BOOKS
The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2
By Jane Poynter
(Thunder’s Mouth Press)
It’s trying enough to be confined for hours at a holiday dinner table with squabbling relatives. Imagine being locked in a 3-acre bubble for two years with a “family” of unconventional idealists and scientists, as the world watched through reinforced glass walls.
Such was life inside the Biosphere 2 — ecological and psychological study meets ultimate sport. In The Human Experiment: Two Years and Twenty Minutes Inside Biosphere 2, author Jane Poynter tells the tale of life inside the giant, hermetically-sealed Petri dish in the Arizona desert. Biosphere 2, a simulated, self-supporting ecosystem of seven biomes based on and named after Biosphere 1, aka planet Earth, was considered to be a first step to space colonization, as well as an experiment in close-quarters human interaction. However, optimism turned to apprehension for the eight biospherians when oxygen levels tanked within the structure, and prolonged sensory deprivation — as well as good, old-fashioned politics — ultimately led to the group’s split into warring factions, Lord of the Flies style.
Poynter’s fascinating book explores the relationship people have with their environment as well as to each other. While the success of the overall mission is debatable, there’s no denying that it was an engrossing adventure in both physical science and human nature.
Visit janepoynter.com — Jessica Ridenour
MUSIC
Big Black Hole and the Little Baby Star
Sean Hayes
(self-released)
Remember when David Gray “came out of nowhere” after languishing eight years in the record store folk bin ghetto to be everywhere, and not just on the radio but sweetly across café sound systems from Seattle to Reykjavik? He did it with a self-financed kitchen recording of what seemed like a groundbreaking meld of acoustic guitar and electronic beats. If lightning could strike twice, another blue-eyed soul troubadour of a uniquely American sort would be carrying acoustic-electric torch to the soul-starved world: Sean Hayes. The independent San Francisco artist has been growing his audience for years now with a sound that hearkens to the rural Carolina of his upbringing, but is infused with clever quirkiness, hard-won poetic wisdom and a hint of Haight-style moon dust. On his latest CD, Big Black Hole and the Little Baby Star, Hayes teams up with producer/singer-songwriter Etienne de Rocher, who keeps Hayes’ organic Americana intact, but embellishes it with subtle electronic grooves on a handful of tracks and, overall, gives Hayes’ music a more pop-oriented feel. The bedraggled Hayes takes his clear yet quavering voice on turns from tender quirk-folk and neo-Americana to the realm of Jack Johnson, Van Morrison and meditative slo-core. It’s a unique style that the modern American version of John Peel — KCRW tastemaker Nic Harcourt — raves about. Joining his acoustic tapestries, Hayes’ voice cracks and the soul rushes out.
Get copies at seanhayesmusic.com — Todd Spencer
Ancient Spirit: Kirtan Café, Vol. II
Ragani
(Wellness Matters)
Many yoga practitioners have come across Ragani’s name over the years. A lifelong devotee of meditation, yoga and acupuncture, Ragini has been widely featured in the book Yoga, Mastering the Basics and its accompanying video series. Here, Ragini crafts an album of kirtan, or ancient chants and mantras that are still used in yoga (most often in the Sanskrit language). On one level, the tracks on Ancient Spirit, especially “Jaya Ganesh,” work as chanting music. But those who have no interest in communal chanting may be surprised at how accessible and soothing the music on Ancient Spirit is. Ragani’s bright harmonic sense has a Western feel and further softens the melodies, drawing new elements out of the music. The opening number, “Prayer of Harmony,” brings to mind a winning collaboration between Enya and the sadly departed George Harrison. There is genuine warmth that carries through the entire release, and on “Hare Krishna Govinda,” Ragani sounds as if she’s singing a lullaby to a child. As on the rest of Ancient Spirit, the surprisingly sophisticated backings ebb and flow in a comforting, rocking manner; at the same time they slowly build in power and emotion. Ragani balances the deceptive simplicity of ancient folk music with the scope of a cosmic orchestra.
