The Last Dalai Lama?

First Hit: A wonderful film about a beautiful man.

Loosely using the 14th Dalai Lama’s 80th birthday celebration in New York City as the centerpiece for this story, this 2015 celebration was a long way from his humble roots in rural Tibet. In this film, director Mickey Lemie paints a short historical vision of His Holiness's (HH) story from child, to spiritual leader of Tibetan Buddhism, to political and governmental leader of Tibet, his forced exodus to northern India and his ascension to world spiritual leader.

The main question is: Will he be the last Dalai Lama? A group of people lead by the Panchen Lama are charged with selecting each Dalai Lama. The reverse is also true; meaning the Dalai Lama leads the selection of each Panchen Lama. The Chinese government has short-circuited this process by kidnapping the last Panchen Lama at age six. He’s not been heard from since. The Chinese have announced that they will select the next Dalai Lama because they want to influence and control the Tibetan people. It is likely they will purposefully anoint a new Panchen Lama, who has their ideals, and then give him directions as to who to select for the next Dalai Lama.

The Tibetan Buddhist tradition for selecting their leaders has been broken. Therefore, the question is will the Dalai Lama reincarnate? He says not in Tibet or China but possibly somewhere else in the world.

I cried, on and off, throughout the film because of the compassionate beauty of His Holiness’s (HH) spirit that showed through each scene. I was in his current home town of Dharamsala, India in December of 1998 when he gave talks at the public meeting/teacher area. I was honored to be in the receiving line and he blessed my silk prayer scarves. I've also seen him speak in San Francisco twice since then and each time, I sat in humble gratitude.

He is, as his name means, an “Ocean of Compassion.” His clarity of purpose is to give to others and this is his path to happiness. Being altruistic is his way to joy. He believes that if one focuses on giving to others you begin to cultivate true joy and it becomes the example to others.

When he discusses the people who have immolated themselves to draw attention to the Tibetan’s plight of the Chinese takeover of their country, I cried sobbingly out-loud in my theater seat (I apologize to anyone who was disturbed by this). The belief of doing no harm to others is deeply entrenched in Tibetans and to bring attention to their plight, they will not harm or go to war with the Chinese, so immolating themselves becomes one way they can bring needed attention to their situation. Later in the film they showed a few of these people’s pictures on the screen and my tears abundantly flowed again.

Another surprising scene included an interview with former President George W. Bush. I have never liked this President, however seeing how HH touched his soul with compassionate beauty, I was heartened. He did a painting of HH which was nice, but it was that he was the first President to publicly lend his office to be with HH when he received the Congressional Gold medal that struck me as powerful.

There were many other touching scenes that brought tears of joy and sadness and there were many scenes of laughter because HH has a wonderful delightful laugh. However, since spending three weeks in Tibet 18 years ago and finding the country and people to be embedded in my spirit, the film reminded me that my heart ached for these beautiful people to freely govern themselves.

The Philip Glass music was phenomenal. Lemie did a masterful job of capturing the spirit of His Holiness the Dalai Lama physically, mentally and spiritually.

Overall:  I was blessed to see him in person and embraced this film with loving openness.

Jeremiah Tower: The Last Magnificent

First Hit:  I thoroughly loved this film.

Having eaten in “Stars” restaurant at least 5 times during its heyday, I can attest to what the film expresses: Tower made eating a fully engaging, yummy, joyous, theater experience. It was the “it” and “in” place to eat in San Francisco as identified by the people who came there to eat. At one point James Beard indicated it was maybe the best restaurant in the United States and maybe the world.

I recall sitting there, having a late night dinner, after seeing the American Ballet Theater perform and in the room not even 30 feet away was Mikail Baryshnikov and Rudolf Nureyev eating with Jeremiah, champagne glass in hand, ensuring their food, everyone’s food, was perfect.

The film is how this amazing place came to be, what happened to it, and more importantly what happened to Jeremiah, who basically disappeared off the map. However, one of the very first lines in the film says it all: “I have to stay away from human beings because somehow I’m not one.”

Although Tower’s parents were extremely wealthy, Jeremiah’s upbringing was extremely difficult and filled with aloneness, sadness and pain. The opening scene has Rocston Issock playing a young 6-year-old Jeremiah wandering a beach, meeting a stranger who cooks them fish to eat, then takes him up the sand into the bushes and sexually abuses him. When the man takes Jeremiah back to the hotel, well after dark, his parents simply ask him where he’s been. They never worried or cared that he’d been out of their site, in a strange land, for more than 6 hours. Their approach was hands off.

