Good Ol' Freda, a documentary by Ryan White

As Freda Kelly says near the beginning of the documentary Good Ol' Freda, she has a good secretarial job in Liverpool now, but it is not as exciting as the one she had from 1962-1972. She was personal secretary to the Beatles, starting at age 17, chosen by Brian Epstein from the scores of young working women who frequented lunchtime concerts at the Cavern. She accepted without consulting her dad, who definitely did not approve of the motley lads, but she won him over to her side. She had a knack for cross-generational communications, becoming part of the glue between the Fab Four and many of their own parents. Everyone seemed to love Freda.

Kelly took her job in the months just before the Beatles became famous. Pete Best was still the drummer and the band had only a local following. She helped with the fan club and took over when its founder lost interest. Unknowing of what was about to occur, she changed the fan club address to that of her home. A few months later all of the postmen knew her house.

Kelly was interviewed often as the Beatles secretary and her letters in the fan newsletter were widely read. It was once rumored that she had married Paul McCartney, but she was mostly forgotten by the public after the Beatles split. She kept out of the limelight, especially by staying in Liverpool when the Beatles incorporated moved to London. When she disassembled the Beatles Liverpool office, she gave away many of its artifacts to fans, keeping little herself.

Viewers at our film discussion seemed charmed by her down-to-earth manner. Talk after the film veered to personal memories of Beatles days. It was fun to hear three people remember when they attended Beatles concerts at the Chicago Amphitheatre or at Comisky Park. Everyone seemed glad to have come to our program.

Tim's Vermeer, a film by Teller

Tim Jenison is a former rock musician whose tinkering with sound equipment led to his becoming an inventor and computer graphics artist. At some unspecified time in the past, he noticed how perfect the light, shadows, and colors are in the paintings by Johannes Vermeer. He read books questioning Vermeer's undocumented techniques and concluded that the Dutch painter had to have used an optical device. Flush with funds from all of his successful inventions, he set out to discover Vermeer's method.

Tim's Vermeer is an entertaining film documenting Jenison's obsessive five-year effort. The "proof" of discovery would be Jenison's recreating one of Vermeer's masterpieces using the theorized methods. How could the inventor pull this off, for he was not even an amateur painter? Confidence in himself is something Jenison seems to have in abundance. His experience with the infinitesimal details of computer graphics probably helped developed his awareness of all things optical. Through trial and error, he developed an unusual sequence of mirrors that helped him paint spot by spot with no underlying drawings. The results were almost photographic.

Many in the art world doubt that Jenison really discovered Vermeer's method. If Vermeer did use Jenison's system of mirrors, it would help explain why there are so few paintings by the master, for it is a very slow process. But neither the secretive Vermeer nor any of his contemporaries wrote about how he painted nor left any such mirrors in their studios. We will never know unless some 17th century documents are discovered.

In any case, as I have said, the film is very entertaining. Jenison and the cast of characters around him, including magician Penn Jillette and painter David Hockney, are fascinating people. The mysterious subject of Vermeer appeals to many art fans. Viewers are left with numerous unanswered questions. I think Tim's Vermeer is a great choice for film discussion groups.

Tim's Vermeer. Sony Pictures Home Entertainment, 2014. 80 minutes.

The Waiting Room, a film by Peter Nicks

Who has not been to a hospital emergency room, either as a patient or as companion to a patient? I think I have been twice as a patient: once when I hit my head with a hammer trying to pull a nail and another time when I popped my knee out of joint. Both times were minor emergencies when I could not wait for a doctor's office hours. Emergency rooms are created for such times, but that is not what we see in the documentary The Waiting Room (2012) directed by Peter Nicks.

The Waiting Room was filmed at Highland Hospital in Oakland, California over a 24-hour period in 2011 or possibly 2010. On the DVD cover below the title is the statement "24 hours. 241 patients. One stretched ER." Of all those patients, several were victims of accidents and violent crimes, but most were people without health insurance trying to obtain treatments that they were unable to procure from general practitioners or the specialists to whom they would have been referred if they had health plans. Without appointments, those without life threatening conditions sometimes waited many hours to be seen by the physicians and nurses of the hospital ER. The waiting room was large and crowded.

