Secret Agent Gal Movie Reviews

Thrive follows the money to reclaim our future, wealth - 5 stars

Everyone can Thrive, according to a new, leading edge documentary impressively researched and organized by business executive Foster Gamble. A wake-up call with a plan, it’s now on DVD and screening nationwide. Steve Gagne directs.

Change is imperative. Nothing less than transformation – personal, social and global – will enable humanity to thrive, according to Gamble, co-founder of CASSonline.org.

Daring to follow the money, Gamble and his wife Kimberly Carter Gamble analyze underlying causes of scarcity and suffering worldwide.

The heads of three famous families have manipulated world wealth as part of a global domination agenda for centuries, Gamble asserts. Not everyone in these families is corrupt, he adds.

The Bank for International Settlements (called “the central bank of central banks”), international central banks, and national central banks control resources. Big banks, corporations and governments lie beneath central banks in a “pyramid of power.”

Elite central bankers control finance, energy, food supplies, education, the media and other systems. By keeping countries and citizens in debt, they effectively stifle human potential with the help of corporate-owned media, governments, major foundations, the IMF and the World Bank.

Many national economies have been harmed, according to the film. The elites are actively seeking to destroy the U.S. economy, experts say.

The number of global elites is tiny, says Gamble. In the U.S., the ratio of citizens to these elite bankers is a million to one, he maintains.

Individuals can exercise power in many ways. Bank locally. Buy and invest responsibly. Seek out news from independent sources. Take part in mass, critical actions. The Thrive website lists suggested actions.

Express your uniqueness, says British author David Icke. Fear of ridicule is one way the global elite gets us to impose its norms on one another.

Free, unlimited, clean energy is the film’s central, revolutionary theme. Two elegant designs, the torus and the Vector Equilibrium (VE), can be used to produce free energy and promote international well-being, Gamble explains.

The torus (or flower of life) is an energy pattern that appears in nature and across cultures. The VE is the underlying structure of the torus, a 64-sided pattern that is “the blueprint by which nature forms energy into matter.”

What does all this mean? “Goodbye Exxon Mobil, goodbye oil, goodbye coal, goodbye linear transmission of electricity,” says Steven Greer, M.D., Director of The Disclosure Project.

Did you know that Dr. Royal Rife invented technology that cured cancer in the 1920s? Have you heard of Nikola Tesla, who invented a technology that produced free, unlimited energy in 1901? The work of both men was destroyed, and their reputations were ruined. Archival footage shows government agents seizing revolutionary technologies.

For those who doubt futuristic exposes like this one, detailed information sources are listed on the film’s website.

Prominent scientists and thinkers are interviewed, including: Nassim Haramein, cosmologist and inventor; Paul Hawken, environmentalist and entrepreneur; Catherine Austin Fitts, former Assistant Secretary of the Department of Housing and Urban Development; Vandana Shiva, environmental activist and eco-feminist; and Elisabet Sahtouris, evolutionary biologist and futurist.

How can the world thrive? Gamble integrates progressive, conservative and libertarian ideas into a model for change:

Stage 1 – Reform. We would reform current systems to “bring integrity and healing to our current condition.”

Stage 2 – Limit Government Control to enhance the “protection of individual rights and the commons.”

Stage 3 – Voluntary Cooperation would flourish as people live by “rules, but no rulers.”

Economic reform in Stage 1, for example, includes: stop bailouts; dismantle the Federal Reserve; withdraw support from the IMF, World Bank, and Bank for International Settlements; refuse international taxes, and monetize debt.

Following these steps would transform the arts, economics, education, environment, governance, health, infrastructure, justice, media, relations, science, spirituality and word view.

Gamble acknowledges that he was born into the wealthy Procter & Gamble family, but has forged his own career path.

Integrity, freedom and compassion can become the world’s guiding principles, says Gamble. Bold and honest, this film offers hope and a blueprint for change.  

If you like Thrive, you might also enjoy: 2012: Time for Change; I Am; Happy.

