Reviews

Jenny's leaving is unmotivated; it's the most important point of the plot. She left a rich, devoted man whom she'd been close friends with lifelong, after he got her pregnant. Jenny's character is undeveloped. The parade of news clips isn't enough to carry the movie. Good music, but very short clips of it. Everything comes too easily for the title character. It's not believable. Hanks is personable and in character in the role. The movie says little about the Vietnam War. It takes no stand, and shows only a tiny bit of war footage. Mainly it's a vehicle to show bits of late-twentieth-century American history in an amusing way. There is some humor.

Where to Invade Next

Brilliant. Michael Moore "invades" countries to capture ideas the U.S. needs: "for we have problems no army could solve."

ITALY:

Navy has only two warships.

Workers get 8 weeks paid vacation per year; couple gets another 3 weeks at marriage; an extra month's pay in December; 2-hour lunch; 5 months paid maternity leave.

Indeed, the whole world gets paid maternity leave, except Papua New Guinea and the U.S.

"We feel we are being rewarded, because the people are very committed. There's no clash between the profit of the company and the well-being of the people."—Ducati CEO Claudio Dominicali

"What's the point in being richer?"

France:

The best place to eat in town is the school cafeteria. First-rate food, and they spend less per lunch than we do.

France pays slightly more in income and social security taxes than the U.S. does. France gets: free healthcare, free college, daycare, paid sick leave, paid maternity leave, 4 weeks paid vacation, prescriptions, nursing care, great schools, bullet trains, huge funds for arts.

People in the U.S. pay college tuition + day care fees + nursing home bills + copays + deductibles + . . . . We pay much more than the French, much of it privately-imposed taxes to enrich profiteering owners of hospitals, schools, pharmaceutical corporations.

French paychecks show itemization of where the taxes go.

For U.S. (not disclosed on paychecks), the numbers are: 01.18% food and agriculture 02.36% transportation 02.60% science 03.51% energy and environment 03.67% international affairs 06.28% education 59.57% military

France teaches true sex ed in high school. Many U.S. states "teach abstinence". U.S. has far higher rates of sexually-transmitted diseases, and of teen pregnancy, than in France, Germany, and Switzerland.

FINLAND:

#1 in education, without sacrificing kids' childhoods. No teaching to the test. Music, art, cooking, woodshop, sewing, nature walks. Teaching is based on what the kids want for their future.

It is illegal in Finland to set up a school and charge tuition. Rich parents have to make sure the public schools are great. And by making the rich kids go to school with everyone else, they grow up with those other kids as friends. And when they become wealthy adults they have to think twice before they screw them over.

All schools in Finland are equally good. No one has to shop for a school.

Many Finnish education ideas were initially American ideas.

SLOVENIA:

Essentially free college, as it is in Argentina, Austria, Brazil, Cuba, Czechoslovakia, Denmark, Ecuador, Finland, France, Germany, Iceland, Ireland, Luxembourg, Mexico, Morocco, Norway, Panama, Sweden, Tunisia, Uruguay, Venezuela.

Even Americans can come to Slovenia and get free college educations (100 classes taught in English). Americans who couldn't afford community college in the U.S., who would be crushed by debt in a U.S. college.

European plans to charge college tuition were met with massive protests: college remains essentially free.

Germany:

Still has a thriving middle class. Still has factories. Factories have windows. Corporations are run by a supervisory board, 50% of which is workers. "Give people a say, they help the company to win." Workers don't have second or third jobs.

In the German universal healthcare system, a stressed-out German can get a prescription for a free 3-week stay at a spa. "It's cheaper to prevent worse sickness."

Germany teaches its high school students about the holocaust. U.S. education downplays the genocide inflicted on Native Americans, and the horrors of slavery.

Portugal:

Decriminalized drugs; universal free healthcare provides treatment for addictions. Drug use has gone down.

In the U.S. the "war on drugs" is an excuse to imprison millions of blacks, who work in prison for 23 cents an hour for corporations. Modern slavery. And they permanently lose their voting rights. In Portugal, prisoners vote. No capital punishment.

NORWAY:

Rehabilitative prisons. No capital punishment. Maximum sentence 21 years. Prison guards don't carry guns. Nor do police. 4 guards, 115 prisoners, in a minimum-security prison, including murderers, rapists, robbers.

In the U.S., 80% of ex-prisoners are rearrested within 5 years. In Norway, it's 20%.

Iran:

World leader in stem cell research.

BRAZIL:

Voting age 16.

RWANDA:

Majority of parliament is women.

TUNISIA:

Free government funded women's health clinics, including abortion, legal since 1973. 24 reproductive health centers. Mostly contraception. Family planning helps women be equal.

People's uprising toppled dictator in January 2011.

New Islamist party had most seats in legislature, did not want women's rights written into constitution. Women rallied, won women's rights protections in constitution. Islamists acceded, stepped down.

ICELAND:

Oct. 24, 1975 women's strike: 90% of women did no work. No schools, banks, buses that day. When women don't work, nothing works. Ideas of women's value changed that day. 1980, Iceland first country to elect a woman president. Women have same opportunities as men. Corporate boards must be 40% to 60% women, 40% to 60% men.

In Iceland, there's a law, you can't say, "this brand is the best."

Bankers were prosecuted and imprisoned after causing the meltdown of the economy. The banks were not bailed out. The economy has recovered and is better than ever.

