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Dynasties is David Attenborough’s new series for the BBC, focused on five famous animals. You might already have seen the penguin clip after the recent controversy over whether the film crew should or should not have rescued the penguins. Via ABC:

Some viewers of BBC’s Dynasties celebrated the crew’s decision to come to the aid of the trapped penguins, but it seemed to run counter to the notion of people, particularly film crews, allowing nature to take its course when in the wild. While filming Sir David’s Africa in 2013, the crew and audiences watched in pain as a baby elephant died of thirst.

Afterwards, he said he took pride in his role as an observer and nothing more, even in difficult situations.

“Of course you see really tough things, but there’s nothing you can do about them,” Sir David said.

But this situation was different, according to Dynasties executive producer Mike Gunton, who said the famous naturalist told him he would have done the same thing had he been there.

One of the female penguins was forced to leave her chick behind after dragging herself out of the ravine with the help of the film crew’s makeshift steps.

“It’s such an unusual circumstance to do this,” Mr Gunton told the BBC.

“There are lots of situations where you couldn’t and shouldn’t and wouldn’t, but I think in this situation there were so many factors.

For some audience reaction:

Neither can my mum. She's yelling at the TV. My dad told her to calm down and she just shouted "He's gonna die, Darren!". 😂 Luckily the penguin survived, she would be in tears if it died.

— Jade/YoungBlood💜💜🖤🖤 (@KittyKat3801) November 18, 2018

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=v70Fu2WU8-w

Microsoft’s Adaptive Controller is the star of its new Christmas ad, pushing the company’s increased dedication towards accessible products. Via Games Industry:

Thanks to John Lewis et al, heartwarming Christmas adverts are all the rage – to the point where even electronics conglomerate Microsoft is getting in on the action.

The company has produced a short film that highlights the Xbox Adaptive Controller, as well as pushing its strategy to promote accessibility in games with a new slogan: ‘When everybody plays, we all win’.

The Adaptive Controller is a device with a variety of different customisable inputs that enables people with almost any disability to enjoy Xbox games. It was unveiled to widespread acclaim earlier this year and released in September.

While it doesn’t actually appear much in the ad itself, the short film’s narrative – which focuses on wheelchair-bound nine-year-old Owen – puts the controller, and accessibility, at the heart of its message.

The ad arrives at a time where accessibility is increasingly becoming a talking point in video games. Case in point, Activision came under fire earlier this week for not including subtitles in the Spyro Reignited Trilogy – thus limiting the experience for deaf players. We spoke to Microsoft’s gaming and disability community lead Tara Voelker earlier this year about why the platform holder is ramping up efforts to improve accessibility in games.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=3dJCroCMBPM

Apple’s new Christmas campaign is titled “Share Your Gifts” and is all about encouraging creatives to be more confident and share their work. Via the Daily Mail:

Apple has unveiled its holiday ad – an animated short reminiscent of the poignant filmography of Pixar animation studios. The ad titled ‘Share Your Gifts’ opens on a picturesque, mountain town and features the sweet ballad ‘Come Out and Play’ by 16-year-old breakout pop star Billy Eilish written for the campaign.

A curly-haired, freckle-faced heroine named Sofia stars in the piece as she is seen working on projects hidden from view on her sticker-covered Apple laptop. She then prints out, frowns over and places her ideas in a gift box tied with a ribbon and locked down with a hair pick. The only witness to her creativity is her large, shaggy dog.

The following day depicts her hiding her creativity from her elderly bakery employers, a child on a bus and a friend in a coffee shop as Billie Eilish’s song gently chides ‘don’t hide away’.

But, she’s forced to ‘come out and play’ when her dog forces the issue, spilling her hidden work out onto snowy streets that get blown by the wind until they come to rest at a winter carnival.

Ramen is apparently quickly overtaking cigarettes as the most prized form of prison currency in jail. This video looks at why that’s the case. For more information, via the Guardian:

Ramen noodles are overtaking tobacco as the most popular currency in US prisons, according a new study released on Monday.

A new report by Michael Gibson-Light, a doctoral candidate in the University of Arizona’s school of sociology, found the decline in quality and quantity of food available in prisons due to cost-cutting has made ramen noodles a valuable commodity.

“[Ramen] is easy to get and it’s high in calories,” Gibson-Light said. “A lot of them, they spend their days working and exercising and they don’t have enough energy to do these things. From there it became more a story, why ramen in particular.”

