Undertow

Undertow is the story of Miguel, a fisherman who lives with his pregnant wife Mariela in a village on the Peruvian coast. Active in the community and their church, Miguel and Mariela would seem to have the perfect life. But Miguel is hiding a secret.

Santiago is an artist who has been coming to the seaside since he was a child. But he keeps to himself and shows no one his work. No one except Miguel. Egged on by the town gossip, the local populace has come to the conclusion that the artist is a bit queer.

And when that same gossip puts two and two together, both mens’ lives are changed forever. After Santiago drowns, dragged down by the dangerous currents offshore, it is up to Miguel to take responsibility for his actions and set things right again. It is up to Miguel to let Santiago finally find peace.

Beautifully filmed and accompanied by a gorgeous Latin soundtrack, Undertow won the Audience Favorite Award at the 2010 Sundance Film Festival as well as numerous awards at film festivals around the world.

And you can reserve it here.

The Fabric Of The Cosmos

Some people have always wanted to learn a foreign language or write the great American novel. Me? I’ve always wanted to understand quantum mechanics.

So many aspects of modern life: the internet, cell phones, laptop computers and space exploration to name but a few, have been made possible because of advances in physics since Albert Einstein first chalked E=mc2 on his blackboard in 1905. Today, physicists have added sub-atomic particles, space-time and the multiverse to their fields of study. 

If, like me, you’ve ever been the least bit curious about quantum mechanics, check out The Fabric of the Cosmos, Brian Greene’s latest NOVA series from PBS. And get ready to have your mind blown wide open. Using easy to follow, non-mathematical analogies even a math-phobe like me can understand, Greene makes it all crystal clear. Why does time travel in only one direction? How can there be dimensions of space and time that we cannot apprehend? And is teleportation really possible? Watching The Fabric of the Cosmos makes me feel a bit less puzzled by the great leaps we’ve made in the fields of astro-physics, quantum mechanics, and digital technology. And I no longer feel like someone just waking up Ichabod Crane-like into the twenty-first century.

And just so you know: about the whole teleportation thing? According to Greene, it may indeed be possible. So, beam me up, Scotty!

A Side Of China You've Never Seen

As China opens its doors ever wider to the rest of the world, some of its wilder inhabitants are also making their debut on the world’s stage. Wild China highlights China’s efforts at endangered species protection, habitat preservation as well as a nascent environmental movement in a country where such concern for the natural world has taken a back seat to economic development.

But of course it’s the animals that make Wild China such a treat to watch. The world’s smallest mammal, the bamboo bat, no larger than a bumble bee, makes its home in hollowed out bamboo stalks. Remarkable Yunan snub-nosed monkeys call across the forest like rambunctious children at play, their faces living portraits in ancient wisdom. And a 400 year old turtle, the species now extinct in the wild, lives out its final days in a temple pond.

Wild China takes great pains to show the close interaction of the Chinese people to their environment. But it is an uneasy relationship at best. Recent and rapid economic development has caused wide-spread habitat destruction and pollution in heretofore inaccessible rural areas. And China must somehow balance centuries of resource use of plant and animal species with increasing demands on those resources.

Wild China is an armchair traveler’s dream come true, offering a lushly filmed look at corners of the country few Chinese themselves have ever seen. It is also an alarming environmental wake-up call that we should all heed. Reserve it today HERE.