UNITED STATES:

Although it appears that the American dream is alive everywhere except in America, the ideas these other countries are living, many of them originated in the U.S. The labor movement, women's movement, no cruel and unusual punishment, no death penalty (Michigan first government to abolish), free education: all these ideas were already ours. We've always had the power to do for ourselves what these other countries have done for themselves.

We just have to stop being such stingy bastards and realize that my prosperity and well-being depends on yours too.

There are no likable characters in this movie.

Even the protagonist is mainly just a victim. She shows some tenacity, but we don't really get to know her enough to like her.

Shows that Chinese people were scapegoated, mistreated, excluded, robbed, murdered in the 1800s.

Shows a poor Chinese father selling his daughter into sex slavery.

Everyone the protagonist encounters mistreats her.

Not a fun movie. Its redeeming social value, if it has one, is in showing the fallout from racism and sexism.

Which is perhaps unnecessary. For a downer, any day's news will do.

A movie should at least have a likable character. This movie lacks one.

Echo of the Elephants: the Next Generation. Broadcast 1/14/1996; on DVD 2005 (with the 1993 episode, Echo of the Elephants. 2 shows on 1 disk.)

Follows the same family from Oct. 1992 to 1995.

Shows the family bedding down after midnight, using a special camera. They sleep only 3 hours (then nap during the day).

Shows more bull elephant fights, mating, births, newborns, injury, illness, recovery, kidnapping of a newborn by a rival family, recovery of the newborn by Echo and family invading the rivals in a phalanx.

A streaming temporal gland between an elephant's eye and ear, shows the elephant is agitated.

There are only 200 breeding-age male elephants in Amboseli: of these, Moss tells us of 4 prime bulls who were killed by poachers and "sport" hunters in 1995 and 1996.

Amboseli normally receives only 12 inches of rain per year, divided among 2 brief rainy periods in an otherwise hot, dry year.

Echo of the Elephants

Echo is the name of the 45-year-old matriarch of a family of 15 females and their young. Males leave at about age 14. Males begin to mate at age 25 to 30; we see an 11-yr-old female giving birth.

Cynthia Moss follows the family from Feb. 1990 to June 1991. A very large calf is born to Echo (22 months after mating), who takes 48 hours to be able to walk (normal is .5 hour), because he was so large his tendons couldn't stretch in the womb. There was drought June 1990 through March 1991. Normally there are rains in both March and November. The park has a swamp that normally has water even in the dry season, fed by snowmelt from Mount Kilimanjaro.

Cynthia Moss has studied elephants since 1972, 20 years in Kenya's Amboseli National Park. There are 750 elephants in 50 family groups, and no hunting.

The show was written by Cynthia Moss and David Attenborough. Moss narrates part of it. Attenborough does not narrate, does not appear.

broadcast 1993. DVD 2005.

Echo of the Elephants: the Next Generation. Broadcast 1/14/1996; on DVD 2005 (with the 1993 episode, Echo of the Elephants. 2 shows on 1 disk.)

Follows the same family from Oct. 1992 to 1995.

Shows the family bedding down after midnight, using a special camera. They sleep only 3 hours (then nap during the day).

Shows more bull elephant fights, mating, births, newborns, injury, illness, recovery, kidnapping of a newborn by a rival family, recovery of the newborn by Echo and family invading the rivals in a phalanx.

A streaming temporal gland between an elephant's eye and ear, shows the elephant is agitated.

There are only 200 breeding-age male elephants in Amboseli: of these, Moss tells us of 4 prime bulls who were killed by poachers and "sport" hunters in 1995 and 1996.

Amboseli normally receives only 12 inches of rain per year, divided among 2 brief rainy periods in an otherwise hot, dry year.

We learn:

Skylab, the first space station, was launched in 1973 specifically to study the sun without atmospheric interference.

Galileo was the first, in the 1600s, to turn a telescope on the sun. He discovered that the sun was not perfect: it had dark spots. And that these rotated. The sun spins on its axis.

About 3 times per decade there is a total eclipse of the sun somewhere on Earth. At these times the corona can be seen from Earth.

Father Angelo Secchi https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Secchi in the mid-1800s was the first to use spectroscopy to study the sun. By using only the light from a narrow portion of the spectrum he could see detail that otherwise is swamped in the brightness. Spectroscopy also identified that the sun is mostly hydrogen and an element unknown on earth, that was named helium (Helios, god of the sun). There are other elements present in the sun as well. Secchi then used his spectroscope on stars. Same elements. The sun is a star. Secchi discovered this in 1862.

Rockets by the late 1940s got above the atmosphere: instruments detect cosmic rays, x-rays, and ultraviolet light, all from the sun, that our atmosphere shields us from.

The first person to do a spacewalk, outside a space capsule, was Alexi Leonoff.

Skylab captured 160,000 pictures of the sun in 9 months. Images included coronal mass ejections.

Astronomer Hale in 1903 built the Mount Wilson observatory near Pasadena, California. The road to the top wasn't built until 1936. The steel and concrete was packed to the summit using horses. At this observatory, spectrographs show high resolution images of sunspots. In the sunspots, spectral lines widen and split. This is evidence that sunspots are areas of intense magnetic field. In the dark spots, the magnetic field suppresses the emission of plasma, lowering the surface temperature 2000 degrees. There are other areas where the emission is more intense.

The northern and southern lights, the aurora, are due to the interaction of ions from the solar wind with Earth's magnetic field. This was discovered by a Norwegian astronomer before World War I.

Chinese astronomers had noticed comet tails always point away from the sun. Light alone could not do this. The solar wind is 300 km/second to 800 km/second, at all times. This was measured by Mariner 2 on a flight to Venus in 1962, having been predicted 5 years earlier.