Gibson-Light interviewed close to 60 inmates over the course of a year at one state prison as part of a wider study on prison labor. He did not identify the prison to protect the confidentiality of the inmates.

He found that the instant soup has surpassed tobacco as the most prized currency at the prison. He also analyzed other nationwide investigations that he says found a trend towards using ramen noodles in exchanges.

“One way or another, everything in prison is about money,” one soft-spoken prisoner named Rogers said in the report. “Soup is money in here. It’s sad but true.”

Netflix has a beautifully filmed high production new series about… dogs, each episode following a different dog. Spoiler alert: They are all good dogs. Via E News:

Dogs, they’re great companions, even better viral video stars and just generally lovable fluff balls. They’re also Netflix’s newest stars in the appropriate titled documentary series Dogs. The six-part series had a trailer drop in late October that probably made you try, so yeah, buckle up for the full thing when it drops Friday, Nov. 16 on Netflix. Where exactly did the idea for Dogs come from?

Glen Zipper, the show’s developer and executive producer, said his life changed in 2003 when he met a pup. He was working as a criminal prosecutor and knew it was not what he wanted to be doing. Enter the dog. “Skinny, with big, splotchy patches of his hair missing, he was in the care of some kids who had taken him away from a neglectful owner. The kids had named him ‘Anthony,'” Zipper said in a statement released by Netflix. This dog, Anthony, was taken to a shelter, but stayed on Zipper’s mind, he said, and he called to check on him and found out that if he wasn’t adopted in three days he’d be euthanized. After racing to the shelter, he met the dozens of dogs in need of adoption and the dedicated shelter staff looking after them.

“Inspired by their efforts, it wasn’t long before I turned in my badge and spent most of my hours volunteering in adoption outreach. It was hard, emotionally taxing work, but the happiness and fulfillment it brought me led me to another realization — it was time for me to head out to that place a million miles away,” he said. And then he found his calling: telling stories. As he embarked on the new producing career, Anthony has been by his side. He made the trip with him from New Jersey to Los Angeles, and has been his copilot ever since.

Coin Operated is an award-winning 5 minute science fiction short film about a young boy with dreams about exploring the galaxy. Via Short of the Week:

A young boy, like many others, dreams of going out to space and explore the galaxy. A simple coin operated space ship at a corner of a street will have a decisive impact on his life. A bright and family-friendly 3D animation, writer/director Nicholas Ariol nevertheless embeds mature themes into this simple work, and subverts expectations along the way—making this 5 minute animated short film into a beautiful allegory of life that is surprisingly emotional.

First-time filmmaker Arioli approached the film’s premise from a personal angle—driven by the challenge of telling a complete story in a short time with no dialogue, he drew his inspiration from the concept of “life savings”. The paradoxical mix of feelings that tag along those two words was something Arioli wanted to capture in a film, relating to us that the idea “seemed to me both a melancholy and a hopeful concept at the same time. We can accumulate one life savings, and spend it on one grand thing. Our dreams and our mortality collide in this common phrase.“

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yDzkpf4kC1k

John Cena is every member of a boyband for this bizarre, hilarious ad for Skyy. We’re not entirely sure what it’s about but we’re down. Via Adweek:

Ask 30 different Americans how they choose to exercise their patriotism, and you will likely get 30 different responses. And you should. That array of perspectives is what makes this country, at its core, truly magnificent.

For some, that means proudly reciting a pledge. For others, perhaps it means performing peculiar spoken word while enacting a branded homage to the Backstreet Boys.

In the case of John Cena and Skyy Vodka, it means both. And that dichotomy is as odd as it is glorious-which is honestly a perfect summation of America, when you think about it.

Skyy has partnered with the WWE star for two very different ads that continue its Proudly American campaign, a celebration of the bold and inclusive aspects of the American spirit. The ads were created in partnership with creative agency VMLY&R, Paper Entertainment and communications agency BCW.

“The Pledge” takes a fairly traditional approach of expression with alternating scenes of Cena living his best life and glimpses of other Americans doing the same (including RuPaul’s Drag Race All-Star winner Trixie Mattel, who appeared in earlier outdoor and video iterations of the campaign). Throughout the montage, Cena can be heard reciting an amended version of the American pledge of allegiance, one that honors “all those who make America what it is, and what it will be.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mNbSgMEZ_Tw

Elton John is the star of John Lewis’ widely awaited 2018 Christmas ad, titled the Boy and the Piano, a short film about a gift that changed his life. The Independent goes behind the scenes:

The short YouTube video features a number of key players who helped produce the ad, including David Furnish, who is married to the iconic musician.