Unlike many documentaries, The Waiting Room has no explanatory narration. One film reviewer says film viewers are "like flies on the wall." Another said that the film was true cinema verite. In an interview, the directory said that he wanted to show exactly what happens in an urban county hospital emergency room and let viewers decide what it all means. He also indicated that policy wonks from opposite ends of the political spectrum have praised the film as evidence for their positions.

Attendance at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library's showing of The Waiting Room for its film discussion was small, but our discussion was lively and somewhat personal. There was empathy for the patients followed by the filmmaker's cameras and admiration for the hospital staff. Discussion trended toward national health care policy, of course, and were left with a series of timely questions: "Has the launch of the Affordable Health Care Act relieved any of the stress on urban emergency rooms? Is The Waiting Room now an out-of-date film?" Time to ask a librarian.

Nicks, Peter. The Waiting Room. Cinedigm Entertainment Corp., 2013. 80 minutes. OCLC: 856022442.

Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Humanity's Lost Masterpiece, a Film by Werner Herzog

In 1994, the timeline of human art lengthened dramatically. In fact, it doubled when three explorers discovered a wealth of ancient paintings in a cave above the beautiful Ardeshe River in rural Southern France. Radiocarbon dating identified the horses, bison, lions, bears, and other images found on the limestone walls to be approximately 32,000 years old. To preserve the paintings, the cave has never been opened to the public and even access to scientists has been strictly limited. Luckily for us, veteran German film director Werner Herzog and his cinematic team were given a few hours in Chauvet Cave to film the wonderful art, resulting in the documentary Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Humanity's Lost Masterpiece.

Unlike many ancient figures, the animals painted in Chauvet Cave are not by any means simple or crude. The artists were keen observers of nature and very skilled at drawing. Their figures display an understanding of anatomy and evoke motion. The artists were even able to use the curves and hollows of the walls to enhance the vitality of their elaborate scenes. I find it fascinating that so much was done so cleverly by flickering firelight.

Herzog interviews many scientists inside and outside the cave. They tell us how the ancient mouth of the cave collapsed, how cave explorers located fissures evicting cave air, how the painters worked, and what is being done to preserve the art. Lovingly, the cinematographer dwells slowly on the images, letting us see the cave's most famous images again and again.

Herzog, Werner. Cave of Forgotten Dreams: Humanity's Lost Masterpiece. IFC Films, 2011. ISBN 9780788614156.

Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles, A Film by Jon Foy

Image that you are walking in a city, such as Philadelphia, Chicago, or New York. You have to cross a street. In doing so, you notice what appears to be a plaque imbedded in the street. Do you read it? If it made no sense to you, would you even think about it later?

Young high school dropout/document courier/artist Justin Duerr and his friends in Philadelphia began noticing strange tiles in the streets in the 1990s. The recurring message intrigued them.

Toynbee Idea
In Movie '2001
Resurrect Dead
On Planet Jupiter 

What was that about? They had to know and started an investigation, culminating in the documentary Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles.

Ten of us gathered at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library on a Friday night this fall to view and discuss the 2011 documentary, which Roger Ebert had included in his best documentaries list for that year. We have seen many unusual films in our over ten years of meeting, and Resurrect the Dead scored high on our weird scale. (I wish we really had a formal weird scale so I could report the score.)

We were captivated by the unrelenting efforts of Duerr and his friends Steve Weinik and Colin Smith to discover 1) who was making and laying the Toynbee tiles, 2) what they meant, and 3) where were all of the tiles. The third question was the easiest to answer, as people from Boston to Kansas City had noticed tiles and shared their pictures on the Internet. A large concentration were in Philadelphia. A small scattering of tiles had also been discovered in South America, one of which included a Philadelphia street address. Much of the film shows the researchers trying to answer questions one and two.

Our group of film fans was riveted to the screen, eager to learn the research teams latest discoveries. Look for the documentary at your library or request it through interlibrary loan.

Foy, Jon. Resurrect Dead: The Mystery of the Toynbee Tiles. E1 Entertainment, 2012. ISBN 9781417235858.

