A tale of two schools.

The Oscar statuettes have begun their stately walk to the Dolby Theatre in Hollywood, California. On the evening of February 28, 2016, the best of the big pictures will vie for the coveted trophies whose official name is the Academy Award of Merit but who has been known as Oscar since 1931.

A tale of two schools will not be there.

“Together We’re Stronger” is a documentary film centered on an inner-city building in Kansas City, Missouri. That structure has housed two schools and been home to decades of students. It is not a big place, and the film is not a big picture. The movie is a surprising story of heart, hard work and unexpected joys.

If he knew, I think Oscar would take notice and smile.

* * *

The story begins in 1961.

Three high schools in Kansas City, Missouri, are consolidating. Two will be all girls. The third will be coed and house all the boys.

On the first day of classes, the young men converge on Lillis High School. They are a different mix. Many probably don’t care much for the move or their new classmates. Before, they had been separate with their own ways and their own teams. Now, they’ve been forced together.

At the first practice, the basketball coach sees something special. In the eyes of those young men, he sees fight. In their moves, he recognizes skill. And in their sighs, he understands their need for identity. He gives them everything he has.

Their first basketball game, the opposing team scores 49 points. The Lillis men score more and win. No opponent will do better that season. The Lillis High School Basketball Team wins every game, and Lillis High goes on to win the 1961 Missouri State Basketball Championship.

* * *

In 2015, the remaining players sit on the bleachers of the old gym.

The coach and their top scorer have died suddenly weeks before. (Death swings fairly, if unkindly.) As they reminisce and the camera runs, sadness wrinkles the corners of their eyes and softens their smiles. They each have had their successes and they are grateful. The missing star won an Olympic gold medal and played professionally. One speaks of the remembered loss of a close relative and they reach together to comfort their teammate.

They are a team, and they will always be unlikely friends who became family at the old school.

* * *

Back to 1979, Lillis High is shutting down.

A group approaches. They need a larger space for their school and they’re willing to renovate. The DeLaSalle Education Center, an alternative charter school for students without a school, makes the old building its new home.

Like the 1961 Lillis team, the DeLaSalle students are a different mix. At first, many probably don’t care much for their surroundings or their new classmates. Like the Lillis coach, the DeLaSalle teachers see the fight in their students’ eyes, the skill in their moves and the need in their sighs. They give those young people all they have.

The students of Lillis became what they couldn’t in the old school. The students of DeLaSalle become what they can’t in the new school. The old building is alive again with friends becoming family.

In time, the students will move out and into the world. With persistence and perseverance, they too will find the unexpected joys their hearts desire. It is the legacy of the two schools.

* * *

One day, a Mom and Dad with their two children will stop outside an empty building in Kansas City, Missouri.

The boy, the great-great-grandson of a Lillis basketball player, will look up and ask, “What is it, Daddy?” The girl, the great-granddaughter of a successful DeLaSalle graduate, will point and ask, “What happened there, Mommy?”

With a smile lightening the corners of their eyes, the parents will answer together, “There were champions, children. There were champions.”

* * *

“Together We’re Stronger” is dedicated to the old and new schools and for the support of The DeLaSalle Education Center. Take a look and enjoy the show. www.twsmovie.com I think I see Oscar smiling.

Grandpa Jim

The Movie that time forgot: The Revenant.

[embedyt] http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QRfj1VCg16Y[/embedyt]

A good yarn has a life of its own – even if few parts may be true.

There is a real story behind The Revenant.

In French, “revenant” is the word for a person who returns or is reborn.

In 1823, Hugh Glass was an American frontiersman on a fur trapping expedition up the Missouri River when he is attacked and mauled by a bear. Abandoned for dead by his companions, Glass crawls and floats many miles over many weeks to reach Fort Kiowa in present day South Dakota, USA.

Hugh Glass returns and is reborn as The Revenant, and his story is told, retold and grows into legend in paper, book and film since the days of its actual happening.

The most recent retelling is The Revenant movie that last evening at the Golden Globe Awards won Best Film Drama for director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu and Best Actor for Leonardo DiCaprio who plays Hugh Glass.

In real life, Hugh Glass sought out the two erstwhile companions who had taken his gear and left him for dead. History does not recount why he did so. Revenge may have been a factor, or maybe he just wanted his old rifle back. In any event, Hugh Glass cornered both parties on separate occasions and . . . he forgave both. He did not chase them with a hatchet or stab them with a knife. He forgave both men.

Hugh lived on in the Old West. He continued to hunt and fish and trap and have close-calls and real get-aways. The life of The Revenant was a life of true adventure.

