TV

Nature's Great Events
Part 1 The Great Melt
Stunning footage, of course. The last ten minutes are a segment called Nature's Great Events: Diaries, which looks at the making of that particular episode. It really shows off the lengths they go to in capturing these images for entertainment/information. Equally as fascinating, in my opinion.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Terry Pratchett: Living With Alzheimer's
Part 2 (of 2)
Fascinating, well-made documentary.
[Watch it (again) on iPlayer.]

Articles

Heroes: Five Ways to Fix a Series In Crisis by Jeff Jensen
(from EW.com)
Heroes is already back in the US, and returns to British screens in just under a week. But will they have fixed it?

Joss Whedon’s 16 Most Painful Character Deaths
(from fandomania)
"spoilers abound in this article, so if you’re not up to date on Buffy the Vampire Slayer, Angel, Firefly & Serenity, Dr. Horrible’s Sing-Along Blog, or Astonishing X-Men, you might want to avert your eyes."
These are seriously spoilersome spoilers -- if you're part way through or ever intend to follow any of these series, avoid avoid avoid.

Magazines

Empire #237
The numerous 'exclusives' branded over the cover are all a bit lacklustre, to be honest. The Hobbit films are far too early in development to add anything meaningful; the Watchmen photos are taken from a book (so not exclusive) and the brief interviews don't add much to what's already been said; at least the interview with Terry Gilliam about Dr Parnassus, Heath Ledger's last film, is interesting. I like Empire and don't mean to tear it down too much, but really, those claims are stretching things.

SFX #180
Both this and the Empire above contain interviews about Lesbian Vampire Killers -- unsurprisingly, as it's out in a month -- and retrospective features on Georges Méliès -- which is more surprising, as his stuff is Rather Old. And, to round things off, it trumps the Watchmen feature by interviewing original artist Dave Gibbons. Sure, Gibbons hasn't been quiet about the project, but he's not as oft interviewed as others involved in its production.

Doctor Who goes anime

I'm never quite sure where to classify web videos (you'd think I'd've thought of that), so this one earns a post all to itself. It's a fan-made video of a Doctor Who anime... which you'd think would be dreadful, but is in fact amazing. No, really, it's got better animation than I've seen in some professional productions -- and that's not fan-to-fan hyperbole, that's genuine.

Anyway, you can watch it for yourselves and see what I mean. The early stuff is all making-of (i.e. sketchy pencils, etc), but wait til it gets to the finished sequences and stick with it to the end. I'd be more than happy to see a whole series like this -- the Cybermen in particular are stunning.

Go to YouTube itself to watch in high quality, which looks even more amazing.

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