CNN.com: Muslim superhero comics meets resistance in U.S.
Naif Al-Mutawa anticipated a struggle when he launched an Islam-inspired comic book series that he hoped would become a symbol of toleration. He worried about the comics being banned in Saudi Arabia – which wound up happening, briefly – and he expected to be challenged by conservatives in Islam, since Al-Mutawa wanted to buck the trend of Islamic culture being directly tied to the Koran. But it wasn’t an Islamic cleric that stalled the series, called “The 99,” after the 99 attributes of Allah, which the superheroes are supposed to embody. It is the American market, and the voices of Islam’s Western critics, that have caused the most problems for “The 99,” says Al-Mutawa, who is the focus of a PBS documentary airing next week.

New York Times: An American Minority’s Road to Rights
It may be the least-publicized revolution of our time but the one whose impact ultimately reaches the furthest, affecting the way our buildings and buses are built, the way our schools are structured, the way our businesses conduct hiring and outfit their work stations. It’s the disability-rights movement, and Lives Worth Living, a Thursday Independent Lens on PBS, reconstructs how it emerged and eventually pushed through the Americans With Disabilities Act of 1990.

Los Angeles Times: Donor Unknown review: Common ground beyond nature, nurture
Donor Unknown is a celebration of commonality, of the connections you can’t deny: Harrison’s kids define themselves by what they share, with one another and with their donor-father — their eyebrows and foreheads, their love of animals, their sense of humor and way of tucking their hair behind their ears. We are all the product of individual circumstances, Donor Unknown says, but you can only nurture what nature provides.

Wired.com: At Popcorn Hackathon, Coders Team With Filmmakers to Supercharge Web Video
“We always talk about this idea of how in the future, filmmakers will need a technology partner almost the way they need an editor today,” said Matthew Meschery, the director of digital initiatives at Independent Television Service. “So there’s kind of this social experiment around collaborating with a coder or technologist … This was an opportunity to put this into practice.”

“Even for someone who cares about the environment, [Jamie Lee] Curtis says Dirt! [The Movie] was an education. ‘I was as astonished as you will be when you see the film, about the earth being alive.’”
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“Sam Cooke: Crossing Over on American Masters: The PBS series takes a respectful look at the life and death of the silky smooth singer, first in gospel and then in pop.”
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“One from the heart, the documentary Mine relates yet one more wrenching, infuriating story about Hurricane Katrina and the devastation wreaked both by the storm and by human error and indifference.”
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“What’s the difference between creative ‘borrowing’ and outright theft? The Independent Lens documentary Copyright Criminals offers a thought-provoking discussion of the subject filtered through a history of hip-hop ‘sampling’ culture.”
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“If you watch/record one thing … I strongly recommend THE WAY WE GET BY, Aron Gaudet’s moving documentary…”
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“NO SUBTITLES NECESSARY is a tale of friendship and survival that has become legend in Hollywood.”
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“[WILLIAM KUNSTLER: Disturbing the Universe is] a refresher course on the history of American left-wing politics in the 1960s and ’70s.”
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“SCARRED JUSTICE: The Orangeburg Massacre 1968 explores an inexplicably forgotten incident when black student protestors were killed by police. It’s an important work of historical reportage.”
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“Even atheists may find their world rocked by Nati Baratz’s UNMISTAKEN CHILD, a simple documentary about a Buddhist monk’s search for the reincarnated soul of his beloved teacher.”
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“I saw a good–no, a very good–movie the other day… It’s called THE ENGLISH SURGEON, and it’s about a brain surgeon who does pro bono work in Ukraine.”
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“UNMISTAKEN CHILD bears witness to a strange and mysterious process, the search for the childhood reincarnation of a recently deceased and revered Tibetan master.”
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“[EL GENERAL] is an imaginative cinematic exploration into the contradictions among familial, personal and national memories framed around one of the most influential and controversial presidents in Mexico’s history—Plutarco Elías Calles.”
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“Ari Folman’s animated documentary of Israel’s 1982 invasion of Lebanon is perfectly surreal.”
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“In 2007, Alabama officially apologized for slavery and its “after effects.” But those after effects still play out in Mobile’s annual Mardi Gras… The fascinating THE ORDER OF MYTHS, which PBS’s Independent Lens will air on February 24, follows these parallel worlds…”
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“Growing up at the center of the firestorm surrounding the famous civil rights attorney William Kunstler wasn’t easy. According to his daughters Sarah, and Emily, the family often feared for their lives… DISTURBING THE UNIVERSE is a timely reminder about the cost of standing up for justice, regardless of the consequences. ”
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“I could not pull myself away from Stacy Peralta’s riveting, revelatory, exhaustive examination of the 40-year history of gang warfare in South Central L.A.”
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“DOC, which airs tonight as part of the PBS series Independent Lens, is a daughter’s film about a difficult father. Immy Humes is the filmmaker; her subject is Harold L. Humes––nicknamed Doc after a genius in the ‘Buck Rogers’ comic strip––whose marquee claim to fame is that he co-founded the literary journal The Paris Review, though he didn’t stick around long to run it.”
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