digital jumbly - philip page's blog

RAVE - Locavore

2012-02-12T10:17:00.000-08:00

I'm giving this a RAVE with an asterisk - a bit like Barry Bonds' big hit record. His asterisk was to denote that his record was steroid-assisted. Locavore's RAVE has an asterisk to record that it was despite some shortcomings.

First, our request for an ice bucket must've thrown the otherwise very good waitress, who seemed flustered by the strange request for something to keep our Alborino icy cold.

Second, for most of the meal, my enjoyment was interrupted by the far too regular whiff of disinfectant, which turned out to be coming from a bucket of er, disinfectant the staff had conveniently placed for their use between our table and the cash register.

Apart from those two things, the rest of the the dinner was very good.

You wouldn't have guessed it from our choices - Pavey's nut 'n cheese appetizer, and the halibut, my duck pate and the burger - that Locavore is a Spanish restaurant, but it was.

A hearty meal on a cold night. What more can a man want?

REVIEW - Oola

2012-02-10T12:07:00.000-08:00

This was one of our many spur-of-the-moment choices for dinner, which would've been perfectly met with a place at the counter in Chez Maman's, but as seems to be the way with many of our equivalent choices, Maman's was choc full at 8pm on a Thursday night.

So, to Oola it was. The choice along that part of Folsom Street made it easy to pick Oola - Lulu's is too family-friendly, Zero Zero is mostly pizza, so Oola's is was.

And that summed up the experience. It isn't a destination restaurant - the food isn't worthy of that, and the atmosphere is hard to get your head around - it tries to give out this cool vibe which it's location, staff, and clientele can't match. It has too high a business-worker looking to hook-up vibe for that.

Pavey's Steak Tartar with Truffle Caviar Chantarelle Vinaigrette and Brioche went down so fast it seemed the evening was a success. My appetizer of Foie Gras Ravioli Spinach, roasted Chicken Broth and Truffle Oil was excellent, but when Pavey had hers as an entree it's full-on flavor was a bit much for her. Similarly, my Chicken Breast and Mushroom Risotto was rich and creamy, but by then I was done with rich and creamy.

The trouble was, last night felt like a Steak night, or even a Burger supper. That would have been fine. Oola didn't lift me, and maybe I wasn't in a being lifted frame of mind.

I'll know better next time.

RAVE - Frank Turner, at Parkside

2012-02-09T08:30:00.001-08:00

I don't want to give Rhys, my nephew, full credit for this.

Admittedly, he's also given the thumbs up to a few of my other, favorite current musical turns, Skrillex, and The Black Keys being among them, but you can't let it go to his head. Next thing you know, he'll be trying to fake deep love for some Bieber-liscious character to trick me.

Anyhow, for now he's on the right track musically, as last night's show proved.

Thee Parkside is a rickety old place, precariously placed on a corner of 17th Street in Potrero Hill. I say "precariously", because at any moment some delivery truck is going to pile into it and send it to that graveyard for rickety old places in the sky.

Until then it serves as a venue for those acts that mostly cannot get a gig at Bottom of The Hill, just a short lurch along 17th Street.

Of course, that cannot be said of the modern-day and friendlier Billy Bragg. Frank Turner, along with his band The Sleeping Souls are witty, and write great English songs. Now, there's a challenge for you Rhys.

Supported last night by Sharks, a UK punk band, with a song-writer who claims Charles Bukowski's poetry is a big influence on his writing. Must be Bukowski's drunk-as-a-skunk period.

RAVE - Wake Wood

2012-02-07T22:09:00.000-08:00

A simple premise - "I can bring your daughter back from the dead, for three days, so that you can say a proper goodbye to her".

Based in Ireland, Aidan Gillen and Eva Birthistle hold a spooky ritual with village elder, Timothy Spall, who promises to bring back their daughter Louise, who died from a savage dog attack a little under a year earlier.

It's a toned down horror movie, but because it was made in Europe, it works.

Not as bloody as some more popular movies, not as loud, no explosions. Nevertheless, it was spooky, schlocky, and weird. And worth seeing.

REVIEW - Man on a Ledge

2012-02-07T17:53:00.000-08:00

It seems like everyone has an opinion about this movie. How its like this, or reminds of them of that.

Our main character escapes from prison, and goes up on a ledge 14 floors up. He makes out he's about to jump, and draws a crowd. The trouble is, he's got something else planned. His main aim, according to him, is to clear his name.

It's a clever-ish caper, with plenty going on - a jumper, and a robbery, with complicit police involved in every step.

In the end though, it falls short of being a great caper.

RAVE - Extremely Loud & Incredibly Close

2012-02-07T16:15:00.000-08:00

Tom Hanks is a father who builds a compelling story about a key, for his son.

His son knew that if the sun were to explode, it would be 8 minutes before we knew about it on earth. Using this fact, he wanted to find the lock that would take the key his father had left him, deciding that if he found the lock before the memory died, he could make his father last forever.

Hanks died in the World Trade Center on September 11, 2001, so the quest becomes a driving force in the son's life, and the center point to a very sad film.

The trouble with the film is that when you strip away that sadness, you've got virtually nothing left.

RAVE - The Plant

2012-02-06T09:32:00.000-08:00

It may have been, at some time, even in San Francisco, that a restaurant that announced that it "sources its produce and goods from local Bay area farms and artisans", and "we work with a large number of small organic farms to take advantage of the great variety of seasonal produce Northern California has to offer", would have been very rare.

Now, of course, every man and his dog sources their goods from local farms, and takes care to serve only organic produce.

Strange then that The Plant sees fit to try and differentiate itself that way. A bit like me attempting to differentiate myself by saying that I'm someone who uses my personal opinions to put a unique spin when commenting on what's going on in the world. Big deal. Who doesn't?

Anyhow, my personal opinion is that despite employing a much abused marketing platitude, The Plant still manages to serve up delicious food that does not require buying processed food that comes from half-way around the world.

This meant that the six of us managed to have a selection of burgers, salads, pizzas, beer and sangria without offending the gods of local food, and still ate heartily, and healthily,

Whoop-de-do.

REVIEW - Firefly

2012-02-05T18:38:00.001-08:00

This was a tough one to call.

On the plus side, a heaving mass of people having a good time, and a menu full of local favorites.

On the negative side, a heaving mass of people, and the heat that heaving mass causes. And a menu full of favorites that only a local would love.

There was something homespun about the restaurant. The decor was a bit thrown together, just like an aunt's house. The clientele was similarly of the kind you'd find around at your aunt's house, with more than the average number of those who can't have walked up one of the steep hills to the place.

The menu was a bit hit and miss, with dishes that could have been made at home.

For example, I had the robust sounding Yummy Roasted Brussels Sprouts with Parmesan and Truffle Oil, and the Grilled Rib Chop with Black Eyed Peas, Escarole and Current Mustard. Both dishes tasted as if they had been produced by someone's mum, and lacked the delicate touch of artistry that's usually associated with a top restaurant.

Not that any of that mattered one bit, because it was all about our guests, Cecile and George, and Cheryl and Blake. At least they all got to eat at our parent's house.

RAVE - The Grey

2012-02-02T21:24:00.000-08:00

I reckon you can usually tell a good film within the first few minutes. You might have to see all of it before you can judge it a classic, but at least the first few minutes will tell you if it's solid - well made.

That was certainly true with The Grey. You could tell from the way the scene was set, with Liam Neeson and his fellow oil workers' aircraft crashing in wolf-infested Alaska. They struggle against the elements, searching for food and shelter. They also contend against the local Wolves, whose territory they have invaded.

Neeson is employed as the oil company's wolf hunter, so he's better equipped than the others for the task at hand.

The film is intense, the constant trailing of them by the pack of growling and snarling wolves is pretty compelling stuff.

REVIEW - Red Tails

2012-02-01T23:39:00.000-08:00

Action 3 out of 5, Plot 0 out of 5. Total 3 out of 10. Seems a bit harsh but that, unfortunately, is the way it is.

Red Tails tells the story of a crew of black American pilots in the now-famous Tuskegee training program, and how they were used in Italy in 1944. They were mostly kept away from front line action, consigned more to protecting supply dumps.

However, our group persuades its commander to persuade his commander to give them a role flying with bombers on strikes against Berlin.

So far so good. But the dialog is all gung-ho and false. The action is much better, with great aerial footage, real aircraft (although the close work is all CGI).

In fact, the action is just good enough to help you block out the lame work done on the script.

RAVE - Puncture

2012-01-31T17:36:00.000-08:00

Based on a true story.

Crack smoking Mike Weiss is one half of Danziger & Weiss, the 'David' of a lawyer firm up against the 'Goliath' of US hospitals. These hospitals won't buy their clients' superior syringe, because they say their existing purchasing contracts prevent them from doing so. The fact that these syringes are loved by those hospital's nurses is just a detail.

The hospital doctors have signed a deal with the providers, paying them a commission on purchases they make from those providers.

Danziger & Weiss take on United Medical Health Supplies, the organization that represents the vendors, and their lawyers begin background checks on D&W, and their witness.

While D&W are hemorrhaging money, UMHO makes a generous contribution to a senator's re-election campaign, the only senator that's helping back their case. Needless to say, the senator withdraws her support for D&W's case. Meanwhile, the main source of D&W's regular legal work tells them they can't sub-contract any more legal work to them.

This is typical of a gripping case which has you locked in from the start. How it ends up affects everyone who ever gets an injection.

Serious stuff. This is a great film that, if it had a bigger cast would have been more successful, but no better.

REVIEW - Seconds Apart

2012-01-29T21:20:00.001-08:00

This is a slick, well-made movie about 15-year old twins and their messed up lives. Not only are they weird, their telepathy makes weird things happen around them. School friends die in strange circumstances.

Annoyingly, the detective investigating them keeps going off into dreams - one where he's alone in a building that's on fire, another where he's alone in an ice cave. I'm no doctor, but I'd say he has a problem with temperature.

Anyhow, the twins are causing these dreams, through their telepathic, er, skills. Quite how is unexplained, and unexplainable.

RAVE - Kill The Irishman

2012-01-29T20:40:00.000-08:00

A cross between The Untouchables, and something a bit rougher and readier than that. This is the true story of an Irishman christened The Robin Hood of his neighborhood.

The Irishman in question is Danny Green, a worker on the up. He muscles his way into a union position on the docks, then as an enforcer for a local money-lender in Cleveland. Eventually, his practices come to the attention of local Detective, Val Kilmer. Now is not the time to go on about the state of Mr. Tubs Kilmer, so I won't.

Things get a bit messy when the genuine Mafia starts to try and take him out, blowing up his car and his house, and taking pot shots at him when he was out taking a run.

One news quote made me laugh: "That summer of '76 there were 36 bombs in Cleveland, and the Danny Green war made national news". It says something about the violence of the times when it took Iraqi levels of violence in a small city like Cleveland to make national news.

I won't tell you how it end, but you can probably guess it.

REVIEW - Haywire

2012-01-29T18:40:00.000-08:00

A strangely pitched Steven Soderbergh thriller. It's part Bourne, with it's brisk fight scenes, but these feature a woman. She's an independent operative, employed by the US Government for projects that are a teensy bit nefarious.

She's double crossed on one such project, and it takes her from Barcelona, to the USA, to Dublin, to Majorca to sort it out.

It's all a bit cold, the action could have done with a bit less of the ice-cold agent. Certainly, all of the agents I've met have been decent, level-headed folk.

Ewan MacGregor and Antonio Banderas are pointless gloss. I barely noticed Michael Fassbender and Bill Paxton. Michael Douglas has got a pair though. Getting paid for taking a stroll in a film like this. Embarrassing.

There's not much to recommend this one I'm afraid.