The Story of the Weeping Camel

This week's final nature film is a docudrama called The Story of the Weeping Camel. Like Winged Migration, the producers use artistic license in the creation of this film, arranging scenes to tell the story that they want to tell, a sort of Mongolian legend in which traditional music is used to manage a problem associated with a rare white camel calf*. I don't want to tell you what as to save the surprise.

While the plot may be scripted, the setting is authentic. Viewers see nomads from Mongolia's Gobi Desert raising their camels, goats, and sheep and living in their gers. We observe the daily life of four generations who seem to be quite prosperous. Inside their gers, are colorful blankets and painted furniture. They may not have been moved recently. Outside the scenery is stark and dry, but the herds seem large and healthy. Camels drive the pump that lifts water from their well. The herders trim hair off the camels to weave their own ropes. The scene seems timeless, except for some bright plastic barrels and the radio that the grandfather keeps. We learn late in the film that they could have a television, but the elders fear the children would waste their time.

The pace of the movie is slow compared with Hollywood fare, but that is a big part of the charm. You can learn much more about the film and life in Mongolia at the National Geographic website.

The Story of the Weeping Camel. New Line Home Entertainment, 2005. 87 min. ISBN 078065014X.

*In the film, the baby camel is referred to as a colt, but I found that zoos consistently use the term calf in their postings on the website ZooBorns. National Geographic also uses calf in its website description of the film.

Jane's Journey

We continue nature film week with Jane's Journey, a biographical portrait of Jane Goodall, who has become a champion of conservation and the ethical treatment of animals. At nearly two hours, this documentary recounts the primatologist's long career, showing her childhood, early chimpanzee studies in Gombe National Park in Tanzania, and global campaign for a variety of environmental causes.

Thanks to Goodall's father, who was an early advocate of home movies, we are able to see her as a child, and she was comfortable in front of cameras when National Geographic arrived at her compound on the shores of Lake Tanganyika in the early 1960s. The magazine articles and television specials that National Geographic produced made young Goodall an international hero quickly. The first half of Jane's Journey describes her years of primate study, her failed marriage with photographer Hugo Van Lawick, and the loss of natural habitat for the wildlife of Africa. The second half shows Goodall as ambassador to the world. A subplot throughout is her strained relationship with her son Hugo, known to people worldwide since his birth as Grub.

Because her causes are now her life, we travel to many troubled places in the later part of the film. The saddest may have been in the United States, as Goodall visited a Native American reservation where poverty and lack of hope have led to many adolescent suicides; her Roots and Shoots program is supporting community gardens to improve nutrition and create civic pride there. Her visit to a Congolese refugee camp was also quite moving. There, as in many places, she is surrounded by people eager to transform their lives and environments.

Jane's Journey will be appreciated by her fans worldwide.

Jane's Journey. First Run Features, 2011. 111 min.

Winged Migration

As I mention in my review of Himalaya with Michael Palin a few weeks ago, we got a flat-wide-screen television which excels at showing nature programs. To celebrate, I am making this nature film week at ricklibrarian. Today we start with one of my favorites, Winged Migration by director James Perrin. This film about the world's birds, many of whom travel great distances seasonally, is filled with dramatic forests, mountains, beaches, and deserts against which the colorful birds are strikingly beautiful. With little dialogue, the film records flocks of birds traveling north to breed and south to escape the winter. In some sequences we simply hear wind, waves, and the flapping of wings. Sometimes new age music accompanies the birds in flight. It is wonderful viewing.

Like many films that we have seen on PBS's Nature or National Geographic Specials, Winged Migration is the story of a year. What distinguishes this film, which was a feature attraction in theaters, is the point of view. We are close flying alongside the birds crossing spectacular landscapes. To get such shots, the producers had to go beyond the rules followed by many nature filmmakers who record unscripted events. Perrin and his crew hatched flocks of migrating birds that imprint well and taught them to accept the sounds of motor boats, ultralights, paragliders, trucks, and motor scooters. We do not hear motorized sounds or the calls of bird keepers, all of which were edited out of the scenes. In the special feature Making-of, the producers admit that their film is not real life but stress their recreation of nature.

Over 450 people worked on the film, 17 pilots and 14 cinematographers. Shooting took three years and another year was spent editing. Each minute of the film represents about two months of a crew on location. The movie was release in the U.S. in 2003 and is still stunning. Viewers with new televisions should borrow Winged Migration again.

