The Sun Behind the Clouds: Tibet's Struggle for Freedom

First Hit: Brought back my feelings of sadness and the beauty of the Tibetan cause.

Tashi Delek!, to my Tibetan friends. I spent some time in Tibet in November and December of 1998. The moment I crossed the border from Nepal into Tibet, I felt at home. I had mixed emotions while watching this film which told me the film was doing its job, it was making me think.

I’ve been supporting the Students for a Free Tibet since the mid 1990s. When I made my sojourn to Dharamsala in the mid-summer of 1998 to visit the home of the exiled H. H. Dalai Lama, I was struck by the number of people who arrive each week from Tibet. They come to Dharamsala to be in the presence of his holiness and to leave the suppression of the Chinese Government over their homeland.

The film focuses on the two different aspects of this battle between the Tibetan people and the Chinese Government. The one aspect is his holiness’s view of the middle way, autonomy not independence. The other aspect as pursued by younger groups, full independence.

The film looks at each side with some commentary by the Chinese Government through public comments at press conferences. The film is relatively current in that is shows the disruption of the Olympic flame as it made its way to Beijing through both Europe and the United States.

The film also chronicles a group of marchers as they marched from India to the border of Tibet only to be turned away by Indian police due to pressure from China. The point that is brought up again and again is the historical fact that when a government attempts to control everything in its jurisdiction, eventually it all unravels.

And, at end of the film, there is a very important question that is asked: What will happen when the current incarnation of the Dalai Lama dies?

Co-directors Ritu Sarin and Tenzing Sonam did a masterful job of interweaving interviews into a cohesive film about a cause.

Overall: The cause is not lost on me or many others; I trust that the Chinese grip will unravel in my lifetime.

Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work

First Hit: Although a fascinating personality and interesting story, in the end I felt sad about Joan and the life she chose.

I’ve watched Joan from when she was first introduced on The Tonight Show with Johnny Carson. I thought she was funny, a bit neurotic, but having enough talent to be someone who would last a long time in show business.

Over the years I disliked her acerbic put downs of other stars and performers, but supposedly that is her shtick. I also felt that her immersion in cosmetic surgery was a reflection of her unwillingness to meet life as it is. However, Joan has continued to push on with her chosen path and this film gives the view of a one year ride into her life. It starts with the lamenting about how blank her business/performance calendar is.

She judges her life and success by how much she is wanted by others. She says multiple times she will do anything for money and I interpreted this as she will do anything to not have to stay home with herself, she has enough money.

During the year we see her embrace Thanksgiving, the failure of a play she writes and stars in, the continued revisiting and sadness surrounding her husband Edgar’s suicide, dismissing her long time Manager, winning The Apprentice competition and her back to living with a full working calendar.

There were times the film felt like we were watching the last gasps of a little old lady reaching for the next steps of an elusive ladder of success, and other times it felt as if you’re on the trail with a force of nature.

Gratefully there were also sprinkling’s of Joan’s comedic geniuses with wonderful direct poignant one liners which seemed to tie the whole thing together.

Joan is Joan and you take her or leave her as she is, she isn’t a phony and she isn’t about to give you a fake version of her life although she has had a lot of surgery. The directors Ricki Stern and Anne Sundberg did a wonderful job of piecing the various components of Joan’s life together into this film.

Overall: Very entertaining and telling film about Joan Rivers.

Babies

First Hit: A joyous funny film exposing how much babies are alike around the world along with the subtleties how they might learn through their own different environments.

Last weekend I was out of town because I had lost a very dear friend to breast cancer and I wanted to support her husband, who is my best lifelong friend. He had asked me to write and give Monique's eulogy, so last Saturday I shared Monique’s path from her birth with a crowd of well wishers. Giving this talk was both difficult and inspiring.

Returning home this week, I went to see Babies and the circle of life and death, as represented by last weekend’s funeral services and watching this film, was a heartfelt release for me. When you see this movie it's obvious that regardless of where in the world you are born, whether it is in Namibia, Mongolia, Japan, the US or, like Monique, France we are thrust into this world of bright lights, darkness, a need to feed, and an internal energetic spirit to begin to explore the world around us.

We start taking steps to become who we are in each moment we exist. Where each of us is right now was a series of steps and the next step we take follows from the last one taken. In our beginning, which is where this film focuses, we all learn to feed, move, sit up, cry, crawl, say a first word, and take our very first step on our own two feet.