RANT - Alyce

2012-01-28T16:48:00.000-08:00

What starts with a night out, develops into Alyce pitching her girlfriend off a roof, and goes downhill from there.

While the rooftop incident is an accident, Alyce torpedoes down into an affair with drugs, and an affair with her drug dealer, murder and some weird stuff with a guy she picks up from a bar. Needless to say, she is out of control. And it only gets worse.

In the end, a pointless portrait of madness, different only in that it's on the part of a woman.

As I said, pointless.

REVIEW - Atlantis End of a World Birth of a Legend

2012-01-28T11:46:00.001-08:00

It's hard to judge this - is it a serious review of the history surrounding this alleged civilization destroyed by a natural disaster, or a mammoth fairy tale.

The "facts" aren't many - a Greek mythology with "great wolves", "a half human, half beast Minotaur". and other fanciful creatures competing against human slaves while a bronze age civilization pranced around doing impersonations of Spartacus in and around Crete, in what we know as the Minoan Empire.

Specifically, the Greek writer Plato tells of the island of Thiera, destroyed by an ancient volcano in The Mediterranean.

It all sounds about as likely as Harry Potter.

REVIEW - 1911 Revolution

2012-01-28T11:18:00.000-08:00

A glossy - for China - attempt to cover the revolution brought to China in 1911, and the founding of the Chinese Republic.

Led by Sun Yat-sen, it seems more like several revolutions than one. The size of China made it difficult for a single campaign to overthrow the Qing dynasty, and there seemed to be a number of parties keen to get in on the action.

It must also have been difficult to establish a single version of the truth - if indeed there is one - when so many interests were at stake.

Still, this is a creditable attempt to construct a cohesive story out of this, notwithstanding the fact that people like Jackie Chan are involved, injecting a wholly unnecessary element of kung fu on the proceedings. Ha!

Trouble is, it's not one or the other. It's not a warts 'n all narrative history of the fall of the last great Empire, and it's certainly not a classic Chinese fight movie.

REVIEW - A Good Old-Fashioned Orgy

2012-01-28T10:31:00.000-08:00

A modestly humorous film, spoiled by its stupidity.

A group of 8 friends spending a summer at one of their father's holiday homes on the coast are desparate to come up with a theme for their last party of the season.

They've done trailer trash, Star Wars, 50s and 70s, so they decide to have one themed around an orgy, a good old-fashioned one.

A little bit raunchier than an episode of Benny Hill, it trundles along, attempting to make a few serious statements along the way, but generally falling short on the intelligence quotient.

Even the party itself is a bit of a damp squib, nothing to get all hot and bothered about.

RANT - Another Happy Day

2012-01-27T22:22:00.000-08:00

Playing like an episode from Harried in the Hamptons, this film is dire. It's featured family is fractured, it's main, divorced couple is incessantly arguing, it's old father is dying, it's two aunts are neurotic, it's mother has alzheimers, it's grandsons are assorted wasters. And that's the good part.

I don't know. If my family was half as screwed up as this one, I'd be pressing the doc for stronger medication.

A depressing slice of privileged life. Move along. Nothing to watch.

REVIEW - Wrecked

2012-01-27T18:44:00.000-08:00

This failed to get a RAVE not because Adrien Brody didn't perform well. he did. Nor because it wasn't interesting. It was. What there was of it. And that was the real problem.

The film started with Big Nose in a wreck, halfway down a 100 foot ravine, banged up and unable to get out of his car, He was kept company by a dead man in the back of the car.

For the next hour, he huffed and he puffed, eventually managing to get the passenger door open and himself out onto the grass.

He has visions of his past, a life of crime, and he sees a dog and a mountain lion. Both real.

That's it. Seriously.

REVIEW - Horrible Bosses

2012-01-26T20:00:00.000-08:00

3 guys

A dental assistant who's boss sexually abuses him. An accountant whose boss has led him along for years, pretending he's going to promote him. Another who is passed over by his boss when his father dies.

What was I saying?

I don't ever see films that are allegedly humorous?

Well I saw this one, and it was quite humorous. Funny for all the wrong reasons.

The three main characters - Jason Bateman, Charlie Day, and Jason Sudiekis - are funny because they're not intrinsically funny people, not professional funny men.

Funny because of great performances by Jennifer Aniston - in a role she was heaven made for. For Donald Sutherland in a gentle little role in which he shone, and Colin Farrel for a role where you couldn't guess it was him. Oh, and Jamie Foxx playing a badass killer, who wasn't.

It was pretty funny.

RANT - Abduction

2012-01-23T18:43:00.000-08:00

If there's anything worse than watching women limp around doing action movies, it's watching kids attempt to do it.

This movie is about two teenagers triumphing against insurmountable - read, illogical - odds battling unknown agencies. The fact that you never quite work out who these agencies are is just one of the intensely annoying things about this.

But it's hardly the only thing you'll find annoying you. The fact that they happen to, d'uh find out accidentally, themselves, that Taylor Lautner is .. wait, I've revealed the major thing wrong with this film. It's that T.L is the main character. His are the massive fists given to pulverising the criminals. His are the eyes that piercingly gaze off into the distance to, um, pierce.

All a bit like a plate of bologna, when I was looking for good old pasta.

The story is so unlikely I'll not even bore you with the details.

RANT - Shark Attack

2012-01-20T15:40:00.001-08:00

What a surprise, a film that trots out a tired old bore-fest about a shark attack on a yuppie party on a lake turns out to be derivative, cliched and pedestrian.

It shows just how those basics are in those Steven Speilberg classics - the characters, the plot, the importance of a story. They may have been hidden behind the towering effect, but that doesn't mean that someone with another spin on the same topic can get away with leaving them out entirely.

The fish was smaller, the victim was less important, the whole thing was just less of a production.

REVIEW - 50/50

2012-01-20T13:59:00.000-08:00

I'm probably the world's worst person to review this.

I rarely watch "funny" movies. I find them lame. I prefer drama. I thought Hangover was funny, but gross. I didn't find Hangover 2 funny at all. I think Romantic Comedies are neither romantic, or comedic.

Which brings me to 50/50.

Joseph Gordon-Levitt discovers he has a rare form of bone cancer on his spine. His best friend, Seth Rogen, uses his only weapon - comedy - to contend with this news.

The alleged comedy is forced / strained and proves partly irrelevant in Gordon-Levitt's handling of the disease, thanks to the film's insistence on finding a way to turn it into a safer rom-com by having him fall for his youthful female therapist.

You're also able to use this device as a safety net, deciding to enjoy the rom-com nature, or the comedy angle according your leanings. That is, IF you have those leanings.

If you're like me, and don't, then do what I do. Imagine something else is on while watching this movie, something actually funny. It works.

RAVE - Ironclad

2012-01-18T19:34:00.000-08:00

I guess it would be unhelpful to summarize this by saying "it all depends on what you're looking for", so I'll elaborate.

If you're looking for a 100% historically accurate tale of medieval England, with grand battle scenes and great cinematography, you'll probably not find this meets your prerequisites.

If you're looking for a great character study of nobles, kings, and peasants, again you'll find this falling somewhat short.

However, if you're looking for something that's as bloodthirsty - but not as ridiculous - as 300, as down-to-earth as Russel Crowe's Robin Hood, but for 1/10th of the cost, and something much less flashy than Liam Neeson and Orlando Bloom in Kingdom of Heaven, then this could be right up your street.

It's England, 1215. King John has been forced by rebel Barons to sign the Magna Carta, a document that gives new rights to free men, and restricts the King. The film focuses mainly on John's siege of Rochester Castle, which goes badly for him and leads to civil war.

For me it filled in some gaps of what I remembered from school - King John enlisting an army from Denmark to help in his fight against the rebel Barons, while the Barons in turn sought to persuade an army from France to invade England to dispatch the oily John.

All good, mud 'n guts stuff. Just don't expect the wife to like it.

RAVE - Ides of March

2012-01-17T18:25:00.000-08:00

Ryan Gosling's a campaign worker, an aide to Philip Seymour Hoffman, who is campaign manager for George Clooney.

Paul Giamatti, Evan Rachel Wood, and Marissa Tomei add to the stellar cast in this solid story about democratic Governer Clooney's bid for the party primaries: the infighting, corruption, the compromises, and other political shenanigans.

The film covers a few days, and many moves and counter-moves, in that campaign. It's not a thriller, but it is compelling, even riveting.

If I said it's a story about loyalty, and the loss of innocence, I'd sound too much like a professional critic. But that's what it's about, and hang the obscure, and - as far as this boy's grammar school education remembers it - irrelevant Shakespearian reference. The Ides of March? Pah!

RAVE - The Iron Lady

2012-01-16T22:30:00.000-08:00

An Oscar-worthy portrayal of Margaret Thatcher by Meryl Streep, but not necessarily an Oscar-worthy movie.

The Iron Lady's story was told through the eyes of an aging Thatcher looking back on her life, talking to the ghost of her husband, and hence draped in sadness.

It was, above everything, a sad movie.

Streep got the accent, and demeanor down perfectly. Margaret Thatcher was not a likeable woman, and it's still weird to see how she held the men in her party and cabinet in her thrall.

It seems that governmental challenges - striking workers, militant unions, political backbiting, foreign intrusions - are on permanent repeat, so the way she contended with these dynamics is still relevant now, and made the movie sharp, and compelling.

It's just not this year's Kings Speech.

REVIEW - Seeking Justice

2012-01-16T17:44:00.000-08:00

Word has it that in "real life" Nicolas Cage is broke, owing millions of dollars after repeated poor real estate investments.

If he carries on working on drivel like this, he's never going to get himself out of debt.

It's a shallow story of a New Orleans' teacher looking for revenge after his wife is violently mugged and raped. Guy Pearce appears out of nowhere to offer his "organization's" services to deal with the offender.

The story tries to get going - there are some potentially promising developments when Pearce gives Cage some tasks to complete as repayment for his services, but eventually those developments frustrate, rather than fuel the interest.

So, none of the 5 movies Nicolas Cage released in 2011 - Ghost Rider, Trespass, Drive Angry, Season of the Witch, and this dog - is any good. Tsk tsk, Nic.

RANT - Ecstacy

2012-01-16T16:17:00.000-08:00

I'm not sure if the film's title describes one of the many drugs this group of party-mad girls tries out, but whatever it was this film is either required viewing for parents of teenage girls, or the last thing you'd ever want to watch if you were one of those parents - I can't decide.

The movie is a mess, a mish-mash of clubbing, whining, pill-swallowing, and the all-too-predictable disastrous results from that.

There are some weird suggestions - one that the local priest is drugging the congregation by adding crushed tablets into the communion wine - but that thread seems to lead nowhere. So we're left with middle-American youth in deep trouble.

Truthful perhaps, but not particularly entertaining.

If the director wanted us to learn that pills and techno lead to a miserable life, he succeeded. Other than that, I don't see the point in this movie.

And to cap it all, the film has a deeply unsatisfying end.

RAVE - Solbar, Calistoga

2012-01-15T15:17:00.000-08:00

After a perfect day sampling wines from Cliff Lede and Joseph Phelps' wineries, we retired and partially revived at Joy's vacation home above Calistoga, and hit the town again Saturday night.

Rather than suffering from being part of a spa (and forcing salads on every guest), Solbar cleverly color-codes the "light" and the "hearty" dishes on the menu.

My hearty choices included the Duck Confit and the Wagyu Brisket "cooked sous-vide for 42 hours and then braised in its juices". The rest of the party had scallops, escarole salad, pork belly, petrale soul, and the like.

Solbar is super-stylish, especially so for wine country, where "style" too often translates into cute foliage and a super-abundance of wine paraphernalia.

