RANT - Tinker, Tailor

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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)

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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?

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

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

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 and foie 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.