My Pet Dinosaur

Watch: BBC Horizon - My Pet Dinosaur on youtube.com

If only those dinosaurs hadn't been so unlucky, they may have been living among us today! Imagine the uses we humans could find for a creature so...huge. Would you have one as a pet, or eat one for dinner? What would evolution have done for them, and would we even be here, along with all the animals we know in our current world? BBC explores these question with experts who share the excitement anyone would when imagining this alternate universe.

Lou Barlow - Goodnight Unknown

Lou Barlow - Goodnight Unknown on youtube.com

If you're at all interested in Lou Barlow as a musician (Dinosaur Jr, Sebadoh, Folk Implosion) then definitely take half an hour to watch this short film, a companion to his new album of the same name. If you're interested in the process of making music, then same goes. Bringing in Melvins drummer, Dale Crover and frequent sidekick, Imaad Wasif - as well as a selection of his daughter's deconstructed toys - watching Lou find just the right sounds is more compelling than one might anticipate. If nothing else, the apparently giant grasshopper hanging off of a light fixture is imagery that you likely won't be able to get out of your head any time soon - scary!

A Hidden America

Watch: A Hidden America - Children of the Mountains torrent on monova.com

Seeing the way some families live in the hills of Applachia is bound to make you question whether their government even knows they're there. With a poverty rate three times that of the national average, and a laundry list of common health problems caused by their conditions, we meet young people who are teetering on the edge of their fate - to follow that of their family, or to find a route towards better. Babies teethed on Mountain Dew and prevelant drug abuse lay on one side, and a struggle without the resources necessary to overcome it on the other. Diane Sawyer explores the hopes and challenges conflicting within these four youths.

Karl Pilkington - Satisfied Fool

Watch:
Karl Pilkington - Satisfied Fool, Part 1 on youtube
Karl Pilkington - Satisfied Fool, Part 2 on youtube
Karl Pilkington - Satisfied Fool, Part 3 on youtube

"A part of me wishes I did try a bit harder [at school] just because of mates I know now who are always saying, ah y'know, "Karl you're stupid and stuff. You don't know enough, you should know more" and all that. But I'm also thinking that, being intelligent, does is make you happier anyway? So yeah, that's sort of what I'm trying to find out really."

Karl Pilkington, who you may know as the round-headed sidekick of one Ricky Gervais, explores his intellect and why he should care in this Channel 4 documentary. Karl goes through testing from big thinkers, including David Icke to see how he stacks up - and whether he's any better off for it.

*and do yourself a favour, if you like this and haven't been to Pilkipedia, do not pass go and do not collect $200.

Super High Me

Watch: Super High Me on Megavideo

Super High Me is Benson's take on "Super Size Me with weed instead of McDonalds", with debatably predictable outcomes. Undertaking testing on his physical, mental and psychic abilities, interviews with activists, medical marijuana patients, advocates and politicians over the course of the project, Benson creates an amusing and fairly thorough picture of the implications of drug use and whether the battle against marijuana is one worth fighting.

Dear Zachary

Watch: Dear Zachary: A Letter to a Son About His Father on youku.com

Dear Zachary is a testament to the friendship of filmmaker Kurt Kuenne, and his friend Andrew Bagby. After Bagby's murder, Kuenne travelled across North America, visiting friends and family along the way and capturing greetings and love sent to Bagby's young son, Zachary who never met his charismatic father. When Zachary's story takes an ugly turn, it brings into question human nature, family ties and judicial logic. A heart-breaking story from beginning to end, this is a film you won't soon forget.

Bus 1170

watch: Bus 1170 on CBC's the Fifth Estate

On a peaceful summer’s night in July 2008, along a stretch of the Trans Canada Highway in Manitoba, the unthinkable happened. What started as just another Prairie bus ride became a nightmare when the lives of two passengers intersected tragically and resulted in the murder of Tim McLean. In Bus 1170, Bob McKeown takes us inside what happened on Greyhound 1170 through the eyes of the surviving passengers and other witnesses. A seemingly random decision, to take the Greyhound from B.C. to Winnipeg rather than a friend’s offer of a plane ticket, would cost twenty-two-year-old Tim McLean his life, would profoundly change the lives of dozens of others who saw his murder and shock anyone who has heard about it since. On Greyhound 1170, Vincent Li, a diagnosed schizophrenic on his own randomly chosen bus journey, sat beside McLean and then, obeying voices inside his head, repeatedly stabbed and then cannibalized McLean’s body. In Bus 1170, the fifth estate recounts the story from the perspective of two of the surviving passengers. Stephen Allison vividly recounts his sense of foreboding as Li walked down the aisle and took the seat across from him, beside Tim McLean. And Kayli Shaw remembers the chilling moment when Allison ran by her yelling at the driver to pull over, that someone was being stabbed. She says she is still haunted by the sound of Tim McLean’s screams.

source: cbc.ca (http://www.cbc.ca/fifth/2009-2010/bus_1170/)