Marla Olmstead, a four year old child paints abstract art that sells for thousands of dollars. Is she a prodigy, or just a kid painting, or a hoax?

Michael Moore’s film “Sicko” compares (sometimes with ironic humor) at the US’s broken healthcare system with universal health care systems in other countries such as Canada, Britain, France, and even Cuba.

There are interveiws with health care professionals as well as citzens of the various countries. There is a testimonial by an former medical reviewer who denied an insured of medical treatment which susquently caused the insured his death — and all because of profits. There are many other first-hand accounts of heart-breaking stories where people have been denied treatment and who subsequently died because of it. And most of whom do have health insurance. As is covered in the extra “special features” of the DVD, it is a myth that if you have health insurance you are safe. The number one cause of bankruptcy and homelessness in the US is due to health care bills. And in 75% of those cases, the person did have health insurance.

Well, at least there were some happy parts to the film. Michael Moore took a group of sick people (including some 911 workers) to Cuba. They had not been able to get the care that they needed in the States. But in Cuba, they did. One person almost cried as she found out that she could get an medicinal inhaler for an equivalent of $0.05 — one which would cost $120 in the States.

Here are two DVDs by Dr. Michael Roizen and Dr. Mehmet Oz who are famous for their “You” series of books…

Dr. Michael Merzenich and other scientist shares what they have learned about the brain and its ability to still develop and change throughout one’s life. This is known a brain plasticity.

A NOVA documentary by theoretical physicist Michael Green that discusses String Theory

Episode 1: “Pole to Pole”

• Emperor penguins protecting their eggs in Antarctica’s winter darkness
• Polar bear and its two cubs which are amazingly cute to watch
• Slow motion footage of shark jumping out of water to catch a seal
• Elephants with a mother and its baby caught in a sandstorm
• Birds in the tropics dancing it mating dance
• Rare footage of wild pack dogs on thier hunt
• Wolf catching a deer

“Planet Earth Diaries”, which are behind-the-scene look at the filming, explains how the film crew consists of both a land crew and an helicopter crew with a gyro-camera called the Heligimbal mounted at on the helicopter.

Episode 2: “Mountains”

• Ethiopia’s volcano
• Avalanche in progress
• Time elapse photography of mountain monkeys
• ibex, puma, bear and its cute two cubs, giant panda and it week-old newborn
• the rarely seen snow leopard and red panda
• eagle catching its prey in mid-flight
• cranes who have to migrate over the Himalayas

An amazing treat in this episode is footage of snow leopard chasing its prey. “Planet Earth Diaries” explains its quest to film the snow leopard and how rare it is to spot one.

Episode 3: “Fresh Water”

• See some strange aquatic creatures
• Giant salamander
• Crocodiles dragging off a Wilderbeast
• piranha’s feeding frenzy that can strip a fish to its bone in minutes
• spectacular waterfalls

Planet Earth Diaries in this episode shows the crews quest to film the piranha’s feeding.

Episode 4: Caves

• Watch base jumpers jumps into pit caves
• Watch snake snatch up a bat
• Watch the aerial acrobatics of falcons as they catch bats in mid-air
• See immense caves with its strange inhabitants
• Cueva de Villa Luz cave with flowing sulfuric acid
• New Mexico’s famous Lechuguilla Cave with gypsum crystal formations

Planet Earth Diaries shows the film crew filming a giant mound of bat dung covered with cockroaches.

Episode 5: Deserts

• duelling ibexes
• multi-colored lizards jumping up to catch black flies
• giant swarms of locusts which eats everything in its path
• important role of cactus in the deserts

Planet Earth Diaries shows the difficulty of tracking camels.

Episode 6: Ice Worlds

We see again the mother bear with its two cubs. But what is more distressing is watching the male polar bear swimming for miles looking for food as its ice world dis-integrates with global warming. In an act of desperation, he tries to attack a group of walruses that are larger then he is. Unfortunately he got speared by the walruses meter-long tusk and is not longer able to hunt.

We also see the cooperation of the Emperor penguins as they brave the arctic blizzards.

Planet Earth diaries details the year-long expedition to film the penguins.

Episode 7: Great Plains

Here we see a …

• importance of grass and water to life
• group of lions hunt down an elephant
• fox snatching eggs and catching chicks
• wolf catching a caribou calf

Planet Earth Diaries explains how infrared cameras are used to film the lion hunt at night.

Episode 8: Jungles

• Diverse and unusual species of monkeys, birds, and insects are found in the jungle.
• The time-lapse photography of the growth of the rain forest plants are amazing.
• See the inventiveness of a spider and its silk thread in capturing prey out of a pitcher plant
• Raiding monkeys expand their territory and cannibalizes another monkey
• Watch three species of birds of paradise display their mating rituals

Planet Earth Dairies shows the immense patience of sitting over a total of 100 hours in a hide trying to wait for the display of the mating dances of the birds of paradizes.

Episode 9: Shallow Seas
The episode starts with a mother whale and its few-weeks-old baby calf in the breeding grounds in topics and ends with the two in the feeding grounds in the poles. You’ll see dolphins hydroplane in near the beaches to catch fish and great white sharks breaching out of the waters to catch seals in mid air. BBC catches one of these breaches in slow motion. And Planet Earth Dairies documents the filming of this with its slow motion camera.

Episode 10: Seasonal Forest

• You see the tallest trees and the oldest trees in these forest
• Watch owl chicks take their first flight
• Mass emergence of cicadas that comes in 17 year cycles

Planet Earth Dairies shows how filming was done via hot air balloons. It is not easy as you can see from a small crash of the balloon into the trees.

Episode 11: Ocean Deep

• whale shark
• dolphines
• spider crab
• whitetip sharks
• sail fish
• and more

Planet Earth Dairies shows the filming of whitetip sharks.

Three more episodes

• Saving Species: Episode show scientists and conservationists talk about the importance of saving species.
• Into the Wilderness: This episode focuses on the human effect on the environment
• Living Together: This episode documents conservation efforts.

There are a lot of controversy around global warming. Find the facts from a reputable source. The documentary An Inconvenient Truth is presented by Al Gore, former Vice President of the United States. Although he did not win the 2000 presidential elections; he did win the Nobel Peace prize in 2007 for his crusade to fight global warming. He is also chairman of Alliance for Climate Protection.

After seeing this film, I throughly recommend it. The charts and animations and graphical presentation of the facts are amazingly well done. You will be shocked to see the before and after picture of the glaciers. It makes the dangers of global warming crystal clear without needing a scientific background.

As of this writing, “An Inconvenient Truth” is the 4th highest-grossing documentary film in the United States. It won two Academy Awards including “best documentary”. If you missed the film in the box offices, get the DVD or purchase an download.