The solar wind streams from the sun's equator, which is the plane the planets orbit in. Mercury's atmosphere has been completely stripped by this wind. Venus's atmosphere, 100 times as dense as Earth's, is being blown toward Earth's orbit by the solar wind. Mars has 1/100 the density of Earth's atmosphere.

Solar wind interaction with Jupiter's magnetic field emits radio waves. Same with Saturn, Uranus, Neptune.

Solar wind doesn't continue forever. The key is that interstellar space has hydrogen and helium in it. The solar wind is pushing this interstellar gas away from the sun. There is a point at which the solar wind has lost its force to the point where the interstellar gas pushes back at the same force as the solar wind. This is called the heliopause. It's at about 4 times the radius of Pluto's orbit. When a coronal mass ejection reaches the heliopause, it emits a burst of radio waves. These radio waves are detected 400 days after the coronal mass ejection.

In 1995, the SoHo observatory was launched. It looks at the sun in the x-ray, ultraviolet, and visible spectra, and listens for sounds emitted by the sun! Sound lets scientists discover what's happening below the surface of the sun. There are rivers of plasma beneath the surface, circling around the sun's axis. Every 6 minutes, the sun breathes in and out.

The sun was formed 4.5 billion years ago when a supernova caused a gas cloud to collapse and begin fusing hydrogen into helium.

1999. 8/10.

Echo of the Elephants

Echo is the name of the 45-year-old matriarch of a family of 15 females and their young. Males leave at about age 14. Males begin to mate at age 25 to 30; we see an 11-yr-old female giving birth.

Cynthia Moss follows the family from Feb. 1990 to June 1991. A very large calf is born to Echo (22 months after mating), who takes 48 hours to be able to walk (normal is .5 hour), because he was so large his tendons couldn't stretch in the womb. There was drought June 1990 through March 1991. Normally there are rains in both March and November. The park has a swamp that normally has water even in the dry season, fed by snowmelt from Mount Kilimanjaro.

Cynthia Moss has studied elephants since 1972, 20 years in Kenya's Amboseli National Park. There are 750 elephants in 50 family groups, and no hunting.

The show was written by Cynthia Moss and David Attenborough. Moss narrates part of it. Attenborough does not narrate, does not appear.

MOON:

This 45-minute show offers insights not available in others of many hours. We learn details of the USSR's moon achievements, and of what scientists learned from the moon rocks. Both unique to this program.

This show makes clear that the entire purpose of the moon program on both sides was a game of one-upsmanship between the U.S. and USSR in the cold war. Yet it did bear scientific and technological fruit.

USSR: Not only did the USSR have the first satellite in orbit (Sputnik) and the first person in space (Yuri Gagarin, 3/12/1961), USSR also achieved:

USSR sent the first probe to the moon.

USSR sent back the first photos of the dark side of the moon (Lunik 3).

USSR landed the first probe safely on the surface of the moon, and sent the first photos from a probe on the surface of the moon (Luna 9, 1966).

USSR had the first probe to orbit the moon (Luna 10).

USSR robotically returned moon rocks to Earth.

USSR had a robotic rover roaming the moon and sending back photos for a year after the last U.S. astronaut left the moon for the last time.

Kennedy and Kruschev had agreed to cooperate on the moon program in autumn 1963. Then Kennedy was assassinated. James W. Douglass in JFK and the Unspeakable: Why He Died and Why It Matters makes clear that John Kennedy was murdered in part because he would've ended the cold war. (my review of that book: https://www.worldcat.org/profiles/Tom2718/reviews/2784576? reviewaction=fetchfull)

In 1959, when the first probe was successfully sent to the moon by USSR, the only radio telescope on Earth capable of tracking the probe to the moon was one in England. The British verified USSR's achievements, and received faxed Soviet pictures from the surface of the moon.

What we learn from moon rocks:

There is not a single molecule of water in any rock returned from the moon. Earth rocks of the same kinds (basalt, orthosite, orange volcanic soil) do have water in them.

Orthosite rock from the moon is 4.5 billion years old--same age as Earth.

Oxygen isotopes in moon rocks have the exact same composition as those of Earth. Meteorite rock from elsewhere has different mixtures of oxygen isotopes.

From these facts, scientists believe that the moon was once completely molten. They believe it was formed in a collision between Earth and a Mars-sized object.

Men were on the moon only during the years 1969 through 1972. (The first person walked on the moon only 66 years after the Wright brothers' 1903 first sustained powered airplane flight.) It would certainly not have happened when it did were it not for the cold war competition.

At 45 minutes, this show is an amazing synopsis of the highlights of the moon program on both sides, US and USSR. It does not mention the many disasters on the U.S. side: the loss of life, and the many early rocket attempts that blew up.

A big plus are the interviews with NASA and USSR scientists.

Disc 2: The Giants; Moon.

The Giants: Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, Neptune, close-ups seen by Voyageur and Voyageur II.

This 45-minute show is packed with information on both the planets and the process of discovery. The scientists who made the discoveries communicate their enthusiasm.

When the first probe was sent to Mars, Mariner 4 in 1964, a student at Jet Propulsion Lab was asked to compute trajectories for the outer planets. He discovered that Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus, and Neptune would be in position so that they could be reached by a satellite launched in August 1977. And, that such an alignment occurs only once every 175 years. The problem is that rocket power is sufficient to reach Jupiter, but to go beyond, it's necessary to slingshot around Jupiter, to head for Saturn. Similarly, using Saturn to redirect the satellite to Uranus, and likewise using Uranus to reach Neptune.

