REVIEW - Unstoppable

Provided you accept the facts: this is a movie about a runaway train, and there's only one way Hollywood can make a movie about a runaway train (i.e. the hero(es) stop it from running away) - this is decently-made, and at times exciting.

It breaks no new ground (alright, I've never seen a train cornering so fast its inside wheels are off the ground), so I'm not sure "exciting" is the right word, but at least the photography is excitingly sharp and direct.

Denzel trots out his usual character, and no-one else really matters (even his co-heroes).

Quite why it made sense for a couple of helicopters to duck and dive either side of the front of the train as it careened towards disaster is anybody's guess. At least it provided bases for the film's camera crews.

All in all, as good as could be expected, I guess.

REVIEW - Cafe des Amis

When there's so much competition, at every level - low-end cheap 'n nasty right up to pricey and pretentious - it's not difficult to criticize an elegant, relative newcomer to the SF restaurant scene.

The look at Cafe des Amis is just a bit too good, almost perfect. Why's that a problem? Because it's meant to be a French bistro, and no real, French bistro looks this good. 

Surprisingly, the food was nowhere near as precious. It's not haute cuisine; it's down an intentional notch or two from that. It's more provincial, country-side or neighborhood French, with the good and bad that brings.

The clam Pavey ordered for her appetizer was mostly raw, despite the explicit instructions she gave to our waiter. My truffled gnocchi was wonderful. Pav's Cassoulet (slow cooked tondini bean casserole with duck confit, bacon, garlic sausage and pork shoulder) was - according to the gourmande herself, fabulous but "too much food". My Choucroute Garnie (pork belly and loin, braised bacon, frankfurter, potatoes, carrots and sauerkraut) was waaaaaay too salty. I couldn't tell if there were any other flavors being masked by the overpowering saltiness, but I don't feel inclined to give them the benefit of the doubt.

The wine list was bereft of anything under $70, so our $90 Vosnes-Romanee while excellent, was used literally to wash down the salty surfeit.

RAVE - Unknown

While not being entirely original (I heard before and after the movie, from different people, that it had all been done before by The Gubernator in True Lies), this was still an absorbing Hitchcock / Bourne type of thing.

Liam Neeson plays a scientist visiting Berlin with his wife, in order to speak at a conference. They get to their hotel, and he realizes he's left his briefcase at the airport. While she checks in, he returns to the airport, but en route his taxi gets involved in an accident and ends up in the river. He is rescued and spends 4 days in a coma in hospital, but when he regains consciousness and heads off to the hotel to reunite with his wife, everyone (including the wife) says they don't know who he is. There's even another person with his name at the conference.

The story unfolds at a healthy pace, and the action is non-stop. Not much wrong with this at all, except for that nagging feeling that we've seen this before.

RAVE - Angie Stone, at Yoshi's SF

This is mostly a RAVE because Pavey liked the show 10 times as much as I did.

That doesn't mean I didn't enjoy the event - Angie Stone has possibly the best female voice I've ever heard live, and the venue (Yoshi's, San Francisco) is perfect - but R&B is not my thang, and un-funky R&B even less so. And I didn't recognize ONE single tune the lady sang all night. How sad is that?

It was still great fun though. Stone's backing band and singers were top notch, and did I say the venue is perfect?

REVIEW - Clybourne Park

We were tempted here to the American Conservatory Theater by reviews of Clybourne Park - "verbal firecrackers; dialogue explodes across the stage", "tour de force exchange", ".. the roots of America's racial divisions are as deep and complexly intertwined as those of the tree in the garden of the crumbling house".

The glowing reviews were widespread, the awards many. So what happened? Last night's production was sold out, yet massively underwhelmed.

The idea, that a slowly-building story set in a 1950s house where the owners are about to move out and make way for black buyers, only really works if the 'slow' gets faster. While 20 minutes of the second act was genuinely rapid-fire stuff, the rest of the two hours was tedious, unfunny (it was billed as a comedy), and broke no new ground whatsoever.

Theater pickings are slim, hence the sold out mediocrity.

RAVE - Twenty Five Lusk

Ditch the cramped tables where we sat, and the loud-mouthed jerks on either side, and you've got a top-notch eaterie.

The place looks super-stylish, lights set low, great layout upstairs and downstairs, good-looking kitchen surrounded by glass - a real treat all around.

I had the gnocchi and short rib to start, and the duck confit to finish, while my hostess had the tomatillo, avocado and lobster soup (with some out-of-place banana in there too), then the gnocci and short rib to finish. That lot was a) saucy, b) tasty, and c) priced well.

All in all a well above average restaurant that felt perhaps a bit over the top for a quiet snack on a school night, but .....

RAVE - Quince (Again)

David and Felicia gave us a wonderful gift card for dinner at Quince, just after Christmas when they left San Francisco to return again to their new home in Detroit.

Lucky us, unlucky them is what I'm thinking.

Quince once again proved to me that it's the best restaurant in SF. Better than pretentious Minna, better than touristy Danko's, better than dreary, old Masa's, and better than everything else.