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Thrive   2011  /  PG-13  /  2 hours, 12 min

Cast Overview: Foster Gamble, Duane Elgin, Nassim Haramein, Steven Greer, Jack Kasher, Daniel Sheehan, Adam Trombly, Brian O'Leary, Vandana Shiva, John Gatto, John Robbins, Deepak Chopra, David Icke, Catherine Austin Fitts, Kimberly Carter Gamble, G. Edward Griffin, Bill Still, John Perkins, Paul Hawken, Aqeela Sherrills, Evon Peter, Angel Kyodo Williams, Elisabet Sahtouris, Amy Goodman, Barbara Marx Hubbard

Director:  Steve Gagne

Genre:  Documentary, Current Affairs, Science & Nature

 

2012: Time for Change advocates "evolve to solve" strategies

Evolve to solve. Daniel Pinchbeck investigates how to survive and thrive during changing times in the wide-ranging documentary 2012: Time for Change.

Thoughtful and visionary, director Joao Amorim’s film transcends apocalypse hype by advocating action. It’s now screening nationwide and streaming via Netflix.

Pinchbeck walks his talk as he shares common sense ways to live consciously so that all can thrive on earth. The founder of the Evolver social movement and editorial director of Reality Sandwich interviews scholars and leaders around the world.

Animation is also used to investigate spiritual practices, sacred activism and new technologies to help us survive change with grace and ease.

Functional design, habitat restoration, ecological detoxification, intentional community, aquaponic agriculture, wind power, open source currency and diverse currency tools are among the ideas examined. The film is similar to the documentary Thrive and surpasses Armageddon dramas like Battle Los Angeles.

“Apocalypse” means “uncovering,” and doesn’t necessarily signal doom, according to Pinchbeck. “Focusing on what will happen in 2012 may just be the wrong question,” Pinchbeck told a meeting of the Left Forum in New York City. “We should just be really asking . . . . ‘What type of change can we bring about?’ It’s going to be up to individuals and then communities to make a profound shift.”

Archival footage of the “Leonardo da Vinci of the 20^th century,” design scientist R. Buckminster Fuller, is shown. Groundbreaking technologies for sustainable energy, health and farming have already been developed, says Pinchbeck. These advances have been suppressed by powerful special interests time and again, he maintains.

Futurist Barbara Marx Hubbard cites Fuller. “We now have the resources, technology and knowhow to make the world a 100% physical success for everyone without taking it away or destroying our environment,” she says.

Many cultural creatives have planted “seed ideas” to help humanity, Hubbard says. These are quietly growing and taking root. “The only way to get to the future [Fuller] was seeing was about completely transforming your consciousness, loving one another as yourself,” she says.

Hot button issues like water scarcity and depleted soil are reviewed. Michael Dorsey, Ph.D. of Dartmouth College notes that current economic and social systems do not deliver justice, environmental protection and human rights. “The system is broken,” he believes.

 “Water’s the next oil,” warns Maude Barlow, Senior Advisor on Water Issues to the United Nations. “Water scarcity has already reached a dire limit for two billion people in the world,” she says.

“As water becomes more corporately controlled, as water becomes more expensive because it’s controlled for profit, it’s going to be denied to people who can’t afford it. It’s already happening now in communities in the global south where water metering is going on,” according to Barlow.

The “Green Revolution” has led us to “an incredible amount of dependency on corporations to supply seed, to supply chemicals,” says Penny Livingstone-Stark, a permaculture designer. Monoculture farming, she says, serves to “disconnect people from their land, pollute water systems, deforest the earth.” Livingstone-Stark explains how using soil biology sustainably perpetuates living systems and increases crop yields.

Reclaiming our lost connection to nature is the key to healing individuals, societies and the planet, Pinchbeck concludes.

Policarpo Chaj, activist and executive director of Maya Vision, explains how past and future are cyclical in Mayan thought. The 2012 prophecy of earth changes and economic downturns is already happening, Chaj and other scholars say.

Filmmaker David Lynch, who has practiced Transcendental Meditation for almost 35 years, tells Pinchbeck that he overcame anger shortly after he began meditating. Looking within helped him “find infinite intelligence, creativity, bliss, energy, love, power,” he adds.

A weak link here is Pinchbeck’s use of a psychoactive root bark to jump start his self-discovery. Using a drug for self-empowerment seems counterintuitive and harmful.