Two satellites were launched: Voyageur and Voyageur II, both within the window of opportunity.

Meanwhile, a "deep space network" of giant radio telescopes were built around the world to communicate with the spacecraft. And, two test probes were sent to Jupiter and Saturn: Pioneer 10 and 11. These probes discovered that the planet Jupiter emits radiation 10,000 times as intense as that in Earth's Van Allen belts, and that Jupiter has an enormous magnetic field. These discoveries were critical, enabling Voyageur's electronics to be redesigned to cope with the intensity. The electronics would have to work for at least 12 years.

Voyageur reached Jupiter on March 29, 1979. It sent video of bands of clouds moving in different directions and speeds, turbulence, the huge red storm 3 times the size of earth. Winds of hundreds of miles per hour. Jupiter's atmosphere is hydrogen and helium. Scientists suspect that gases at the center of the planet are compressed into a metallic liquid, giving rise to the magnetic field that, if it were visible, would look from Earth to be the size of the Sun, although it is 5 times the distance. Jupiter is half a billion miles away. The Sun is 93 million miles from Earth. Jupiter emits twice the energy it receives from the Sun.

Jupiter's moons:

Io, closest large moon to the planet, stretched and squeezed by tidal forces, has 8 active volcanoes. Io's motion through Jupiter's magnetic field generates a constant flow of 3 million amps of electricity from the moon to the planet.

Europa, next closest large moon, has a rock-hard ice surface; possibly warm water underneath.

Ganymede is larger than the planet Mercury. It's icy.

Calisto, the farthest large moon from Jupiter, has a cold, cratered, icy crust.

Saturn: Voyageur reached Saturn December 11, 1980. 1 billion miles away. Voyageur surprised us by sending pictures of vast numbers of rings, not just a few wide ones. Scientists hurriedly reprogrammed Voyageur II to look closer at the rings, after Voyageur I sent the first look. Voyageur II found tiny moons "shepherding" rings, and "spokes" of what were apparently magnetic dust above the rings, rotating with the planet's magnetic field.

Saturn's moons are mostly small, cold, icy, and cratered. Minos has a crater 1/4 the diameter of the moon; Tethys has a crater 1/3 the diameter of the moon. The rings may once have been moons, broken by meteors.

Saturn, like Jupiter, is hydrogen and helium. Saturn emits, and receives from the Sun, less heat than does Jupiter. Saturn has 1000-mph winds.

Saturn's moon Titan is the only moon in the solar system with a thick atmosphere. It can't be seen through with ordinary optics.

Uranus: Voyageur arrived Jan. 24, 1986. 5 years after Saturn. 2 billion miles away. Sunlight is so dim at this distance, the scientists had to program the spacecraft to turn while the photographic exposures were being taken, to compensate for the motion of Voyageur relative to the subject.

Uranus has no apparent internal heat source, a bland atmosphere, no apparent detail visible. Uranus' atmosphere is methane and ammonia! Scientists speculate there may be ice, possibly water.

Uranus' tiny moon Miranda looks like a jigsaw puzzle, as if bashed apart and reformed.

Uranus has been knocked over on its side.

Neptune, 3 billion miles away, was reached in 1989. after 12 years in flight. Neptune is deep blue, with white clouds and a dark spot. It looks like Earth, but its atmosphere, like Uranus', is methane and ammonia. These outer 2 are ice giants; Jupiter and Saturn are gas giants. Neptune's winds are the fastest measured, over 1000 mph. There's so little heat there's no turbulence: the winds just go and go. There seem to be clouds moving in different directions.

Neptune has very thin ring arcs, visible from near the planet when the sunlight strikes them just right.

Neptune's moon Triton is about the size of Pluto. Triton orbits Neptune clockwise, seen looking down from the north. Everything else in the solar system rotates counterclockwise as seen looking down from the north. Triton must have been captured by Neptune, as opposed to formed with it. Triton's surface is 40 degrees above absolute zero: the ice caps are frozen solid nitrogen. Yet there are geysers miles high, of nitrogen.

Uranus and Neptune are now out of our reach: it's unlikely any probe will be resent to them in our lifetime.

In October 1997, spacecraft Cassini was sent to Saturn, to spend 4 years sending images.

This movie was made in 1999. (put on DVD in 2008.) By 2015, Voyageur will be 12 billion miles from Earth, 130 times the Earth-Sun distance. "Maybe at the edge of interstellar space."

Plan Colombia. 58 minutes. 2003.

The war on drugs in Colombia is a subterfuge. It's not about drugs. It's about propping up a corrupt government friendly to U.S. oil companies and U.S. banks. The 2 billion dollars per year of U.S.-made weapons given to the Colombian government are used against the population in parts of Colombia where political opponents of the government are. This U.S. "aid" goes to the army and its allied paramilitary groups, who murder and terrorize the population, on the pretext that political opponents of the government are "communists" or "terrorists," or else growing coca. In fact, the paramilitary is more heavily involved in the drug trade than the political opposition is. And, shamefully, when weapons for the Colombian regime were debated in the U.S. congress, the debate was only on how many helicopters would be made by Sikorsky in Connecticut, and how many by Bell in Texas.

If it were about reducing drugs, by far the most cost-effective (and humane, and just, and every other measure) is drug addiction treatment programs here in the U.S. It's not about drugs.

It's a powerful movie. Too powerful. The shots of corpses murdered by Colombian government-backed paramilitary troops, with U.S.-provided weapons, are hard to look at.