The entire experience at Quince is superb, from the luxurious pre-dinner bar and drinks area with excellent servers, through the superb tables in the sounds-just-right dining rooms, with more excellent staff.

The clientele may feature more of the elderly suits and jewels than we'd normally relax with, but I guess they have to eat somewhere. And the 18 aging Mafioso celebrating someone's 120th birthday (or at least he looked 120) was having fun along with everyone else.

And how could anyone not have fun here: the food is faultless. From our amuses bouches - steelhead sashimi with truffled mushroom shot glass accompaniment - through Pavey's scallops, agnolotti, and rabbit, and my farm egg, Fazzolettini, and beef, everything was stupendous.

How many places can you eat where 7 of 7 dishes are perfect?

And if you say Burger King, you're posted to Detroit!

RANT - Never Let Me Go

I'd never heard of Kazuo Ishiguro's novel, let alone read it. But if I had read the book, I almost certainly wouldn't have wasted nearly two hours mind-numbingly bored by watching the movie.

The children we follow as they grow up are clones - or in the film's parlance, "modeled on" people who want to keep the living, breathing spare parts around for when they might need them.

Knowing their status placed them in a very miserable position, and they did nothing during the film - nor presumably the book, to lighten things one bit. They know their days are numbered, and in one or more "episodes" they will be operated upon and farmed for their organs.

If they had only done something about their situation - Pavey suggested they track down their models, and kill them. I, much more lovingly, suggested they hightail it to Montevideo, or somewhere else no-one can place on a map.

Either way this was a dreadful experience, for the clones and us poor viewers.

RANT - The Last Exorcism

OK, what did I expect? No known actors, a lame premise, and probably the worst film quality ever - even worse than Blair Witch, which at least had a point to the bad quality.

The Rev. Cotton Marcus (yes, "Cotton"!) is a sham preacher in Baton Rouge. "Sham" because he admits he performs fake exorcisms - all pre-recorded noises and not very special effects. He agrees to do one Last Exorcism in front of a camera crew, who turned out to be a couple of shaky-handed fools with a camera but not lighting.

Cliche-ridden (aren't they all?), ultra low budget (and it showed), content-free, and a huge waste to time.

Good job Pavey was out with the ladies and I was stuck home with a man cold.

RANT - Twelve

Twelve is a drug, dealt around rich white kids in New York. White Mike is a dealer. His cousin is wrongfully arrested for shooting NaNa, a black kid he used to play ball with.

That's about all that happens in the first hour. Aside from some annoying voice-over to help us through the straight lines in the shallow plot.

A lame attempt to thicken that plot came from White Mike's family, but I'm getting bored just adding that detail to this post. Definitely not worth the price of admission, so somewhat of a shocker that it was directed by the normally reliable Joel Schumacher.

Er, that's about it. Skip it.

RAVE - Stone

If you ignore the dreadful series of Fockers movies, you'd have to say that anything with Robert De Niro and Edward Norton facing off would be a sure-fire winner. And Stone is.

De Niro plays a prison officer reviewing prisoners up for parole. Edward Norton plays an arsonist looking to get paroled. Norton wants to improve his chances of getting released, so talks his wife (Milla Jovovich) into seducing De Niro and presumably then blackmailing him into signing Norton out.

Even though there are only a couple ways this could've turned out, I was left guessing right to the very end.

There's a back-plot - images of insects caught between window and screen suggesting Mr and Mrs De Niro and/or Mr and Mrs Norton are trapped in their marriages, but that line of misery doesn't get in the way of a good bit of suspense.

Probably a bit slow for some, and certainly too slow to be described as a thriller, but strong, deep, and rewarding. 

Just don't let the man sign up for any more Fockers rubbish.

RAVE - Downton Abbey

With so many years of TV productions of classic British literature (Upstairs Downstairs, Onedin Line, Jane Eyre et al), the idea of yet another - this one called Downton Abbey - didn't generate much initial excitement in the Page-Purewal household.

But how wrong we were. Having now watched all 4 episodes of the series, I can say this is right up there with Gosford Park. In fact, I kept expecting GP characters to pop up in the busiest Downton Abbey scenes.

The story, strangely enough, doesn't really matter. A disgustingly wealthy Earl, his wife, 3 daughters, mother and household full of servants, go about their daily lives in the build up to World War 1. But so what? There have been hundreds of movies, plays and TV series around that basic storyline. 

What separates this production from everything but Gosford Park is the fabulous wit, depth, and clarity of the script. The standout roles and lines come from Robert Crawley, The Earl of Grantham (played by Hugh Bonneville), Mr. Carson, the Butler (played by Jim Carter), and the fabulous Violet, Dowager Countess of Grantham (played by Maggie Smith). 

One example of how Maggie Smith's sarcasm is put to excellent use is when she's discussing with her daughter-in-law what can be done about finding a husband for her wayward grand-daughter: "One can usually manage to find an Italian who isn't too picky." 

It's worth watching this whole 4-hour series, either on Comcast (or equivalent cable) on demand, or on DVD.