British rock singer Sting, who co-founded the Rainforest Foundation and practiced Ashtanga yoga, notes that he also took the drug. Fasting and meditation are just as effective ways to connect with the Divine, Sting adds.

Pinchbeck sees an empowered “global tribe” replacing poor, suffering masses. His essay collection Notes from the Edge Times has just been published.   (4.5 out of 5 stars)

If you like 2012: Time for Change, you might enjoy:  I Am; Happy; Waste Land; 2012; Thrive.

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2012: Time for Change    2010  /  NR  /  1 hour, 40 min

Cast Overview:  Mitch Horowitz, Michael Dorsey, Ph.D., Gaspar P. Gonzalez, Penny Livingston, Maude Barlow, Bernard Lietaer, Joel Kovel, Michael D. Coe, Ph.D., Policarpo Chaj, Tiokasin Ghosthorse, Terence McKena, Steven Colbert, Sting, Dennis McKenna, Barbara Marx Hubbard, R. Buckminster Fuller

Director:  Joao Amorim

Genre:  Documentary, Spirituality, Science & Nature, Current Affairs, Animation

The Insider: Russell Crowe fights Big Tobacco in real-life thriller *****

 

A whistleblower (Russell Crowe) forces Big Tobacco to reveal the dangers of cigarette smoking in the fact-based thriller The Insider (1999).

With non-stop suspense, the film follows tobacco scientist Jeffrey Wigand (Crowe) and CBS news producer Lowell Bergman (Al Pacino) as they create a 60 Minutes expose. Wigand faces death threats and loses his job and family. Bergman challenges the network and legendary newsman Mike Wallace (Christopher Plummer) to air the segment despite litigation.

Director Michael Mann’s film is in the spotlight this week as five tobacco companies filed a lawsuit in federal court Tuesday. They are challenging part of the 2009 law which imposed federal regulations on the tobacco industry. The F.D.A. has mandated that they print graphic warning images on cigarette packages as of September 2012.

The Insider is an iconic look at American journalism. Like All the President’s Men (1976), it explores moral dilemmas in journalism and in life with outstanding character development and pacing. The relationship between a journalist and his source is intimately explored.

Wigand reluctantly tells his story and is sued by Big Tobacco for breaking a confidentiality agreement. Bergman assures Wigand that he is making a tremendous difference by speaking out. According to HealthNews.com, “Tobacco smoke contains a deadly mixture of more than 7,000 chemicals and compounds, of which hundreds are toxic and at least 70 cause cancer. Smoking causes more than 85 percent of lung cancers. . . . One in three cancer deaths in the U.S. is tobacco-related.”

A whistleblower on the edge of nervous exhaustion, Wigand cannot ignore the serious public health hazard. Before speaking with Bergman he warns a tobacco company executive about “ammonia chemistry.” He’s incredulous when the company chooses profit over safety.

Crowe’s acting is raw and fully dimensional, foreshadowing his Oscar-nominated portrayal of Dr. John Nash in A Beautiful Mind (2001). Wigand loses virtually everything: his career, his reputation, his wife and children, and his home.

Crowe becomes the consummate hero as The Insider never flinches from looking at personal agony and danger. Wigand rails against Bergman. “I have to put my family's welfare on the line here, my friend! And what are you puttin' up? You're puttin' up words!” he shouts.

 

Pacino is a pit bull here as Bergman fights to air the 60 Minutes interview. “You pay me to go get guys like Wigand, to draw him out. To get him to trust us, to get him to go on television. I do. I deliver him. He sits. He talks. . . . Is it newsworthy? Yes. Are we gonna air it? Of course not. Why? Because he's not telling the truth? No. Because he is telling the truth.”

Privately, Bergman worries that his source has sacrificed in vain. His wife (Lindsay Crouse) prompts him to re-examine his personal and professional values. Forced to take a leave from work, Bergman walks along the beach near his vacation home. Ocean waves roll in. It’s a timeless image of a man with all the perks of success pausing to breathe and re-evaluate his career. This is one of Pacino’s many memorable characters, reminiscent of Lt. Vincent Hanna in Heat (1995) and Arthur Kirkland in … And Justice for All (1979).