It's by Free-Will Productions. Website http://www.plancolombia.com/ contains a slide show with a detailed synopsis.

7/10.

Linda Ronstadt: Canciones de mi Padre. 1992.

Ronstadt's amazing voice, perfect for these songs, is backed by a big Mariachi band, dancers, and the occasional duet singer, including her 17-year-old niece on one song. Elaborate costumes and sets.

It's a little more than a straight concert video, in that there's a voice-over introduction by Ronstadt, saying what the songs mean to her. Some of them have English translations of the lyrics as titles.

Recorded in San Francisco in front of a big audience, the concert of Mexican songs includes:

1. intro 2:59

2. Los Laureles. 2:55 titles

3. Por un Amor. "For a Love" 3:18 titles

4. La Cigarra. "The Cicada" 3:51 titles

5. La Bamba. "The Wood" 3:25 Veracruz courtship dance. male vocalist.

6. Hay Unos Ojos. "There Are Some Eyes" 3:07 titles

7. Dos Arbolitos. "Two Little Trees" 2:58 dance. titles.

8. La Barca de Guaymas. "The Boat from Guaymas" 4:02 dance. titles.

9. Amorcito Corazon. :54 male vocalist. There's a longer version of Amorcito Corazon sung in the 1948 Pedro Infante movie, "Nosotros los Pobres."

10. El Cascabel. 4:46 male vocalist

11. La Rielera. "The Railroad Woman" 3:00 dance. duet w/male vocalist.

12. El Adios del Soldado. "The Soldier's Farewell" 4:15 titles.

13. Yo Soy el Corido. "I Am the Ballad" 2:59 dance. titles.

14. El Gusto. 2:40 dance

15. El Caballito. "The Little Horse" 1:26 dance

16. El Sol Que Tu Eres. "The Sun that You Are" 3:48 duet w/male vocalist. titles.

17. El Jarabe Tapatio. 2:52 Hat dance.

18. Y Andale. "Get On with It" 3:05 duet with 17-yr.-old niece Melinda Marie Ronstadt

19. El Crucifijo de Piedra. "The Crucifix of Stone" 3:10 titles

20. La Charreada. "The Rodeo" 4:17 dance. titles.

21. Cancion Mixteca. "Song from Mixteca" 2:14 titles

22. Volver, Volver. "Return, Return" 2:46 titles

Stories of Lost Souls. 2005. Six shorts, each showing a soul who is lost in one way or another.

A whole new day. 1999. 4/10. A man wakes up and everything in his life is gone.

Euston Rd. 2004. 3/10. A strange man makes a bet.

New Year's Eve. 2002. 2/10. Bad behavior at a party.

Standing Room Only. 2003. 4/10. A fight for a place in a waiting line.

Sniper 470. 2002. 2/10. For 20-plus minutes we watch Billy Boyd wait for something to happen. Finally something bad happens.

Bangers. 1999. 1/10. A woman loses it.

Overall, 3/10. Some of them have their moments. Most are pointless, all are disturbing in one way or another. Short as each is, they're not worth the time.

Each short has its own IMDb page: most with glowing reviews by people who wanted to see just such a disturbing short movie.

Nosotros los Pobres. Pedro Infante. 1948.

11-year-old Evita Muñoz 'Chachita' cries and screams her way through calamity after indignity after injustice.

It's an astounding exemplar of melodrama: a consummately well-done show of a type I wouldn't usually seek out.

The end is worthy of Shakespearean tragedy. (That's _not_ a compliment.)

Contains two well-sung songs, Las Mañanitas and Amorcito Corazón.

The titles at the beginning are shown as if in a book a couple kids found. What the kids do with the book at the end is worth one star.

6/10. This first installment is much the best one. (I give film 2, Ustedes los Ricos, 4/10.)

Come and Get It. 1936.

It's a horrible story.

Married 50-something proposes to 20-year-old daughter of the tavern singer he jilted to marry his boss's daughter for her inheritance.

It's slimy and unpleasant to watch.

Also too long at nearly 2 hours.

Walter Brennan does a good job as the Swedish sidekick. A fine actor who had a 50-year acting career.

The logging footage is impressive: big stacks of massive logs rolling to the river.

1,000 years before the golden age of Greece, Hittites ruled Asia Minor and the northern Levant. In 1595 BCE they sacked Babylon. In 1274 BCE they routed the armies of Ramases II, mightiest pharaoh in Egypt's history. They perfected chariot warfare, fielding 40,000 men and 3,500 chariots, 900 miles from home.

Theirs is the oldest known writing in an Indo-European language.

They built with stone blocks of up to 40 tons: 3500 years later, a piece of paper still can't be slipped between the blocks. Their capital Hatusha (Bogazkoy) rivaled Babylon or Thebes: far larger than ancient Athens or Troy, it boasted plumbing, sewers, fountains.

Their myths are repeated by Hesiod and Homer; their storm god became the Greeks' Zeus. They were masters of diplomacy and personal contact in international relations. Their scribes maintained archives for centuries--which the rulers read, knowing the roots of the present are in the past.

They instituted a system of justice based on compensation rather than retribution.

The movie is an eye-opening view of a little-known chapter in human civilization. The records left by the Hittites, and deciphered by 20th-century archaeologists, tell the personalities of the rulers, the religious attitudes, the physical, military, and social environment, of a lost but important civilization.

