HinesSight

Elemental is a film with wildfire lessons for Oregon

It was purely coincidence, but there was still something wonderfully strange to have Ralph Bloemers, the Executive Producer of Elemental, a gripping documentary about wildfires, talking last Friday night in our living room with my wife and I about the film while we and other neighbors were worried about the Vitae Springs wildfire in south Salem that started that day and had led to a Level 2 (Get Set) evacuation order that extended almost to our neighborhood adjacent to the Ankeny Wildlife Refuge.

Bloemers parked his camper van at our house Friday night since he had to be both at a Friday 7 pm premiere showing of the film at Salem Cinema and a Saturday 10 am showing for survivors of the Santiam Canyon fires. Ralph was a lead attorney for our neighborhood's lengthy fight against a Measure 37 subdivision some years back that Laurel and I led, which is how we came to know him so well.

 

Bloemers talked with us before he headed off to sleep in the van. So while worried about a nearby wildfire, we heard a lot about wildfires. Mostly reassuring messages, since I told Ralph that while we'd done quite a bit of clearing of brush and trees around our house that sits on ten mostly natural acres, we didn't want to cut down some beautiful large firs and white oaks fairly close to the house.

 

Echoing one of the messages of Elemental, Bloemers told us that creating defensible space around a structure is less important than hardening it against wildfire. Key to that hardening is not having bark or other flammable material within six feet of the structure, having fireproof vent screens in place if a house has a crawl space, and either not having gutters or keeping the gutters clear of debris.

 

The movie shows that even a very hot wildfire won't ignite a structure if the fire is over 50 feet away, I recall it was. So it's helpful to have cleared space around a structure. However, often, or usually, embers are the bigger danger to a house. And embers can fly long distances in a wildfire, especially in a strong wind. Thus there's no way a wildfire can be controlled by bare earth, since embers can travel a mile or so, igniting other fires when they land, which then create more embers.

 

This means that wind is worse than trees burning. Yet historically forest management has been viewed as the best way to combat wildfires -- thinning trees, clearcutting, and such. Elemental features persuasive interviews with wildfire experts who say that based on solid research, taking trees out of a forest doesn't work well to reduce wildfire risk.

 

In fact, the film shows a researcher talking about an Oregon fire that spread over land that included both clearcuts and old growth forest. The clearcut land fared worst in the fire, because replanting of trees created a monoculture where all the trees were about the same size, making it easy for the fire to spread through crowns close to each other, whereas the old growth forest, being much more diverse, resisted fire to a greater degree. 

 

I've watched a lot of documentaries. Elemental is one of the best I've seen. The original photography is beautiful, and archival footage of the recent Paradise, California fire and other wildfires is expertly blended in. The film starts off by startling the viewer with scenes of the horrendous damage wildfires can do to homes/towns, and concludes by demolishing many of the myths about how wildfires should be controlled.

 

Putting them out sometimes isn't the wisest course of action. Native Americans knew that fire rejuvenates the land. Elemental shows current tribe members reverently setting fire to some of their land, making fire a sacred sacrament of sorts rather than an evil to be fought with brute force.

 

I'm sure that not everybody who sees the film will come away convinced that the policies advocated in Elemental should be followed. However, I'm confident that every viewer will find much in the film to think about, since it takes a much-needed scientific approach to dealing with wildfires. The film is shaping up to be a big success. You can see it at Salem Cinema until September 15.

 

Here's part of an email Ralph Bloemers sent me about the film in his Executive Producer role. (Copying and pasting led to some weirdness in the font sizes.)

 

Over the past five years, National Geographic and PBS Filmmakers Trip Jennings, Sara Quinn and I traveled throughout the West and across the country to visit with the top experts, indigenous fire practitioners and communities impacted by fire. We spent time capturing rebirth in the burn using time lapse and wildlife camera traps, and went into active fires with firefighters and first responders.

 

The result is a new film entitled Elemental - which seeks to present the thinking of top scientists in a visually compelling and engaging way that is directly relevant to most people’s lived experience - and offers solutions to keep our homes and communities safe.

 

Elemental has been entered into dozens of festivals and been selected for fifteen so far - including the Valley Film Festival in LA (August 6), Sonoma (September 21st), the Mill Valley Film Festival in Northern CA (early October), Sedona (Arizona), Doc Society, Greenpoint, Newburyport, Wildlife Conservation and more. 

 

For our Portland Premiere, Senator Jeff Golden, Rep Dacia Grayber and Rep Khanh Pham co hosted the event. Willamette Week named the film it’s Top Pick, it was featured in the Oregonian and on Oregon Public Broadcasting’s Think Out Loud.  

