On a night so cold that birds dropped from the sky and teardrops turned into ice pearls, Jack was born with a frozen heart. In order to save him, a cuckoo-clock heart was substituted, complete with a clock face and pop-out bird.

“Take what you can and leave the past behind,” sings Tom Petty on “All You Can Carry.” “We gotta run.”

Before there was Batman, Gotham City had James “Jim” Gordon watching its back. Played by Ben McKenzie (Southland), Gordon is brand new to Gotham’s detective squad and out to make a name for himself.

One of the remarkable things about a series like Doctor Who is the potential for versatility in storytelling. It explains the show’s enduring appeal, that every week can bring a new adventure in any setting imaginable, on any world, past present or future. Yet for some reason, the last year or two have been uncharacteristically underwhelming. Now, five episodes into the new season, and the adventures are exciting again, and in this week’s case, considerably more creative.

Margaret Atwood has returned with a collection of short fiction for the first time in eight years.

In some minor but important ways, writer-director Hong Khaou’s film, Lilting, resembles The Wedding Banquet: on its surface, it has the same kind of conceit wherein a young man must hide his sexuality (and boyfriend) from his, in this case, mother.

Individuality goes a long way in the music industry, something SBTRKT (aka Aaron Jerome) found out when he emerged onto the underground dance scene in 2009.

It’s helpful in understanding Cassavetes’ last great feature, Love Streams, to know that it was pitched to Cannon Films as a comedy.

Something strange happened to hip-hop in the past decade: the genre’s most conscious artists, once considered incendiary, somehow became legacy artists.