The michelin-starred restaurant boasts plenty of choices, and we pushed the boat out dessert-wise, with fried apple pie, basque cake, chocolate marquis, and lemon parfait with chopped cookies.

Definitely a place to re-visit, perhaps on a warmer evening where we can sit outside in the glamorous gardens.

RAVE - JoLe, Calistoga

2012-01-14T14:19:00.000-08:00

We met up with the aforementioned Woodie and Bill (see Limon), and their Houstonian friends Joy and Vee-Ann, in the superb bar at JoLe.

They had brought with them several bottles of wine from places they'd visited using a Calistoga wine passport, which meant no corkage fees with our dinner!

I'm not sure what everyone had, as the meal was picked up by Woodie and Bill :) but I do recollect seeing and tasting some Grilled Cauliflower (with Medjool dates, Marcona almonds, and chorizo), and saw Mrs. Page guzzling the Scallops (with Red Kuri squash, broccoli di ciccio, and brown butter).

My own choices included a special (not on the menu, so I can't check its exact description online) that involved "pork head and cheeks, deep fried", which tasted a million times better than it sounds. I also had the seared Sonoma Artisan Foie Gras, stewed red cabbage, candied pecans, and plum jam, curiously paired with Uni (sea urchin). While the inclusion of urchin didn't necessarily improve the dish for me, it didn't detract, and you'll all be happy to know I selfishly scoffed the lot.

JoLe is a wonderfully warm, inviting restaurant, and our group - judging by the noise we made - had a great time there.

RAVE - The Veteran

2012-01-12T18:40:00.000-08:00

A British-made movie about a soldier returning from Afghanistan who is recruited by a secret organization that claims it's helping the UK battle terrorism within its borders.

His new role involves tailing suspected terrorists, but he frequently crosses the gangs on his local council estate, who are more interested in drugs than bombs.

Eventually, his anti-terror moves intersect with the gangs, and local estate mayhem ensues.

If the numbers claimed by the controllers in this film, about the thousands of UK-based terrorists being readied, this is serious stuff.

Not at all flashy, just a solid film with solid actors.

RAVE - Limon

2012-01-12T13:43:00.000-08:00

The food was pretty good - perhaps not exactly RAVE-worthy on its own, but the company turned up the enjoyment factor several notches.

Bill and Woodie visited us from Houston, en route to our weekend in Calistoga. To honor Bill's student days in Peru, we ate at Limon, one of a number of Peruvian restaurants in The Mission district.

We shared ....

Ceviche Nikkei - Ahi Tuna marinated in soy sauce-infused leche de tigre, toasted sesame seeds, shredded nori, and celery.

Jalea - A mixture of crispy seafood, yucca and salsa criolla served withhuacatay tartar sauce.

Costillas Nikkei - St. Louis style pork ribs with spicy sesame seed/soy sauce glaze and cole slaw.

Pescada Limon - Crispy snapper fillet, over crispy potatoes and spinach.

Trigo and Vegetales con Pesto - Sauteed veggies and whole wheat, finished with cilantro pesto, parmesan wafer, grilled asparagus and red pepper sauce.

Chicharron de Pollo - Crispy pieces of chicken marinated insoy sauce, Garlic and aji Amarillo, served with salsa criolla.

Lomo Saltado - Traditional Peruvian style stir-fry of sirloin strips, onions, tomatoes, cilantro, soy sauce, garlic with fries and rice.

Truffled mac-n-cheese (because Bill said that when he was in Peru, he was always too broke to eat any of the fancier foods.

All of this washed down with a couple of jugs of perfect Sangria made this a fun place to eat and re-tell old stories.

RAVE - Treasure Island (2012)

2012-01-11T16:41:00.000-08:00

I know The Streets weren't thinking of Robert Louis Stevenson's Treasure Island when they released their CD Original Pirate Material, but that's pretty much what this story is.

Eddie Izzard is wonderfully cast as Long John Silver, although his accent, and most of the rest of the crew's, occasionally sound out of place.

I always explain, to those who give a scurvy rat's ass about the subject, that the reasons cinematic Pirates all sound like they come from my home town of Weston-super-Mare are :

a) because back in the day the English navy's conscripts were hauled out of bars along the south and west coasts of England, and

b) most people can't tell the difference between the accents from Gloucester in the SW Midlands, around Bristol and the English south-west coasts to Portsmouth, so I sound like a Pirate.

Skipping these irrelevancies, this is absolutely the best pirate story ever written, and shows why I so despise Pirates of the Caribbean.

This story, while having been re-told many times since we read it at school, is still fabulously rich, and the characters - Blind Pugh, Ben Gunn, Jim Hawkins, Flint, and many more - are worth a thousand Jack Sparrows.

The book scared the crap out of me when I was 10, and I can still see why now. This is an excellent re-telling, from Sky TV.

Pieces-of-Eight-tastic!

RAVE - The Girl With The Dragon Tattoo (2012)

2012-01-08T10:10:00.000-08:00

You'd think that after reading the book, and seeing the original Swedish movie, I'd remember the story details, but watching the Hollywood remake last night the story was fresh, and even better than that original.

Daniel Craig is always an understated, un-flashy actor - even as James Bond, for heaven's sake - so he perfectly fit the role of Mikael Blomqvist, the spare, embattled journalist in this film. Rooney Mara, as the skinny, pierced, tattooed, ultra-edgy hacker Lisbeth Salander was equally well-cast.

Together, they address the mystery of Harriet Vanger, missing for 40 years, and uncover a string of gruesome murders.

The sharply-observed direction - for example when Blomqvist learns he's lost a libel case against arch-enemy Wellenstrom, buys a pack of Marlboro, takes one cigarette out, lights it, and throws away the rest of the pack - really highlights the characters.

All of this in the nastiest, sub-Arctic weather. Why would anyone live that far north?

Weather aside, this is a pulsating thriller, with not a second wasted in its over 2 hours of play-time. Tight, atmospheric, and genuinely exciting. But enough about Daniel Craig's underpants.

This is a great movie, in any language.

RAVE - A16 Again

2012-01-06T20:32:00.000-08:00

Is this the best Italian restaurant in the city?

It certainly lines up with Delfina, Bar Bambino, and maybe Beretta, and against the North Beach Italians, in style, approach, and delivery.

The latter are far too touristy, and maybe because of that seem to just turn out the same old same old, whereas A16 is definitely edgier, and more modern.

Whatever and however, it was another wonderful night out with our much-missed friends from Detroit, Felicia and David.

Felicia's carrying O'Connor Junior, and my better half offered to drive, so it meant David and I glugged some outstanding Montepulciano, while we all shared the proscuitto tasting, goose and duck terrines, a salsiccia pizza groaning under the weight of its delicious toppings, and various pasta and lamb loin plates.

A16 is humungously busy every night of the week, and deservedly so.

REVIEW - Everything Must Go

2012-01-05T17:33:00.000-08:00

A sad movie.

There it is. That's my review.

You want more?

Will Ferrel gets fired from his sales job. He drives home to find that his wife has left him, changed the locks on their house, emptied their joint bank account and dumped his stuff out on the front lawn.

He's an alcoholic, so accepts that all of this is his fault.

He's forced into a yard sale, to get rid of all the stuff on his lawn. Hence the title.

As I said.

It's a sad movie.

REVIEW - Dream House

2012-01-05T16:17:00.000-08:00

While this is an otherwise decent movie, it's hard to give it a RAVE when there's one huge problem with it. Any story that assumes the main protagonist has completely forgotten an earlier passage in his life is just too hard to swallow.

I can't say too much about this element of the film, otherwise it'd ruin the outcome. But other movies that have employed the same plot device have been equally unsatisfying, notably Shutter Island. That movie ended with me groaning at having been duped throughout - made to believe that a story had unfolded when in fact it had all taken place in the mind of an asylum inmate.

In Dream House, publisher Daniel Craig gives up his job to spend more time with his family, and write a book, in their new, rural house. Unbeknown to Mr. Craig, the former residents of the house were brutally murdered, and the murderer has recently been released from prison to a halfway house.

Bring on the shadowy figures, the spooky lurkers, the lurking spooks.

RAVE - You Heard It Here First

2012-01-04T18:58:00.000-08:00

I'm far too modest to gloat, but ... over a year ago I ranted about alleged Cold-Pressed, Virgin Olive Oils, and how there were far too many of them on our supermarket shelves for them all to be genuine, and even if they were, they didn't warrant the big ups they were getting over warm, hooker Olive Oils. Well, lo and flippin' behold, this article appeared in today's Guardian.

The Italian fraud squad recently announced they were investigating allegations that the country's largest olive oil producers have adulterated Italian oil with cheaper imports from Spain, Greece, Morocco and Tunisia.

Fraud is extensive, particularly adulteration and false labeling. The world's largest former dealer in olive oil, one Domenico Ribatti, plea-bargained his way to 13 months in prison during the 1990s for passing off Turkish hazelnut oil, which he had refined in his own plant, as olive oil. Another prominent importer, Leonardo Marseglia – appropriately based in a town called Monopoli – has variously been accused of selling cheap non-European oils as Italian ones, fudging documents to shirk import tariffs and forming a criminal network to smuggle contraband. Marseglia has denied the charges.

A 2007 EU investigation found that 95% of all known misappropriations of European Union agricultural misappropriations occurred in Italy, telling us something of the culture in which Italian olive oil fraud was taking place.

George Bennell is the managing director of Belazu, which markets a delicious unfiltered olive oil from a small producer northern Spain, among other goods. "I don't know for sure that Spanish olive oil fraud is less common than Italian," he says. "But the fact is, the Spanish produce twice as much olive oil as the Italians, and the Italians consume and export more olive oil than they can produce, so they have to import it."

Olive oil is far from being the only commonly adulterated food finding its way into British supermarkets. A British trading standards officer said last month that "criminals are moving away from drug offences to counterfeiting [food ingredients], because they are looking at severely reduced jail times. You are looking at 10 years plus for drugs, whereas it's half that for counterfeiting." This echoes what one EU investigator told Tom Mueller: "Profits [in olive oil fraud] were comparable to cocaine trafficking, with none of the risks."

Only last week consumers were warned again about counterfeit vodka, and one recent estimate based on data from the Food Standards Agency suggested that fraud could affect as much as 10% of all the food bought in the UK. This includes "wild" salmon that is actually nothing of the kind – it's estimated one in seven salmon sold as wild have in fact been farmed – to the labeling of products as organic and so on, in order to exploit specific scruples in the customers.

In 2010, a UK businessman was jailed for a $5m scam in which he labelled battery eggs as free range and sold them to retailers including Tesco and Sainsbury's. A few years earlier, an investigation found that basmati rice was being mixed with cheaper rice costing half as much. This kind of thing does appear to be on the rise - when a family friend arrived at Christmas last year with a magnum of Pol Roger, everyone was delighted; upon examination, the label looked to have been printed on a domestic inkjet.

______________________________________________

To be fair, the same article has recently appeared in the local, digital rags here in SF, but let's not forget that this on-the-money RANT from yours truly, plus that other one about Cash 4 Gold, means perhaps I should re-badge this blog as Digital Astrology Jumble.

I certainly shouldn't stop ranting! Despite what you say.

RANT - A Dangerous Method

2012-01-04T16:39:00.000-08:00

I would have liked to have been a fly on the wall when the Producers of this movie first did the rounds looking for funding.

"Hey, we've got a great idea for a film that takes a long, dark look at the intense relationship between Carl Jung and Sigmund Freud that gave birth to psychoanalysis". Silence.

"And listen to this, we think it could be a great vehicle for [smirk] Keira Knightley". More silence.

"Think of it, we could have Keira screeching, screaming and cackling interminably as the disturbed patient over which some deadly dull doctors, played by, let's say Viggo Mortensen and Michael Fassbender, debate for months on end".

