Unnatural Causes: Not Just a Paycheck

Here in Oregon, this and the final episode are showing this Sunday, 11 am. (We've complained in the discussions about what a poor time choice this was by OPB. Shameful.)

What happens when a company pulls out of a town and whole swaths of people become unemployed? More people than would be usual will die. And what can we trace it back to? Everybody now.....toxic stress, and that means....everybody now....too much cortisol. Hmmm...following that link I find that constant noise will cause toxic stress too. That would explain why when I experience PMS that loud noises now get to me. They haven't in the past, but lately sometimes my brain just seems to fizz out, and I need to find the space to breathe. That would also be an additional factor in how place matters...all the noisier things are in the poor sections of a town...airports, train yards, manufacturing plants, etc.

When people lose their jobs, many never recover financially. They don't just lose a paycheck. Their health also spirals downward. People will self-medicate by eating more or turning to alcohol. In Greenville, Michigan, the town featured in this show, the caseload in the local hospital nearly tripled after the big employer, Electrolux, pulled out and moved to Mexico. Electrolux is based in Sweden, a place where it likely could not pull out without compensating the displaced workers, and where workers have scads better social safety nets than we do for unemployment.

Here, there is a still-growing chasm between the "haves" and the "have-nots". Workers have not shared in the wealth from greater productivity. While these are things I agree with, there was quite of bit of this stuff said without supporting statistics. I'm sure they're there, but perhaps they didn't use them because it's not as dramatically straight-forward as all the health stuff has been.

One person said (perhaps the mayor?) that "we live in an individualistic society. We believe that people are responsible for their own fate." We do live in an individualistic society, something that I believe has come up in the community conversations as working against us, but it is a myth that we can be completely responsible for our own fate. It's a myth also that this society is set up to support the individual in creating their own fate. Much of it works against the majority, and supports the few.

In Sweden, the unemployed worker featured gets 80% of his former wage as long as he's going to school or looking for work. He did not have any anxiety or stress over his unemployment. In Sweden, new parents get 16 months paid leave. There, "health is not dependent on personal income, wealth, or job security."

Highlights from the discussion

• woman has never had a living wage job since she moved to Oregon (she is now unemployed and has been a valuable voice in the discussion...like when someone suggested barter alternatives, she talked about the tax and unemployment rules and how if she works for her mother for room and board she has to claim the cash equivalent on taxes, and I presume loses some of her unemployment compensation)
• somebody said that we in the US cannot move to Mexico and get one of those jobs that were outsourced, according to NAFTA. I don't know if that's true. Apparently it is possible to get a job in Mexico, according to this.
• Unions could exert pressure in Sweden, not here.
• someone followed that: even strong unions cannot work alone; we need a good government that supports unions; government doesn't support the people, work for the people any more
• same company wasn't able to be as ruthless in Sweden as it could in the US

Looking for solutions

• how about we make companies pay for it when they harm workers?
• if we can't get it on the state level, a Multnomah county tax for job loss support
• support for the stress of job loss: education, support, medication (one of the first medications people stopped buying was anti-depressants)
• get grants from corporations to support people with job loss, for health, education; make it as cache to help with health needs as it is to help the library
• sponsor debates, raise awareness
• tie relief to farmer's markets; support barter, sharing

Unnatural Causes: Bad Sugar

The funny thing about watching these documentaries...you may think beforehand you know what it's going to be about, but you don't. Bad Sugar isn't simply about diabetes, and it isn't simply about how the loss of a native's diet brought about higher incidence of diabetes. How is it that the world over, natives that have had their lands taken, who have lost their histories, whether in the Americas, in Australia, or elsewhere, these natives have experienced a higher than usual rate of diabetes?

The Tohono O'odham nation in Arizona "has the highest rate of type 2 diabetes in the world." Terrell Dew Johnson, activist and artist, says his elders never said they have diabetes, "they've always said 'I just have bad sugar.'"

The ancestors of the Pima in Arizona were master water engineers. The Coolidge Dam on the Gila River took away their water. At first, the people died from starvation. Within two generations, they began dying from type 2 diabetes.

Not only were the foods supplied by the US government to Native Americans to replace their lost livelihoods loaded with fat, sugar, and carbs (remember this is how we got fry bread), stress and poverty also contributes to the higher rates of bad sugar. Remember, chronic stress = too much cortisol = impaired glucose production. Fresh food was not provided until 1996.

When Coolidge had that dam built, the Pima were promised there would be water for all. Heh, yeah right. The Pima went nearly 100 years without water. The prosperity of Phoenix and the rest of Arizona is built on the backs of the natives. Prosperous Scottsdale has a 5% rate of diabetes; working-class Bullhead City has a 11% rate; the reservation has a 50% rate.

The documentary refrained from mentioning green lawns and golf courses while the Gila River ran dry. There was mention that among whites, there has been a culture of believing "that the tribes did not deserve the water."

This is the sort of thing that Rev. Wright referred to when he said he hates America, and I cannot blame him. While Barack Obama had to say his former minister was "stuck in the past," to appease the bristling Nationalists, I think he was wrong. This is not the past! Until white America reaches a tipping point in acknowledging this, racism will not be something of the past. I hate this about white America too. Now, after the Water Rights Act of 2004 (2004!!) the Pima have water flowing in the Gila River again.

From the community discussion:

• news that day: local tribes accepted not-quite-billion dollar settlement. The tribes agreed to drop lawsuits regarding ecological management of the Columbia River. (The money is expected to come from electricity rate. Again it is a win for the corporations.)
• there was no mention of corn sugar: corn syrup is "bad sugar" and is in everything
• Q: what is it that created problems for these communities. A: They were forced into decisions that go against their values. A: They were forced to eat cheese and carbs, not their native diet. [it seemed to me people shied away from saying they were robbed of their land, their culture, and their history]
• There are 9 reservations in Oregon: we need to broaden this conversation to the state level
• School lunches, emergency programs: success is based on measurement of calories, should be on nutrients
• Q: what are the next steps, some solutions? A: my community and family affected by diabetes: need education on how to cook
• Community solutions: African American Coalition taught barbers and beauticians about diabetes. This teaches a culture of taking care of each other. Need to find "unexpected alliances." How about health brochures in freebies in libraries, on Trimet, in various languages...not just at the doctor.
• Share in the bounty: community gardens. I need to remember to share about Growing Gardens--that is what I'd like to see in our community gardens.
• Let's have health fairs all the time: community activity board, billboards, signs.

Unnatural Causes: When the Bough Breaks

Becoming American and When the Bough Breaks will be airing on OPB on this Sunday at 11 am (tomorrow at 7 pm if you have HDTV). I'm sad that it's at such a bad time. Who watches tv at that time? If you're outside Oregon, check your local listings.


An acquaintance friend of mine from way back who works for the County was the facilitator for this showing and discussion. I just love her voice. It's kind of like Fran Drescher's really is, without the exaggerated whine that she does for The Nanny. There's this harmonious alto warble that is so enticingly interesting. I digress... Ms. D is a fabulous facilitator, which made up for Dr. A not being there. Dr. A is so cool too.


Many of us were returning viewers, but for those new to this, D reminded us that these documentaries show us that "health isn't' just about health coverage or even personal choices, but there are social causes to ill health too." Again, I would warn my readers that this review contains spoilers.


Unlike new immigrants, African Americans experience socially caused ill health at the other end of the scale. Their babies are born premature or too small at twice the rate of other groups. Twice the rate! This gap is not corrected by education or socio-economic status. In fact, the gap actually widens the more educated or higher status a black person has.


A couple of doctors saw this gap, and developed the hypothesis that it is due to their unequal treatment in American society. Ya think? But being good scientists, unlike me, your average geeky lay person, they tested. They asked "could the problem be genetic?" They compared the low-weight birth rates between African Americans, African immigrants, and American white women. The immigrants and the white women had similar outcomes. But if you're paying attention and remember the lesson of Becoming American...you're right, immigrants lose this relative equality of health within a generation.


The chronic stress of living with discrimination, and the cumulative experience over a lifetime not only affects the health of a woman, it affects her birth outcomes. The thing is, the sociologist asks, "How do we measure the subtle racism that follows African American women throughout their lives?" Women internalize this. They think about how race affects their lives constantly. How do you measure it? A sociologist, anthropologist, and an epidemiologist got together to do this. They started with a focus group that went on for 15 years.