Jeremiah lived in hotel rooms and boarding houses. As he said in the film, his domain was his hotel room, hotel hallways, and hotel dining rooms. His parents rarely, if ever, looked in on him to see how he was doing. He raised himself in luxury hotels and on large cruise ships like the Queen Mary.

He finally gets shipped off to school and ends up cooking things for his classmates. He even states at one point, “from early on, I think food was my best pal.” Finally, he gets to Harvard and is studying something useful, architecture, but at age thirty his parents tell him his allowance is over and he’s on his own.

Never getting his architectural degree, he heads to California broke and in 1973 while he’s looking for work and a friend hooks him up with Alice Waters of Chez Pannisse fame.

Drawing on what he’s learned and tasted through his whole life eating the best food in the world all by himself, he takes and makes over Chez Pannisse’s menu and kitchen. He grows in his skills exponentially and the people love his food.

Boldly one day he tells Alice, they are going to radically change the menu from French based to all California based food and we'll cook it a new way. Everything will come from California. When his friend James Beard comes to review the restaurant, the result is that it becomes world famous overnight. Tower is on the map as the best chef in the world and the person who puts food, presentation and flair together as one thing. He becomes the first celebrity chef.

Prior to this, chefs were behind the door cooking. He brought the kitchen into the dining room with flair. When he accidentally reads Alice’s draft for a new cookbook where she claims authorship for all the recipes, Tower goes ballistic and leaves.

With an investor, he opens “Stars” in a seedy section of San Francisco and it instantly becomes a success. And again, I will say I ate there and was as good as legend says it was.

But after a few years it closed. Why? There was a lawsuit, he opened too many other restaurants and was stretched thin, and the earthquake of 1989. Regardless, after “Stars” closed, he disappeared and was not heard from again until 2014 when he was hired as Executive Chef for "Tavern on the Green" in New York City, which had been failing at the hands of a “celebrity chef”. He begins to instill discipline and perfection into the restaurant's food and service. But we all know this is hard to do in a short time, and before he knows it he’s ousted in April of 2015.

This film is shot in Mexico and the USA although Jeremiah also spent time in Italy and Philippines during his hiatus between Stars and The Tavern. What was remarkable about the film is that despite scenes of him walking on ancient Mexican pyramids and through buildings, and how they might be boring, these scenes enhance his separateness from the world and everyone else.

Lydia Tenaglia did an outstanding job of creating scenes that captured Tower’s illusive nature and spirit. The pictures of Stars captured my heart. Seeing pictures of Willie Brown and Herb Caen along with other San Francisco socialites was joyful.

Overall:  I wished Stars was back so I could relive the magnificence of eating beautiful food in a place where everyone was treated royally and like they belonged.

Born In China

First Hit:  I was disappointed in the overall presentation, narration, and empty space. I look forward to seeing Disney nature films and this film was no exception. It started out OK, but started to fall off with the narration and then the story's lack of engagement. Somehow John Krasinski’s voice failed to get me absorbed into into movie; it seemed pressed or manufactured without true feeling or empathy.

I did expect more from Krasinski's narration because he himself has two daughters and this film is about parents raising children. 'Born In China' is about three mothers raising their new babies. The animal mothers were: Snow Leopard, Golden Monkey, and Panda.

I thought that following a Snow Leopard, Golden Monkeys and Pandas would have been enough. However, either, following the three families didn't provide enough content or they didn’t do enough to deeply engage us and show us their lives, because there was so much empty space in the film. The possibility also exists that they needed more families to follow, but I'm not sure that would have helped.

Of course, many of the shots were fantastic because Disney's photographers are amazing. This point is proved in the opening scene, with two mother Snow Leopards facing off in a territory dispute. This scene was intense, inspiring and engaging and set a high mark for the rest of the film. It is unfortunate that the film falls away after this.

This falling away resulted in scenes of humor and cuteness by following the Golden Monkeys and Pandas. The Snow Leopards path was far more intense and had the feeling of being on the edge.