Winged Migration. Sony Pictures Classics, 2003. 89 min. ISBN 9781404923096.

Bill Cunningham New York directed by Richard Press

Who's that man in the blue windbreaker taking candid photos of people on the streets of New York? Why do so many people seem so unconcerned when he lopes ahead or behind them, snapping shots from many angles? Do they know him? Yes, many do. He's Bill Cunningham, fashion photographer of the New York Times, and for decades he's been taking their pictures for his Sunday fashion column. Many Manhattanites dress up hoping Bill will notice their wild hats, capes, shoes, earrings, purses, and vests, and they are quite pleased when their photos show up in the newspaper. They strut for Bill, who is the subject of the intimate 2010 documentary film Bill Cunningham New York directed by Richard Press.

There are many surprising things about Bill, including his age. At over 80, he dashes between his Manhattan assignments on a bicycle regardless of the weather. At several points, I thought he might get hit by a cab, but he seems to be protected by a guardian angel. He also lived at the time of the filming in an old artist apartment at Carnegie Hall without a closet, kitchen or bathroom. Most of the space was taken with filing cabinets holding his photo archive. His bed was a mattress propped on boxes wedged between cabinets. He always eats out - the cheaper the better. Despite his total lack of pretension, he receives invitations to many of the most exclusive society affairs in the city, where he never accepts even a drink of water while others wine and dine.

Before our film discussion group viewed Bill Cunningham New York, I couldn't imagine being interested in a fashion photographer, but Bill is a totally free spirit who seems to enjoy nearly every minute. In the serious moments of the film, you will discover that he works very hard to remain independent. Whether he is a viable model for living is a good topic for any discussion group - after they stop laughing.

Bill Cunningham New York. Zeitgeist Films, 2010. 84 minutes.

Autism: The Musical

What is autism? I have just watched the documentary Autism: The Musical, and I am having trouble pinning down a definition without referring to a dictionary. I know it is a neurological disorder that interferes with a person's ability to communicate and socialize, and it may manifest itself many ways, as shown in the film which follows five elementary and middle school age children. The four boys and one girl have very different abilities. Henry knows much about dinosaurs and sounds like a professor telling others what he knows. Highly verbal Wyatt seems to understand everything that is going on among the people around him yet not be able to join in; he tells his mother exactly what will happen if his is mainstreamed at school. Adam can play the cello but is highly excitable and may start running in circles. Neal is non-verbal but shows great promise with a keyboard speaker. Lexi can sing songs by Joni Mitchell yet has trouble putting together a sentence of her own. Autism must be a large family of disorders to cover these five children.

Educator and drama coach Elaine Hall is the mother of Neal. She had the idea that he and other children could put together a musical performance after starting the Miracle Project, a theater program that mixes typically developing children with those with special needs. Such a program would challenge the children and show others how not to underestimate them. Filming the work must have been a given from the start, for Hall has been coaching child actors for television. Many of the parents of the children also have television and entertainment ties.

Like Mad Hot Ballroom and Young @ Heart, the cameras show much more than rehearsal and performance. Viewers meet the children and their families in their homes, some of which have had marriages torn by the pressures of raising special needs children. The upcoming musical actually seems to be an almost forgotten plot element at times, as the stories of the children dominate our attention. And that is just fine. We do see some scenes from the musical at the end, which are important but probably less so than the story of its creation. Autism: The Musical, which won numerous film festival awards, deserves being in many library DVD collections and is a good title for film discussion groups.

Autism: The Musical. Docuramafilms, 2007. ISBN 1422907996.

Afghan Star: A Documentary Directed by Havana Marking

In the United States, television mostly seems irrelevant these days. It no longer brings us together as it did in the 1950s and 1960s when there were just a few networks giving us common cultural experiences. Now the population is divided by hundreds of cable stations. TV mostly separates and pacifies us. As described in the documentary Afghan Star, the situation is far different in Afghanistan. Watching television is a pleasure recently restored after years of Taliban rule. Viewing is a political statement that defies the radical Islamic clerics who want to dictate morality. Performing on television is an act of courage.