Watching Knightley's face twitch as she grimaces her way through a Russian-but-sounding-bad-American accent makes me wonder why this "intense relationship" between Jung and Freud didn't give birth to a sharp slap across the face as the recommended method for dealing with people like her.

I know I'm stretching the point here a bit, but when one thinks of "Thriller", A Dangerous Method should probably be as far away from one's mind as, er, marshmallows.

Maybe that gulf between this film, and any action, kept making me wish director David Cronenberg would revert to type and have someone's head explode.

I got the movie - it's focus on deep, thoughtful conversation, but that didn't make it enjoyable on any other plane.

Of course, my predilection for poking fun at thinks is worthy of analysis too. Or you could just ask my wife what's wrong with me. She has tons of suggestions.

Hello, welcome to the psychiatric hotline:
If you are obsessive-compulsive; please press 1 repeatedly.
If you are co-dependent, please ask someone to press 2 for you.
If you have multiple personalities, please press 3, 4, and 5
If you are paranoid delusional, we know who you are and what you want. Just stay on the line so we can trace the call.
If you are schizophrenic, listen carefully and a little voice will tell you which number to press.
If you are depressive, it doesn't matter which number you press. No one will answer.

REVIEW - Final Destination 5

2012-01-02T20:33:00.000-08:00

I don't know what it is about the Final Destination franchise. What could possibly be of any merit to have attracted me to each episode? Clearly it has to be the freaky accidents, because there's no actual plot in any of them.

In FD 5, as in 1-4, on a group excursion one of the party has a premonition about a humungous accident. In this story, it's a suspension bridge collapse. The person who had the premonition persuades a group of 6 or 7 to leave the scene of the impending disaster, thereby saving them all from horrible deaths.

Or does it?

Of course it doesn't. They each die in tragic accidents, each of which requires - for the film to exist - a succession of impossible coincidences to occur, culminating in a painful death for each unlucky person on the list.

Schlocky? Yes. Silly? Oh yes.

RAVE - Cafe Claude

2012-01-02T16:45:00.000-08:00

What is it about French bistros and ratty lanes?

On Claude Lane we have Gitanes and Cafe Claude, and on nearby Belden Lane there's Cafe Bastille. And just around the corner - not on a lane, but on an unglamorous street, is Cafe Central. On summer days in the city these are gorgeous sun traps. On the first couple of days of a new year, they can be glum iceboxes devoid of light.

Good job then that the food at Cafe Claude is so good. Or at least that was true of my Frisee aux Lardons and Steak for lunch today. Pavey's Chevre, and Coquilles St Jacques were "OK" and no better.

Our server left a lot to be desired, but now that I've typed that in it could be taken for a compliment, at a restaurant. She didn't deserve a compliment, but my glass of Pastis made up for any shortcomings on her part.

RAVE - Colombiana

2012-01-02T09:24:00.000-08:00

Bogota, 1992.

When her parents fall foul of their drug-dealing partner, 10-year old Cataleya moves to stay with her uncle in Chicago. He's a gun-toter too, so she gets her wish to grow up as a paid killer for her uncle, and does regular business on the side in her quest to track down the gang that killed her parents, and its leader, Don Luis.

While some of the action is a little improbable, all in all this was an exciting revenge movie, and didn't tax the post New Year's Eve party brain too much.

RANT - Worst Movies of 2011

2012-01-01T17:58:00.000-08:00

And as a satisfying counterpoint to the Top Ten, here are those movies I hated from 2011; a collection of drivel, dreck, and dross.

11/11/11
Anonymous
Black Swan
Captain America
Country Strong
Cowboys and Aliens
Exorcismus
I Spit On Your Grave
Immortals
The Last Rites of Joe May
Man on the Train
Never Let Me Go
Slaughter
The Last Exorcism
Thor
Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy
Twelve

RAVE - Top Movies of 2011

2012-01-01T15:31:00.000-08:00

I've selected the following Top Ten from among all those movies I raved about this past year. I gave up trying to put them in any order of preference, and I know Downton Abbey is a TV Series rather than a movie, but it got released like, and treated like a movie here in the U.S.

RedState

DowntonAbbey

Moneyball

Unthinkable

PointBlank

AProphet

ABetter Life

Riseof The Planet of The Apes

Toast

Limitless

And here are the rest of my 2011 RAVEs, movie-wise:

5Days of War

13 Assassins

ALonely Place To Die

AppropriateAdult

BaaderMeinhof Complex

BarryMunday

Bhutto

Contagion

EssentialKilling

KillerElite

MarginCall

PageEight

Senna

SixtySix

Stone

TheAdjustment Bureau

TheAmerican

TheDebt

TheDevil's Double

TheGuard

TheThing (2011)

TheWhistleblower

Triage

TrueGrit

RAVE - NYE at RN74

2012-01-01T12:24:00.000-08:00

A great combo of things I love - New Years Eve, RN74, and friends Felicia and David.

Oh, and great wine and silly hats.

We started early at home, with champagne, snacks, a couple bottles of excellent red, and non-alcoholic cocktails for the mother-to-be and therefore handy driver for later on ;)

RN74 is an interestingly laid-out place, long and relatively thin. A reception and bar at the center, a lounge turned into boisterous dance-hall at one end, and the classy restaurant at the other end.

The set menu had just enough choice to keep us happy, so we happily chose these dishes:

Musque de Provence Pumpkin soup - smoked hazelnuts, meyer lemon, espresso bean, mascarpone
Ona Kanpachi Crudo - cucumber, radishes, black truffle, passion fruit, nache
Steak Tartare - cauliflower, pine nuts, Dijon mustard, whole wheat flatbread, watercress
Sauted Hudson Valley Foie Gras - foraged mushrooms, cipollini onions a la grecque
Cascade Mountain Arctic Char - sauteed pork belly, french green lentils, brussels sprouts, parsnip veloute
Daurade Royale, cardoons, new crop potatoes, king trumpet mushrooms, hollandaise mousseline
Roasted Mary's Chicken - celery root potato gratin, anjou pear, swiss chard, sauce colbert

We ended at home, with totally un-necessary but nevertheless very tasty single malts.

I remember a healthy debate over dinner about baby's names, but can't remember the result.

RANT - Tinker, Tailor

2011-12-30T10:59:00.000-08:00

I remember vividly the first time I fell asleep in a movie. It was in 1986, Under The Cherry Moon, "starring" that little dipstick Prince. And it sucked like a warehouse full of Dysons.

Last night I came close several times, and it was only thanks to repeated nudges from Mrs. Page that I didn't let everyone in the theater know how little I thought of Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy. It was inordinately slow. I'd say "Slower, and less interesting than watching paint dry" if I hadn't already used an analogy in the first paragraph, and used the "drying paint" line in another recent post.

What staggers me is not that such an array of fabulous British actors (Oldman, Hinds, Hurt, Firth, Strong, Burke, and more) could conspire to disappoint me so, but that every other review I've read seems to applaud this snooze-fest.

And why make it so dour? The 70s was all disco fever - big hair, wide ties, and even wider flared pants. Yet here, under Tomas Alfredson's direction, London feels like the Gulag, with muted tones, dreary housing, plain clothes, and everyone a 3-pack-a-day smoker.

What a shame. I remember reading many of Le Carré's books and marveling at the intrigue. I even made excuses for last night's movie to my wife, saying it was the Anthony Blunt Affair, during Margaret Thatcher's prime ministership, that got me hooked on Le Carré.

Anthony Blunt, the so-called Fourth Man in the Cambridge Five spy ring, passed secrets to Moscow while working for MI5 during the Second World War. Blunt was appointed Surveyor of the King’s Pictures in 1945, continuing the role under the Queen. He was knighted in 1956. Anyhow, the revelation that some old fart in Her Majesty's entourage had been passing secrets to the enemy was a very big deal at the time, and sparked in me an interest in John Le Carré, which led to Alexander Solzhenitsyn, which led to me lying awake at night repeating Russian names, which ended my love affair with that genre.

And if it hadn't already ended, last night would have killed it dead.

RAVE - Christmas in Jamaica

2011-12-29T16:30:00.000-08:00

As usual, we rented a place that was way too big (4 bedrooms, 4 bathrooms) for the 2 of us, just in order to be somewhere with a pool and space, but no interference, for a proper holiday.

This time we were on Discovery Bay, between Montego Bay and Ocho Rios, Jamaica.

"Discovery Bay" because it was the very spot where Christopher Columbus anchored in 1494. Of course, he'd only "discovered" a place where locals had been chilling out for a couple hundred years before wind and tide sent him there, but such is the history of most places west of The Azores.

My summary? Jamaica is basically a pretty unkempt place - and we only saw the allegedly prettier, north side of the island. A mixture of gorgeous coast, plus nondescript vacation resorts, and scruffy townships. This is no Cote D'Azur.

And one fiendishly annoying element: wherever you go in Jamaica you always seems to hear TWO music sources - the one nearby, spilling out reggae or Christmas-themed tunes, and the one in the background, delivering a completely different bass-line to some other song. In our villa, it was the kitchen radio keeping the cook happy with his local pop, reggae, and cricket competing with some jerk next door who thought we all needed to enjoy Cher all over a-bloody-gain. Outside, it was said jerk in the foreground, but a rumbling bass from the public beach a half mile away. Even at the "luxurious" Secrets resort, it was Andy Williams singing (heaven knows why) White Christmas from the speaker above your dining table, vying for your attention with Frank Sinatra lounging his way through some tired old rehash from speakers 50 yards away.

It sounds like I'm giving it all the thumbs down, but the good very definitely outweighed the bad. Our villa staff - chef, housekeeper, and maid - were fabulous, and meant we never lifted a finger for the 10 days. 3-course meals at breakfast, lunch, and dinner, is too much for anytime except Christmas, and even then only when someone else is doing the cooking.

The lying-around-and-reading opportunities were immense, which meant I finished 2.5 books on my Kindle, and snoozed plenty. Meanwhile, her ladyship swam and snorkeled in the sea that lapped the rocks at the end of our garden, or floated around in the pool.

All good stuff that completely ignored the Christmas spirit being served up, chucked back, and thrown around everywhere else. Marvelous!

RAVE - Makers, Cory Doctorow

2011-12-29T13:54:00.000-08:00

I was so impressed by this book that I'm now pressing on certain friends to quickly read it so I can discuss some of its ideas over significant amounts of alcohol.

Set in the near future, it covers the meltdown of companies like Kodak and Duracell, faced with a dramatically reduced market but tons of resources, re-forming as Kodacell with the aim of driving hundreds of small teams to rapidly develop ideas into products into markets into money - a crash and burn mentality that dumps Silicon Valley in its wake and relocates to vacated strip malls in Florida and other dead property locales.

The tech ideas are astounding - perhaps a little too astounding in some cases, particularly for the very near future - and it's these ideas I'm anxious to debate asap.

The story is part sci-fi, part tech blog, part love story - and I read the whole thing in a couple of sessions on the patio in Jamaica. A perfect setting to enjoy an outstanding book.

RAVE - The Girl Who Kicked The Hornet's Nest

2011-12-29T13:43:00.000-08:00

To be honest, it's hard to read the Dragon Tattoo trilogy and not feel exhausted by it all. It's not exactly Lord of the Rings, I'll grant you that, but the interminable Swedish names - people and places, coupled with Stieg Larsson's attention to detail (or his "narrative excess", as Publisher's Weekly describes it).

I've spent too long on this third book, having started it months ago and been sidetracked by other books and games, which has added to its dragged-out-ness.