Attributed to the Milwaukee Journal, I found this account of Hugh Glass’ final hour: “Old Glass with two companions had gone to Fort Cass to hunt bear on the Yellowstone, and as they were crossing the river on the ice, all three were shot and scalped by a war party of 30 Aricaras.”

In a sense, the bear was there at the story’s true ending.

Hollywood loves the exaggeration of retelling. Like Gollum in the cold pool at The Return of the King, they sink their teeth in the rawness that makes us cringe and turn away. With the pain of embellished experience, they would have us like Luke Skywalker in The Empire Strikes Back hide in the warm carcass of the slain beast. Unlike Jimmie Braddock in Cinderella Man, we do not choose but are forced to endure the long slow crawl back to life – and the place we reach is not a cottage in New Jersey. With the sweep of Maria in The Sound of Music, these western hills are not just alive, they are overly alive with the clash of chase, fight and the bad business of mean men. We search for Mr. Peabody & Sherman and the validating historicity of the Wayback Machine to lend credence and meaning to a landscape run amok and find none. Yes, the scenery is beautiful, but disheveled and disassembled, in a tinted miasma of surreal season.

There is little to encourage in this retelling, and, at its heart, there is little hope.

At show’s end, I searched for the printed scroll to tell me the long struggle would not begin again for Hugh Glass. I found no such words crawling down the screen. To their finish, I watched to read but a brief paragraph on the new life of Hugh Glass. I waited not to see more red on white snow, but to view bridges built and crossed and the real story beyond show’s end.

I watched in vain, and for that we are both the lesser.

Grandpa Jim

Now we emerge to face the morrow.

Let the cameras begin to roll.

87 times to show.

This is the year of the 88^th Academy Awards ceremony to be held on February 28, 2016, in Hollywood, California. The best films of 2015 will be honored there and the Best Picture selected.

To date, there have been 87 Academy Award ceremonies and 87 Best Pictures selected and carefully place waiting on their shelves to be viewed again.

So starts “The Marathon of the 87 Best Pictures” and “EthnoSocioFamilyMovieOgraphy.”

Before we start, let’s visit the things that started the year.

One person defined a New Year’s resolution as a promise made at the beginning of the year and carefully kept for two weeks. The suggestion is that short-term resolutions are of small merit. Can this be true? The collective experience of the masses is that most resolutions are of a brief and passing nature – seldom reaching to year-end. Are those resolutions for their limited lives of little value?

In a past New Year, I resolved to eat more salads. After a brief period of time (let’s say two weeks to honor our humorous naysayer), my intent flagged and the green leaves wilted to brown on their plates. Was this from a failing commitment on my part? “Nay,” I say, “No!” I had in my weakened state experienced an epiphany, a revelation: I cared little for salad, and salad cared little for me.

Without the initial, if short-termed, resolution, there would have been no longer-term revelation. I would have been a lesser person lingering in continuing fear that lettuce was absolutely essential to my life. It is not.

The experience of my salad revolution birthed a revelation of personal understanding. I experienced a better appreciation of me. Resolution led to revelation. I now understood that lettuce was not as important as my own reasoned selection of foods. To eat less green was the wiser, happier and healthier personal choice.

In being broken, my New Year’s resolution had worked quite well!

We see then that what is important to the New Year is the honest experience of resolution, not blind commitment to a 365-day goal.

Some might say that this is just a rationale to justify broken resolutions. It is if you did not learn something about yourself in breaking the resolution. If you did learn more about you, it is not a rationale. If you learned the resolution is not compatible with you, it is a requirement to break that resolution.

Having said all of that, I am glad I did not make “The Marathon of 87 Best Pictures” a New Year’s resolution. It is not. It is a hope.

A “hope” is much more mysterious and less demanding than a “resolution.” Hope focuses beyond me to the future. Resolution focuses on me in the present.

I hope to watch all 87 Best Pictures in 2016. I am not resolved to learn anything about me in the process. I do hope to learn more about what those movies mean to friends and family who watch the shows with me.

That is the “EthnoSocioFamilyMovieOgraphy” part: “ethno” for people, “sociofamily” for the community of family and friends doing the watching, “movie” for the Best Pictures we will watch, and “ography” for my recording and tabulating the results.

We start this Friday by watching “Wings,” the first Best Picture, filmed in 1927 and winner at the 1^st Academy Awards held on May 16, 1929 in Los Angeles, California.

Reports will be posted, and I do hope we go the distance.

But I’m not making any resolutions.

Cheers,

Grandpa Jim