Ironically, Afghan television is encouraging its viewers to come together and speak out by emulating one of the few American programs that has recently garnered viewers from all ages and political parties. Like its model American Idol, Afghan Star is a televised talent show that lets the viewers vote to decide who wins. In the documentary by the same name, we follow four contestants through one season of Afghan Star. For the two men, being on television is risky behavior that wins them fans who reject the Taliban past but are still cautious about offending conservative forces. The two women, on the other hand, have literally made themselves into targets for censure and possible assassination for appearing unveiled with men.

Viewers of the documentary see how thirty years of war has wrecked the country. As tense as the situation is, however, the message of the documentary seems upbeat. There are brave Afghans who want to enjoy music, such as the family identified as "Number One Fans" whose older daughter engineers a television antenna on the roof with foil and younger daughter plays Afghan Star with her dolls. There are the industrious street boys who recharge car batteries and cart them through the rubble strewn street to houses without reliable electricity. There are also legions of people spreading Afghan Star leaflets across the country to encourage voting for their favorite singers.

Sixteen people attended the film discussion at Thomas Ford and none left early after the viewing. Our conversation about the film and what we knew about the Afghan conflict lasted nearly half an hour. Other film groups should consider showing Afghan Star. More on the film is available at its own website.

Afghan Star. Zeitgeist Films, 2010. 88 minutes.

Mine, a documentary film by Geralyn Pezanoski

Hurricane Katrina continues to be the source of unusual stories, including Mine, a documentary film by Geralyn Pezanoski. According to the Film Movement website, within weeks of the storm in 2005, Pezanoski was in New Orleans with her camera crew filming efforts by volunteers to rescue pets left behind (not "abandoned") by the residents ordered to flee without animals. While most residents were still being kept out of the city, people with animal rescue organizations from around the country were in New Orleans prying open windows, crawling under houses, cutting through roofs, and doing whatever necessary to save hungry, frightened pets. With irony, one rescuer noted that anyone could write "animal rescue" on the side of their truck and easily pass into the city while local police and the National Guard were keeping pet owners - the people who could have helped the most - out. While as many as 150,000 animals died, the volunteers rescued thousands of dogs, cats, guinea pigs, etc., noting their addresses and tags to assist in reuniting them with owners later.

If there had not been so many pets, the animals would not have been sent to so many shelters across the country. Pets in the documentary went to Florida, Texas, Pennsylvania, California, and (I think) Colorado. The film indicates that these shelters began by asking people in their areas to foster these pets until the owners could be found. What was not clear was when the idea of fostering was replaced with giving the pets to new owners.

Pezanoski follows the cases of five owners separated from their pets. Some people were displaced for months and, when they finally got back to New Orleans, they had no idea initially how to locate their pets. By the time they got leads, new families in other parts of the country were attached to the animals, giving them new names and incorporating them into their families. Some new these owners refused to give them back. To her credit, Pezanoski shows all sides of these cases when subjects cooperated. In my opinion, only the lawyer who bad-mouthed the people of New Orleans gets and deserves no sympathy. Still, I think most viewers will side with the New Orleans residents who lost so much and then learned that other people were withholding their pets.

We showed Mine in our film discussion series at Thomas Ford. Though our turnout was light, our discussion of the emotional film was heartfelt.

Mine. Film Movement, 2010. 80 minutes. ISBN 9781440793721

Young @ Heart, a film by Stephen Walker

Thomas Ford showed the documentary Young @ Heart a year or two ago. It was not my turn to show the film and lead the discussion, but I heard that attendance for the program was good and that our moviegoers liked it. I have long intended to see Young @ Heart but had not until Bonnie taped from PBS. Even then, it sat on tape for weeks before we sat down to view it. It was well worth the wait.

The Young @ Heart Chorus is a seniors group in Northampton, Massachusetts, formed by Bob Climan in the early 1980s. The average age of the men and women in the chorus is around eighty years. You might think that the chorus would concentrate on singing old American songs, such as "My Old Kentucky Home" or "I Dream of Jeannie," but you would be mistaken. Instead the folks, whom you get to know in the documentary, tackle songs by James Brown, Jefferson Airplane, Jimi Hendrix, and Radiohead. The act has been so successful that the chorus has toured Europe and played before the king of Norway.

