A new film will open in the reworked all digital Robert D. Lindner Family OMNIMAX Theater on June 7. A few previously shown films have appeared as part of the theater’s classic series but Cuba: Journey to the Heart of the Caribbean is only the second new production to be shown since the theater reopened in December following a long closure. A post on the reopening and the first film, Volcanoes, is here. There were two members-only showings of the new movie on Saturday and I jumped at the chance to attend. Volcanoes is an awesome movie; Cuba might be even better.
It’s the work of Golden Gate 3D, which I’ve now learned was responsible for two of my favorite 70-millimeter real film IMAX movies: Jerusalem and National Parks Adventure. The images are superb, from scenic panoramas to the microscopic; From world stopping slow motion to the super acceleration of time-lapse. The three storylines do a fine job of holding the film together and moving it along. Then there’s the music. ¡Ay caramba, the music! It grabbed me from the start and never let go through slow soaring overhead shots to frantic-paced dance scenes. I expected to see a long list of contributors when I scanned the credits but it appears that just two men composed all the original music: Andres Levin, who was also the film’s music supervisor, and José María Vitier. Wonderful stuff, fellows.
The storylines involve Havana’s official historian, an aspiring ballerina, and a pair of scientists. Eusebio Leal doesn’t just study history, he preserves it. He is responsible for saving and renovating many of the city’s numerous endangered buildings. He is also responsible for the only direct quote I recall from the movie: “Architecture is frozen music and we are a people who love music”.
It was a major surprise to me to learn that the world’s largest ballet school is in Havana. The movie follows Patricia Torres, one of the Cuban National Ballet School’s approximately 3,000 students, as she works to realize her dream of joining the Cuban National Ballet Company. Fernando Bretos and Daria Siciliano study Cuba’s coral reefs to discover why they are actually recovering while those in other parts of the world continue to decline. Their work provides the filmmakers an opportunity to show off their considerable underwater skills in recording some beautiful scenes.
Two of my favorite scenes are the result of underwater microscopic time-lapse recording. Siciliano tells us that the coral is not inanimate stone but is simply living at a different pace than us. The cameras then demonstrate. The scenes instantly reminded me of liquid light shows I saw in the 1960s. The great music certainly encouraged the idea that I was watching a brilliantly colored high-def high-tech version of hippy era stagecraft.
There was another flashback of sorts in plenty of shots of the legendary 1950s American automobiles that resourceful Cubans have kept in operation despite the long-standing complete embargo on parts. Of course, keeping the mostly brightly colored vehicles running is not the only place where the embargo and generally poor economy have led to uncommon ingenuity. Agriculture is one such area that is highlighted in the film.
The lack of money and materials is evident in the film from the aforementioned “classic” cars to the deterioration of buildings. Cuba: Journey to the Heart of the Caribbean doesn’t avoid or downplay this aspect of the politically isolated island but the bright and crisp images somehow make it less sad. The music might also have something to do with that. The faces certainly do.
The movie is filled with smiling faces, dancing feet, and drum pounding hands. Most of the people seen in the movie are happy. Of course, this is partly due to the fact that parades and other celebrations are frequent subjects. Not every face is smiling and not every scene is a happy one but there are a lot more grins than grimaces. Somewhere near its beginning, the film talks of Cuba existing in three different periods. There is its glorious past, its uncertain but promising future, and the present. The present is what it is. This movie might make things look a little better than they actually are but I don’t think that’s an intentional misrepresentation. I think its creators wanted to make a joyful and entertaining movie that included some seriously representative images. They used some of the best of the present and included a little bit of both the past and the future. When you see it, and I really recommend you do, be prepared to tap your toes and maybe dance in your seat a little. It’s gonna be hard not to.
My original notion of what’s inside Diners of the Great Lakes was not very accurate, but I’m not the least bit disappointed. For no particular reason, I more or less expected this book to be something akin to a directory of diners currently existing in the Great Lakes region along with a telling of their individual histories. There is a certain amount of that, but it comes late in the book after Engle has delivered not just the history of diner operation in the region but of the manufacture of diners there along with their development as something distinct from what occurred nearer the Atlantic.
And now for something completely different. Anyone who thought releasing two books within three months might be overdoing it will have no doubts about that being the case when they see another appear a week later. But this is a different kettle of fish. Really. Six of Each is a collection of photographs drawn from the previously published travelogues. Each of those travelogues is available in two forms. There is a black-and-white printed version and a color digital version. Photo-quality color printing is still relatively expensive in the low-volume print-on-demand world. Printing the books in black and white keeps them reasonably priced. On the other hand, color in digital files is free. Offering B&W paperbacks and color ebooks isn’t ideal but it keeps the books affordable and color at least available.
