RAVE - Range

Range is one of many, many places on Valencia Street that vies for custom, and yet it was packed even for 8pm on a Monday night. I can see why.

It's a warm, welcoming place with a great atmosphere. The menu, while not in the least bit adventurous, has plenty worth trying.

Mrs P vacillated over the cauliflower soup and soft shelled crabs - as I would have - then plumped for the asparagus appetizer and oven roasted chicken with potatoes, trumpet mushroom, chard, pancetta and green garlic vinaigrette.

I had the chicken liver mousse - which was a bit runny - and the roasted chicken too.

All in all, a pleasant if not earth-shattering experience. We'll probably go back, although I think tonight we might have picked the best items on the menu.

REVIEW - John Carter

If you find it hard to believe that Mars was once full of warring tribes, various types and color of creature, and the oxygen they all required to breathe, then this film will be a stretch.

If the film-makers didn't want to explore the likelihood or not of this situation, it shouldn't have jumped back and forth between Mars and late nineteenth century America. 

Then I remembered it's based on a book by Edgar Rice Burroughs, writer of Tarzan, The Land That Time Forgot, and many other stories involving life on Mars and Venus.

So, with those humbug credentials accepted, this could've been an Avatar.

Could've been, but wasn't. 

Just how Disney managed to turn this isn't a mammoth box-office loss is probably down to it being a bit juvenile. Sheesh, how can I say that, knowing that's just how 90% of super-hero movies are pitched. But there has to be some reason like that - the plot, and the script just weren't clever enough. 

All that money, all those effects, all that scope. Blown. Another Dune.

I wanted to like this - as did, I'd bet, most of the audience.

RAVE - Coriolanus

A modern re-telling of a Shakespeare tragedy: Rome is a starving city.

Ralph Fiennes plays Caius Martius Corialanus, a Roman military governer hated by the people for his hard-lined approach.

Gerard Butler plays Tullus Aufidius, a Vorascian rebel.

Together they lead their forces to fight over Rome.

I usually find pure Shakespeare, in his original words, tiresome and ungainly.

For example, when Martius is rallying his men he says:

"Those are they
That most are willing. If any such be here -
As it were sin to doubt - that love this painting
Wherein you see me smear'd; if any fear
Lesser his person than an ill report;
If any thing brave death outweighs bad life
And that his country's dearer than himself;
Let him alone, or so many so minded,
Wave this, to express his disposition,
And follow Martius."

.. instead of ...

"Come on lads, let's 'ave it at 'em".

Where would we be if I'd written all of Shakespeare's works, instead of that bloke in Anonymous?

Maybe because it was an action-centric story, this worked. Forsooth!

RAVE - Get The Gringo

Mel Gibson's new film, also known as "How I Spent My Summer Vacation" is a rough, dusty prison movie, that starts with him driving a car through the wall on the border into Mexico. 

There he's arrested by corrupt Mexican police, and he and his unconscious passenger in the clown's costume part ways.

The rest of the movie follows Gibson as he finds his feet in La Pueblito, the tough Tijuana prison, where he's helped by a young boy who hangs around the prison looking for the man who killed the boy's father.

A combination of Gibson's ongoing real-life rantings and his reduced box office pull have resulted in this film getting a low-key, art-house plus DirecTV release, so you may not find it.

If you do, you'll see that Gringo is a bit of a mess, but is still a decent Mel Gibson film. 

It's no Apocalypto, I'll warn you that, but it's worth seeing nonetheless.

REVIEW - Straw Dogs

A remake of the 1971 movie that starred a youthful Dustin Hoffman and Susan George, this retelling tries hard, but is a shadow of that Sam Pekenpah directed classic.

This version, starring airheads Kate Bosworth and James Marsden, and a slumming James Woods, lacks most of the tension of that original, with Marsden missing all the breaking-point unhinged-ness that Hoffman delivered.

Marsden and wife Bosworth re-locate from LA to Blackwater, Alabama, which is her hometown, to allow him to write a movie script.

While a local crew work on the roof to their house, tensions rise between the two successful LA types and the country boys. Things escalate, as they often do in these situations, and the workers' push the writer to the brink.

While the last half hour is gripping stuff - and I'm sorry to keep repeating this - it's not as good as the original.

RANT - Columbus Circle

A curiously dated flick - set in the current day but featuring a low-key crew and an even lower-key plot.

The main character, played by Selma Blair, is a wealthy agoraphobic who has not stepped out of her apartment on Columbus Circle for twenty years.

The neighbor from across the hall is murdered one night, and that brings the police and a host of other disturbances to Blair's life.

But as the characters add their limited weight, the ordinary plot weighs it all down, and it ends up like a ninety-minute episode of Law and Order, and those are two-a-penny.

REVIEW - Men in Black 3

Have we really seen two of these before?

As we came out of the theater, I said to Mrs P "it's funny how the big budget and all those fancy effects somehow add up to nothing". 

Yes, it's choc full of titter-ful material, but the sum of the parts just doesn't add up to much.

Will Smith is very good, eclipsed only by Jermaine Clement (Flight of the Conchords) as the fabulous Boris The Monster.

