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.