This conclusion to Larsson's trilogy continues the story of Lisbeth Salander, shot in the head in the final pages of the last book, alive, though still the prime suspect in three murders in Stockholm. Meanwhile, journalist Mikael Blomkvist works to unravel the crimes alongside the police, both public and secret.

Now that the Daniel Craig / Dragon Tattoo movie is out, I had to sprint through the final pages of Hornet's Nest before switching from deep and moody Swedish to, presumably, something completely different.

We'll see.

RAVE - John Oliver, at Cobbs

2011-12-29T11:27:00.000-08:00

Amo treated us to a night at Cobbs Comedy Club, to see British comic John Oliver.

I don't know how may people in the UK know John Oliver. I first saw him a couple years ago on The Daily Show with Jon Stewart, and Amo separately introduced him to me through his Daily Bugle blog for The Times.

I know it's an easy comparison, in that they're both English comics with great story-telling skills, but Oliver's delivery and content is very much like that of "executive transvestite" Eddie Izzard.

Oliver's material on Wednesday night ranged from Bachman to Disneyland to the imminent loss of the American Empire, and despite flaying the American Dream had the audience captivated. Unlike many of Cobbs' regulars, he performed over an hour of bitingly original material that, aside from the aforementioned Izzard you'd be hard pressed to hear anywhere else.

RAVE - Goldeneye, Ocho Rios

2011-12-22T12:22:00.001-08:00

One hour in a rickety old Toyota along Jamaica's north coast from our base on Discovery Bay to the other side of Ocho Rios took us to Pavey's choice for lunch - the Goldeneye resort, named by its original owner Ian (Bond, James Bond) Fleming.

His house is now the reception; his library and study now part of a bar, and his private beach and lagoon now circled by 20 guest houses, and our restaurant.

To be honest, the food is not what draws people here. It's perfectly good fare, but outshone by the surroundings and the clientele. Our waitress told us that P. Diddy had stayed here last week, and Jay-Z, Beyonce and entourage had stayed before that. Of course, it's highly unlikely any of those characters is kicking back in their respective cribs right now explaining that Mr. and Mrs. Page are chilling out in the exact same spot they recently frequented, but I'll remind them of that gaping hole in their story when I next see any of them at the checkout at Safeway.

Goldeneye is now owned by Chris Blackwell, long-time top man at Island Records, who happened to be shirking his management duties while we were there, playing foosball with other guests.

It's a gorgeous resort, and one that Mrs Page won't shut up about until I take here back there for a whole week!

RAVE - Appropriate Adult

2011-12-11T11:11:00.001-08:00

Just shown on Sundance Channel, this tells the true story of British serial killer Fred West and the court-appointed "appropriate adult" assigned to monitor the questioning he receives from the police.

Set in 1994, the film picks up right after West has been arrested and his interrogation begins.

Dominic West (best known for his Detective McNulty role in The Wire) is electrifying. I don't know if it struck home with me because his and most of the other actors accents are true to the locale - Gloucester, in England, which is 40 miles from and very adjacent to my birth-place and natural accent - or because Fred West and his wife Rose are such notorious figures, having tortured, raped and murdered at least 11 young women and girls, many at the couple's homes. Naturally, this was BIG NEWS in the UK, as the Wests twisted and turned their stories day by day, and week by week, and how news of each new body broke.

The Wests were evil animals. The fact that he confessed more to the appropriate adult than he did to the police makes the telling of this story from that "adult's" perspective all the more compelling.

Chilling stuff, and brilliantly acted.

RAVE - Mua, Oakland

2011-12-10T22:03:00.001-08:00

The last few times we've eaten out in Oakland with Jen and Sue we've had great fun, with great food.

Tonight was no exception.

Mua is a cavernous place, a converted car showroom having undergone a suitably hip re-decoration.

Being Saturday night, the place was packed; the music was hot, and the menu was downright interesting.

We had the ahi tuna, beef bone marrow with toast and cornichon, the mac and cheese, crabcakes, Berkshire pork lettuce wrap, duck confit, and fried chicken. Oh, and some killer cocktails.

Everythig was top notch - with my choices, the bone marrow and duck confit being particularly wonderful (but I'm biased).

We'll be here again very soon.

REVIEW - Apollo 18

2011-12-10T15:19:00.001-08:00

Somewhere between a regular documentary and a Blair Witch style story about an alleged secret US space mission to the moon, which pretty soon finds footprints on the surface, and what looks like an abandoned Russian capsule.

As they uncover more evidence of an earlier Russian landing, more and more information comes out that was known by the US Government and not revealed to the crew in advance of the mission.

As the tension mounts, the documentary and editing style - cuts from one CCTV camera to another, and from hand-held to hand-held, all low quality footage - gets annoying.

At the end I was left thinking "so what?"

RANT - Immortals

2011-12-10T14:27:00.001-08:00

Well Gareth, this RANT was almost guaranteed. You've been wittering away about us going to see this film for ages, and I've resolutely resisted.

I got to see it today, and it was even worse than I predicted.

I know all of these ancient Greek stories are hogwash, but this pile of tripe manages to layer on the steroid-ridden swordplay from multiple myths plucked from the drug-addled brains of countless bearded fairy-tale tellers.

I grew up with stories of Jason, Achilles, and Troy, but to move Theseus and the Minotaur from their already flaky footing to this tale of Titans, Tartaros and other trash is pointless and stupid.

To say it was worse than watching paint dry does a disservice to Valspar.

RANT - 11/11/11

2011-12-09T18:04:00.001-08:00

I must be on a Groundhog Day roll ... what with The Thing, then Exorcismus, and now 11/11/11. Three repeat versions of movies done many times before.

While The Thing was a standout, the other two were blah.

And this one - where bad things are destined to happen on a boy's 11th birthday on November 11th, 2011, is particularly blah.

This is a lame re-hash of dozens of other ground-less doom-fests, and adds nothing new or unique.

But worst of all, it was just dull; a thriller devoid of thrills. And that's despite the group of devil worshipers apparently permanently parked in a blacked out limo outside the doomed boy's house. Ridiculous!

RANT - Exorcismus

2011-12-09T16:06:00.001-08:00

Maybe this genre has been overdone, because gone are the bloodcurdling jackal's offspring of The Omen, and the head-twisters of The Exorcist, or even the household ornament-shifters of The Poltergeist. Instead, Exorcismus starts with a teenage daughter suffering an epileptic fit.

Continued ill health and ominous handwritten messages on bathroom mirrors lead to the usual home meetings with a psycho-analyst / hypnotist.

This so quickly leads to strange voices and a heart attack for the quack that one wonders if any parent of the possessed has ever seen any of these movies before, and therefore ought to know better than to call in the mumbo jumbo merchants in the first place.

Of course, then come the requisite nightmares of cockroaches streaming out of the toilet - and so we go down the well-trodden path of devilish distractions.

It's only a matter of time before we get the modern vicar / care-giver with his own demons involved.

The one thing in this film's favor is that despite covering the same old ground with the exact same plot elements, it does so at a brisk pace. That's the best I can say.

Been there. Done that. Got the tee-shirt.

RAVE - The Thing (2011)

2011-12-08T16:15:00.001-08:00

First of all, I have to admit a huge (and therefore unreliable) bias in favor of this movie. I loved the John Carpenter version from the 1980s, and despite (or maybe because of) that, I'm very positively predisposed towards anyone who attempts to up the ante.

This 2011 version (which is a prequel to that Carpenter film) starts with a Scandinavian crew surveying Antarctic wastes and plunging into an icy abyss in their snow-truck.

They find an ice-bound "structure" and "specimen", which of course need further investigation. Queue the doomed follow-up team who zoom in to inspect the block of ice containing what we all know to be a killing machine / monster of obscure origin.

All the basic elements are therefore in place for a kick-ass scare-fest. And so it goes.

While there's nothing new here - in fact, pretty much every angle and nuance from the 80s version is covered / prequeled here - the cutting-edge technology used to create the alien and related effects are top notch, and make this an excellent film for everyone except Mrs. Page, who resolutely refuses to watch this kind of stuff.

It's her loss, as a large group in an isolated location + screetchy, pointy nasty alien creature = the perfect ingredients for a thriller.

It's odd, in both movies, how a group of supposedly studious scientists so quickly become flamethrower-toting Chuck Noriss's, but I guess aliens'll do that to you.

REVIEW - Rampart

2011-12-04T16:12:00.001-08:00

Woody Harrelson in what amounts to a movie version of The Shield. A great combo of an idea, that works pretty well.

Harrelson is a mean, nasty cop in 1999 LA, with a newbie female cop under his wing. His nickname is "date rape", somehow from early in his career when he killed someone that had assaulted a series of women. On their first day together he beats information out of a meth-cooking suspect. He's caught on video beating a driver who ran into his car. He picks up girls in bars. He smokes non-stop. Yes, he's a badass.

The pressure on him to resign mounts, from his boss Sigourney Weaver, and from others. He feels hemmed in. He spirals down under the weight of drugs, booze, and money problems.

That's the story. There's no crime investigation type plot. Nothing but a bad cop under intense pressure.

It's due out in January, and don't expect a neat conclusion.

RANT - Black Swan

2011-12-04T14:28:00.001-08:00

Yes, I know I'm months late seeing this film, but despite it's critical acclaim I had rightly pre-judged it as as even worse than a chick flick - an edgy chick flick.

I had put off seeing the movie because her ladyship didn't want to see it ("too heavy"), and then only saw it today because yesterday a friend (that's you, Tom) suggested this blog had fallen severely short by not including a review of it.

The tortured expressions on Natalie Portman's face were like watching highlight reels of that other arch-whiner, Kristen Stewart. With her painfully vacuous facial non-events, Stewart all but ruins the already preposterous notion that teens who can't fit in must become vampires. But we're talking about Natalie Portman's painful vacuosity here.

Dance movies: everything from Footloose, Dirty Dancing, and Flashdance, to Glee and Step Up, all seem to employ the same "battle against adversity" plot, and rely on the viewer a) liking the dance style in question, b) liking the music, and c) being prepared to put up with wall-to-wall angst.

Now it may be chauvinistic to lambast an entire genre of movie in one sweep, but that's what sweeps are for.

I like ballet - honest. In fact, I was just this morning looking at the brochure for SF Ballet's upcoming season, picking out which performances I'd like to see. I like the spectacle, the attending as well as the dance itself.

But Black Swan was repetitive - Vincent Cassel going on and on about how Portman's character is great as the White Swan, but never lets herself go enough to get into the Black Swan. And then the next 15 minutes shows Portman punishing her body and mind, forcing herself into the darker side of the character. Keep repeating that cycle until Portman explodes.

Just like the blood and lust in Twilight, I have a theory that what really attracted many people to Black Swan was the titillating edginess of the language, the blunt words and sex, all against the backdrop of the otherwise demur ballet scene. Whatever it was, it didn't move me.

So, that's that. Billy Elliot is still the only dance movie I really like. Yes, it's as rags to riches as the rest, but it's funny too.

RAVE - 5 Days of War

2011-12-02T21:11:00.001-08:00

It's a shame that Val Kilmer's star has drooped so low that all of his work now goes straight to DVD.

This latest concerns the brief conflict between Russia and Georgia (South Ossettia to be exact) in 2008.

It's all very complicated, with Ossettia attempting to break away from Georgia, which had already broken away from Russia, and Russia invading South Ossettia / Georgia to protect its oil interests. The various message boards on IMDB.com are littered with Russians making claims about unprovoked attacks from Georgia, Georgians making claims about unprovoked attacks from Russia, and everyone claiming this movie is an inaccurate mess of propaganda.

An inaccurate piece of propaganda it may be, but it's still gripping, and an easy way to get a perhaps skewed insight into a recent conflict.