An excellent presentation of some of the causes of poverty and inequality is "Speaking Freely Volume 2: Susan George," 52 minutes, 2007 (from Cinema Libre Studios http://cinemalibrestudio.com/all_dvd_titles.php). George explains how northern banks, aided by the International Monetary fund, World Bank, and World Trade Organization, extract wealth from the poor in the global south.

George tells us debt is now used to force the poor to overproduce commodities (coffee, tea, cotton, cocoa), keeping prices low for those of us in richer countries, keeping debtor nations transferring wealth to northern banks, the wealth taken from the poor in low wages, lack of government-funded education, health care, transportation, etc.

The one new piece of information the film presents is that it was in the year 1646 BCE that the Santorini island volcano erupted. The date was discovered from the volcano's chemical signatures found in Greenland ice cores. The eruption covered the town with 100 feet of pumice, preserving its remains, including pictures of period boats and people.

The second, longer part of the film is of Athens, circa 432 BCE. The filmmakers reconstruct the Parthenon with computer graphics. Its Athena statue, 40 feet tall of gold and ivory, was more costly than the building.

Filmed in autumn with a north wind, the pictures show Athens with rare visibility (smog-free).

It's a Macgillivray-Freeman film. Well done. macgillivrayfreemanfilms.com/site/our-films/film-library

A more comprehensive movie about the golden age of Athens is "Empires: The Greeks - Crucible of Civilization," imdb.com/title/tt0239018/reviews-3

There's more on the Parthenon in the 2008 Nova episode, Secrets of the Parthenon, http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1240284/ including how it was built and how it's being maintained.

The film is an interesting portrayal of the life, attitudes, and effects of a man who hoped by violence to overthrow slave-lords' power.

WE ARE TOLD that:

"Slavery can only be destroyed by bloodshed." -- Fredrick Douglass

"The crimes of this guilty land will never be purged away except with blood." -- John Brown

Brown's attack on the arsenal at Harper's Ferry, Virginia, and his murders of pro-slavery fighters in Kansas, fueled paranoia among white Southerners, who armed and formed militias and vigilante groups.

Brown's martyrdom achieved his aim of pushing the country toward civil war in the interest of ending slavery.

Brown's attitude was formed partly from his witnessing a brutal beating of a black boy, when Brown was age 12.

If Brown had been killed by a federal soldier, as he nearly was, instead of captured and executed, he would be largely unknown.

This is actually a history of attitudes toward sex and love, particularly religious and political attitudes. Terry Jones does it in an entertaining and engaging way.

ACCORDING TO TERRY JONES, attitudes change as follows:

Prehistory: Gods & goddesses create, and yearly re-create the world sexually. Sex an expression of divinity.

Iron age: ensuring fertility less important than military supremacy. Male-female balance gives way to male domination.

c. 650 BCE Hebrews, at war with Assyrians, expunge "foreign" gods, including their Canaanite goddess Ashura. Now one, male, god. Eve story is written: "woman is man's downfall."

Christianity creates the idea of sin; that sex is sinful and cuts you off from the love of God; and that priests can forgive confessed sins. Christianity is "the anti-paganism;" its priests control attitudes toward sex, gain power.

12th century CE: Marriage until now has been a contract between families, not involving the church. Suddenly the Pope declares sinful any marriage between couples "within 11 degrees of consanguinuity"--you can't marry anyone with whom you share a great great great grandparent-- without the church's permission--which comes at a price. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Consanguinity

1495: Syphilis appears in Naples, Italy. By 1497, to Scotland. By 1498, to India. By 1505, to Canton, China.

Mid-16th century: Church finally declares marriage a sacrament, that must be performed by a priest.

2009 50 minutes, National Geographic Channel. Blurb says, "This gorgeously shot documentary from National Geographic explores the tropical wonders of Hawaii's pristine Papahanaumokuakea Marine National Monument, where rare aquatic plants and animals thrive in crystal-clear waters. Striking underwater footage brings the beauty of these islands to life and also reveals the dangers that threaten many of the species living in Papahanaumokuakea, the largest marine protected area in the world."

It's about the northwest archipelago, from Midway through to west-northwest of Kauai. Much of the area was set aside for federal protection in the early 2000s. The video follows a team of diving scientists as they inspect some of the aqueous fauna. We're told they identify several isolated populations of fish, molluscs, and other animals within this large area. Unlike the vastly-superior David Attenborough shows, this National Geographic one focuses primarily on the activities of the crew--rather than the subject matter itself. Much time is spent showing us *that* research is being done, leaving little time for the few discoveries mentioned. The video does not attempt an overview of the area; shots of corals and fish are incidental to following the team around. Shows large amounts of beached trash, floated from California. Shows monk seals and large turtles, dependent on these low atolls--which will soon be under water as Greenland ice melts.

If you want a great nature show about Pacific islands, see Wild Pacific, narrated by Benedict Cumberbatch: www.imdb.com/title/tt1458521/

Links for Hidden Hawaii (2009):

channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/episodes/hidden-hawaii/ synopsis and two 3- to 4-minute video clips

channel.nationalgeographic.com/wild/episodes/hidden-hawaii/credits/ credits

shop.nationalgeographic.com/1/1/2908-hidden-hawaii-dvd.html DVD reviews and availability

If you expect a movie to tell a story, to develop characters, to have actions, and their motivations, look elsewhere. If you're content to listen to bits of conversation between people you haven't been introduced to, who don't like each other much, who can't figure out what their lives are about, try this movie.

Near the end of the film, the guy who's been looking for the missing person all film says, not only he doesn't know what happened to him, he doesn't know who he is.