I thought to myself, I wish they'd do this for fat people. We too are subject to thinking about this constantly. Unlike people of color, we are almost always told to blame ourselves for the fatness of our bodies. We think about this every time we eat, every time we attempt to move about or sit in a space designed for smaller people. This too puts chronic stress on our lives. This too must have an effect on all those health factors that this show is talking about. Yet when studies are done, chances are much more likely they're looking for a way to blame the weight, not the stress.

Some highlights from the discussion

• premature/small babies: same biological response as during war
• we can't change the way our species reacts to strangers (tribal response) (I disagree)
• story about experience as only non-white woman in a group: joined an artist group, at a party nobody sat with her at her table; "I've learned to cope by ignoring it."
• OHSU graduate student, white: we've learned people with dark skin need more Vitamin D; their bodies cannot manufacture it at all in our Pacific Northwest winters; this also causes low birth weight (I didn't get the sense she was trying to discount the racial gap, but looking for ways to mitigate it...at first...then it seemed she would rather believe a more graspable reason for the gap than racism) She would like to see a test for Vit. D deficiencies as part of a woman's annual exam. Good idea.
• pregnancy program worker: studies show this gap still exists in the southern states, where they do get more sun
• policy can't change people's perceptions
• (me) but it can! this is changing the public dialog. on a national level, the sound bites are separative; appropriate policy can change the sound bites to be connective
• money follows the policy
• (me) a question: is it possible that awareness of this, the influence of chronic stress, can change how it influences our health? (I knew my own answer to that question, I know from years of meditation and awareness practice that it does.)

My question prompted a flurry of dialog, prompted by the second facilitator, who asked: Those of you who've seen these shows, have you done anything differently?

• she herself has told herself "life is too short. let go let god."
• it's about self-love
• gonna buy vitamin D!
• if someone has a problem with who I am, it's their problem
• find ways to support those in less advantaged places
• it there's a policy, it's like having a road we can follow
• important to have good relationships, love
• good relationships between community members and policy makers
• this is from Malcolm X: when the people with the problems come up with the solutions, you have better solutions (so true)

Just a side note: I've eaten more Baja Fresh in the last 4 weeks than I had in the whole past year. That is the free food they've had for us. I like it, I just don't get around to going there that often.

Unnatural Causes: Becoming American

I was so happy about this: there were 30 people there for this showing. I was able to share that people could still see the first episode at some location in North Portland, and there were still some more showings of the second episode, and that they could go to the library website and find it under "News". Bruce, from the Health Dept. said I get an A plus plus for coming to all these.

While the first episode was an hour long, all the rest of them are a half hour long, so we have lots more time for the focus group conversation. I learned later that several of the attendees were immigrants, which was exciting considering the topic. I wondered if they came in particular because the topic drew them over the other episodes, or if they'd been especially marketed to through some group or agency. Regardless, it was great to hear their points of view.

Review:
This was a surprise to me: recent immigrants have better health than the wealthiest in the U.S. It's a myth that they bring infectious diseases...I would say a racist myth. They're healthier than the rest of us; within a generation, they lose that advantage, and are affected by the same unnatural causes.

The role of the strong family ties "forms a shield around them, protects them from the deleterious effects of American culture." We work more than ever. We are more socially isolated. That's a big thing. Social isolation can kill, it is linked to a greater risk for almost every cause of death. But, family isn't enough, that shield weakens.

It helps when communities are organized to keep that protective shield working. Kennett Square, a strong Quaker town, was featured as an example. One from there said, "Everyone benefits if no one is left behind." A worker at a large mushroom farm was featured.

• Among immigrants, as teens acquire American culture, they lose that hopefulness that their parents came here with.
• The American Dream is a myth: most people do not move up the social ladder.
• When immigrant parents work a lot, kids lose that valuable contact with the positive aspects of their culture.
• This country increases your risk of psychiatric illness
• Workers don't like to take time off work for health care, so illnesses are pretty far along when they do go (the big employer established a health clinic on site for the many immigrant workers)
• Acculturation--the process of selecting and choosing pieces of the culture to take on
• It would be good if we can take what we see in protected/shielded communities and incorporate that into health-protective benefits

The discussion

At first talk bounced around among people, but then with 45 minutes left, our facilitator, Dr. Anna, did a round robin to hear from all the people there.

Some excerpts:

• struck by irony: the people who bring us our food have less health care
• kids run the house, they're the language and cultural interpreters
• we've discouraged shared housing from the 50s on: how to encourage multi-generational families
• elder generation subject to social isolation
• car culture: socially isolated in cars (that was me)
• there was a sentence, "American culture makes you sick" we need to ask what is it about this culture that makes us sick? is it that individuality?
• immigrants are pressured to acculturate. this comes from everywhere: school, work. (from an immigrant)
• people in this country don't recognize themselves in other people (from an immigrant)
• (from an immigrant) they teach our children to be independent. our children come home, we teach them to think of the community. we watch them become someone else. focus on cultures, how to work with the family: give us more control to be able to resolve problems within our community

The round robin question: How can you make anything within your community better? Help keep people from getting sick?

• work within communities; don't come from without and impose structure
• need to celebrate various cultures
• used to get lots of fruits and vegetables in Guatemala; here in high schools they serve pizza
• create moments of community building; traditional dishes, potlucks
• activity centers for kids, community centers
• encourage health clinics in the workplace, as in the documentary (that was me)
• we need more compassion
• valuing caregivers
• a website listing ethnic grocery stores, farmer's markets [I so wish I had the health equity coordinator's email...wait, maybe I do. A wiki would be great for a listing of ethnic grocery stores. There is a website here. Farmer's markets...that guide exists right here.]

Unnatural Causes: Place Matters

Unnatural Causes is now showing on PBS! Thursday evenings, starting tonight. TV is learning from the web: people want interactive information, people want to have a say, and PBS is providing it. Besides these events like I'm attending that are happening around the country, PBS is asking for your stories related to these ideas in the series. Share your stories here.

Oh, good thing I looked. Here in Oregon on OPB, it's showing on Sunday at 11 am. Here are the tv listings for everybody, may not be accurate. Here are OPB's listings. If you have HDTV, (like anybody who reads me does...do you?) it's showing several more times.

The showings by Multnomah County aren't in the same order as they will be on the web. I saw episode 5, Place Matters, a week and a half ago. (I'm so behind with the blogging thing.) Again, this will contain spoilers, if you care about that before you watch a documentary.

Where you live has an effect on your health. Some of this was review, similar information as found in In Sickness and in Wealth. Obviously, place determines what you're exposed to. Who doesn't know about industries polluting the poor neighborhoods? Chemical agents, pollutants, violence, lack of access to fresh food, abundance of fast food joints...all of these contribute to poor health in poor neighborhoods.

In this episode, Richmond, California was featured. Like Louisville in the first episode, they showed that diseases cluster in certain parts of the city. Some differences were highlighted. Did you know it costs an average $500 more for a car in a poor neighborhood? I knew groceries cost more and are less abundant. Well-off communities have advantages and environmental support. Banks and other businesses move out of poor neighborhoods.

Cortisol from stress is covered again in this episode. Someone in a poor neighborhood has an "accumulation of multiple negative stress sources." A man named Gwai was featured. He'd had a recent heart attack. His daughter had been recently murdered by a SE Asian drug gang, mistaken identity or something. His son was involved with the wrong crowd.

Adult problems can be traced to childhood environment. Many kids in Richmond don't think they'll live to the age of 20. One program on hope tries to teach them how their actions can change their environment.

Asthma is certainly affected by place. Leaking windows encourage mold, moisture encourages dust mites and roaches.

High Point neighborhood in Seattle was also featured. It got a makeover, all new housing, with original tenants meant to move back. Community gardens were designed to be places that promote social gathering. Breathe-easy houses (wouldn't I love to have that) cost $6000 extra, or about 2 years of medical care. Would that all houses in the Pacific Northwest could have these breathe-easy features. Great idea, but the monetary support that created High Point was phased out. Some of the residents couldn't come back.

Sadly, not as many people came to this showing. Most of the people there were staff presenting it. Still, we had a good dialog. They liked my thought that Multnomah County can work under the radar. Average voters think of the mayor as the face of government, and think of the city when they don't like how things are run, but the county, with just as big responsibilities, usually seems to escape notice. (Our last County chair didn't get this: she ran things like a politician and got more noticed than she probably wanted.) The County thrived under Bev Stein before her, who ran things like a manager. Our current chair also seems to run things like a manager, and I think that bodes well.

When we do get noticed, it's for things people like, like the library. The health department wishes it got noticed more, I think. Several of the presenters are doctors in free clinics.

