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Grade • A

DVD • "Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey" is a fascinating journey that, like the original "Cosmos" in 1980, is not exactly your average documentary. It's a journey through science rather than a stuffy tutorial.

"It's primarily a story of why science matters," said host Neil deGrasse Tyson. "There's plenty of science that's new [since the 1980 original], but the goal is not to show here what is the new science. The goal is to show here's why this new understanding of the world continues to affect us deeply as an individual, as a nation, as a species."

Even if you've seen the 1980 "Cosmos," you haven't seen the 2014 "Cosmos." There are some familiar elements — like the Ship of the Imagination and the Cosmic Calendar — but Ann Druyan (who wrote both series) insisted the new series "is not, in any sense, a reboot or a re-creation of the original series."

The look of the new "Cosmos" takes advantage of the advances in CGI in the past 3 ½ decades. It's stunning to look at and nothing short of fascinating. List_item —

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