At one point the searcher and his partner receive a few thousand dollars that, we presume, somehow came from the missing person. We don't know why the money arrives, nor why the guy doesn't show up.

If you want a missing person who just stays missing, whom no one seems to know much, look here for it.

Or, if this is all you want, why see a movie? There's plenty similar "just life" going on everywhere, just as pointless.

Greeks: Crucible of Civilization, 1999.

Rise and Fall of Athens, 561–399 BCE.

6th century BCE, Athens a small city ruled by self-interested aristocrats over serfs and slaves. Life expectancy at birth less than 15 years. Literacy rare. No science nor medicine. Life nasty, brutish, short, tough. Egypt and Persia are great civilizations. Greece has many warring city-states. Sparta is military power; Corinth trading power; Argos ancient. "Greeks were like frogs around a pond (the Aegean)"—Plato (c. 426–348 BCE).

c. 561 BCE, Peisistratos becomes benevolent tyrant of Athens by coming to town with a tall girl he says is Athena. Reduced taxes, free loans to build farms: more vines and olives. Athens rises as economic power. Olives meant food, cooking oil, lubricant, fuel, soap, trade.

Pottery begins to have realistic life drawings. One pot is inscribed, "Euthymides, son of Polias, drew this. And I'll bet Leuphronias couldn't have managed it".

527 BCE, Hippias succeeds his dead father as benevolent tyrant.

514 BCE, Hippias becomes mad tyrant after murder of his brother. Strips commoners of freedoms.

510 BCE Hippias banished.

508 BCE Isagoras becomes tyrant w/help of Spartans; exiles 700 households, dissolves council. Athens mob revolt: first time in history, commoners seize power. Cleisthenes (born c. 570 BCE) institutes democracy: citizens gather every 9 days to vote on civic matters.

"Athenian democracy is a very different sort of democracy from ours. One has a sense, as an Athenian citizen, that you really can make a difference."—Paul Cartledge, Cambridge University.

Democracy leads to a flowering of civilization and culture.

490 BCE Persians land at Marathon. Phidippides, Athenian citizen, runs 26 miles to Athens. Athens sends 10,000 hoplites with bronze weapons and armor, of a population of 20,000 to 30,000. Athens runs off Persian army of 20,000, killing 6,000.

483 BCE a vein of silver is found near Athens, worth 100 talents ($20 million in 1999 dollars). General Themistocles (c. 524–459 BCE) persuades Athenians to spend it building a fleet of 200 triremes (170 oarsmen per ship).

480 BCE Persian army sets out for Athens, reportedly nearly 2 million men. Athens is evacuated and burned. Themistocles tricks Persian emperor Xerxes into bringing his fleet into straits of Salamis, where Athenian navy destroys 200 of Xerxes' 800 ships. Persians leave, defeated. 472 BCE Themistocles is exiled (ostracized).

c. 461 BCE Pericles (c. 495–429 BCE) comes to power. By 450 BCE Athens has a de facto empire in the 200-member Delian League. Unprecedented quality of life and wealth. 447–432 BCE Pericles directs building and adornment of Parthenon, temple to Athena. Pericles divorced his wife and took hetaira (courtesan) Aspasia (c. 470–400 BC) as a partner.

Aeschylus (c. 525–455 BCE); Sophocles (c. 497–405 BCE); Euripides (c. 480–406 BCE) tragedians.

Anaxagoras (c. 510–428 BC) first to realize moon is lit by sunlight.

Herodotus (c. 484–425 BCE); Thucycides (c. 460–395 BCE) historians.

Socrates (c. 470–399 BCE) philosopher.

431 BCE Pericles makes war with Sparta. 150,000 people crowd behind Athens' walls. Spartans burn farms. Supply ships bring plague to Athens: kills over 50,000 Athenians, including Pericles in 429 BCE.

429 BCE leaderless, pretenders to power pander to prejudices and passions of the masses to gain support: mob rule; assembly in hands of self-interested despots. Athens never again has a strong, good leader.

416 BCE still at war with Sparta, Athens sends 50,000 men to attack a Spartan ally 700 miles away on Sicily. All the men are killed or captured. Athens is never again a military power. Persians help Sparta build and man a fleet.

404 BCE, Athens surrenders to Spartan commander Lysander. Athens' walls are torn down, fleet destroyed.

399 BCE Socrates is killed as a scapegoat. He was a critic. After death, Socrates becomes a new model of Greek hero: a person of conviction and conscience.

Athens never again has an empire, but never again descends to mob rule.

Plato (c. 426–348 BCE).

Aristotle (384–322 BCE).

Athens, in 561 to 399 BCE, gave us democracy, politics, science, philosophy, literature, drama, history, art, architecture. Athens at that time set in motion elements of Western civilization that still shape the world today.

Vanishing of the Bees. 2010.

In 1994, systemic pesticides were introduced in France. These are applied to crop seeds, and infuse the plant for its life. Bee colonies began collapsing in France.

In 2003, systemic pesticides were introduced in the U.S. U.S. beekeepers first complained of honey bee colony collapse disorder in 2006.

Bees bring the pesticide-laden pollen back to the hive; the newly-hatched bees eat this pollen. Bees become confused and susceptible to bacteria, fungi, viruses, mites that they usually can fight off. Within about a year, the colony is all dead.

In France, systemic pesticides have been banned: bee populations are recovering.

In the U.S., the E.P.A. (which relies on research done by the pesticide companies) is not convinced that the systemic pesticides must be banned.

Honey bees continue to die by the billions in the U.S.