One of the things that gets my attention is how difficult it will be to sell this. The answers to "Unnatural Causes" are complicated. I said, "Politicians take this interconnected multi-layered thing and make it one thing, and talk that one thing to death. ...until well...it's dead." Of course it would go a long way to help the health of all if we had a single-payer health care system, but these shows reveal there are causes that go way beyond that. We could never have a dialog like this on the national level...not the way political conversation happens now. But this is wild, this is amazing, on the county level.

We had a neat conversation about how we could get more fresh food and consciousness of fresh food in the kind of neighborhoods that are swamped with the fast food joints. We already have community gardens, but individuals sign up for plots in those, and waiting lists are long. Also, I'm not sure that there are as many community gardens in the poorer sections of the city. I thought it would be nice to have some community gardens that are actually communal, encouraging the social gathering place as mentioned of High Point. They could be places of education as well as sustenance.

Oh, hey! I discovered I'm getting paid to go to these. So ixnay on the oliticspay alktay. Not here, there. I'm not getting paid to write this.

Unnatural Causes: In Sickness and In Wealth

Beginning March 27, PBS will be airing a mini documentary series called Unnatural Causes. While you may be right in thinking none of the Presidential candidates have a useful solution to the health care crisis in the US, this series would tell you even if we had universal, single payer care, that would not be enough. A person's health is completely tied with social status, as this series will show. I haven't seen Sicko, but I'm sure you'll see that, and more, and more proof, in these.

How do I know? I already saw the first one, and you too can get a preview in cities across the US. Check that website for related materials as well. At least you can supplement your viewing when it does come to PBS. Here in Portland, the Multnomah County (yay my employer) is partnering with the library and with other community centers to show each of seven parts, several times. See the schedule here.

Not only is the Health Department showing this, and giving out FREE FOOD, the County is treating this as the beginning of a three year project to work on health equity. Go Multco! After the show, community discussion. The audience is in effect a focus group. The audience at the showing I went to last Monday was woefully small. We need more people there, and we need more people who don't come with their own AGENDA about what they think the solution is. One guy rattled on and on about people needing to get more involved in community, completely missing the point that the disenfranchised people who are too tired from too much poverty to even come, or even know about it because they don't/can't look at websites, can't go to such meetings and spend their time listening to windbags like him.

Sorry to be so disrespectful about a young white guy so gung-ho about people needing to get involved, but really, he needs to learn to shut up, and actually hear what the issues are. And get a clue as to why the few people there had the luxury to be able to attend this meeting. Most were in the health field. Some in the community activist field.

So right now, Portlandians, you can see this amazing series. It will open your eyes as to the complexity of the American crisis, and that we do not have guaranteed national health care only makes our ability to deal with the complexity that much worse.

Review of Part 1: In Sickness and in Wealth
Note that while I saw the last showing at a Multnomah County Library, there is still one showing in Portland. (Saturday, March 29 :: New Columbia Education Center, 12 p.m. - 2 p.m) If you care about SPOILERS, even in documentaries, proceed with caution.

One of the experts introduces the subject by saying "we carry our history in our bodies. How could we not?" Karma folks. Any Buddhist who's done a few go-rounds in meditation retreats could tell you that. Such psychic wounds that cause physical ailments, they are there. When I stopped dieting, and thus stopped feeling bad about every bit of food I ate, my blood pressure went down. Hmmm.

One person was a medical sociologist. I wrote it down so I could look it up. It "examines topics such as the social aspects of physical and mental illness, physician-patient relationships, the organization and structure of health organizations and the socio-economic basis of the health care system. Sociology majors who focus on medical sociology develop research and analytical skills to address issues facing health care providers and those needing health care."

Also, epidemiologist. Something to do with epidemics, but more than that? Ding ding!

From Answers.com, Sci-Tech encyclopedia:

Epidemiology examines epidemic (excess) and endemic (always present) diseases; it is based on the observation that most diseases do not occur randomly, but are related to environmental and personal characteristics that vary by place, time, and subgroup of the population. The epidemiologist attempts to determine who is prone to a particular disease; where risk of the disease is highest; when the disease is most likely to occur and its trends over time; what exposure its victims have in common; how much the risk is increased through exposure; and how many cases of the disease could be avoided by eliminating the exposure.

For this first show, they look at the lives of several individuals who live in Louisville, Kentucky. Each lives in a different section of town, and each has a different income level. At the beginning, either the sociologist or an epidemiologist shows us a map of Louisville, and how the frequency of all the diseases we tend to think come from our individual preventative health choices can be mapped according to district. The poorest have more cases of cancer, of high blood pressure, of diabetes. By following these individuals, we begin to get a peek as to why income level allows for more choice to actually follow good health practices.

But good health practices do not decide all, and this is one of the points mr windbag missed: even with other preventative factors accounted for, people at different status levels have corresponding degrees of these diseases. The first to find it was one of those experts in Britain...where they have the universal health care. The occurrences of these conditions have everything to do with whether you have "the ability to influence the events that impinge on your life."

I always find the science of body chemicals interesting. That karma thing, after all. I learned that when we have a stress response, the body releases cortisol. When life is good, and you have stress sometimes, that's ok. A little adrenalin gets released, you deal with the stressful thing, and the levels go back down. When your life is chronically stressed, as when you're poor, or when you have a high demand, low control (and low paid) job, your cortisol levels stay up, and that is not good. When children grow up with that, that is very not good. It affects the development of the brain. This is toxic stress. It causes lifelong problems.

It affects whether you get colds. There was one (ew-producing) study shown in which people were fed a cold virus up their nose. The people in lower-income levels, lower-status levels were more likely to get the colds.

Having learned this, you should not be surprised to learn that "African-Americans die earlier ...across the social gradient."

Why do we have such a health crisis? For all our "freedoms" we have a very inequitable society. One of those epidemiologists said, "Those countries where wealth is more equitably distributed are healthier."

Go see the rest. Be a part of the conversation. The next one I go to see tomorrow, Place Matters.

Health is more than health care. Where we live, work and play impacts health. The food we eat and the stress we endure contribute to our health. How can investments in education and neighborhoods improve the health of our whole community? Find out how…

• Monday, March 17 :: Midland Library, 5:30 p.m. 7:30 p.m.
• Saturday, March 22 :: Portland Community College-Cascade, 1 p.m. - 3 p.m.
• Wednesday, April 2 :: Northwest Library, 6:30 p.m. - 7:45 p.m.
• Saturday, April 19 :: New Columbia Education Center, 12 p.m. - 2 p.m.
  

Movies Seen

(I watched alot of movies when I was home sick with a cold.)

How to Get Ahead in Advertising
A man who is fairly ruthless in the business of advertising just can't come up with something for boil-removing cream. Is it because the boil sprouting on his neck is going to come alive (wasn't this a cartoon...did this or that come first?) or because he's going crazy and is hearing voices? Something happened to comedy in the 90s, I don't know, was it Adam Sandler and Ben Affleck? They do things over the top, and you can't look away, like having to look at roadkill. This one was from '89 and the UK, so while the fashion was a bit distracting, the comedic value came more from the responses of the man and the people around him to the notion of a talking pimple than from the pimple itself.


Autism is a World
A documentary following an autistic woman who was perceived as retarded until a means of communication was devised using a keyboard when she was 13. She's going to college and plans to write and advocate. Heard about this from Rosie and her bloggers. I have a girl in my Dharma School class who has autistic tendencies, and a young woman who comes to the library that I make a point to speak to, so it helped to see the kind of struggle someone like this goes through. I've always made a point to say hi to the woman who comes to the library with her mother. One time I saw them at a restaurant, or a store. Mom couldn't quite place me at first, but by the way the young woman got excited, I knew she remembered me right away. I always assume they take in and understand more than I could possibly know.

Water
Heavy movie by Deepa Mehta, part of a trilogy. Set in India in the time of Gandhi, it follows a girl who is widowed before she even lives with her husband. Her father wakes her in the night and asks if she remembers the wedding. She sleepily rubs her eyes and says no, and then her hair is cut and shaved off. She is taken to a house of widows, women of all ages who respond to her in various mothering ways. Another young widow, a beautiful teenager, meets a young man and elements of the tragic Indian love story follow, but it does not subsume the tragic plight of the widows.

Mindmeld
A conversation between Leonard Nimoy and William Shatner about their days working on Star Trek together. Sweet and real.

The Magnificent Ambersons (A&E)
I vaguely remember seeing the original by Orson Welles, this makes me want to go back to compare. Jennifer Tilly was great as the soused aunt.