Plummer portrays Mike Wallace as ego-driven and power-hungry, a journalist whose will to investigate powerful special interests is compromised. Plummer conveys charisma and gravitas as the 60 Minutes star. Wallace objected to how he was portrayed when the film was released.

Diane Venora (who played Al Pacino’s wife Justine in Heat), gives a brief but moving performance as Liane Wigand. Philip Baker Hall plays legendary investigative journalist turned CBS executive producer Don Hewitt. Hewitt died in 2009.

Finally the full interview appears on 60 Minutes, but only after The New York Times reveals CBS’ financial motives to suppress the story. The Wall Street Journal clears Wigand’s name after a tobacco industry smear campaign. Wigand reveals that the manipulation of ammonia causes addiction as nicotine is more rapidly absorbed into the lung. This boosts its affects on the brain and central nervous system, he said.

Mann wrote the excellent screenplay with Eric Roth. Dante Spinotti’s cinematography is superb, especially during a scene where a suicidal Wigand sits alone in a hotel room. In a panoramic shot, the mural-covered walls swirl around the hero. Music is used as dialogue to convey deeper meanings.

The Insider was nominated for seven Oscars including Best Picture, Best Actor (Crowe) and Best Director. Wigand went on to teach high school science and was nationally recognized for his work in the classroom. Bergman became a producer for the PBS show Frontline. He’s also a professor at the Graduate School of Journalism at the University of California, Berkeley.

If you like The Insider, you might enjoy: Page One: Inside the New York Times; The Soloist.

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The Insider     1999  /  R  /  2 hours, 35 min

Cast Overview:  Al Pacino, Russell Crowe, Christopher Plummer, Michael Gambon, Diane Venora, Bruce McGill, Philip Baker Hall, Lindsay Crouse, Gina Gershon

Director:  Michael Mann

Genre:  Thriller, Drama, Biography

 

Another Earth: Brit Marling seeks cosmic redo in Sundance award winner ****1/2

 

What if we could start over, erase our most painful mistakes and move forward? Another Earth explores guilt and grace as its signature image, a blue-green planet, hovers above. The sci-fi indie won the Alfred P. Sloan Feature Film Prize (for films with a science or technology theme) and a Special Jury Prize at Sundance 2011.

Rhoda Williams (Brit Marling), who has just won a scholarship to MIT’s astrophysics program, parties herself into a stupor and decides to drive home. Speeding along, she gapes at a turquoise disc in the night sky, a newly discovered duplicate planet earth. With sickening inevitability, she crashes head on into another car, killing a mother and son and leaving a father comatose. Dazed, she wanders the scene.

Another Earth blends science fiction, art and emotional truth. Mike Cahill’s feature debut is stark and understated, a contemplation of regret and human possibility. Cahill co-wrote the mesmerizing, imaginative script with Marling, drawing upon the theoretical physics of parallel worlds.

Released from prison four years later, Rhoda is a shell of herself. She moves back in with her upbeat parents and wisecracking brother. In an attic room, she gazes lovingly at a poster of the Horsehead nebula. Rhoda ponders distant Earth 2. She is that far from forgiving herself.

Newcomer Marling is a talent to watch. She embodies desolation with other-worldly poise and willowy beauty. A felon, Rhoda takes a school janitorial job because she doesn’t want to talk to people. She trudges to and from work, hunched, her face hidden under a hood. Eventually she befriends an elderly janitor Purdeep (Kumar Pallana).

 
                            

William Mapother (In the Bedroom and TV’s Lost) plays John Burroughs, a Yale professor and composer who is the other survivor of the tragedy. Rhoda rehearses her confession and knocks on his door one day. When he answers, she loses her nerve. She pretends to be a maid, asking if he would like a free trial house cleaning. Drunk and depressed, he accepts.

The characters of Another Earth don’t interact so much as they revolve slowly through each other’s orbits. There’s a sense of vast eternity, a lonely hum. Mapother and Marling are remarkable alone and together. Dazed and tentative, they become animated, then withdrawn. In time, they grow more fluent with each other.