So what I’ve done is pick a half dozen pictures from each of the existing travelogues and combine them in a Blurb magazine. The magazine is only available through Blurb (that’s one of those magazine restrictions) and there is no digital version available (that’s my restriction). It’s also more expensive than it seems a 32-page “magazine” ought to be. But it does let me see what some of my photographs would look like using something besides black ink on stationary paper. And it’s there for anyone else who would like to look.
Too soon? What had been my most recent travelogue, 
This is my fourth self published book; All are travelogues. This one is a midquel that covers the omitted middle section of a trip that formed part of the previous book, 
A funny thing happened on the way to this review. Not funny ha ha; Funny peculiar. This is Jim Grey’s second book. I reviewed the first, Exceptional Ordinary, in April, 2017. I figured that this review would reference that one, make some comparisons, make some jokes. It would be fun; Maybe even funny ha ha. But that review has gone missing. I don’t know how or even when. I’ve 
I photograph a fair number of signs as I travel, and I know quite a few people who photograph many more than I. Not one, however, is in the same league as Debra Jane Seltzer. If sign hunting was an Olympic sport, the petite Seltzer would be buried under gold medals. Her photo expeditions are legendary. Until recently, when she and her dogs (currently four) headed out in the white Chevy van named Sparkle, they would take along a big stack of notes and marked up map printouts. Today there might still be a printed list of targets but Google maps and a smartphone have reduced the need for paper considerably. The target list is never limited to signs. It’s almost certain to include interesting buildings and other roadside attractions of all sorts.
The “Animals” chapter is probably my favorite. Colorful birds, fish, and dogs draw customers to businesses of all sorts. Sequenced neon segments can make birds appear to fly and dogs and horses appear to run. A pig almost always indicates a BBQ restaurant although one sign shows a line of pigs merrily leaping in to a grinder to be made into sausage.
“Things” is as varied as you might imagine. Bowling balls and pins are popular as are skates, cars, and assorted food items. Donuts and ice cream cones seem to be the most common edibles used to attract customers. Bowling balls lend themselves to animation and when a neon bowling ball rolls, a strike is virtually guaranteed. Together, “Types of Signs” and the three chapters of the “theme” section make up a sort of sampler of the massive Roadside Architecture site. Picking less than 200 images to populate this sampler had to be tough but the choices made were excellent.
Old-car guys and old-road guys are hardly one and the same although there is definitely a whole bunch of overlap. With this book, Tom Cotter stakes out a position deep in that overlap. Tom is, however, much more of an old-car guy than an old-road guy so it’s not surprising that his position is closer to the car side than the road side. The story of how plans for the trip came together is telling. The idea that Tom started with was driving an old car across the United States. Over the years, the idea had been refined to involve a particular old car. He called it a dream and admitted that it was unlikely to be realized but the car he really wanted to drive across the country country was a Ford Model T. In his dream the road was secondary.
Anthony Wayne gave Fort Greene Ville and Fort Recovery their names. They were significant in both his life and mine although the level of significance is severely tilted toward Wayne. Fort Recovery is where the army led by Arthur St. Clair was nearly annihilated in 1791. It got its name when soldiers under Wayne’s command built a small fort there in 1793. Also built in 1793, Fort Greene Ville stood twenty some miles to the south and was Wayne’s home base during the Northwest Indian War. The treaty ending that war was signed there in 1795. The town that developed on the site of the abandoned fort adopted the shortened name Greenville. I grew up near the midpoint between Greenville and Fort Recovery and adopted Anthony Wayne as a hero at a very early age. I eventually figured out that much of the initial attraction was due the the cool bicorne hat he was commonly shown in, but the fact remains that I’ve known of General “Mad” Anthony Wayne nearly all of my life.
It was probably about sixty-five years ago that I was hooked by that super groovy hat and decided that the dude under it was my hero. It was only a few years later that I saw a painting of a hat-less Wayne and was shocked to learn it was the same person. That painting might even be the same one that appears on the cover of this book. It was at least similar. I recognized that there was more to a man than his hat and Wayne survived as a childhood hero. Inside Unlikely General, Mary Stockwell reveals a lot more than a high forehead. Anthony Wayne was not, as some have interpreted his nickname, insane, but he was a long way from perfect. Perhaps the fact that I’m much older now explains why I was less shocked at learning of the imperfections than I had been at my first sight of Wayne bare-headed.