Proof
OK I really would not seek out a movie with Gwyneth Paltrow or Anthony Hopkins, but the plotline sounded interesting so I checked it out. I forgave the genius daughter character being filled by Gwyneth due to my dislike of the older sister character. Brilliant mathematician (Hopkins) goes "bughouse," and his daughter (Paltrow) quits school to take care of him. When he dies, she struggles with wondering if she'll be crazy too, while she presents another brilliant proof as her own, and everybody doubts her.

Movies Seen

After Innocence
Everyone should see this documentary. Our criminal justice system is broken. People are exonerated years after conviction, and then simply released. Parolees have more services available to them than the exonerated. See their stories, and how they are working together to change this.

Alice in Wonderland (1985 TV)
I've always tried to like Alice in Wonderland, really I have, but it always has felt to me just a tad meanspirited. I read on a blog somewhere that this was the writer's favorite movie version so I decided to check it out. Of course now it's been so long since I saw that, I don't remember who put it into my head. I did like this better than others. I liked the music and all the cameos by tv personalities of the 70s. I especially liked Steve and Eydie as Tweedledum and Tweedledee, and of course Sammy Davis Jr. as the caterpillar with a hookah. The girl was especially adorable when dancing with Sammy.

Everything is Illuminated
This was a book that I didn't finish in time for a library book group several years back. I meant to finish it, but as usual I felt swamped with other stuff and didn't get to it. When I heard it was made into a movie, I decided to just wait to watch it. I'm glad I did. I thought the book was ok, interesting enough, but the movie, well, the movie illuminated the subject with a more direct line to the heart. A young man has always been a "collector." Oddly, when some significant moment happens, he takes a material thing from that moment and bags it up. Apparently it began with his grandfather's death, and a bit of amber jewelry he saved from the bedside. When his grandmother dies, he saves the dirt that he should be throwing on her grave as a good Jewish boy. He goes to Europe to find the woman who saved his grandfather's life. We know this story from his translator in the Ukraine, who has learned something about the heart from this young man's journey. Together, they find the town that disappeared during the Nazi invasion. Together, they find a piece of both of their grandfathers' histories.

13 Conversations About One Thing
I think this is one of those movies you're supposed to like because it appears to be artful, but I don't know, I just can't get into the movies that have separate little stories that intertwine with each other. Unless it's Ursula LeGuin, I don't usually like books like that either. The characters weren't very likeable, weren't meant to be, I suppose. So eh...

Life Running Out of Control
Not just about genetically modified foods, but about genetic technology, such as the race by corporations to patent human genes. In India, activists work to bring diverse heirloom seeds back to the farmers after years of disastrous corporate manipulation. Scientists study how escaped genetically modified fish will affect native species. GM foods were rushed into the market, not scientists look at just what is happening as a result.

Forest for the Trees (German with English subtitles)
A young woman starts out in life with everything arranged. She's just finished college. Her daddy helps her move in, she has a teaching job. She tries so hard to fit in, find friends. She tries so hard to apply her teaching skills with all the latest techniques. She has little gifts for all her new neighbors. Yet for all her earnestness, no one is inspired to like her, not students, neighbors, or other teachers. As the viewer you cringe for her, but you can't really like her either. The ending, though, changes the movie completely. I take it the ending is symbolic, internal, not something that actually happens. It and the title reveal the character's major life question. You're left wishing you could find out what she's going to be like next...

When Stand Up Stood Out
A look at the beginnings of Steven Wright, Denis Leary, and Janeane Garofalo among others. Interesting. Self-involved, as comedians are. They didn't think much of the hordes that came after them, after their golden years, blamed the plethora of comedy clubs for the cookie-cutter comedians that came with the rise of clubs. I couldn't help but think of my first husband, and how he missed the rising tide of comedy, and tried making something of it when it was on its way back down.

Freeway
I loved this modern telling of the Little Red Riding Hood story. The opening credits animation alone could be worth it. Reese Witherspoon as the delinquent child hood, well, you couldn't get better. Kiefer Sutherland as the big bad wolf aka I-5 killer, well, ok.

Movies Seen

Me and You and Everyone We Know
Written and directed by Miranda July. Miranda July Miranda July why is that vaguely familiar? Oh, it's because she lived and done stuff in Portland, Steve tells me. The movie isn't filmed in Portland, but the script is littered with Portland names such as Laurelhurst Park and Burnside Street.
The dad who sets his hands on fire is John Hawkes. He was in Deadwood as the shopkeeper. These reviewers say more.

Dandelion
At first glance this is an emo movie. This reviewer thinks so, and doesn't get it. It's about the choice. There are two tragedies, but in the end I think the main character realizes his choice, emo despair or loving-kindness and the possibility of change in the future. The boy's decision to take the fall for his dad transforms his family. I've come across this theme before, how unresolved guilt can make you a better person. The book The Kite Runner is good for that.

TransAmerica
A just-before-op transsexual finds out she's a dad. She still has unresolved issues regarding her parents, especially her mother, and must face them via being a parent. The actor is a she. I thought she looked familiar but didn't recognize her, Felicity Huffman from Desperate Housewives. Her therapist makes her face the family issue before she'll sign off on the operation. The movie becomes not one about changing one's sex, but a cross-country discovery of self and family, a rather classic theme.

The History Boys
This movie was so refreshingly foreign, that is not-Hollywood. The kids to be celebrated were the smart ones, not the rugby stars. The big build-up was about the group getting into Oxford or Cambridge, not winning the big game. The scenes denoting training weren't frantic punching bag scenes or run-run-run, but boys piling up books and checking them out of the library to cram more facts for their specialty in history. The teachers weren't that svelte Hollywood teacher type. The fat one wasn't a foil for a joke, and he was treated kindly by the boys for his somewhat foolish groping ways.

Jesus Camp
Rosie O'Donnell was ostracized for calling radical Christians the American Taliban. She was right. She never said all Christians. But see this movie, and you will agree there is an American Taliban, and they are in power. At a certain age, kids will blame themselves. These Jesus Camp people take advantage of that, and brainwash them in my opinion, and they are being trained to be very good at stream-of-consciousness verbal testimony. That can be very convincing, but it is a skill, not the voice of God. I found it interesting that the children who were most apt to find that weepy transformative place of the sinner being washed by Jesus were the ones with troubles at home.

Come Early Morning
Ashley Judd is so sexy in this movie as Lucy, though her character is not the sort of girl one wants to get hooked on. She can't have sex without drinking, or without it being a one-night stand. A man helps her get over that, but who expects that to work out? Of course her dad has something to do with her fear of intimacy with men. Her dad seemed familiar but I couldn't place him, Scott Wilson. He was an extraordinary guitar player, but too shy to play for an audience unless he was completely shit-faced (I quote) or was behind a curtain. He also slept around. He was very quiet and stiff, and it was difficult for Lucy to have an extended conversation with him. His character was quite similar to the Dad that Scott Wilson portrayed in the next movie I watched a day later:

Junebug
Totally accidental. Funny how that happens, like those times you see a movie on one channel, and one actor is in another movie on another channel. Scott Wilson plays a man who is also close-mouthed and stiff, but less messed up. He holds things inside, but he's got his eye on people, and he knows what's up. Pretty emblematic of many of the characters in this movie, no doubt a character trait of the rural folks of the area. I wasn't sure I would like the movie at first, didn't like the main characters to start. I thought the art dealer wife was fake, and her studly man a trophy husband. Maybe that was the case. Definitely another not-Hollywood movie...the over-the-top things I expected as Hollywood would do, did not happen. Instead there are more subtle shifts in characters, glimpses of their inner workings. The art dealer's find, an artist who painted scenes of the civil war with penises as guns, was a hoot. Creepy, sorta autistic, and funny that was.

Movies Seen

Auntie Mame with Rosalind Russell
A friend mentioned this movie is one of her favorites, as well as the book, so I thought I'd check it out. I'd only seen the musical Mame years ago. Mame lives and loves fully, though she can be calculating about it. I don't know, the movie classics don't grab me in the way they did in my twenties. Now that I've seen more theater, I can see more of the theatrical acting in these older movies. It strives for a different kind of authenticity than contemporary movies.