 

We are premiering it across Oregon and other Western states in the coming months, and doing private screenings as well.  The response has been overwhelming. 

Summer of Soul -- great movie about 1969's Black Woodstock

Last night, via Hulu, my wife and I finished watching Summer of Soul, a hugely entertaining movie about the 1969 Harlem Cultural Festival that featured outdoor concerts with musicians such as...

Stevie Wonder, Nina Simone, Sly and the Family Stone, Gladys Knight and the Pips, Mahalia Jackson, B.B. King, and The Fifth Dimension.

It's been called the Black Woodstock.

However, a big difference is that Woodstock, which also happened in 1969, became a cultural phenomenon, with a movie about the festival coming out just a year later in 1970. By contrast, footage of the Harlem Cultural Festival sat untouched for fifty years.

Thankfully, we're now able to see many of the acts that thrilled a mostly Black crowd of 35,000 or so who crowded into Mount Morris Park for six concerts in the summer of 1969. 

I found the movie deeply moving for several reasons. 

The emotions conveyed by the musicians gripped me. The movie flips back and forth between video of the performances and footage of what was going on in the country around that time. 

Murders of Martin Luther King and Bobby Kennedy. Vietnam War. Hippies. Drugs. Hair, the musical. Black Panthers. It was a tumultuous time. 

I was attending San Jose State College in 1969. Me and my hippie friends would go to San Francisco, Berkeley, Santa Cruz, tripping on marijuana, psychedelics, or both. 

Once we saw Ike and Tina Turner, but I don't recall seeing any other Black musical groups in person. So it was a delight to watch them perform in Summer of Soul, since their TV appearances back then were a lot less soulful than the Harlem performances.

The movie talks about how music was used to both express the Black experience and to help Blacks deal with the many challenges they faced back then. Also today, of course.

Seeing the faces of the crowd as they watched the Harlem Cultural Festival performances made me realize much more deeply how soul, blues, and gospel music touched the Black community. This was a special event for Harlem. Attendees speaking today in the film would say that they'd never been with 30,000 fellow Blacks in one place before.

The highlight of Summer of Soul for me was Mahalia Jackson and Mavis Staples singing Take My Hand Precious Lord. A short clip someone put on You Tube doesn't do justice to their performance, but it gives a hint of the strong feelings expressed by Jackson and Staples.

What kept going through my mind as I watched Summer of Soul is that expressing how we really feel may not make a crappy situation better, or make a pleasant situation even more enjoyable, but it connects us more deeply to reality -- whatever that reality may consist of.

I saw hundreds of years of Black oppression and Black culture being expressed on the stage of the Harlem Cultural Festival. And I know that the people who attended the festival viewed those performances with much clearer inner eyes, since they were living the realities being sung about.

I'm sort of embarrassed to admit that when The Fifth Dimension came on stage and sang songs from Hair, I thought, "Well, damn, they're Black." I didn't know that.

A member of The Fifth Dimension said in a present-day interview that they were criticized for being Black and sounding white. Yet she noted that they couldn't help sounding however they did, correctly saying that it was ridiculous to expect them to sound Black -- as if that's an actual sound. 

Here's a 1970 video of them performing The Age of Aquarius.

Sly and the Family Stone brought back memories, though I can't be sure if I ever saw this band in person. (OK, there's lots I can't remember from that psychedelic era; as the saying goes, if you can remember the 1960s, you weren't there.)

Sly singing Wanna Take You Higher to the Harlem audience had mixed messages. Sure, that what's marijuana and other drugs do. Sly also seemed to be speaking to the heights Blacks could reach if the forces keeping them down were lessened.

I think this video is from the Woodstock performance by Sly and the Family Stone. 

"In the Heights" shows joy of belonging to a community

Today I praised the In the Heights movie to someone who hadn't heard of it.

They pulled out their phone and told me the film's Rotten Tomatoes ratings: 96% positive for critics, 95% positive for viewers.

I said, "I'm surprised it wasn't 100%." 

In the Heights is that good.

My wife and I watched it at home via our HBO Max subscription. It's showing at Regal Willamette Town Center and Regal Santiam here in Salem, plus the Independence Theater.

It looked and sounded fine on our TV. I'm sure it would look and sound even better on a really big screen.

But be warned.

It's a musical. Some people, mostly men I suspect, have an aversion to musicals. However, In the Heights isn't a traditional musical, assuming that word -- traditional -- has any meaning these days.

It's a musical in the style of Hamilton. Which isn't surprising, since Lin-Manuel Miranda wrote the music and lyrics for a Broadway production of In the Heights before he created Hamilton.