John confronts Rhoda. He knows she is lying. She has never cashed his checks. The Maid in Haven cleaning service has never heard of her. Still he’s drawn to her. Their romantic pull, while unlikely, is mysterious and certain as a law of physics.

Purdeep acts as a kind of shaman for Rhoda. He’s the first one who is able to evoke real feeling from her. In an exquisite scene, he coaxes her back to life from what may be his deathbed.

Cahill’s cinematography is observant and reverent. His use of a hand-held camera helps build delicious anticipation. John and Rhoda emerge as she clears the clutter of his rural farmhouse. Dust motes float like disembodied souls.

Contact is made with Earth 2. Rhoda enters an essay contest to win a space shuttle trip to the planet. John fears for her safety, but she has nothing to lose. Throughout the film, an astrophysicist muses reassuringly over the radio. “There’s another you out there. . . . Therein lies the opportunity and the mystery.”

The film’s startling end could be seen as inspiring and hopeful. It all depends on how we look at it.

If you like Another Earth, you might enjoy:  Hereafter; The Ledge.

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Another Earth     2011  /  PG-13 /  1 hour, 32 min

Cast Overview:  William Mapother, Brit Marling, Kumar Pallana, DJ Flava

Director:  Mike Cahill

Genre:  Sci-Fi, Indie, Drama

 

Forks Over Knives ****

 

More energy, weight loss, longer lifespan and lower risk factors for heart attack, stroke and cancer are the benefits of a vegetarian diet according to Forks Over Knives.

Lee Fulkerson writes and directs the film which advocates empowering ourselves by taking a preventative dietary approach to health.  Skyrocketing rates of obesity, diabetes, heart attack, stroke and cancer in the U.S., despite a huge investment in healthcare, point to the effectiveness of dietary change.

Nutritional scientist and former dairy farmer T. Colin Campbell believes that health care costs in the United States could be cut by billions if Americans switched to a whole foods, plant-based diet.

 

Campbell authored The China Study, where comprehensive research reveals that “degenerative diseases like heart disease, Type 2 diabetes, and even several forms of cancer, could almost always be prevented — and in many cases reversed — by adopting a whole foods, plant-based diet.”

A renowned surgeon who heads the Breast Cancer Task Force at the Cleveland Clinic, Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr., found that “many of the diseases he routinely treated were virtually unknown in parts of the world where animal-based foods were rarely consumed.”

Fulkerson plays guinea pig as he consults the team of Matthew Ledderman M.D. and Alona Pulde M.D.  After just a few months on their whole foods, plant-based diet, Fulkerson saw tremendous improvement in his test measures of good and bad cholesterol, blood vessel inflammation (associated with heart attack and stroke risk), and blood pressure.

Several inspiring case studies are featured. Ruth Heidrich (then in her 40’s) successfully reversed her breast cancer (which had metastasized) by joining John McDougall, M.D.’s clinical study and going on a low-fat vegan diet.  She continued aerobic and weight-bearing exercise. Today the 70-something athlete competes, writes and teaches.

San’Dera Brantley-Nation, a mother diagnosed with diabetes, works with Esselstyn and his wife to change her diet. Keeping a journal, Nation achieves impressive weight loss and reverses her diabetes.  Ironically, she works in an endocrinology office and faces the skepticism of her own medication-centered physician.

Processed foods, touted in the U.S. since the 1950’s, act as a “pleasure trap” that only partly fills one’s stomach. Triggering the body’s sensors with natural and artificial stimulants, they induce a low-grade addiction, according to Terry Mason M.D., a Chicago urologist and, until recently, Chief Medical Officer of the Cook County Health and Hospital System. Eating natural foods which are much higher in bulk would alleviate these effects, he added.

An added benefit of the vegetarian way is a significantly lighter footprint on the earth’s environment.  The clearing of much of the Amazon forest to make way for cattle grazing is shown as a case in point.

While some criticize such plant-based diets as too extreme, Forks Over Knives can be seen as too conservative.  For instance, the differences between organic and conventional food supplies are not detailed. If one is eating pesticide-treated vegetables in abundance, wouldn’t that increase one’s risk for cancer?