No Direction Home: Bob Dylan A Martin Scorcese Picture
I enjoy music when it's there, but I don't seek it out much. I got out of the habit of music during my early years of zen practice. I was doing that zen thing of just eating when eating, just doing dishes when doing dishes, etc. I still do that quite a bit, but not all the time, like I needed then. You could count the number of live shows I've been to on my two hands, but that doesn't mean much because those particular shows were a bit random, like my first show, during college. My housemate asked me if I wanted to see Ferron with her. I got tipsy on Tequila Sunrises (this was Santa Fe) and we held hands. We were both mostly hetero females at the time, but this was Ferron, and the energy was filling the intimate barroom stage. Almost the only non-random show I sought out was the double-billing of Bob Dylan and Van Morrison. Sadly, the sound was horrible. It was just a bunch of noise, with sort of recognizable cadences that were possibly songs I knew. It wasn't Dylan's fault, it was the venue.

This documentary more than makes up for it. I thought I might watch and listen while I did other things, but this turned out to be a vital piece of American history, and some music I'd never heard before. From the first, I was hooked in by Dylan's account of his musical influences, and his discovery of Woody Guthrie. Dylan "didn't want to give himself away" when he recorded his first album, so he didn't record his own stuff really. He stole his buddy Dave van Ronk's version of "House of the Rising Sun," who couldn't sing it anymore because people would say he stole it from Dylan. Van Ronk got a good laugh when the Animals did the same to Dylan. (They didn't say stole...but told the account of Dylan asking permission after the recording was done.) There's great footage from Dylan's and fans' archives in the 208 minute 2-part documentary, never before released.

Palindromes
This director has a bit of the darker side of the Brothers Grimm in him. It will push buttons for those wary of not-so-secret pedophilic messages. He talks about his use of eight different actors for the part of the 13 year old Aviva who wants to get pregnant in this online interview. I think this movie would have deeper meaning for me if I'd spent more time in my life pondering the structures and implications of palindromes as a symbol. Maybe I need to watch it with someone who likes to delve into symbols and patterns.

Happy Accidents
I have a soft spot for time travel movies. I like to ponder those implications, the life-not-lived, or the life-that-must-be-lived and how that all works when someone goes back to make something happen a different way. Of course it helps to add love to the mix, and "strong emotions" were the key to allowing a change in the time continuum. I've never been pulled one way or another by Vincent D'Onofrio, but there were a couple of scenes in which I so wished I could have been Marisa Tomei. One where he explains time travel with his hand and her leg, and another where his whole body reached for her kiss as though he would melt or disappear or crackle into pieces if he wasn't completed by that kiss. I believed his love.

White Light, Black Rain: The Destruction of Hiroshima and Nagasaki
(on HBO now)
See it. You will cry. Find someone who has HBO if you don't. I have never been to a talk by a survivor. This one has the stories from many. First-hand witnesses of a nuclear bomb must be heard, must be seen.

Reds
I don't remember hearing of this movie when it was released. I would have been entering high school. I do remember a lot of talk of Chariots of Fire winning Best Picture that year, but not this one for Best Directing. I didn't even know Warren Beatty had directed anything. It's long, but a must-see. He brings a hidden history to life through a love story in the midst of American Communists connected to the Russian Revolution. At least I knew of Emma Goldman...not that I knew much. The witnesses were a brilliant touch: Beatty interviewed people (very old already then) who were witnesses to the lives of John Reed and Louise Bryant. I wished they'd had the names, but I understood the explanation in the dvd extras (done in the same style as the witness interviews) that they didn't want to bring some kind of hierarchy to the recognition of names, and for that, it worked well.

Into the West
Two Dublin kids keep a horse their Grandpa gave them. The cops take it away, and sell it illegally. It is a magical horse, according to Grandpa. It certainly can jump, and a rich man buys it for jumping. When the kids see the competition on television, they steal the horse back. Magical horse? What do you think...this is Ireland we're talking about.

Oregon's Covered Bridges
This would be a snooze if I weren't doing something else while I watched. This would be a great travel video for someone who loves covered bridges. I did learn something about the unique structures of covered bridges, and I learned that waysides still exist. I've bemoaned the loss of them in Wisconsin, long-time readers might remember. Many of these covered bridges in Oregon have wayside rest areas next to them. I checked this out, thinking it might be nice to see some bridges. The narrator said they're not all alike, but his somnambulistic voice made them so, reminding me of those educational films from grade school.

Movies Seen

The Persuaders
Available online. It's all about branding, and about limiting what truth is easily available. Example: the persuaders marketed the estate tax as the "death tax." Suddenly Americans don't want the "death tax." That tax only affects the very rich, but it was brought down successfully by marketing to the poorer majority. There's now so much advertising, so much clutter, the advertisers must cut through that by telling us less.

The Stepford Wives (1975)
With the new movie already out awhile, I thought I'd like to see the old one first. If I saw it as a child, I was too young to know what it meant. With 'stepford wife' commonly used to identify a certain type of woman's life, I felt it my duty to go to the source. Now I'm not sure I want to see the new movie. This one was great. I don't know but I'm willing to bet there's a whole subset of kinky folks who love to role play based on this movie.

Bridge to Terabithia
How'd I see a 2007 movie on dvd already? A co-worker gave me the heads up to put a hold on it, so I got it as soon as it came out on dvd. Not quite as enchanting as Narnia, but this was about imagination rather than an alternative world. I liked what they did with the arch-nemesis from school as a troll.

Little Miss Sunshine
The little girl really sparkled, and that mostly is what it's all about. When it came to the moment she really needed to, I thought she didn't, so it kind of fell flat for me. Maybe the point of that was, even when she didn't sparkle, she just keeps going.

Whisper of the Heart
Unlike Studio Ghibli's other fantasy movies, this anime is a story about a girl in junior high who finds herself and the stories inside her waiting to be written. No otherworldly action, just the imagination of a girl and a first love. Oh, the cat just might be otherworldly. Sweet movie.

U.S. vs John Lennon
Would that there were a musician with the drawing power of John Lennon today to give voice to an anti-war movement. Would that there were media drawn to a bed-in to film the word peace on superstars' wall as they made their honeymoon a means to protest the war. Maybe it has happened but nobody paid attention because all the media does is follow the lives of misstepping starlets and discuss the latest intimacies of a faux-reality show. I checked this out because I was reminded by Rosie that everyone must see it. I wonder if she was influenced by John Lennon when she chose to speak her views frankly on The View.

Ladies in Lavender
A young man is washed up on the shore of Cornwall between the World Wars. Two spinster sisters take him in while his broken ankle heals. Based on a short story by William J. Locke, the director confesses that he made the ladies a little older, in their sixties rather than in their forties. I thought that made it all the more interesting. Judy Dench showed sublime talent portraying an old lady falling in love with a younger man.

I loved this movie, even with it's muted British undercurrents. At first I pegged it for a tale of Odysseus from the other side, an older Circe seducing the mysterious young traveler with her hospitality. What was the young man's past? Did he even remember it? Did he know where he was meant to go?

A neighboring woman, suspect because she was German, took an interest in him as well. The director called this a fairy tale, and her character was the wicked queen fairy, and thus a dazzling beauty. I could see that. The young man already seems to have a bit of the fairy in him with his almost otherworldly talent with the violin. Perhaps he more belonged with the fairy queen, and the spinster sister with her unrequited love seemed to recognize that.

Archetypal undercurrents aside, it's a daring movie to have an older woman fall in love with a younger man, and to have nothing happen with that except that he leaves the town, as was always expected.

Sir! No Sir!
They tell us that Vietnam Vets were spit on when they returned home, but that's an urban legend. The vets were welcomed into the anti-war movement. And there was an anti-war movement among the serving troops. This movie reveals Jane Fonda was there with the troops, not something the Fonda-haters would have you know. Underground newspapers, refusal of orders, sabotage, fragging, all talked about here.

Quinceañera
A couple of guys were asked by their neighbors to shoot their daughter's Quinceañera. They told each other that somebody needed to make a movie about this. They turned out to be the somebodies. I finally got this after hearing about it on the IFC Spirit Awards. It's a glimpse into a world I know nothing about, and in the movie, the Latino gay boy makes reference to that to the gay men gentrifying his hood. The older man says, "You live in a whole other world don't you." The Latino says, "No, you do."

There's a scene that keeps echoing in my head: girl with boy on bike on a hill. Very much like a scene in Whisper of the Heart. A Quinceañera is much like a wedding, with the celebrating girl walking down the aisle created by her flower-holding court. The movie begins and ends with one, I like that, as though the movie is creating the space for the story's own coming of age.

Movies Seen

For Your Consideration
The same folks that did Best in Show and A Mighty Wind, this movie reached moments of brilliance as it made fun of the Hollywood world.

