talking about.These shows could never make it on television today, because there is always something less boring than this, even if you have to click it over to the shopping channel.I hate having spent about thirty bucks on this, and my four-year-old daughter I bought it for hates it too.Get the Wild Kingdom Definitive 50-Episode DVD Set if you want lots of animals and very little boring logistics. It's a blast from the past you can't help but love.Cousteau's documentaries are just plain dull.

I enjoyed this series immensely and was reminded of the reasons I began diving in the first place. The video quality is exactly what I would expect from footage shot 25-30 years ago, a bit grainy with some color shift but that never interferes with the content or becomes a detraction to the program's continuity.If your old enough to remember the pre-cable made-for-TV documentaries (before "extreme", "mega" or "ultimate" had to be in every title), this DVD set will bring back some nice memories of the men in red hats and Speedos while providing insight to some exotic places above and below the water. And if you have never seen a Cousteau special, this series may give an interesting look back to the earlier efforts of documenting our planet, protecting its inhabitants and environments (and how things have changed).