We can help by choosing to eat organic produce; avoid pesticide-grown foods.

http://www.vanishingbees.com/

For a good show about how bees survive and thrive when a colony is healthy, see Nova: Tales from the Hive: http://www.imdb.com/title/tt1406058/reviews-1

We Shall Not Be Moved The Untold Chapter in the Struggle for American Civil Rights 2001

Spiritual battle against prejudice and contempt.

"The battle was...not ours. It was the Lord's."—Rev. Abraham Lincoln Woods

Dr. King's start:

In 1954, Martin Luther King, Jr., age 25, applied to be pastor of Dexter Avenue Baptist Church in Montgomery, Alabama, "where he could...finish his Ph.D. dissertation...and...learn...how to pastor a church. He did all of that. But about two weeks after he mailed in his dissertation, Rosa Parks sat down in the bus."—Ambassador Andrew Young

Focuses on central battles:

1. Montgomery, Alabama bus boycott, Dec. 5, 1955–Dec. 20, 1956

Dec. 1, 1955, police arrested 42-year-old Rosa Parks for refusing to yield her seat in the front row of the colored section of a bus, to a white man.

"Ministers sold their membership on what they wanted them to do. ...They supported it 100 percent."—Deacon R. D. Nesbitt, Sr.

Buses lost 30,000–40,000 fares daily.

Alabama court tried to halt car pools. U.S. Supreme Court declared bus segregation unconstitutional.

"In Montgomery: The movement got its leader, Martin Luther King. The movement got its method, nonviolent...resistance. And the movement brought to the fore...the political power and activism and religious enthusiasm of the African-American church."—Dr. Wilson Fallin

2. Little Rock, Arkansas, school desegregation, 1957–1959

Little Rock was "more moderate" than other Southern cities: "fairly liberal."

Sept. 4, 1957, Governor sent National Guard, keeping African-American students out of Little Rock Central High. White mob surrounds school.

"This guy to the left of me says, 'We got us a N----r right here.'...He's got a rope around his shoulder."—Melba Patillo Beals

Two weeks later, Governor withdrew National Guard. Students enter school, which is surrounded by mob.

"I heard them say, 'It's bad out there. We're going to have to...let 'em hang one...to get the other nine out.'"—Melba Patillo Beals

Eisenhower called Army to protect students.

"They assigned us each a guard. Personal bodyguard."—Melba Patillo Beals

Governor, Sept. 1957: "We are now an occupied territory."

"That...year...every day...you think you're going to die."—Melba Patillo Beals

"We got calls,...every night, that somebody was going to have acid thrown on 'em,...or that they were not going to make it home the next day."—Ernest Green

Next year, Little Rock closed all public high schools.

3. Birmingham, Alabama segregation

"Birmingham, Alabama was probably the most segregated city in the South."—Dr. Wilson Fallin

Alabama outlawed NAACP. Rev. Fred Lee Shuttlesworth tried to integrate Phillips High School....He was beaten, with chains. His wife was stabbed. ...His home was bombed. He said, 'If we die, then our lives will be one installment on the payment for freedom.'

Young people joined protest marches. They might get hurt....King said, 'They've already been hurt. The Southern way of life, injustice, racism, has hurt 'em.

"We had been beaten. We had been thrown in jail. We had been the victims of the dogs and the fire hose. . . .We thought that was a small price to pay, to change the world."—Ambassador Andrew Young

4. 16th Street Baptist Church bombing, Birmingham, Alabama, 1963

"It was youth day. Most of our youth were dressed in white. ...The Sunday school lesson for the day was, 'A Love that Forgives.'"—Carolyn McKinstry

"The children that had been in those Sunday school classes and left a little early to get dressed to take their part at the eleven o'clock worship service."—Dr. John Cross, Former Pastor, 16th Street Baptist Church, Birmingham

"Four children in a ladies' rest room, getting ready for a program."— Josephine Marshall

"I could smell the smoke of the dynamite, and my heart was in my mouth."— Rev. Abraham Lincoln Woods, Pastor, St. Joseph Baptist Church, Birmingham

The bodies of Denise, Carol, Addie Mae, and Cynthia were carried out of the rubble.

"And mothers were standing on the steps, pulling out their hair."— Josephine Marshall

"the bomb that was heard around the world. ...The reaction of the rest of the world is what shamed the people of Birmingham."—Carolyn McKinstry

In 1964, President Johnson signed the Civil Rights Act, forbidding discrimination in public accommodation.

5. Selma, Alabama, voting rights, 1965

Selma was majority Black. Black voting was suppressed with so-called "literacy tests"—such as, guess the number of jelly beans in a jar. If you guess wrong, you don't vote. And with poll taxes.

In February, 1965, police killed a Black voting-rights marcher. March 7, 1965, police brutally attacked marchers at the Edmund Pettus bridge in Selma. Pictures went all over the world.

In 1965, President Johnson signed the Voting Rights Act.

6. Memphis, Tennessee, Garbage Workers' Strike, 1968

"Like anybody, I would like to live a long life; longevity has its place. But I'm not concerned about that now. I just want to do God's will. And He has allowed me to go up to the mountain. And I've looked over, and I've seen the promised land. I may not get there with you. But I want you to know tonight that we as a people will get to the promised land. So I'm happy tonight; I'm not worried about anything. I'm not fearing any man. Mine eyes have seen the glory of the coming of the Lord."—Dr. Martin Luther King, Jr., April 3, 1968

Less than 24 hours later, he was dead, at age 39.