Orwell Rolls in His Grave
The media doesn't serve the public it supposedly informs, it serves the corporate interests that own it. Media consolidation stifles the voices of democracy. We have the illusion of choice and the illusion of democracy, and this documentary rolls over example after example. Interesting analysis: much like the former Soviet Union where you could criticize individuals in the communist party, but couldn't criticize the party itself, so too you cannot criticize capitalism itself, only a few scapegoats. If one is aware of the underside of the mainstream news, there will be no surprises here, but there are many who need this lesson about the biases of the news.

Hoot
Carl Hiaasen's books are quite popular, but I haven't read any. If one likes Disney movies, this will satisfy, though it isn't produced by Disney. A kid moves to Florida from Montana, and finds himself getting more attention than he wants from bullies and from cops, but he can't help following the mysterious barefoot runner. Jimmy Buffet plays a role. Owls have a starring role, of course.

Friends With Money
I don't know why I watched this vehicle for the Friends actress playing a maid who has rich friends. I think the movie tried to be real, but it was a very narrow slice of 'real'. It was background noise, what can I say.

The Enchanted World of Danny Kaye: The Emperor's New Clothes
The same stop-animation, even some of the same puppets, as Santa Claus is Coming to Town and Rudolph. The tale is changed a bit. The swindler has more noble intents than the traditional story.

Look Both Ways
Australian movie, themes of death. Look both ways...at death, and life. Neat art animation of imagined scenarios in character's head. While she's a painter and her imaginings show up as drawings or paintings, the photographer's thoughts show up as snapshots. I liked this unusual creative effect.

The 40 Year Old Virgin
OK, I finally saw it. I even thought, I might as well get it over with. Heh that's what I thought ummm let me think, those 22 years ago when I shed my virginity. The poor guy is made out to be a perpetual teenager, and all is fixed when he finally gets a girlfriend.

Movies Seen

And Starring Pancho Villa as Himself
True story. Pancho Villa had himself filmed to sell his revolution to the public. They picked the actor well for Pancho Villa. Antonio Banderas could portray the visceral magnetism of the man, and yet make him the slightly repulsive warmonger he was as well.


Family Fundamentals
Can't say much, I only half paid attention while I did other stuff. The Christian Fundamentalists rejected their homosexual children and mentees. We knew that. It's horrible. It was brave of these people to tell their stories. The fundies think homosexuality is an addiction. That's how they reconcile their love with their hateful actions.



Monster's Ball
One of those movies I can admire for its artistry, but not really like it.


The Toilers and the Wayfarers
This movie is gay gay gay. By that I mean it is an indie film in black and white whose audience is intended to be gay men. It's a coming of age movie, but in some cases the scenes play more like a fantasy of a coming of age than the real thing. Young men cracking open a beer while they pack for moving. Young man getting spanked by Daddy. Arresting officer sends flirty vibes even as he tells the naughty kid that he's going to hate it in juvie. Blond German with muscles framed in soft light. It was a winner at the Milan Gay and Lesbian Film Festival.

Weeds Season 1
Eh, I'll watch more as I can get them from the library...but I'm not hooked on it like I am HBO shows, like Big Love. Suburban mom deals pot to get by. I couldn't get into the suburban angst thing, not like with Desparate Housewives.

Now and Then
Eh. I think I saw it a long time ago and wasn't much impressed. This time either...I thought I'd see it again cuz Rosie fans seem to like it. Maybe I'm just not in the mood for the suburban mom thing lately, or the girlfriends unite thing.

Sisterhood of the Traveling Pants
OK this girlfriends unite thing I liked, a girls coming of age movie. I'm one of those people that doesn't have friends that go back to childhood. An occasional holiday card, no wish to see them on visits home. It's kind of foreign to me. I like this series of books, and they did well with the movie.

Half Nelson <--that link is to the official site...beware the automatic music.
This was one of those I wanted to see from IFC's Spirit Awards show. In the spirit of indie films, this one resists the usual Hollywood urge to paint the crack-head teacher as evil, the local drug dealer as evil, and the girl who has these people in her life for role models as doomed. The ending is neither feel-good or tragic. Through the slats of the grinding pain of their inner-city lives, you can see the beauty and fragile balance a genuine friendship can bring to their lives.

The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe
I was happy to watch this with Steve. He's been working soooo much and we've had little time together for such mundane things as movies. He liked the talking beavers. Me too. I also liked the talking fox. We lamented the beavers not getting any knightships or such at the end. If anything, it is a beautiful movie to watch: Narnia has incredible vistas. For some reason I found the wardrobe scenes compelling, that transition from fur coats to evergreen branches really set the scene for the movement from English country home to the wilds of Narnia.

It was interesting also because both of us read the books when we were kids, but don't really remember much of anything now. That distant familiarity made it satisfying for me, somehow making the movie more intimate. Otherwise I'm not sure the actors would have made me feel that way. When I was a kid the whole idea of Aslan as a Christ figure went right over my head...but I'd heard about that as an adult and worried that would turn me off. It didn't, particularly because Aslan said "deeper magic" and that kept me happily in the fantasy genre. After seeing this, I just may go back and read the books. Two more Chronicles movies are coming soon, I suppose they want to keep the same four children so must produce quickly before they grow up.

Movies Seen

Wild Parrots of Telegraph Hill
Can you feel the love? It's clear that Mark Bittner loves his friends the wild parrots. Perhaps it is his unabashed caring that pulls in his love, the filmmaker. He makes their lives so vivid, narrating for us the characters of the individual birds. He feeds them, talks to them as to old friends. He feels the grief of leaving them, reveals their grief for lost birds. The death of an old grandma bird is as poignant to him, and thus to the viewer, as a human friend sinking from illness to death. The glorious green spots of the flock winging across the sky, what a sight that must be to see in San Francisco.

North Country
The personal is political. In some places, it's still man's world. Women trying to be coal miners in the North Country are repeatedly harassed, threatened, and greated in their locker room by shit smeared cunt grafitti on the walls, semen deposited on their change of clothes. I grew up with a confidence that it was a world of equal opportunity, but this happened in 1984. The case was finally settled in 1998. This wasn't just a Lifetime movie made for the big screen. This was a hefty film in the ranks of Silkwood and Norma Rae. It took one woman. One woman willing to endure the smear campaign, a stalker (not covered in the movie but mentioned in the dvd extras), the possibility that she would be branded in her company town for good as a hater of men, an outcast. She brought us the first class action for sexual harassment, established a precedent that really ought to have happened long before.

A Guide to Recognizing Your Saints
Based on true events from the youth of writer/director Dito Montielo. Coming of age in Queens. This fit right in after watching 3 episodes of Rescue Me. I'm fascinated by these unabashed portrayals of NY men and the gritty violent edge they must live with, or so the movie and shows suggest.

Trigun
Vash the Stampede is sort of a Zorro in a world of Batman bad guys in an outerspace spaghetti western anime. Vash the Stampede keeps getting blamed for the violence of others. He acts the idiot, but dodges bullets and saves the true innocents. Two female insurance agents follow him in an attempt to stop the chaos and costly insurance payouts. They take several episodes to believe the blond goofball is the legendary outlaw. A black cat crosses the screen in every episode.

20/20 Transgender Children
Wonderfully sensitive account from mainstream TV about children who know from before they can talk that they were "born in the wrong body." These kids were featured because they have accepting and loving parents....think of how many must be living whose parents see such children as wrong, defiled.

Bill Moyers Journal Buying the War
If you did not see this, follow that link and watch it online. The Iraq war was sold to America through propaganda. Those of us in the peace movement could see this, but our voices were stifled or spun. Nice thing about this, they can't spin Bill Moyers.

Trigun
I saw this come through the library and I thought, hmm, an adult swim anime. i found Cowboy Bebop via adult swim. this looks like similar scifi, i'll give it a try. Before Bebop (and Spirited Away) I didn't like anime. Cowboys in space, great jazzy bluesy music, creative worlds and space ships..anime allowed for flexibility in aliens and their ships. While not quite as good as Bebop, Trigun is also satisfying as a cowboys in space anime. (Another Western in space that I love...not anime...Firefly.) The main character has a bit of Zorro in him, starts out acting fey and goofy, the insurance girls following him don't believe at first that he could possibly be Vash the Stampede. Not the guy that leaves a wake of destruction. Somehow he's developed this reputation while he refuses to kill others, even bad guys. Somehow he persistently emerges unscathed. Who is this superhuman? Check it out and see.