We made the mistake of seeing it in 3D - another waste of technology and uncomfortable glasses.

But, the plot doesn't matter, the humor is mostly slapstick, and MIB3 didn't add anything over 1 or 2.

REVIEW - The Samaritan

It's a pleasure to see Samuel L Jackson in something that doesn't require he wear an eyepatch and start ordering around dipsticks dressed in superhero outfits.

In this he's just released from twenty-five years in prison, trying to go straight. Unsurprisingly, that doesn't work out, and he gets embroiled in a scheme hatched by his ex-partner.

That "scheme" is a grift, called The Samaritan.

Against his better judgement, Jackson plays along, but the whole film is a bit lacking in pace.

It's made in an older film noir style, and wasn't quite enough to keep me captive.

REVIEW - The Cabin in the Woods

Billed as, and starts as a generic horror movie - a group of five decide to head on out of town to a remote, deserted cabin for the weekend. 

But the first few minutes of the film are set in a CIA-like facility where everyone's dressed in white shirts and black ties, and when the group set off for their weekend, another CIA-type is watching their house.

There are some saving graces for this film: 

1. It has some serious actors: Richard Jenkins (The Visitor) and Bradley Whitford (West Wing)

2. It knows when it's poking fun at itself: one creature is listed in the credits as "Fornicus, Lord of Bondage and Pain".

The fact that there's a whole organization of CIA types watching this on CCTV, even betting on the outcome, tends to undermine - in a good way - the cliched events that unfold, like when the group is playing "truth or dare" (#1 on the list of things NOT to do when you're in a deserted cabin in the woods) and the cellar door pops open and they go down to investigate (#2 on the list, etc), and then one of them reads aloud from a Latin book they find in the cellar (#3 on the list ..)

From there, the film either descends into the same old territory covered by a thousand other horror flicks, or ascends into the campy, fun-poke you might be looking for.

One scene epitomizes that camp-ness: 

... As it breaks from the "action" to the team watching it all .... when one woman objects that she hadn't won the prize despite picking "Zombies" as the creatures that would first make an appearance. "No, 'Zombies' are entirely different to 'Zombie Redneck Torture Family', just like 'Elephants' are different to 'Elephant Seals'".

And another, as one "CIA" controller looks on at the developing scene, pulls a lever and says "Engaging pheromone mist".

I've got one of those on order from Amazon.

REVIEW - Pacific Catch

It's strange that while Japanese food - sushi or otherwise - is so different from most other kinds of food, that each Japanese restaurant has the same menu as virtually every Japanese restaurant.

While I knew therefore, that going into Pacific Catch I would see the Edamame, ceviche, calamari, spicy tuna and California rolls, tempura and so on, the restaurant mixed in a tasty selection of Thai and Latin dishes. So much so, that I wouldn't categorize this as a sushi place at all.

To be fair,  they advertise as a "Fresh fish grill" rather than a hard-core sushi place, so I guess I shouldn't have been surprised.

But .... and this is a big "but" .... the net result was unsatisfactory.

The place sounded, and felt like a busy strip-mall restaurant, part of a chain, and lacking most of the factors that would make this a serious downtown experience.

It's hard to put that down to one or two things - it basically all added up to a negative. 

My coconut shrimp appetizer was OK (not much zing), and  Korean barbecue bowl with marinated skirt steak, seasoned cucumber, shredded omelette, daikon sprouts, shredded nori and Korean BBQ sauce was good. Pavey's Hawaiian Poke (sushi grade ahi tuna in a sesame-soy marinade and spicy seasonings with wonton crisps) was good, but her spicy salmon & albacore roll topped with tobiko, green onion, sriracha (don't ask me what that is) aioli and eel sauce wasn't spicy enough. They were out of her first choice, which was the spicy tuna, but nevertheless, the girl's gotta have her spice!

I'll  have to keep going in my quest to find somewhere in San Francisco that properly matches Blowfish Sushi.

RAVE - The Dictator

Sasha Baron Cohen is one of those people it's natural to love and hate. Who knows if he's a great dinner guest or husband, anyone with that much bile in their comedy just has to be a nasty piece of work in some part of their life.

But it's good to put those considerations to one side when watching a movie like The Dictator. If you consider even one of the jokes about race, religion, physical characteristics, terrorism, children, or sex to be offensive, chances are it will ruin the whole experience.

I'd heard in one review how you could hear a pin drop as the first of those jokes came out, and it was only as the film developed that people found it possible to laugh. There was no such breaking in period required last night, as the audience took all Cohen had to offer, and laughed themselves silly.

Haffaz Alladeen is the wacky dictator of the oil-rich African nation of Waadeya. But not so wacky that he's at a loss for words when the situation allows for some healthy criticism of American politics. 

When addressing the United Nations council, Alladeen extolls the virtue of his dictatorship by telling the UN "Just think, if you had a dictatorship in America, you'd be able to give your closest friends senior positions in government; you'd be able to reward the bad judgement of business people by forgiving them when they messed up, even giving them millions of dollars to do it all again; you'd be able to put people of one color into prison without anyone complaining ....." 