“The John Lewis Christmas campaign is an iconic part of Christmas now and has had so many warm memories and associations for us, with all of our Christmases, so to be asked to be part of that was a huge honour,” says Furnish, who is co-chief of the film company Rocket Pictures with John. “Seeing the accuracy, and the work that has been put into to creating everything, the attention to detail is fantastic, so it is very exciting to see, it is like taking a step back in time.”

Richard Brim, who is the chief creative officer at adam&eveDDB, the ad agency behind the film, reveals how the script was chosen from 300 submissions. “This one really stood out,” he says in the video. “And it’s the story of how a gift changes a little boy’s life. But the little boy just happens to be Elton John. From playing in pubs to laying down the first notes of ‘Your Song’ and then from there, it went stratospheric.”

The ad was directed by Seb Edwards, who has also shot campaigns for Vodafone and Hovis.

“He’s a brilliant director,” Brim adds. “He has a very subtle way of telling emotional stories and they just feel effortless. So, he felt like a natural fit for this script.”

MARS is a thrilling National Geographic series following the quest to colonise Mars by 2032, featuring guest interviews with Elon Musk. Via Space:

National Geographic’s “Mars” returns for a second season on Monday (Nov. 12), bringing a blend of extraterrestrial drama and real-life insights about humanity’s future on the Red Planet. The docudrama premiered in 2016 with the story of the first humans to ever embark on a mission to the Red Planet. While actors dramatize the events taking place on Mars, real-life experts bring the story down to Earth with unscripted segments in which they explain humanity’s progress toward launching a real crewed Mars mission and the challenges that will face the first Mars colonists. These so-called “big thinkers” include Elon Musk, Bill Nye, Andy Weir and other experts from NASA and the private spaceflight industry.

When the story left off at the end of Season 1, things were looking pretty bleak at Olympus Town, the Martian colony built by a group of astronauts working with the International Mars Science Foundation (IMSF). After losing multiple lives to a series of unfortunate events — accidents caused by a combination of human error and the Martian environment — IMSF officials on Earth were considering putting an end to the whole gig, bringing the colonists back home and never sending people back to Mars again. [Living on ‘Mars 2’: The Real Tech Behind Nat Geo’s Martian Colony]

Season 2 picks up the story five years later, and not only are the colonists still on Mars, but the Martian population is booming! Several new spaceships (which bear a striking resemblance to SpaceX’s “BFR”) have arrived with dozens more IMSF astronauts. But that’s not all — now a for-profit corporation called Lukrum Industries is sending crews of miners to Mars in an effort to take advantage of natural resources like water. Naturally, the two groups start stepping on each other’s toes. This new conflict between the scientists and miners leads to the first group brawl on Mars, and that fistfight is only the beginning.

This Planet Earth clone by Netflix has also collected David Attenborough as a voice over. Not sure how that got legally worked out. Via Gizmodo:

No one will ever say there’s too much Planet Earth. Sir David Attenborough, the voice of some of the greatest nature documentaries ever, has almost exclusively spent his career at the BBC. But on Thursday, Netflix announced that it has successfully delivered a big enough dump truck filled with money to sign the 92-year-old broadcaster for its own nature series, Our Planet.

In a press release, Attenborough said, “Our Planet will take viewers on a spectacular journey of discovery showcasing the beauty and fragility of our natural world.”

The eight-part series, which debuts April 5, 2019, has been in the works for four years and was filmed in 50 countries with the help of 600 crew members. The company said that it “will showcase the planet’s most precious species and fragile habitats, revealing amazing sights on Earth in ways they’ve never been seen using the latest in 4k camera technology.”

Attenborough isn’t the only one lending this Planet Earth clone legitimacy. Alastair Fothergill, the creator of both the Planet Earth and Blue Planet series, is directing. Fothergill said this is “our most ambitious endeavour to date.”

With the announcement comes a teaser. Awe-inspiring music? Check. Sweeping vistas? Check. Unreal close-ups of wildlife? Check. The smoothest British voiceover in the business? Well, they wisely withhold that until he simply intones the words, “Our Planet, only on Netflix.”