The widely reported tainting of U.S. wheat, corn, soybeans and canola with pesticides and genetic modification are not mentioned at all here. One eye-opening claim that is offered: erectile dysfunction signals the “first early warning sign” of vascular disease.

Future films in this genre could address the social pressures facing healthy eaters. How does one gracefully bow out while most indulge in the pizzas, birthday cakes and drinks after work that are so integral to our social traditions?

First Lady Michelle Obama is shown speaking about the childhood obesity epidemic. More of a “wow” factor could have been achieved by including cameos of the many movie stars who espouse vegetarian, vegan and/or whole foods diets. For instance, Russell Brand, President Bill Clinton, Steve-O and Anne Hathaway are now finalists for  PETA’s Sexiest Vegetarian Celebrities List of 2011. Demi Moore, Madonna, Clint Eastwood and The Beach Boys all drink an organic apple cider vinegar (ACV) drink, according to the website of author and educator Patricia Bragg, N.D., Ph.D.

Forks Over Knives can inspire viewers to renew their commitment to a healthy diet, and even begin the shift to vegetarianism. This documentary joins a number of recent films on whole foods and diet, including Food, Inc.; Food Matters and The Beautiful Truth.

If you like Forks Over Knives, you might enjoy:  The Beautiful Truth; Happy; I Am.

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Forks Over Knives     2011  /  PG  /  1 hour, 30 min

Cast Overview:  Lee Fulkerson, T. Colin Campbell, Caldwell B. Esselstyn, Jr.

Director:  Lee Fulkerson

Genre:  Documentary, Health, Mind and Body

The Beautiful Truth *****

 

An Alaskan teen journeys cross country with his filmmaker dad to investigate a natural diet therapy for cancer in the eye-opening documentary The Beautiful Truth.

After his mother dies in an accident, 15-year-old Garrett Kroschel nearly flunks out of school.  His dad Steve begins to home school him.  Garrett becomes interested in cancer, diet and health after reading Dr. Max Gerson’s book A Cancer Therapy: Results of 50 Cases and The Cure of Advanced Cancer.

Garrett first meets with Gerson’s daughter, Dr. Charlotte Gerson, and his grandson, Howard Straus. He visits a Gerson treatment center.  According to Dr. Gerson, the therapy stimulates the body’s natural ability to heal itself and includes organic foods, juicing, supplements and the use of coffee enemas. 

Garrett speaks with scientists, researchers and survivors who confirm that cancer and other illnesses have been reversed as a result of The Gerson Therapy. He also meets with opponents of nutritional therapy.

The teen interviews Dr. Hal Huggins, an authority on toxic dental materials; Dr. Roger Eichmann, a chemist and practicing dentist who lectures on the hazards of mercury fillings; Dr. John Olney, a neuroscientist who has researched aspartame and MSG and their connection to brain lesions; and Jay Kordich who is a bladder cancer survivor. Kordich is also Dr. Gerson’s patient and a New York Times bestselling author known as The Juiceman.

 

Cancer treatment in the United States is a multi-billion dollar industry, according to sources.  Reports of suppression of natural cures have been made.

Inspired after his meetings with survivors, Garrett shares his findings with neighbors back home.  The Beautiful Truth presents natural alternatives for health conscious viewers and patients who have received “incurable” diagnoses.

If you like The Beautiful Truth, you might enjoy:  Forks Over Knives; Happy; I Am.

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The Beautiful Truth   2008  /  NR  /  1 hr, 32 min

Cast Overview:  Garrett Kroschel, Steve Kroschel, Charlotte Gerson, Howard Straus

Director:  Steve Kroschel

Genre:  Documentary, Science and Nature, Health, Mind and Body

 

Happy *****

 

Oscar-nominated director Roko Belic’s film shares insights from psychology, neuroscience, and multicultural wisdom to discover the keys to deep and lasting joy in the documentary Happy.

Belic, who shared a 1999 Oscar nomination with his brother Adrian for the musical documentary Genghis Blues, asks why the United States, one of the wealthiest nations in the world, ranks low in happiness.  He traveled to 14 countries, interviewing positive and optimistic individuals both rich and poor.