RANT - Mission Chinese Food

2011-12-02T20:53:00.001-08:00

One of these days I'll meet local restaurant critic Joel Bauer in a bar and have a real good argument with him.

I'll start by saying "what on earth were you thinking when you gave such ridiculously high praise to that dive Mission Chinese Food and its greasy selection of overly-spiced trash food?"

Alright, that doesn't sound like much of an argument starter does it? I'll have to throw in a bit more vitriol.

I can't believe the gulf between the fulsome reviews given to the food this place turns out and the reality.

Tonight we had the Hainam Chicken, Thrice-Cooked Bacon, Mongolian Long Beans, Sizzling Cumin Lamb, and Smoked Beef Brisket Soup Noodles, and every dish was too greasy, and too spicy. For me, the lamb was inedible - just a hunk of overly tough and fatty meat. Nasty. As were all of the dishes.

Admittedly, it's a somewhat different take on Chinese food, even if it's another Americanized version. On first encounter it's as much Indian or Thai as it is Chinese, with lots of chili pods and oil.

In one of those strange scenarios I've only encountered in San Francisco, although it may be true all over the world, this Chinese restaurant has no Chinese chefs. The owner and chef is Korean, and had never cooked Chinese food until he decided to feature this cuisine in the Mission. That accounts for the "different take", but doesn't excuse the oily nature of every dish.

This place will not be seeing us again.

REVIEW - Fondue Cowboy

2011-12-02T09:24:00.001-08:00

There's a saying that indoor fireworks have an excitement value inversely proportional to their name. In other words, a "Super Volcano" will no doubt be less exciting than a "Volcano". You must have wasted money on indoor fireworks to appreciate the diss, but I'm supposed to be talking about a restaurant here.

"Fondue Cowboy" has an undeniably hip name, but it's one the restaurant completely wastes.

Its location on seedy Folsom Street ought to give the game away, as the place is slightly better than a dive cafe, but not so much that you feel you're dining out for the evening.

I was so looking forward to having my first fondue since all those Austrian, Swiss and Italian ski holidays, but this was a big let down.

The place is pretty spartan (as in bare and un-interesting, rather than violent and blood-thirsty). Other reviewers warned that it can be noisy, and so it was last night, with one boisterous table making it too noisy for us to easily talk. And the food wasn't worth the effort - a well-meaning but in the end un-exciting dollop of deconstructed pizza topping warmed up in a bowl with plentiful but uninspiring bits of potato, fruit, bread, and meat to dip in it.

So, all in all a very "un" everything night.

REVIEW - Another Earth

2011-11-30T20:32:00.001-08:00

Yes, another planet, an exact mirror image of our Earth, appears in our Universe.

On the same night that it appears, a car accident takes the life of a composer's wife. Instead of focusing on what everyone does about the existence of this duplicate Earth, the movie covers in depth the guilt felt by the woman driving the other car; how she spends the next few years in jail for causing the accident, then the year after getting out of jail cleaning the composer's house and getting "involved" with him, all without him knowing who she really is.

Full marks for a story that manages to cover a huge science fiction topic without a shred of science.

An intensely miserable film, which left me feeling that the other Earth was just an arty farty light against which to hold a sad tale about guilt and grief.

An ending that could spark hours of interesting debate doesn't really save this from being too slow, and a bit dull.

RANT - How to stay healthy

2011-11-28T13:41:00.001-08:00

Saw this posted somewhere today. Sorry for the lack of clarity, but the location isn't as important as the message.

Gillian McKeith is an old whiner, like many holier-than-thou organic trumpet blowers.

Nigella Lawson may not be the skinniest chef I've seen, but she carries it very well.

I don't need to add anything to the message, do I?

REVIEW - One Hundred Mornings

2011-11-20T11:48:00.001-08:00

Fashioned after The Road, but not as dramatic, or well made.

After a "break down in society" whatever that is, 2 couples try to survive / live it out in a remote-ish cabin in Ireland. I say "whatever that is" because people still show up from time to time in vehicles, so it's not the aftermath of a nuclear winter depicted in The Road.

This appears to be a no TV, no electricity, no schools kind of break down in society, where people mostly keep to themselves (which is what they always do in rural Ireland, surely), and wait for news from the "outside world".

Desperate measures are signaled when one of the guys uses the last squirt from their last ketchup bottle.

But it's mostly about them being bored, and unfortunately that rubs off on the audience.

REVIEW - J. Edgar

2011-11-19T22:06:00.001-08:00

A solid, well-made, presumably accurate story of the career of J. Edgar Hoover. The trouble was, that's all it was.

Maybe we shouldn't expect anything different from a story that's been told many times before. But with nothing other than detail - no particular political, sexual, or overly critical angles to pursue, Clint Eastwood's direction fell short of even being an Oliver Stone-like expose of Hoover.

All of the main protagonists are represented (Hoover's original mentor, his long-term secretary, and his second-in-comannd, and likely wannabe gay lover), and every expected avenue was explored.

Pavey thought it unfairly focused only on Hoover's negatives, but I've never seen or read another story on the man that does not cover those same negatives. I'm prepared to believe he was fragile, vindictive, obsessive, as well as a national hero.

So, see it, but aside from Di Caprio's monumental performance, don't expect to be blown away by it.

RANT - Man on the Train

2011-11-16T12:47:00.001-08:00

What is billed as a "Crime movie" starts out so slow it may lose you in the first 15 minutes - hell, it runs at a snail's pace throughout, so there's hardly anything to get into at all.

The man who arrives by train into a small town hooks up separately with two people - the first is an old professor (Donald Sutherland) who welcomes the traveler into his home; the second is an Eastern European crook planning to rob the local bank with the train traveler.

What's clear by the end of the movie is that the professor and the criminal from the train long to be in the other man's place, and that I'd rather be somewhere else than watching this.

REVIEW - Chez Spencer

2011-11-13T17:35:00.001-08:00

Having said I don't usually review breakfast spaces, today's brunch at Chez Spencer was special (and therefore review-worthy) for a number of reasons:

1. We were celebrating Jen and Sue's recent wedding

2. er, that's reason enough

Chez Spencer is an all-too-easy-to-miss establishment in The Mission, and a top-notch location for dinner. Only lately (I think) have they started opening for brunch, and even if it's not a recent development, this is the first time we've eaten anything other than dinner there.

Despite Chez Spencer's usual dinner top-notch-ness, their brunch is probably a little too fancy for pure relaxation.

For example:

Omelette aux fines herbes

Foie Gras Au Torchon

Wild mushroom tartine with poached egg

Cauliflower veloute with parmesan crisp

Filet mignon with morels a la creme & truffle butter

Together with the champagne, Sazerac, and martini cocktails, our dining choices sounded fabulous, but somehow ended up just OK. There wasn't much to fault in the food - perhaps we were all in a corned beef hash mood.

Thank heaven the get-together was more than just about the food.

RAVE - Plow

2011-11-13T10:25:00.001-08:00

Plow is normally open for breakfast and lunch, and does an outstanding job of that. But I don't bother to RAVE or RANT about breakfast joints. However, last night we joined Gareth, Katie, and 20 others for one of Plow's monthly dinner parties.

Plow's owners also own Ruby Wine, just a few doors along 18th Street on Potrero Hill, and this allows them to pair wonderful organic food with equally wonderful wines.

The highlights of the night were the Short Ribs, paired with a Syrah from a challenging location on the Northern California coast. The other courses - crudites, salad, and apple pie - were good if not world-beating, but the Short Ribs + Syrah + company made the evening fly by.

Plow is an excellent place for breakfast and brunch, often ruined by the crowds that line up outside on the weekends; nowhere is worth queuing for an hour, especially when there are a handful of other great places within a few minutes' walk. Plow doesn't accept reservations, so your best bet is to drive there, and keep driving past if there's a line outside. Try Serpentine, or Axis Cafe in these cases.

RAVE - A Lonely Place to Die

2011-11-11T14:49:00.001-08:00

5 adventurers in Scotland discover what they think is a Croatian girl left abandoned in a hole in the ground.

Like a number of recent British films, this is a horror movie with a very different pace, and none of the histrionics that come with American horror movies.

Mountaineering scenes remind me why I never want to climb any higher than the second floor in our house. The only time I've been close to real climbing - a couple hundred feet of abseiling in Scotland - stamped this sickly grimace on my face that made everyone but me laugh. Ugh. Never again!

The requisite near death experiences while climbing develop into a tense story, with twist after twist.

While out hiking, they hear screams for help coming from underground and find a young girl who has been buried in a hole by persons unknown.

The group of 5 splits up (never a good idea, and one of the only early indicators of this being a horror movie) with the 2 best climbers heading for the fast way down off the mountain to get help, and the other 3 staying with the young girl but needing to get away from the place where she had been abandoned.

When they encounter the crew that left the girl in that hole, things (and I'm sure you've expected this) go downhill from there.

RANT - $4.3M for this?

2011-11-11T08:20:00.001-08:00

I rarely, if ever criticize others art preferences - who's to say one person's Gainsborough is better than another's Liechtenstein? And while I may not covet one artist's "yard-square patch of grass" art installation, it's fair game for anyone else to crave it.

However, when some dipstick pays FOUR MILLION THREE HUNDRED THOUSAND DOLLARS for a dull as ditchwater photo of a bit of indiscriminate water, someone needs to say "Oi! Double You Tee Eff!" And today, that "someone" is me.

Yesterday, an un-named collector stumped up $4.3m at a Christie's auction for this 1999 (yes, it's not even an old classic) photograph of 50 yards of the river Rhine.

You'd probably be hard-pushed to pay that for a freaking mansion on the banks of The Rhine, let alone this underwhelming snap of the grey river.

The 1999 photograph by German artist Andreas Gursky. Titled "Rhein II," is a chromogenic color print face-mounted to acrylic glass.

No, even with that additional data it's not worth 4.3 dollars, let alone 4.3 million!

RAVE - Page Eight

2011-11-06T20:48:00.000-08:00

A made-for-British-TV spy thriller now showing on Comcast On-Demand, and soon on regular TV. It's a corker.

Bill Nighy plays an all around decent bloke working as an intelligence officer within MI5, who is shown a top secret report stating the Americans are imprisoning and torturing suspected terrorists. The fact that Nighy knows who in Government has known all along about the prisons and the torture, makes him a target from his own security services, and heaven knows who else.

He's no James Bond - he drives a Saab, lives alone in a Fulham apartment, meets his contacts at Little Chef - but this develops into a gripping drama worthy of 007.

RAVE - Bistro Jeanty

2011-11-06T10:40:00.000-08:00

We're gradually eating our way through Yountville, Napa. I shouldn't make it sound like such a chore, as Yountville probably has more fine restaurants per resident than any other town in the US. The fact that it's smack in the middle of Napa wine country makes today's escapade - buying a case of Hill Family Sauvignon Blanc and a cook-book from Bouchon, while having sunday lunch at a Michelin-starred restaurant next door - an easy task.

Today's subject was Bistro Jeanty, a gorgeous little French restaurant that's sooo French you imagine they use Garlic air freshener in the restrooms.

BJ's web site allows you to download the recipe for their "world famous tomato soup". We had that soup, and it wasn't worthy of that accolade. Mostly cream, not enough tomato, there are many better examples - even Campbell's straight-from-the-can tomato soup is better.

Anyhow, apart from the inflated view of their soup, this place is outstanding. My Petit Salé aux Lentilles (Pork belly with a lentil andfoie gras ragout) was one of the best dishes I have ever tasted. Ever.

Pavey's Boeuf Bourginon, and my Cassoulet (Baked beans with duck confit,Toulouse sausage & bacon) took us over our "rich food" limit for the day, and despite their fabulousness, we couldn't finish them.