Available at cdbaby.com — Nick Dedina
FILM/DVD
Conversations with God
Directed by Stephen Simon
Conversations with God is the new movie based on the best-selling book series of the same name. Producer/director Stephen Simon has wanted to adapt Neale Donald Walsch’s books to the silver screen for years, and the man behind the Academy Award-winning What Dreams May Come has finally done it. The small-budget movie stars Henry Czerny as Walsch, a recently divorced 40-something who loses his job to corporate downsizing then promptly gets in a car wreck that leaves him in a neck brace. Suddenly hurt, unemployable, in debt and without insurance, he becomes homeless — a victim of a bad stretch of luck that could happen to anyone.
Eventually, at his absolute emotional nadir, Walsch shouts to God for answers…and actually gets them, turning them into a charismatic speaking career and a manuscript that leads to a million-dollar book deal. It’s a great story that’s unfortunately fumbled a bit thanks to groan-worthy segments that show glassy-eyed fans fawning over the author-lecturer’s simplistic generalizations about love and life. Surely these re-creations of his lectures could have been better written.
The film is at its strongest when it shows us what it’s like to become homeless in America — quickly dehumanized and untouchable. And how he wins his book deal is fascinating, too.
It’s difficult to make a movie as good as the book, and Conversations with God is an example of that maxim’s veracity. But the film’s emphasis on grace is its saving grace, and fans of Walsch will find much to enjoy.
Opens nationally Oct. 27. Visit cwgthemovie.com — Todd Spencer
Black Gold
Written and directed by Nick Francis and Marc Francis
Thanks to the multinational coffee companies that rule our supermarkets and dominate an industry worth over $80 billion a year, coffee is the most valuable trading commodity in the world, after oil. But while we continue to pay two, three and four dollars a pop for our lattés and cappuccinos, the price paid to coffee farmers remains criminally low. The average retail price for one single cup of coffee in the West is more than what farmers in Ethiopia are paid for an entire kilo. And many family farmers have been forced to abandon their fields.
Enter Tadesse Meskela, manager of a giant Ethiopian coffee co-operative of subsistence farmers who cultivate the world’s highest quality strain of coffee, but who can’t even feed their families. Meskela embarks upon a mission to disentangle his group from corporate clutches and greedy middlemen, and seek out direct Fair Trade relationships with roasters across the Western world.
Against the backdrop of Meskela’s journey to London and Seattle, the enormous power of the multinational players becomes apparent. New York commodities traders, the international coffee exchanges and the double-dealings of trade ministers at the World Trade Organization reveal the many challenges Meskela and his farmers face in their quest for a long-term solution to their poverty. Thankfully, it has a happy ending as they reinvent their co-op as a Fair Trade producer and find many new, fulfilling business relationships.
DVD releases Oct. 15, blackgoldmovie.com — Charles Shaw
Zen Noir
Written, directed and produced by Marc Rosenbush
Filmmaker Marc Rosenbush seemed nervous as he introduced his Buddhist mystery movie Zen Noir at a recent prescreening. “It’s okay to be confused,” he cautioned the packed crowd. “Enjoy the confusion.”
In Zen Noir, a nameless, trite detective (Duane Sharp) still mourning the loss of his wife investigates a mysterious death in a Buddhist temple. Clad in a traditional gumshoe trench coat, gripping a small notepad and pencil and using abrasive questioning techniques, he enters the temple anxious to discover the truth behind the murder, but soon realizes that everything he knows about his work — the logical, left-brained crime-solving skills — are useless in the intuitive, non-linear and mysterious world of Zen.
While attempting to question the inhabitants of the temple, the only witnesses to the supposed crime — Ed (Ezra Buzzington), a troubled monk with secrets; Jane (Debra Miller), a mysterious woman who seems to be escaping from something on the outside; and the Master (Kim Chan), an infuriatingly obscure Zen teacher who does strange things with oranges — the detective finds himself drawn into a deeper, personal mystery.
Rosenbush said he created Zen Noir from a “unique and strange vision.” But, unless you’re a complete stranger to Zen teachings and the practices of Buddhism, Rosenbush’s non-linear and deep-thinking vision won’t seem that strange. It’s a murder mystery, love story, surreal spiritual journey and drama with passable acting and some obvious symbolism, but the film offers a rare and worthwhile glimpse into the enlightened and fascinating world of Buddhism where everyone (detective and monks) is seeking the same truth. Perhaps the mystery isn’t a murder at all, but death itself.
DVD releases in November, visit zenmovie.com — Caroline Casper