So the basic rhythms are rap, hip-hop, and Latin. The movie is set in the largely Dominican community of Washington Heights in New York City. 

I loved the sense of community that permeates the entire movie.

Which, by the way, doesn't have any bad guys/gals. No evil-doers. Nobody to boo.

It's that rare movie where 100% of the characters are positive people, all trying to do their best in a world that puts up barriers to them because of their heritage and circumstances.

Since I'm so used to movies that feature the main characters overcoming the malevolent actions of others, it took a while for me to settle in to watching In the Heights without the expectation of "something bad is about to happen."

Nothing does. 

Sure, there are problems people face. That comes with being human. The only tension in the movie arises from wondering how the main characters will deal with their problems.

Since it's a musical, problem-solving involves a lot of singing and dancing. And since it's a Latino-themed movie, often the singing and dancing has a salsa-like flavor.

I live on ten acres in rural south Salem. I grew up in a very small California town in the foothills of the Sierra Nevada mountains. I've never lived anywhere that bears a resemblance to the highly urban Washington Heights. 

But In the Heights made me wish I could experience the warmth, neighborliness, energy, joy, and passion of the diverse community that's the centerpiece of the movie. 

Yes, it's an idealized picture of a few blocks in Washington Heights. Everybody gets along. No gangs. No trash. No violence. No police. No traffic jams. 

A summer power outage during a really hot spell is the worst thing that besets the community. And it doesn't take long before people are back to dancing and singing their way through this challenge. 

What kept going through my mind as I watched In the Heights is what a city like Salem (Oregon), where I live, misses by having a semi-small-town feel throughout most of the urban area. We do have a downtown.

However, there's no singing and dancing in the streets, aside from a few special occasions each year. Mostly our sidewalks are nearly empty. If someone started playing salsa music and invited passers-by to dance along, there'd be few takers almost everywhere in Salem.

Again, I realize that In the Heights isn't a depiction of real life. Still, the sense of community among the mostly Latino population felt decidedly genuine. This isn't something that can be packaged, sadly. 

It's a natural result of people living in close proximity to each other who share a cultural heritage that encourages openness, communal eating and drinking, celebrating joys and supporting each other in sorrows.

An NPR interview with Lin-Manuel Miranda and screenwriter Quiara Alegría Hudes ends this way:

I want to finally ask about the timing of this movie because it's going to be among the first wave of summer films to open in theaters as the pandemic is slowly winding down. How do you think that timing might shape how people take in this story?

Miranda: I think it's enormously poignant. We filmed this in the summer of 2019 before the pandemic hit. And I know when I see a picture of two people standing close together, I've been marked by this — "Are they OK? Are they vaxxed? Is this all right?"

And this movie is such a love letter to the power of being in community with each other, of being out on the curb, of hugging, of dancing together. It is such a reminder of the power of that. I'm really hopeful that it's giving folks a reminder of how we used to be and how we can hopefully one day be again.

"The Great" is, well, great! Here's why I liked it.

My wife and I came late to The Great, an engrossing ten-episode series on Hulu that is (very) roughly based on the story of Catherine the Great, Empress of Russia. 

It was released on May 15, 2020. We discovered it last month after looking for something else on Hulu, noticing The Great, and having my wife say, "I've heard it's pretty good."

From that moment we watched The Great almost every night until we finished the last episode yesterday. Thankfully, Season 2 is in the works, because we loved the show.

It's like nothing else I've ever seen -- not on television, not on the big screen. 

There's so much to admire about The Great. Here's some of what kept me firing up Apple TV and clicking on Hulu night after night.

History, what history? Yes, there are aspects of The Great that are historically correct. However, the overall tone is wildly 21st century, not 18th century. The characters speak like people today, albeit with an even greater use of "fuck." 

At the start of every episode there's an asterisk next to the title that says, "An occasionally true story." That's accurate.

The Great doesn't look like I'd expect Russia in 1761 to appear, assuming I knew anything about Russia at that time. 

The accents are British English, by and large. The clothes worn by those hanging around the court of Emperor Peter often look quite modern. The sun always appears to be shining and it's warm enough to lounge around outside.

All of that contributes to the story of Catherine and Peter, who she has been betrothed to in an arranged marriage of sorts, rather than detracting from it. 

The craziness of The Great, the contradictions, the jarring confluence of olden times and modern attitudes and ways of speaking -- all that drew me in like a cinematic magnet. Endless surprises kept my attention glued to the TV screen for all 10 episodes.