A glass of Ricard, with ice and water, and a couple glasses of Sancerre kept us floating Francophiles for the rest of the day.

RAVE - Wild Flag at GAMH

2011-11-05T16:39:00.000-07:00

Seems like the ladies of Sleater-Kinney like to play at Great American Music Hall, whether they're in S-K or Wild Flag.

We've seen Sleater-Kinney a couple of times at Great American, and last night - despite Pavey's dislike for the "wailing and screaming" we saw Carrie Brownstein and Janet Weiss in their new band, Wild Flag, at the same venue.

I love this place; like Slims, The Independent, and Bottom of The Hill, you walk in off the street and it seems like you can immediately touch the stage.

The sound is great, and the size means even if you're at the back, you still feel part of the action.

Wild Flag have, however, toned down their wailing and screaming, and without those essential elements they sound just a bit too mainstream-with-the-volume-way-up.

Never mind, it was much better than a night in front of the telly.

"Much better" that was, except for the dreadful support band, Drew Grow and The Pastors' Wives. We tried to arrive after they finished, but events conspired against us and we had to listen to their entire, mangled-cat sounding set.

REVIEW - Anonymous

2011-11-03T08:48:00.000-07:00

Under normal circumstances, this deserves a RAVE - it was well-directed, beautifully-shot, and superlatively-acted (particularly by Rhys Ifans).

But these aren't normal circumstances - Shakespeare is one of the basic pillars of education, and not just in England.

Even though I thoroughly disliked Shakespeare when I was 12 years old, being forced to read Julius Caesar along with the class, and dragged along on school trips to see Richard III at the movies, as I grew older I realized how important these works are to our lives.

I'll stop there, because I don't want to come across as a card-carrying, old school educationalist.

But, to have someone attempt to tell a different tale than the one I learned at school, and a German director at that, is too much for me. It's like learning England did not win the World Cup in 1966, or that The Beatles mimed all their songs, with Milli Vanilli doing the actual singing.

Maybe I should have picked more contemporary comparisons, but you get the drift.

Roland Emmerich - the offending German director - claims that because we don't have any original scripts that can be compared with other (non-existent) examples of William Shakespeare's handwriting, we should spend 90 minutes watching some cock and bull story about Edward De Vere, Duke of Oxford, and ex-lover to Queen Elizabeth (the first two badges are real, the third only alleged) was driven into poverty in his pursuit of the ignoble art of writing plays that were indirectly ascribed to Shakespeare.

If that wasn't enough, the film portrayed the real Shakespeare as an illiterate, drunken buffoon.

All too much for me. The film's first hour was entertaining enough, but I kept nodding off during the last 30 minutes.

I think I'll spread some rumors about Johann Wolfgang Goethe's books and poems having been penned by a pig farmer in Bavaria.

RAVE - Bar Agricole

2011-11-02T13:25:00.000-07:00

Surprisingly busy for a Tuesday night at 7.30pm - or maybe this is how SOMA hipsters spend their "school" nights?

Anyhow, we were impressed by the design, layout, ambience and general coolness of the place. Despite it's somewhat narrow, shed-like frontage, inside it's an interesting mix of indoors and out-of-doors dining and drinking spaces, with a main restaurant divided into attractive sections, with a great mix of lighting.

Surprisingly, even with the place being full last night, the noise level was low-ish, making it easy to converse with my hot date / wife.

That same date / wife didn't enjoy the food as much as I did, perhaps because she's trying to get over an annoying cough, and because she didn't order a freaking appetizer! She mostly had to watch me eat the excellent country pate, and 6 equally excellent oysters, before her Cod and my Beef Brisket arrived.

One negative from me ... that Beef Brisket came with Polenta, rather than proper, honest-to-goodness, God's-own-vegetable, Potato. I hate Polenta. It's worse than tasteless - it has an annoying half-taste that does nothing more than remind you you're not eating potato. I hate turnips, and parsnips even more, for the same reason. I'll have to refer to them collectively, as Polentic ingredients.

The cocktail list is very different from the usual Basil- or Cumin-infused stuff that's now served up everywhere in San Francisco, and we enjoyed the Presidente and the Sleepyhead.

Having said that, the "mixologist" on duty last night worked stoner-slow, which didn't bode well for a Friday-night-with-Gareth type of session.

Needless to say, we'll try it again to see if the duffer behind the bar has another gear besides (S)low.

RANT - Thor

2011-10-29T20:16:00.000-07:00

A complete and utter waste of time. So, those are the good points about this steaming pile of poo.

What on earth Kenneth Branagh was thinking of when he signed up to direct this dreadful mess is beyond me. I can't believe he can look himself in the mirror now.

Ah, what's the point in piling on the negatives?

RAVE - Margin Call

2011-10-28T16:21:00.000-07:00

Perhaps strange to give props to a story about how the global Finance community royally screwed us, but it's the telling of this story that places it so much higher than Oliver Stone's Wall Street: Money Never Sleeps.

The film starts with a large slice of one Wall Street brokerage firm getting laid off, and then develops as the dirty laundry is uncovered. Admittedly, this re-telling focuses more on the extent to which the brokerage is exposed, rather than the sub-prime mortgages, dodgy loans and other corporate excesses (all bundled together as "toxic loans") that caused the exposure.

I'm not sure whether to be more surprised by the enormity of the financial train wreck, or the fact that two of the brokerage's senior executives cannot read a spreadsheet.

When the top guys meet for a pow-wow, it's apparent none of them are Excel-aware. Jeremy Irons looks like a more angular Mitt Romney, which doesn't bode well should the flip-flopping Mormon get elected as our next president.

No doubt the real life experiences of many of these finance types aged them tremendously, but Kevin Spacey and Demo Moore are looking really OLD.

RANT - The Last Rites of Joe May

2011-10-28T14:46:00.000-07:00

All too depressing for me to provide a positive review, I'm afraid.

Joe May is an aging hustler, just out of hospital after a 7-week bout of pneumonia. He returns to his chilly neighborhood to find that his apartment has been rented to a single mother and her 9-year old daughter. His scant belongings have been thrown out by the landlord who thought Joe had just moved away without telling anyone.

And it all goes downhill from there for the hapless Joe.

I'd like to say that Joe, or the movie, have some redeeming qualities that are revealed as the story s-l-o-w-l-y and miserably unfolds, but there are none.

This might be "the role of his life" as tagged by one Eye for Film reviewer, but Dennis Farina is much easier to watch in Law and Order.

RAVE - Sushi Roku, Las Vegas

2011-10-27T20:58:00.000-07:00

Other than for its vast selection of top notch restaurants, I pretty much hate Las Vegas.

Maybe it's because every time I go there it's for business (schlepping around trade shows, mainly) and not for pleasure. The hours are long, the standing around time is interminable, and the fresh air moments are all too rare.

I've just spent 8 days at 2 events - one of which was the IBM User Conference, delivered 5 presentations to 50-150 people at each, walked for 1 hour each day to get to and from that IBM Conference, and pretty much stood around the other 9 or 10 hours each day discussing document imaging and capture software with our customers and business partners.

I've eaten 24 times in 5 hotels, and only had one meal that is worth talking about.

We used to live in LA, within a block of Sushi Roku in West Hollywood, so I mostly knew what to expect. And I was looking forward to a fun evening with one of my co-workers. As I had experienced every time we ate at the West Hollywood location, the food was wonderful.

I'm not a cold, dead fish fan (I may even have used that very expression in one of my earlier sushi reviews) but here the Yellowtail Sashimi with diced chiles, Popcorn Rock Shrimp Tempura, and the various rolls we had were all superb. A few Kirin, and some wacky Japanese cocktails to wash it all down made it a great evening.

It certainly stood out alongside the dreadful buffets, fried food breakfasts, and Stoli-drenched meals on every other day.

REVIEW - London Boulevard

2011-10-16T18:52:00.000-07:00

Once you get past the stupid title (is it a musical, is it a travelogue?), which turns out to have nothing to do with the subject or plot, and the fact that this is probably the 5,000th movie about a newly-released jailbird trying against stiff odds to go straight-ish, this is a decent crime story.

Colin Farrell is the ex-con - we never find out exactly why or how long he'd been in prison, but he's a solid hard man, rather than a measly thief - and soon after his welcome back party in a pub full of half the criminal population of London, he's embroiled with Keira Knightly (a movie star always dodging the paparazzi), David Thewlis (her stoner companion) and big, bad Ray Winstone (the local crime boss).

The story's not that taxing, the action not that breakneck, but it's still better made than most of the other 4,999.

RAVE - PGA Hopefuls in Palm Springs

2011-10-14T16:33:00.000-07:00

Probably should've said "PGA No-Hopefuls in Palm Springs", but our general lack of skill with the golf stick thingies was more than offset by the great company, our enthusiasm and good humor.

Lawrence, Gareth (pictured here in one of those rare 'not entirely horrible swing' moments), Amo and I spent Friday through Monday in Palm Springs, golfing at Cimarron Golf Resort on Saturday and Indian Canyon Golf Resort on Sunday.

Both days were scalding, with temperatures in the high 90s, but we were ready for that with our shorts, hats, and ice-boxes.

We rented a house through vrbo.com, and spent most of our down-time in or near the pool and hot tub.

Palm Springs had just enough to keep us occupied restaurant- and bar-wise along Palm Canyon Drive through downtown.

The heat sapped our strength a bit, so there were no disgustingly-late nights.

I don't know if I could spend longer there, as the heat would get to me, especially considering it's nearly "winter" there. Of course, "winter" in Palm Springs is like night-time on the sun - still way too hot for most normal humans.

REVIEW - Bourbon Steak

2011-10-12T21:41:00.000-07:00

Some time ago, celebrated chef Michael Mina moved his eponymous flagship restaurant from the Weston St. Francis Hotel to his old Aqua space.

After the move, the hotel location was re-branded as Bourbon Steak, and with my brother Lawrence visiting us from the UK, we decided to address his love of steak by visiting Bourbon.

The room is very large, too dark, slightly less classy than it was before the BS overhaul, but overall quite impressive.

Service is almost perfect - a consistent feature in each of Mina's restaurants. The food here however, is only competent, and not stellar.

The three of us each had a different steak, but none of us believed it to be anything like the best steak we'd ever had. Needless to say, Mr. Mina prices his steaks like they are the best you'll ever have.

Overall, a great night out, with enough style to make it a great, special night out, even if you have to go elsewhere for the best steak (e.g. Harris', Lark Creek, or 5&5).

RANT - Benu

2011-10-02T17:17:00.000-07:00

Let's just start with a combined gastronimic and economic warning - don't waste your time and hard-earned cash eating at Benu.

The plaudits garnered from various culture magazines and repeated on Benu's web site must've been written after industrial-sized samplings from the great wine list, rather than experiencing the microscopic scraps of food on the fussy flop of a menu.

We had the tasting menu - 19 items (yes, 19 items) each - which revealed several things:

Way too much time is spent arranging tiny amounts of food into pretty little shapes, and no time at all is spent making sure those ingredients taste good
The huge feeling of disappointment as each dish is delivered, and each dish cover is removed, doesn't diminish over the 2.5 hours it takes to pick through the menu
Most of the dishes on the 'tasting' menu have no real taste whatsoever; this is a culinary feat in itself .. using so many normally tasty ingredients and rendering them taste-less
I'm already repeating myself: the food was taste-less and massively overpriced.

Service was impeccable, but not good enough to make Benu worth another visit.

REVIEW - Blitz

2011-10-01T16:28:00.000-07:00

Well this is a record. Two Jason Statham movies in 3 days!

This one is straight from the bottom of the quality pile, and barely more demanding than an episode of Law and Order.