Thank You For Smoking
A tobacco lobbyists meets regularly with an alcohol lobbyist and a firearms lobbyist. They call themselves Merchants of Death. The MoD squad. The twisted logic of spin rules their world, and the tobacco lobbyist dad finds acceptance from his kid by teaching him the ways of spin. Somebody needs to do a kick in the pants satire like this about the Bush cabal. I suppose unfortunately nobody can touch that.

Movies Seen

Til Death Do Us Part on Court TV, by John Waters
I can't decide yet if this is too creepy to keep watching. John Waters directs these vignettes of true crime, marriages ending in murder. He begins the show with himself in the first scene. Whether a bystander or a guest at the wedding, he has some snarky Serling-esque comment for the camera. He's the best part of the show.

Road to Guantanamo
More true crime, this perpetrated by our government. This documentary follows the story that led three British Pakistanis to a horrific stay at Guantanamo, courtesy of the US government. Dramatization alternates with interviews. One of the four friends is getting married in Pakistan. They hear an imam preach and decide to visit Afghanistan to help people. One of the four is lost and likely dead. The remaining three are on their way back to Pakistan, not having found a way to 'help', when they are swept up by the Northern Alliance. They are separated. One survives a trip in a metal shipping container. Some died from lack of air, and some died from the bullets used to create airholes. It is absolutely disgusting that my country had something to do with this. It is absolutely disgusting that gitmo is still open for business.

I can see how this happens. Many humans are a hairs-breadth away from becoming torturers. Witness the Milgram experiment. Witness the Stanford Prison Experiment. Philip Zimbardo has just come out with a new book, The Lucifer Effect. He says of the book, "I offer a psychological account of how ordinary people sometimes turn evil and commit unspeakable acts. As part of this account, The Lucifer Effect tells, for the first time, the full story behind the Stanford Prison Experiment, a now-classic study I conducted in 1971." He hawked it on The Daily Show just the other day.

For me, the most visceral moment in this movie happened when a prisoner was placed in solitary confinement, made to squat, feet and hands shackled together. Loud heavy metal music blasted the cell. I felt a mild flashback in my body as it brought me back to a time when my stepfather had me crabwalk around the dining room table for what seemed an eternity. I was around ten years old. I crabwalked until my arms and legs gave out and my butt collapsed to the floor. Raging, he kicked me in the back, and I crabwalked some more. I don't remember what it was I'd done to merit this punishment. Most of the time I'd forgotten some chore, or I hadn't done a chore good enough. Pondering this karmic ghost triggered by torture at Guantanamo, I remembered that I'd just come home happy and carefree from a day with my dad. That was probably what I'd done wrong.

We Americans torture our children, not always behind closed doors. It is no small wonder then that our government has sanctioned torture and thinks valid information will come from it. We are a nation full of insecure, self-hating people that lash out at those weaker than us. The Dalai Lama himself has commented on our tendency to insecurity. Underneath our hatred and entitlement is a fear that we deserve to be hated, and are not entitled. Mix in a few elements of Milgram and Stanford Prison, and we have war crimes.

I'm not trying to create an argument or a polemic here, to any who would argue with me for the need to torture to glean information. That flashback did serve a purpose, it gave me an intuitive insight into the pervasive dependency this society has on violence. If people are raised with torture disguised as discipline, it is all too easy to find it acceptable to use similar techniques to get faulty information. I know from first-hand experience you will say whatever needs to be said for the pain to stop. You will say what needs to be said so the pain won't happen again. You learn to hide the truth. My stepfather has issues. In the case of the military, violence is taught, conditioned, encouraged. Empathy and compassion are discouraged. People like my stepfather and worse are created. When will it stop? Could we please stop?

Movies Seen

A Thief Of Time
Based on a novel by Tony Hillerman. Two different cases thread together in this made for TV Joe Leaphorn mystery. A segment of Native Americans don't like Tony H for capitalizing on them and their culture. I will say once I discovered novels by Native Americans, Hillerman's books just weren't as appealing to me. Still, when I went looking, albeit not very deeply, I found positive reviews in Native American newspapers. Hillerman is good for light entertainment, mystery with hints of supernatural. Native American novels and movies capture the complexity of Native American intersections with the white world in a much better way, I think.

Minority Report
It's a Tom Cruise vehicle, so not bad, but not brilliant. Good entertainment. Since I prefer Sci Fi, I'll take this over the Mission Impossible series. I'd seen so many bits and pieces since this came out, the movie already seemed rather familiar. It's based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. I haven't read any of his stuff.

The Guru
A South Asian dance instructor comes to New York hoping to make it big. He can't even get in a porno movie, but is mistaken for a guru (dancing guru that teaches about sex) and finds a small bit of fame. Some Bollywood-style song and dance numbers, fun, not too much. Marisa Tomei is cute as a poor little rich girl.

Bride and Prejudice
Another Bollywood fusion movie, I really liked how well the Pride and Prejudice story was followed. From the director of Bend it LIke Beckham (also very worth seeing, teen girl soccer coming of age movie), the Elizabeth Bennet character is a feisty Indian girl who must wait for her sisters to get married, and the Mr. Darcy character is a rich American. Also has some Bollywood song-and-dance numbers, again just the right amount. The dvd also has some fun footage of the crew goofing around along with the director, doing the same dance numbers. Special appearance by Ashanti. I learned from the DVD that Bollywood movies usually have such special numbers, a single big production featuring a star that doesn't quite fit with the rest of the movie's flow.

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang
Robert Downey Jr plays a thief that gets caught, his partner in crime gets shot, and while trying to get away he stumbles upon an audition for a character, and reads for the scene where the character is interrogated and told he's responsible for his partner's death. He gets sent to LA, and caught up in murder intrigue. Much violence of course, I didn't watch too closely.

Yo Soy Boricua: pa'que tu lo sepas!
I found this on the Independent Film Channel. Produced and starring Rosie Perez, it's a documentary on Puerto Ricans. I learned some of my favorite actors as far as looks go, Puerto Rican. mmm hmm. (Raoul Julia, Jimmy Smits, Benicio del Torro, even as a child...Freddie Prinze) I learned the Young Lords in New York staged dramatic and effective civil disobedience to get get real garbage service, and to draw attention to the need for child care for poor mothers. I learned Rosie herself was arrested in a protest of US Navy bomb tests on the island of Vieques off the coast of Puerto Rico. Fiesty folks, Puerto Ricans.

Ghosts of Abu Ghraib
The abuses at Abu Ghraib were not the random acts of a few renegade poorly equipped prison guards. I knew that, you knew that, but that is what the official investigations would have us believe. They may have done wrong, but some of those few men and women have made some of it right by interviewing in this HBO documentary. The whistle blower, the one who turned in the photos, assured of anonymity, was outed on international television by Donald Rumsfeld. Oops? The man luckily was with friends in the mess hall, he was flown out of there back to the US. The culture there was, and is, one of approval of torture. The documentary began with footage from the Milgram experiment. I found myself wondering, how can we have this knowledge, and the knowledge of the Stanford Prison Experiment, and have this still happen? Why aren't precautions taken to prevent abuses? The answer immediately arose, because in the bureaucratic military machine, they wanted it to happen. Plausible deniability. Approve a little torture, and deny complicity and ubiquitous atrocities. It's showing on HBO for a while yet, hard to watch, but something all Americans should see. Find a way to see it.

Heroes (TV)
People born with genetic anomalies that give them supernormal powers are finding each other. Some are good and trying to save the world, and some are bad, really really bad. Of course a mysterious agency (government?) keeps them under wraps. I missed some episodes but think I managed to fill in the gaps. There's no real star, there's so many characters that have intriguing powers and tasks, hard to say which is my favorite. Maybe the Japanese guy, Hiro, who found a comic book of the future, and he's making sure he fulfills the story to save the world. Hiro can stop and move through time. The artist of the comic books can depict the future in his paintings. Peter's afraid he's going to destroy the world in a nuclear explosion...he takes on the superhero ability of any one of them he gets near, similar to the evil one, Siler, who kills the others to take their abilities. I love this show. Sadly, I have to wait in real-tv-season time for the next episode.

Medium (TV)
For some reason I thought this was discontinued, there was such a long time between seasons, so I missed some episodes. Now I'm back to watching Patricia Arquette, as Allison Dubois, solve mysteries with her dreams. This show is just one of my guilty pleasures. I'm not buying the 'based on real life stories' part though.

Movies Seen*

*When I list movies or books, it's mostly for me so I can remember what I've seen or read. Sometimes I feel like I have cottage cheese for brains. You may look at this as reviews, but as reviews go, my thoughts would be pretty lame. (and this is about 2 months worth of viewing...I haven't been that much of a couch potato.)