Strong woman plus jerk of an emperor equals fascination. All of the actors in The Great are terrific. But Elle Fanning as Catherine and Nicholas Hoult as Peter are the most watchable.

They take different trajectories as Season 1 progresses.

Catherine starts off as a nice woman thrown into a marriage with an asshole of an emperor. Bit by bit she finds her inner empress, taking on some of the ruthlessness of Peter.

Meanwhile, Peter becomes increasingly likable, though by no means a nice guy. He finds his softer side, while Catherine hardens up. She isn't Russian, but realizes that if she wants to change Russia into a more refined and democratic nation, she has to become as tough as Russians are.

Catherine is a character that bears some resemblance to what I've seen before in movies. Peter, though, is unique, thanks to the astounding talent of Hoult.

Peter is Trumpian, though without Trump's most irritating qualities.

Yes, Peter is narcissistic, controlling, authoritarian, cruel, uncaring. Yet he also has a sense of humor, can laugh at himself, is open to suggestions, and appealingly transparent.

Like Trump, Peter is unashamedly himself at all times. But I liked Peter hugely more than Trump.

I think it's because you can see the humanity in Peter lurking below the surface, which isn't the case with Trump, who is a jerk all the way down.

Peter is somewhat conflicted about being Emperor of Russia, while I have no doubt that Trump would have zero doubts about being Emperor of the United States. At any rate, Peter commands the viewer's attention whenever he is on screen, as is the case with Catherine.

It's a wild and crazy court. I'm not saying that I'd like to be part of the emperor's court as shown in The Great, since in the long run it would be stressful and exhausting. However, they sure do have a lot of fun.

Assuming your definition of "fun" includes shooting inside the palace, having sex whenever, wherever, and with whoever strikes your fancy, prodigious drinking and eating, making the heads of your enemies a table decoration, and so on.

The excesses washed over me in a pleasing waterfall of decadence. There's never a dull moment in Peter's court, that's for sure.

I really liked the frequent exclamations of "Huzzah!," a catch-all outcry that has no real equivalent in English, with "Yay," "Hooray," "Right-on," coming closest I guess, along with the Marine Corps' "Oorah."

"Huzzah" became so appealing to me, I'd like to make it part of our language.

Peter and the rest of his court said it before smashing their glasses on the floor, as a gesture of solidarity, as indicating approval of something someone did or said, and in other intriguing ways. 

As I suspected, that term isn't part of Russian culture, according to the Russia Beyond web site.

“If you had a drink every time someone in The Great said ‘Huzzah’, you’d be drunk before the end of the first episode,” is a joke currently doing the rounds among Russian Twitter users.

And that’s not surprising - in the new (not so) historical comedy series about the Russian Empress, with Elle Fanning and Nicholas Hoult in the lead roles, this exclamation of delight comes at the end of pretty much every piece of dialogue.

In fact, “Huzzah!” is essentially the equivalent of the traditional Russian exclamation “Ura!” (the Russian for “Hooray!”), which usually denotes excitement, joy after achieving a set goal or defeating someone, or a war-cry. 

Here's the trailer for The Great.

The Prom is a great feel-good movie (ignore The New Yorker)

Hah! A seventy-two year old father, me, showed in one instance he's more culturally with it than his forty-eight year old daughter, Celeste. 

Usually Celeste has seen, or at least heard of, cinematic offerings before me. After all, she lives in Orange County, which is a lot closer to Hollywood than I am here in Oregon.

But in a post-Christmas FaceTime call this afternoon, I asked Celeste if she had seen The Prom yet. No, she hadn't. And it appears she wasn't even aware of this Netflix production.

I highly enjoyed The Prom. So did my wife. I don't get why Rotten Tomatoes has it with a 58% positive review from critics and 68% from viewers. 

In my utterly personal opinion, this story of two girls who aren't allowed to attend their Indiana high school prom as a couple was well-acted, entertaining, and moving.

It's full of song and dance numbers involving the four lead actors: Meryl Streep, James Corden, Nicole Kidman, and Andrew Ranells. I thought the last two sentences of The New Yorker review by an overly snooty Anthony Lane missed the mark.

It's possible both to agree entirely with the movie's politics and, at the same time, to feel that you're being strangled by a rainbow, and we should thank the Lord that "The Prom" wasn't released before the election. I can think of some states, not just Indiana, where wavering voters, disgruntled rather than wowed by the film's remorseless plea for tolerance, might have swung in the opposite direction.

Well, maybe those of us old enough to distinctly remember when lesbians and gays were really discriminated against in high school, way beyond what The Prom shows, find the aforementioned "remorseless plea for tolerance" more appealing than younger viewers like, perhaps, Lane.