Although I applaud the director to include the mother's death scene, I still wanted to know what happened to the mother’s two kittens. The Golden Monkey story had both laughter and drama. The Panda story was interesting to me especially because they are very sloth like and the babies are so very vulnerable when born.

I’m not sure using the Crane as a moral compass was a good thought. It might have been better to learn more about the cranes.

Didn’t like Krasinskie’s voice and inflections for the narration. David Fowler and Brian Leith wrote a somewhat weak script. Chuan Lu did a mediocre job of putting these stories together. Although the filming/cinematography was exquisite.

Overall:  Disappointed by this film and made me question whether I’ll see the next in the series.

Kedi

Overall:  I was very engaged for the first 45 minutes, but more of the same until the end made it less interesting. Cats rule the roost in Istanbul. This film documents these felines and how they do not belong to anyone. They choose their life and who they allow in it. We’ve got the loner who doesn’t like to be petted or go inside any place. To get food he scratches the window of the restaurant where he hangs out. Funny though the restaurant is one of the nicer, upper level restaurants; smart cat. There is the cat that is extremely tough and pounces on any cat that does something in its territory that it doesn’t like. We also follow the film's first cat who makes his way around town, getting food and attention and then ends up visiting a young woman's home.

Then there are the people of Istanbul who care about the cats. We’ve got the guy who had a debilitating stroke and medication wasn’t helping, but his attention to a group of cats has healed him from his blood pressure and finding his life is much more relaxed now that he’s taking care of a group of cats.

There is the woman and her mother who make twenty pounds of cut chicken every day to feed a group of cats that gather inside and outside her home. There is also the young woman who begins the film talking about the cat who makes her a semi-home way station. The cat comes into her home, gets a scratch or two, some loving, food and then heads back out into the streets.

No one really knows how the cats started ruling Istanbul, but it seems to touch men more profoundly than women but that could have just been the filmmakers point of view. I really liked the downlow cat height shots as the cats made their way through the city streets, alleys, rooftops, and the docks near the water. The shots of Istanbul were interesting and I would have liked a better orientation of this exotic ancient city.

Ceyda Torun did a very good job on many of the cinemograph shots of these cats and how they roam the city. However, after the first forty-five minutes, it felt like it was more of the same and the point seemed to be getting lost.

Overall:  It was interesting but more context would have helped.

I Am Not Your Negro

First Hit:  The most powerful film I’ve ever seen about racism in America.

I always pull four brown paper napkins from the dispenser in the lobby prior to taking my seat in the theater. Generally, I use one or two for something like wiping my mouth after eating a powerbar. However, for this film I needed to have taken many more because my heart cracked open so many times during this film that I had to reuse my usual lot over and over again to blow my nose and wipe away the tears that kept falling from my eyes.

All the dialogue in this film comes from James Baldwin. Some of it from his unfinished book “Remember This House” while other sections came from his other essays and published writings. Using clips from films referenced in his writings, television clips, interviews, quotes from letters he wrote and other Baldwin writings, we get an amazingly clear picture of his experience, reflections and thoughts about living in Harlem, Paris, and finally back in the United States.

Baldwin’s amazing articulation of his experience, the black experience, in America through his writings by questioning his inner self is sublime. His self-awareness and the ability to see, understand, and enunciate the differing paths of his close friends Medgar Evers, Malcolm X and Martin Luther King, Jr. was ethereal.

There are moments in this film where Baldwin’s statements of awareness speak to and through the existence of all of mankind. Of course, the most powerful scenes are the actual clips of James Baldwin speaking, but Samuel L. Jackson's voice for the remaining Baldwin dialogue was well chosen. Baldwin's intense intelligent eyes belie the pain of what he experienced and saw in our society.

Using photos, film, and television clips from the early 1920’s through 2014, Director Raoul Peck was able to create a mirror of America’s racism that is not only bold, but at the very heart and soul of our still troubled racist nation.

I think that everyone needs to see this film and check within themselves about their own tendencies and be willing to change our hearts and maybe our future actions. I know I am more acutely aware of this issue having seen this film.

Jackson lent his distinct voice to aid in this film’s impact. I cannot find words to express the amazingly persuasive fluent film that Peck created. How he was able to pull all these pieces together in such a powerful way was outstanding in every sense of the word.

Overall:  This film had more impact on me than any film in the last 20 years maybe longer.