To say he's prolific would be a massive understatement, as he's got FIVE films out this year, with three already in the can for release next year. My guess is that most of them are like this shallow piece of drivel, rather than the above average Killer Elite we saw earlier this week.

As they say about Statham, "you just have to take the rough with the, er, rougher".

REVIEW - Hello Sailor

2011-09-30T13:23:00.000-07:00

Scottish stinginess is legendary, as is the almost impenetrable accent.

So, what does a Scottish rugby fan do when his friend in Australia says "I've got you a ticket for the game against England in the Rugby World Cup next year, in New Zealand?"

Realizing the ticket would have cost him $50 or more, he SAILS FOR 18 MONTHS FROM SCOTLAND TO NEW ZEALAND!

A moving story it's true, and one that I hope will be rewarded with a right royal thumping by the England team.

It's hard to express that sentiment without a few exclamation marks, so! here! you! go!!!!!

RAVE - Killer Elite

2011-09-30T13:03:00.000-07:00

Alright, so Jason Statham is about as deep as a single sheet of tissue paper being flattened by Chaz Bono, but somehow this movie had enough depth, enough plot to keep us captivated.

It may be the same plot we've seen a dozen times before, but it's a proper plot nonetheless. Mr. Stubble and his fellow mercenary, played by the virtually-retired has-been Robert De Niro, do Stubble's "last job" in Oman.

Why this job, and the next one (so it wasn't his last job after all) centered on Oman must mean that either:

a) Oman is now the bull in the dart board of international evil, or

b) The film's producer is getting healthy kick-backs from Hertz in Oman.

Anyhow, Statham is persuaded to return from retirement in Australia to rescue De Niro by finishing off a job Roberto took but failed to complete - which resulted in his being held captive until that job was tidied up by Mr. 5 O'clock Shadow.

It turns out their employer, Sheik YerMoneyMaker, had 3 sons killed by the dastardly SAS and wants revenge.

Statham reluctantly agrees to exact the required punishment in order to free De Niro, and tracks down the SAS killers in their respective hideouts - mostly pubs in England and Wales. He bumps several times into ex-SAS toughie Clive Owen, invents a cure for cancer and turns down the $6m fee from the Sheik.

All in a day's work for JS.

RAVE - Florio

2011-09-28T13:55:00.000-07:00

This was our third time visiting, but first time reviewing Florio.

It's an energetic brasserie at the better end of Filmore Street - "better" if you're interested in eating or drinking rather than listening to live music.

My pate de campagne with rabbit and pork, black Jonathan apple and fennel compote was perfect. Pavey's soup - roasted kambucha and french butter pear puree, with creme fraiche - was lavishly named but otherwise un-noteworthy. My hanger steak frites with bearnaise sauce was above average. Pavey's oxtail ravioli, roasted early girl tomato sauce, gremolato, and grana padano, was excellent, if a bit heavy on the sauce.

Those "lavish" names blotted the otherwise great menu. Whoever wrote this menu is pretentious and probably still choking on the "Dictionary of Overblown and Pointless Ingredient Names". For example: "sausalito watercress". What on earth differentiates the watercress - something just a little bit fancier than grass - from Sausalito, from watercress grown in any other damp patch of earth in America?

It sounds like our food was just average, rather than rave-worthy, doesn't it?

However, the frenetic activity - we sat near the front bar, rather than in the quieter back, or in the semi-private room - and people-watching made this an enjoyable Friday night dinner.

RAVE - Moneyball

2011-09-28T12:57:00.000-07:00

What perplexed me throughout this great movie was that, despite almost being able to see the Oakland Athletics' stadium across the water from our house, I don't remember a thing about this episode in their recent history.

Basically, in 2001-2 the A's general manager, Billy Beane had lost his top 3 players - Jason Giambi, Jason Isringhausen, and one other whose name I forget - to higher-spending competitors, and was desperate to build a new team given the money constraints imposed on him by the A's owner.

On his travels he found Paul DePodesta - played as "Peter Brand" by Jonah Hill in the movie, because real-life DePodesta objected to being portrayed merely as a statistician - a Harvard graduate and mathematics expert working on the Cleveland Indians' staff.

Beane learned from DePodesta / Brand that every major league baseball team was undervaluing, and not drafting the real talent - people who could make a real contribution to those teams without costing millions of dollars to sign and keep each year.

Thus was born Moneyball: Beane hired Brand to apply his statistical data to the A's acquisition and deployment of new players.

After a rocky start to the 2002 season, the Athletics just missed out on the playoffs, but won the same number of games as the mega rich Yankees, at less than one fifth of the cost per win.

Those are the facts. The movie tells them with great atmosphere, lots of excitement, and plenty of laughs (although this is not a comedy).

Of course, with the memory of their neighbors' (the SF Giants) World Series win last year, where absolutely everyone, and his or her dog, was a rabid baseball fan, I'm unlikely to miss another Moneyball-type episode here on the best coast.

REVIEW - Catch

2011-09-28T12:26:00.000-07:00

Not much to say about this place - it's a middle-of-the-road, seafood-oriented spot in The Castro, but it was only a quick dinner spot between an afternoon at the Folsom Street Fair and a few drinks while trying to look straighter than straight in a couple of bars on Castro Street.

My crispy duck dumplings (no double entendre intended here!) were good and tasty, while my braised chicken was unadventurous - although I hadn't planned for an adventure with the chicken, so shouldn't have been surprised by this dish.

All in all, it was a very sedate affair, with neither Reggie nor me attempting to push the conversation far from work-related gossip.

I guess I'll get a tee-shirt that says "nothing particular to drag me back to Catch".

REVIEW - Folsom Street Fair

2011-09-27T22:55:00.000-07:00

I've never been to Rio for Carnival, and only seen the New Orleans version on HBO's excellent Treme series. With that disclaimer, I can say that Folsom Street Fair, here in San Francisco is one of the most eye-popping spectacles on the calendar.
Targeted at the leather-wearers among you, it attracts guys and gals, hunks and grrrls, bears and cubs, fetishists and freaks from far and wide.

Despite the yuppie lofts that have appeared on and around Folsom Street over the past 10 years, the area is still gritty. Realtors might describe it as bohemian ("boho"), but that's putting a typically over-bright label on a neighborhood full of bars, night clubs, workshops, automobile fixer-uppers and smut-peddlers.

The Fair supercharges Folsom and the connecting streets with hundreds of stalls, music stages and side-shows for the weekend.

I don't have the body for tank tops and leather shorts (maybe I never did), but the photographer and voyeur in me is thankful that many people do. So, along with my trusty cub buddy - Reggie - I gawped the length of Folsom Street on an overcast Sunday, trying not to peer into every mini tent (afraid of what I might see), glugged beer and margherita, and generally had a whale of a time.

REVIEW - The Moss Room

2011-09-26T18:45:00.000-07:00

It's stylish, good-looking, in an interesting location, but the lousy service lost this place its Rave rating for me.

Our weekend guest and I arrived at The Moss Room at 1.15pm Saturday, sat down and chatted with our lunch partner for one hour fifteen minutes before we got our first course - pate and a couple of salads. Not exactly demanding or time-consuming for the kitchen.

It started badly, when we were there for 20 minutes before anyone came to our table to ask us what we wanted to drink!

After getting and eating our appetizers, our server came to me and said that chef was "not happy" with the Pork Sugo he'd prepared for me, and it would take too long to make it again. Would I care to order something else? I did, and the Fennel Sausage (another trivial dish to prepare) added another 20 minutes' wait for our main courses.

Everything tasted good, but thank heavens for the cocktails and company, because it took a total of 3 and 3/4 hours for our lunch!

RANT - Facebook updates

2011-09-21T19:04:00.000-07:00

As one who is thoroughly sick of Facebook and related mania, and therefore more than normally p****d off with the enforced changes this week, I particularly enjoyed this arty rant.

RAVE - Living in San Francisco

2011-09-21T16:00:00.000-07:00

Don't you just hate it when someone crows about their new car, new house, new girlfriend, ad nauseum?

Right.Therefore, I'll try not to bang on about how great it is to live here in SF, where the weather never gets too hot or too cold or too humid; where the violence hasn't reached Baghdad proportions; where there may be transients and beggars, but you know where they mostly hang out and you can have money ready, or avoid them; where (isn't this where I break out into The Lumberjack Song, a la Monty Python?)

As an Englishman I - a) always craved a life in the California sun, b) have enjoyed every minute of the 14 years I've spent so far in San Francisco, and c) still check bbc.com before any other site, for news.

So ... I loved today's BBC review of life in SF.

REVIEW - Detective Dee

2011-09-21T09:48:00.000-07:00

The full title: Detective Dee and The Mystery of The Phantom Flame, is both too long to use in my review title, and too Harry Potterish to properly categorize the film.

This is an LSD trip of a movie, and not in an altogether good way. It's well made, well shot, and well intentioned. I think. I can't say that it's well acted though, as there are too many unintentionally funny (i.e. silly) sequences, as so often appear in this genre.

The dialog drags on a bit. I'm not saying I only enjoy these pseudo martial arts movies for the action, but this one just had too much pointless talking and not enough action.

Whoever described it as Crouching Tiger Meets Sherlock Holmes got it close in some respects, but inflates Detective Dee way too much.

So, one for the enthusiasts, rather than Joe Public.

RAVE - Red State

2011-09-19T16:08:00.000-07:00

A genuinely original storyline:3 teenage boys lured to a trailer by the offer of sex with an older woman are drugged, then dragged to a local Fundamentalist church led by a crackpot Pastor wanting to punish "wrongdoers" on behalf of God.

Things quickly get out of hand, and this develops into a great horror flick.

James Parks as the crackpot Pastor, and John Goodman as the ATF commander play outstanding characters as church and state battle it out at their most unhinged.

There are some fabulous twists and turns in the story, which is told at a perfect pace throughout.

A really scary movie, and even more so when you realize rural America is riddled with these nutcases.

REVIEW - 54 Mint

2011-09-17T22:32:00.000-07:00

It's always tricky when the votes are mixed.

Tonight, Mrs. Page really liked her meal at 54 Mint. I was satisfied, but underwhelmed.

She loved the place. I thought it was way too noisy.

She was OK with our waiter. I thought he was a clumsy dork, constantly knocking into me, or our table, whenever he went past.

So, what coulda shoulda woulda been a RAVE if it was her blog, and a RANT if mine was the only vote, averaged out to a REVIEW between the two of us.

Her Prosciutto di Parma and cheese appetizer was "the best I've ever had", and her Gnocchi with ground beef and port ragu earned similar praises. My Polpette (veal meatballs in a chunky tomato sauce) were not as good as those we had at Piccino earlier in the week, and my Costata di Maiale (pork chop with cannellini beans and sauteed mustard greens) had great texture and color, but lacked punch in the taste department.

Her newly-patented phrase "plenty of ooh, but not enough aaahh" was a well-placed critique on the evening.

There are plenty of better Italian restaurants in the City, so it's unlikely we'll be shouting across the table again at 54 Mint.

RAVE - Contagion

2011-09-15T22:58:00.000-07:00

The 'rave' is in recognition of the quality of the movie, not because it's great - it's not particularly exciting, or thrilling; it's not even that suspenseful.

It's a perfectly made account of the spread of a deadly virus - there's no romance angle, no chase, no explosions, no big star performances, and even the closing sequence - where the source of the virus is revealed - is just a "so what?" moment.

Strange that with all those negatives, or non-events, the overall product was so good and tight.

I have to call out Jude Law. While his acting was solid as usual, why oh why pick an Englishman to play an Australian? Heaven knows there are enough Australian actors available - they're usually playing the English roles in every 'historic' movie. He played a pseudo journalist who drew this criticism from Elliot Gould's character: "Blogging is not writing. It's graffiti with punctuation".

;?";;!!