Young @ Heart starts with a live crowd-pleasing performance by the chorus of the Clash's "Should I Stay or Should I Go," followed with their humorous music video version of the Ramones's "I Want to Be Sedated." Then we see them at rehearsal with Bob Climan introducing new songs for a concert to be held in seven weeks. The seniors complain about some of the songs right off, but trusting their director, they continue to come to rehearsals to learn music they would not consider even listening to at home. Viewers wonder both whether the chorus will learn the lyrics in time and stay healthy enough to perform. One of my favorite scenes is the music video of the chorus singing the Bee Gees' "Stayin' Alive" in a bowling alley; in a way, it is a song you might expect given the circumstances, but it is so well done that you have to love it. (This video also has the advantage of timing at 1:13 as opposed to the Bee Gees 3:55 original.)

Seeing that the DVD has deleted scenes, including the complete "Purple Haze," I placed a hold. By searching "Young @ Heart", you can find many of the videos and some interviews on YouTube.

Young @ Heart. Twentieth Century Fox Home Entertainment, 2008.

51 Birch Street: A Film Discussion Guide

Last night at the Thomas Ford Memorial Library, we had one of the best film discussions that I have ever witnessed. Fourteen people came to see the documentary 51 Birch Street by filmmaker Doug Block. In this film, which begins when his mother dies, he seeks to learn why his father would remarry within three months of her death. Was his parents' 54-year marriage a happy one? When his father decides to sell the family home, he and his sisters come to sort through all the possessions. They discover 30 years worth of journals written by the late mother.

After the film ended, the discussion began and lasted for half a hour. I did not need a list of questions or to even direct the conversation. Here are questions that the viewers asked and discussed.

1. Is it right to read a deceased person's journals? How would you know whether they intended them to be read? Would you want to know what is in your parent's journals?
2. Would you trust what was written in a journal?
   
3. Why do children dislike the idea of a surviving parent remarrying? Should there be a period of grief observed before remarrying? When life expectancy is already short, is there a reason to wait?
   
4. Was Block's mother depressed? Did the traditional housewife role doom her? Would she have enjoyed life more if she had a job? Did psychotherapy help her?
5. Was Block's parents' marriage a mistake? Were they just not compatible? Was she incapable of love or was he incapable? Was making do for so many years acceptable?
   
6. Did Block's father have an affair? What constitutes "an affair"? How did he reconnect with his new wife so quickly after more than thirty years?
   
7. Why do Block's sisters disappear in the latter part of the movie?
8. Is Block honest about his own feelings about marriage?
9. How do fathers and sons learn to accept each other? What right does Block have to ask his father such personal questions?

I was struck by the sheer amount of stuff that in the Block house after 50 years. It is so funny and sad how the father keeps trying to get the son take some of the things that he has saved for so many years.

I had thought that the film might be terribly sad, but it was not. Block takes the film in directions that the audience does not expect, probably because he was very surprised by the developments. I recommend it to public library discussion groups.

Ken Burns Previews "The War"

"There are no ordinary lives," according to Ken Burns, who focuses on individuals to tell his stories about historical events. In his new documentary series The War, he and the crew of Florentine Films anchor the story of World War II on the experiences of people they met in four American towns: Sacramento, California; Mobile, Alabama; Waterbury, Connecticut; and Luverne, Minnesota. Like his series on the civil war, baseball, and jazz, he weaves together interviews, still photos, archival film, and period music in this production, which will premiere on PBS in late September.

Burns said that many people have requested that he make a series on World War II, but he had resisted for years. He changed his mind for two reasons. First, he read seven years ago that a thousand WWII veterans were dying every day, and he realized that many of their stories were being lost. Also, he read in the late 1990s that a poll of high school graduates revealed that many thought the U.S. fought with Germany against the Russia in the war. Being interested in the power of history, he had to address these problems.

Burns admitted that he keeps making the same film over and over. The question he is always asking is "Who are we?" He uses the same techniques and always combs libraries and archives for "the grist of all the films." He and his researchers visited hundreds of libraries in the making of The War.

I was impressed by the eloquence of Burn's speech, which reflects on his skill as a writer. I was also impressed by the seven segments of the documentary series that he previewed for us. Burns has gone far beyond the sanitized footage of the war that we normally see. The series will have to have viewer warnings.