Lost Horizon
This took me back to my AMC watching days, not necessarily in a good way. I was bothered a bit by the depiction of Tibet, and how a utopian society in the middle of the high mountains was led by a white man who'd supposedly lived over 200 years and was called the "High Lama." The people there had created an elite little European enclave with European furnishings but stole the ideas of the Tibetan Buddhists to make it a utopia.

Howl's Moving Castle
Who doesn't like anime by Hayao Miyazaki, director of Spirited Away? This story also happens to come from one of my favorite SciFi/Fantasy authors, Diana Wynne Jones. A girl is cursed into an old lady, and she's caught up in the middle of battling witches. Lauren Bacall wonderful as the voice of the Witch of the Waste.

My Neighbor Totoro

Anime also by Hayao Miyazaki. A co-worker told me I would love it, and she was right. The soot sprites of Spirited Away make a comeback, and Totoro is a giant oak tree spirit that makes friends of two girls who move to the country and whose mother is sick. It was so sweet, I could watch it again. I especially loved the scene when the girls wait in the rain for the bus with their father on it. Totoro joins them, and the girls offer the creature their umbrella. Extra large drops plunk the umbrella, causing Totoro to frizz with startled alarm. I also loved the giant cat bus that Totoro summons to help the older girl look for the younger. Shades of the Cheshire cat. Dakota Fanning (love her!) and her little sister Elle were the voices of the girls for the English version.

Kicking Bird
A truly indie movie shot in Portland. A decent story about a boy who runs to escape bullies who are on the cross-country team. The coach wants him on the team, but also wants the boy to be his ticket out. No Hollywood slickness here. I was tickled to find a small but good part played by one of my Dharma School moms. She also was the casting director. Produced by Angry Filmmaker.

The Ref
Denis Leary makes a great burglar. The bickering couple comes home, and he ends up refereeing. Therapy didn't help, but they find each other again at the end of a gun. Hmmm. I did like it though.

Country Boys
This was a fascinating documentary series from Frontline in which two Appalachian boys were followed by a camera crew, and interviewed, for several years. Poverty is indeed crushing. One boy was born again about a year before the filming, and was and is in a heavy metal Christian band. His girlfriend, now wife, is pretty sharp. They feel God brought them together. With such a love larger than themselves, I kind of think they'll be one of those rare sweet lifelong couples.

Just Like Heaven
A spirit haunts the condo of a man who falls in love with her, and helps her figure out her story. Romantic comedy with a paranormal twist, I like that. And I like Reese Witherspoon.

Wild Hearts Can't Be Broken
A teenage girl is told she's not wanted there anymore, so she leaves home and joins the circus. True depression-era story about a girl who dives into a pool of water on a horse. The scarier part of that for me was her jumping on the horse just before it jumped off the high-dive. Great story. Wild job. She has an accident that makes her blind, and that doesn't stop her.

Taken (miniseries)
A Steven Spielberg creation, it's 10 movies made for TV that pulls in all the lore of UFOlogy. The story follows several generations of three families: one family that descends from an alien and human; one that is consistently taken and probed by the aliens; and one that one that obsessively ties it's supersecret area 51 career to hunting those aliens and the other families. I'm sure Art Bell listeners would catch a whole lot more references than I could. Narrator and final hero of the story played by my favorite child star, Dakota Fanning.

Stage Beauty
Better than "Shakespeare in Love" (who could ever think that was remotely about Shakespeare?) this story is about the time of transition when women went from being outlawed in the theater, to being allowed. But eh, suddenly the women bring a less stylized acting to the stage, and there had to be a romance where she bests him. I guess they had to appeal to the modern audience.

Aeon Flux
I used to watch this as a cartoon on MTV's Liquid Television. I was curious as to how they would translate this into a movie. I never quite knew what was going on with the Liquid Television vignettes, but I guess I wasn't supposed to. Aean Flux was spindly and taut muscles and bones, and could crawl up buildings and jump from skycrapers, and died and rose like a phoenix each episode. The movie captured this well. The plot provided backstory for the cartoon (finally).

Neverwhere (miniseries)
Neil Gaiman is considered one of the best graphic novel artists and authors. I'm not into graphic novels, but was curious about his artistry. It's got a British production feel, not something I find appealing, but the fantasy genre willed out. A parallel society lives Under London, and a man with a boring life finds himself more a part of that world where rats talk, than his old life. Above-ground people don't notice the people from under.

Mysterious Skin
A little league coach messes up two boys for life. One grows up to become a prostitute, the other obsesses about his lost time and thinks he was abducted by aliens. They need each other to recover. Good movie.

Reading Rumi in an Uncertain World
Poetry reading by Robert Bly and Naomi Shihab Nye. Bly has a neat way of repeating lines, allows them to sink in. Rumi's great.

Movies Seen

The L-Word

OK, not a movie, but as good as. I watched the first 2 seasons on DVD. Lesbians. Love. Los Angeles. A Lot of sex, and not just lesbian sex. Shane is the player, everybody sleeps with Shane, Shane doesn't do relationships, and everybody, but everybody, wants to get in her pants. One character finally explains it as that wanting of the unattainable. Somehow, she is the sexiest, most desirable of the characters, my favorite. Perhaps it is also her androgyny. Jennifer Beals is sexier now than her Flashdance days, and she alludes to the bad fashion from that time in the DVD bonus features.


The Mudge Boy

A woman with two full flats of eggs in her basket pedals a bike uphill on a gravel road. She gets off the bike to walk, and flops over dead. Later we find out she is the mother of an odd boy who is just beginning to be sexually aware. Country boys in big trucks rattle through while I as viewer cringe at his vulnerability. The boy finds a way into their circle (money for beer) but the tension of barely contained uncaring violence skirts around the edges. This is a movie about straddling that thin edge where things could go horribly wrong, or things could be all right.

Howard Zinn: You Can't Be Neutral on a Moving Train

Howard Zinn became an historian with the understanding that the people's experience of history in the making would not necessarily be the history in the books. He found this out as a young adult during his experience as a labor organizer in the Brooklyn shipyards. After WWII he got his degrees and went to work at a black college....just when the Civil Rights movement was gaining momentum. He was right there with his students.

I was impressed with their civil disobedience in a court in which the judge attempted to retain 'separate but equal'. Howard sat on the black side, his students on the white side. The judge ordered them to move. They did not. Howard stood up and said, "The Supreme Court has ruled that it's illegal to segregate in any courtroom in the United States. Would you mind following the law of the supreme court?" And the judge did.

His wife Roslyn Zinn was there throughout, a wonderful presence. She was always the first to read his books, editing with the eye of a lay person and a reader.

When Howard received an award in France, in his speech he said, "I don't want to invent victories for people's movements but to think that history writing must simply recapitulate the failures that dominate the past is to make historians collaborators in an endless cycle of defeat. Now if history is to be creative, if it is to anticipate a possible future without denying the past, it should, I think, emphasize real possibilities by disclosing those hidden episodes in the past when even if in brief flashes people showed the ability to resist, occasionally to win. I'm supposing, perhaps only hoping, that our future may be found in the past's fugitive moments of compassion rather than the solid centuries of warfare."

Just like that moment in the courtroom, I would say.

I've been inspired by this documentary to actually read my People's History, a little bit at a time.

(Just a side note: I don't know why I didn't make this connection before...Jon Kabot-Zinn is the son-in-law of Howard. JKZ was instrumental in bringing Buddhist mindfulness meditation to American medicine.)


Van Helsing

Vampire hunter meets Indiana Jones with a little bit of 007 mixed in.

Off the Map

A girl grows up in the sticks of New Mexico. Her parents live simply, while she wants what she hasn't got. I kept seeing my cousin Jo in Mrs. Grodin, the same weathered stretched-back smile, the same hint of expansive internal landscape. Jo lived much of her adult life in that enchanting land of northern New Mexico.

Scene from movie, the jewel through which the whole can be seen:

"It was like the cornerstone of my childhood...the event upon which I built everything else...now was pulled and everything is toppled. The only thing I can hold on to, right now, Mrs. Grodin...the only thing I know to be true...is my love for you."
"Mr. Gibbs."
"Yes."
"New Mexico is a very powerful place. Often when people first get here it's a little overwhelming."
"Oh. Ah. Well. I do feel a little...displaced."
"You're welcome to stay here, with us. As long as you like, until you get your bearings."