Having spent 1962-66 at a small (400 students or so) central California high school in Woodlake, I watched the inspiring end of The Prom with tears beginning to form in my eyes.

Partly because I admired the courage of the student, Emma (played by Jo Ellen Pellman), who wants to take her girlfriend to the prom and meets resistance from a behind-the-times parent organization. 

And partly because I was inwardly cringing at the memories of how the guys in my high school referred to homosexuals. We'd throw around insults like "You homo!" and "Faggot!" with gleeful abandon. 

Naturally there weren't any known lesbians or gays in my high school. Yet probably they were there, just underground. In fact, they might have been using those epithets I just shared themselves. If you're afraid to be outed, you have to show that you're part of the heterosexual in-club.

I wish I could apologize in person to anyone harmed by how we spoke about homosexuals back then. My only excuse is that we didn't know any better. There was zero mention of homosexuality in any class I took in high school, so far as I can remember.

Plus, there definitely was no attempt by the teachers to encourage respect for diversity, including different ways of expressing one's sexuality than the societal norm. Back then homosexuality was viewed as an aberration, a moral failing, something to be mocked and condemned.

I can understand why young people today who live in liberal areas might look upon The Prom as making a big deal out of something that is taken for granted by most high schoolers today: being attracted to the same sex not only is no big deal, it isn't any sort of deal, just the way things are.

That's wonderful. But The Prom still has a message that needs to be heard, because not everyone agrees with what I just said. Are you listening, Indiana? 

Here's the trailer.

 

Beyonce's Coachella show was mind-blowingly beautiful

Thank you, Netflix. There's no way my wife and I would have seen Beyonce's astounding  2018 "Homecoming" show at Coachella without streaming it the past two nights, courtesy of our Netflix subscription.

For one thing, the many shots of the crowd showed that if anyone our 70'ish age saw the two live performances (over two weekends), they sure weren't in the front rows. For another, our willingness to travel long distances and put up with large crowds to see a concert are long behind us.

So it was a gift to be able to sit at home and stare with rapt attention at our big screen TV displaying one of the most amazing performances we'd ever seen.

If  you haven't watched the Netflix film, Homecoming, make this a top priority.  

Most of the two hours and seventeen minutes is a masterfully edited view of the two live shows. Yes, two. It took our senior citizen minds a while to figure out that the seemingly miraculous instant costume changes actually were the result of virtually seamless editing of footage from the two Coachella performances of Homecoming.

The scenes of how the performance came to be also were fascinating. I was especially impressed by how Beyonce was able to handle the rehearsals and other preparations for Coachella so soon after giving birth to twins.

There's a reason evolution has females reproducing us humans: men wouldn't be capable of doing this.

I found Homecoming to be an amazing piece of performance art. Anyone who doubts that a lavish outdoor music show doesn't deserve to be in the same artistic category as a symphony, opera, or whatever needs to fire up their Netflix subscription and watch Homecoming start to finish.

Rarely do I stare at the screen of our TV all the way through the closing credits. I did with this film, though, because I wanted it to never end.

I don't believe in reincarnation. However, if there's a Rebirth God out there, here's a request: next time around fashion me into a black person who can sing, dance, and have a rollicking good time like the performers in Homecoming.

By and large, I don't believe there are big differences between blacks and whites. Still, this thought kept going through my head as I watched Homecoming: Maybe it would have been possible for Beyonce to populate the stage with equally talented white performers, but this would have been really tough.

This show, and the film, was a tribute to black culture -- especially the amazing marching bands at black universities. The energy, enthusiasm, and joy of the performers, led by Beyonce herself, was beyond belief. I wanted to bottle the good feelings I had while watching Homecoming so I could take sips when I felt down and uninspired.

I got exhausted just watching the Coachella performances. How Beyonce was able to do all that singing and dancing without seeming to break a sweat astounded me.

(Well, she did appear to have a wind machine follow her on stage to blow her hair, so maybe that helped.)

From my male perspective, I found it fascinating, but really not all that surprising, that Beyonce and her crew of female dancers, singers, and musicians could be both sexually sensual and womanly empowered. Somehow Beyonce and the other artistic directors were able to make shaking one's booty into a feminist statement (much to my delight).

It also was great to see the two French dancers, Larry and Laurent Nicolas Bourgeois, a.k.a. Les Twins, prominently featured in Homecoming. They competed on World of Dance and blew me away with their unique appealing dance style.

Here's the official trailer for Homecoming. There are homemade videos on You Tube showing the performances,  but they're nowhere near as good as the Netflix film.