Happiness is 50% genetic, 40% intentional, and only 10% circumstance, according to scientists. This contradicts the widespread belief that attaining wealth and material things guarantees delight. Once our basic human needs are met, researchers say, $50K and $5 million look very much the same to our brains.

Adversity can kick start happiness, giving our brains the biochemical contrast needed to create new, better realities, according to scientists. Melissa Moody recounts her comeback from despair following a truck accident. While recovering from multiple reconstructive facial surgeries, long-buried memories of childhood abuse resurfaced. Her husband left her. She contemplated suicide. Moody hung on for the sake of her children. Today she says she has reached a more centered, happy place. She helps others with physical rehabilitation. She met and married someone new.

The happiest countries promote community. Denmark offers co-housing groups where families share chores and rewards. Anne Bechsgaard, a divorced mother, says she rebounded from depression after moving into co-housing. She and her children enjoy many friends and caring neighbors there. Communal dining has lightened her workload. Bechsgaard cooks supper and cleans up afterwards only twice a month.

 
 
A rickshaw driver living in the slums of Kolkata, India, Manoj Singh exudes happiness through arduous work days in extreme heat and monsoons. His family and neighbors are key, he says.

Bhutan’s government now weighs Gross National Happiness as well as Gross National Product, according to government official Dasho Kinley Dorji. For example, flooding a valley for a new dam would bring economic benefits, but would not be feasible because many would be displaced, and places of worship would be destroyed. The Gross National Happiness experiment is relatively new and results are forthcoming, we are told.  

Andy Wimmer, a former West German banker, volunteers at Mother Theresa’s Home for the Dying in Calcutta, India. As he moves about the hospice room filled with the destitute, he helps them eat and clean themselves. He feels deep peace knowing he is doing “something more” with his life.

 “It’s the values we have that are the biggest indicator of our happiness,” Belic learns. Intrinsic goals such as compassion, friendship and contributing to one’s community are much more conducive to happiness than extrinsic goals like money, power and social standing, he discovered.

Connectedness, generosity, play, flow, health and longevity are parts of the puzzle. New twists on traditional approaches are offered. “Nature is good medicine,” we’re reminded. Exercising in novel ways increases the brain’s dopamine levels most effectively, say neuroscientists. Choosing a new running or walking route can accomplish this.

Among the experts featured are “Dr. Happiness” Ed Diener, who has studied happiness in America for over 35 years, and Richard Davidson, a neuroscientist at the University of Wisconsin-Madison who studies meditation’s effects on individual happiness.

Not for cynics, this decidedly upbeat exploration will appeal most to those who yearn for genuine contentment, and to others who are already happy to some degree.

Like his producer Tom Shadyac (who directed blockbusters such as Bruce Almighty and, more recently, the documentary I Am), Belic sold his home and moved to a trailer on the beach in Malibu. He enjoys surfing and a sense of community, he told Paste Magazine. “Within the first two weeks of moving here, I met more people than I did in 10 years of having a house in the suburbs of San Francisco.”

Happy is narrated by Marci Shimoff, author of Chicken Soup for the Woman’s Soul.

If you like Happy, you might enjoy:  I Am; 2012: Time for Change; Thrive.

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Happy     2011  /  G  /  1 hour, 18 min

Cast Overview:  Ed Diener, Daniel Gilbert, Gregory Burns, Read Montague, The Dalai Lama, Matthieu Ricard, Mihaly Csikszentmihalyi, Nic Marks, Richard Davidson, Sonja Lyubomirsky, Tim Kasser, Andy Wimmer, Chikanobu Okamura, Anne Bechsgaard and family, Hiroko Uchino, Kundo Bo and family, Manoj Singh and family, Melissa Moody, Michael Pritchard, Ronaldo Fadul, Roy Blanchard and Family

Director:  Roko Belic

Genre:  Documentary

 

Cave of Forgotten Dreams ****

 

New wave German filmmaker Werner Herzog reveals a protocinema of Paleolithic drawings in the documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams. Herzog’s enthusiasm is contagious in this unprecedented filming of Chauvet Cave in southern France. Here Earth’s earliest known drawings, about 32,000 years old, were discovered in 1994.