I know what I will be doing with fourteen and a half hours this fall.

Planet Earth: The Complete Series, a Hit with Teens

I was surprised this spring when I found a bunch of teens gathered around our television watching the Discovery Channel presentations of Planet Earth, a nature documentary series. Bonnie and I have been watching Nature, National Geographic, and other wildlife and natural history programs for years, and Laura and her friends always leave the room. Kids do not normally sit for the sometimes slow moving programs. Planet Earth is not normal. It includes stunning photography and gripping wildlife stories that even impress teens, a tough crowd to please.

Bonnie and I actually became disenchanted with the Discovery Channel presentations. Though we had videotaped the episodes, the commercials were a nuisance. It seemed that bits of the stories were missing, especially after commercials when topics would inexplicably change. Also we were disappointed that the cable network had replaced the narration of David Attenborough with that of Sigourney Weaver. We're Attenborough fans. We decided to wait for the library-owned DVDs.

Now we are watching the DVDs. What a great change! Each episode has about twelve to fifteen minutes longer, restoring what was edited out for commercials by the Discovery Channel. Also, we get to hear the always enthusiastic David Attenborough.

Our daughter Laura says that she preferred the Sigourney Weaver narration because it used American (instead of British) vocabulary. This has not stopped her from watching the DVDs. She watched two episodes late Tuesday night and then showed them again to her boyfriend on Wednesday morning, telling him when the best parts were coming. That proves teen appeal to me.

Libraries that buy Planet Earth should not hide it back in the natural history section. Put it where teens can see it.

Planet Earth: the Complete Series. British Broadcasting Corporation, 2007. ISBN 1419849360. 5 discs, 660 minutes.

The U. S. vs. John Lennon

The After Hours Film Society packed the Tivoli Theater in Downers Grove for its showing of The U.S. vs. John Lennon. Around one hundred people stayed for the discussion late Monday night.

"Does it bother you that Yoko approved all the content of this film?" asked one of the discussion leaders. "No," one man answered, "we are usually given the other side. This was tribute, not journalism." The group of mostly Lennon fans agreed. They wished we had a figure like Lennon today.

The U.S. vs. John Lennon starts in Ann Arbor, Michigan at a rally for the release of John Sinclair, a marijuana advocate who was sentenced to two years in prison for possession. Up on the stage with anti-war activists like Jerry Rubin and Bobby Seale, Lennon sings a song he has composed for the occasion. The Nixon administration takes notice, and J. Edgar Hoover assigns F.B.I. agents to follow the musician.

The film then turns back to Lennon's youth and his career with the Beatles, showing how he was always stirring controversy. With statements about religion, use of drugs, and criticism of the Vietnam War, he irked American conservatives who held bonfires to burn Beatles albums, photos, and collectibles. He marries performance artist Yoko Ono, and, under hand printed "Make Love Not War" signs, they spend a week-long honeymoon in Amsterdam in bed surrounded by reporters and followers. Denied entry into the U.S., the couple repeated the in-bed protest in Montreal under the lights of American television.

Lennon and Ono are then allowed into the U.S. and settle in New York, where they start appearing on Dick Cavett's talk show, recording anti-war songs, and meeting American radicals. For Christmas, the couple covers the city (and 11 other international cities) with billboards saying "War is Over ... If You Want, Merry Christmas, John and Yoko." Because they are stirring such trouble, the Immigration Service starts deportation hearings against John, who was arrested for marijuana possession in London years earlier. The latter part of the film focuses on Lennon's efforts to stay in the U.S.

In addition to film of the period and a soundtrack of Lennon music, The U.S. vs. John Lennon is full of recent interviews with newsmen, activists, writers, and government agents of the time. Walter Cronkite, George McGovern, Gore Vidal, Tommy Smothers, and Angela Davis are among thirty plus interviewees. John Dean and a couple of F.B.I. agents seem contrite, ruing what they did. Only G. Gordon Liddy maintains the Nixon administration was doing the right thing with its "dirty tricks."

The DVD of The U.S. vs. John Lennon with 50 minutes of additional scenes will be released February 13. Many libraries should add it to their collections and consider it for discussions.