The Cove Wins an Oscar

It's not often that a movie-making team includes a director of "clandestine operations" and rarer still that a documentary about hunting dolphins in a remote corner of Japan wins worldwide attention. But that's what happened in March when The Cove won an Oscar – with double help from the Academy Awards, which guaranteed the team media buzz by silencing its acceptance speech to prevent its appeal for the audience to take action to stop the brutal dolphin hunt the movie illustrated.

The film helped millions of viewers understand not only the problems associated with one way of fishing, but the problems of depleting the oceans through overfishing in general.

Not for nothing, Ken Burns' latest documentary, The National Parks: America's Best Idea, also took home a couple Emmys.