Cinematographer Peter Zeitlinger’s exquisite 3-D images show horses gallop, and now-extinct cave bears and cave lions stalk the undulating walls glittering with calcite. Woolly mammoths peer back at us. Spotted panthers prowl.

The 3-D camerawork brings viewers more deeply into the cave. Herzog’s offbeat narration and signature metaphysical musings keep the film lively. A sacred feeling is evoked in kinship with the ancients.

Cave bears clawed these walls. Leaving their mark on the drawings, they seem like collaborators. Only a small camera and four small, portable panel lights were allowed. Filmed under strict limitations to protect the delicate ecology, the scenes inspire awe.

Since ancient artists carried torches to provide light, Herzog theorizes that they held these aloft and danced, their shadows moving with the animals in an ancient cinema. Impishly, he shows us a clip of Fred Astaire dancing with his own shadow in Swing Time.             

 

In a striking marriage of science and art, a laser spectroscopy image is shown. Hundreds of thousands of points of light reveal every detail and contour of Chauvet Cave's 1300 feet. Jean Clottes, head of the scientific team studying the cave and its art, shares his excitement and theories.

Europe was a dry, cold glacial land back then. One could journey on foot from England to France and Germany. Dominique Baffier, archaeologist and curator of Chauvet Cave, tours the drawings. Each one tells a story, she believes. Rhinoceros lock horns. Bison run, their multiple legs meant to show movement.

Archaeology Magazine reports that the Chauvet artwork was created 35,000 years ago, and again 5,000 years later. Looking fresh and new, the images have been carbon dated.

Fantastic beauty fills the cave. Stalactites and stalagmites glow. Some formations unfurl like candy ribbon. Others evoke thin, frozen needles of rain.  

In another mystery, only one human form was drawn. On a rock pendant, the bottom half of a woman with Venus of Willendorf proportions appears. The team mounts its camera on a stick to reveal the upper half of the image for the first time. It is a bison head.

Animals and humans shared a common, dreamtime existence then. Trees spoke. Have we forgotten how to listen? The footprint of an eight-year-old is found next to a wolf paw print. Herzog wonders whether they walked side by side.

The cave was used for drawing and ceremony, experts believe. There are no human remains. Animal bones, including cave bear skulls and even a golden eagle skeleton, carpet the floor. A Bear Skull Altar faces the cave’s entrance. Bits of charcoal are strewn about like remnants of incense.

Herzog interviews several odd, passionate spiritual seekers. Reindeer-skin clad Wulf Hein plays The Star-Spangled Banner on an ancient flute made from a vulture’s ulna. Archaeologist Julien Monmey shares a story about an Australian aborigine. When asked why he was painting on rock, the aborigine replied, “I am not painting. The hand of the spirit is painting.”

Marring this beautiful documentary is its obtrusive soundtrack, ill-suited to quiet reverence. When Herzog asks his team to observe silence and listen to the cave, moviegoers listen with them for only a few seconds before the heavy-handed score intrudes. Herzog also invites a master perfumer along, but he is unable to detect much aroma.

Risking his life to uncover mystery and truth in his work, 68-year-old Herzog explored some of the most remote areas of the South Pole in Encounters at the End of the World. In Fitzcarraldo and Grizzly Man, he delved into man’s improbable visions and showed the price for realizing those dreams.

In a surreal coda, we see a nuclear power plant some 20 miles away from Chauvet Cave. Its super-heated water prompted officials to build a tropical biosphere dome there. Alligators were introduced. They thrive, some mutating into a ghoulish white.

Might the reptiles escape one day and invade the Chauvet area, once covered by thousands of feet of ice? Two albino alligators face each other in the waters, teeth bared. Herzog asks whether we are doppelgangers, ghostly doubles of the ancients.

If you like Cave of Forgotten Dreams, you might enjoy: The Wind Journeys; Sanctum.

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Cave of Forgotten Dreams     2010  /  G  /    1 hour, 30 min

Cast Overview:  Werner Herzog, Dominique Baffier, Jean Clottes, Jean-Michel Geneste, Carole Fritz, Gilles Tosello, Michel Philippe, Julien Monney, Charles Fathy 

Director:  Werner Herzog

Genre:  Documentary, Nature, Science, Spirituality