If we have siblings we might get pushed around a little as the family hierarchy is identified. If we have animals around us we’ll explore them. In babies, I am amazed at the calmness that the cats and dogs which get pulled, tugged and pushed in all kinds of ways.

No matter where in the world a baby is born, it learns from both the environment it is in and from an internal spirit, energy, and drive to explore the world in which we find ourselves.

The babies; Bayar, Mari, Ponijao and Hattie are the true stars of this film and each was perfect in their role. Thomas Balmes directed this satisfying film which let the babies be the point of interest and the parents, and their parenting, were to only be wondered about.

Overall:  This is a genuinely feel good film.

Oceans

First Hit: Beautifully shot scenes of the ocean and its inhabitants, but overall I didn't connect with a central theme.

Some of the scenes in this film are beyond compare: Whales breaching, ribbon eels moving, birds diving for food, and dolphins jumping. Shots of the furious ocean demonstrating its strength against ships and the coastline juxtaposed to the calm of Monterey Bay where otters lazily fed themselves in the sun.

Life under the surface was shown in many different ways, a burrowing shrimp beating a crab senseless and the power of a great white shark lifting a seal out of the water in its jaws demonstrated various ways sea creatures survive.

But was there a point to all this? The narrator discussed why the ocean needs to be saved. He discussed that through all our exploration of the solar system and in space, we’ve only found one spot that has oceans, our Earth. But, then he goes on to point out places that are still pristine, “untouched” by pollution.

Then, in the next sequence, showed how garbage is collecting in our seas and is killing them. If there was a larger point to this film, I came out of the theater unaware of it. The ocean is a place of wonder and it truly is the instigator of our life on this earth. But maybe because I grew up near and on the water, I’m aware of how we are slowly killing the very thing that brought us life.

This film didn’t seem to make this point strong enough.

Jacques Perrin and Jacques Cluzaud co-directed this film. Maybe because there were two directors is why the film seemed to not be clear in making its point. However, these directors did put some amazing footage together.

Overall: The pictures were amazing and it seemed to keep the kids and adults in the theater interested and very engaged.

When You're Strange

First Hit:  The Doors music is always great, but this film isn’t. 

First of all, I didn’t understand the Jim Morrison look alike driving through the desert and periodically showing up in between the archival footage of Morrison and The Doors playing, standing around, and doing interviews.

Yes, I got the obvious link when it was announced on car radio (LA’s 95.5 KLOS) of this look alike, that Morrison had died in Paris earlier that day but that some thought and were reporting that Jim was still alive.

But beyond the first introduction of his death via the radio broadcast, what did this serve? Why did we continually revisit this guy driving around in the hot Mustang? What value did this add to the picture? What was the point? The narration by Johnny Depp was tonally good; the actual script was stupid at times and made me cringe in my seat.

Although old enough, I thought that maybe Director Tom DiCillo never saw any of The Doors concerts and created the script through his own perception of the group, but finally I just realized he shouldn't have written this script.

The reality was, that The Doors created some of the most unique and intense music of the 60’s generation. It was different by virtue of the unique talents of the musicians, an area DiCillo did cover. I grew up with The Doors music and saw them at the Whiskey A Go Go in Hollywood and also at the Hollywood Bowl when Mick Jagger was in the front row.

Watching footage of these events brought back a flood of very fond memories. Despite the extreme difficulty of creating a cohesive story with only interview, concert and studio footage outtakes; the pain of John Densmore, Robby Krieger and Ray Manzarek trying to keep the band together and creating music was evident and foretelling of Jim’s demise and early death.

Although there are lots of songs which would provide an interesting picture of The Doors, try putting on a good set of headphones (or ear buds), turn up the volume real high and listen to the opening of “Break On Through”; drums and cymbals flowing into the unique organ base line, followed by guitar mimicking the base line - twice, and then Jim singing “You know the day destroys the night, Night divides the day, Tried to run, Tried to hide, Break on through to the other side …”. Jim was always interested on breaking on through to the other side; “…yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah yeah”.

DiCillo brought some interesting footage together but there wasn’t much of a theme that ran through this film and I thought the look alike stuff driving around in a Mustang GT-350 was wasteful and unhelpful to understanding The Doors or Morrison.

Overall: Although some of the never seen before archival footage was varying in quality, it was wonderful to see but I especially enjoyed the music and in the end it was about the music.