Surprise, surprise, all of these things are done in America.

RAVE - Le Colonial

Having been here a couple times before - most notable a New Years Eve party that disintegrated into an exercise in drunk dodging - it was a pleasure to sit down for a relaxed dinner with one of my close friends from England, and Mrs Page.

Le Colonial certainly looks the part. A grand entrance up a stone staircase, through a palm court into the main dining room is probably San Francisco's best attempt at Elegant.

The mostly Vietnamese menu is good, if not exactly fabulous. It would be churlish to put down the food when the atmosphere is so good. So I won't.

When you have company as good and as talkative as these two, one could argue you don't even need food.

RAVE - Dry Creek Kitchen, Healdsburg

Once you get over the fact that Healdsburg is impossibly twee - perhaps not quite so as Yountville - you have to admit that its restaurants are definitely worth the drive.

And so, Saturday lunch saw us in The Dry Creek Kitchen. 

It was a perfect day out, weather-wise, so we sat on the veranda, sipping our Sauvignon Blanc and Gewurtztraminer while digging into excellent Charcuterie plates, followed by pan-roasted Scottish Salmon, spring chicken "picnic style", and Wagyu beef mini-burgers.

This was all after a detour through Mill Valley, to attend Mrs Page's business mentor's Wild Horse charity for Laotian children. 

Suffice it to say that standing around listening to a teen choir, followed by lunch in the sun is a recipe for sleep, which is how we wasted the evening.

RAVE - Ellendales, Nashville

I'm here at Opreyland, in Nashville, Tennessee, just to top up my revulsion for country music for a week, and do some business at the same time. 

When colleague David and I invited a couple of customers out to dinner, our fears were where we'd end up having our "meat with three types of cheese poured on top", which appears to be what passes for haute cuisine around these here parts. 

But wait, we were recommended to a classic, old house (100 years, but still older than most buildings in Nashville) with a classic, old restaurant and a classic, old menu.

It was definitely meat-centric, with lamb chops, steak, and pork medallions, but it was intelligently prepared - not fried, or cheesed-up - and served up with lashings of genuine Southern hospitality.

Our server turned out to be a singer in a country band with a new record contract. Whether they make it will determine whether she'll still be serving at Ellendales this time next year. Look out for The Barrel Jumpers.

RANT - Bouche

This restaurant sooo disappointed us. It's received glowing reviews since it opened a few months ago, but in my opinion those reviewers just saw in it what they wanted to see.

First, it's in a horrible location, right next door to the Tunnel Top bar on Bush Street, almost on top of the sleazy massage parlors below at the tunnel's entrance.

Second, it's tiny. That in itself shouldn't be a problem. But you push through the people sat at the downstairs bar, and go upstairs to 8 or 9 tightly-packed tables bereft of any light or atmosphere. That upstairs section seems so flimsy, that every time one of the staff used the stairs our table wobbled and creaked.

That would all have been OK if the food was as good as this French chef is alleged to be.

My duck confit starter had to be hunted under the salad with a microscope. When I did find it, it tasted fine, but there was only enough to whet the appetite. Pavey's sauted squid was only fair, and drew no gasps of delight when she ate it.

We both had the lamb shoulder, which tasted fine but left a hole where a satisfied experience should have been. The side order of spring onions looked like they had been dug up and dumped on the plate; and were a pain to eat.

We both felt cheated, and therefore had desserts, neither of which fulfilled the promise the "exciting chef, direct from France" could and should have delivered.

I rarely, if ever comment on the price. But all of this for $170, and we felt like we had overpaid and under-eaten. A rare experience for a restaurant in California, and not one that we intend revisiting.

RAVE - Australian Financial Tips

A piece of sobering advice on the state of the European and American financial markets comes from this pair of Australians, as always posing as respectable Europeans.

It seems like only yesterday we were having fun with the mule-riding, homemade-helmet wearing criminals of the Ned Kelly variety, so this commentary from a couple of those in rented suits is a mostly too-late warning of what financial borrowing has done to us all.

And if that's all too much for you, rest assured there are still Australian pundits like Chopper still around to offer advice to the working men and women in search of a handy bit of compensation.

RANT - 21 Jump Street

I never saw the original 21 Jump Street, the 1987 film starring Johnny Depp. Maybe that helped. Maybe it doesn't matter.

Certainly, this 2012 version doesn't matter much.

High school pals Jonah Hill and Channing Tatum graduate, join the police and wind up as bicycle-riding, city park patrolling boys in blue.

Their youth and new-found jobs, together with their long-standing ineptitude make them perfect candidates to be placed undercover, charged with infiltrating a drug ring operating in a school.

This was plain unfunny.

RANT - The Darkest Hour

Thanks to a thoroughly implausible plot - but more likely the Russian funding for this movie* - two internet start-up guys are in Moscow to see their killer idea stolen by a two-timing Russian "businessman". 

Aside from the opening scene reminding me never to fly Aeroflot, aliens make it an even worse trip for our American friends by invading. Heaven knows why they invaded Moscow - it must have reminded them of their own frigid planet.

Anyhow, the universe's dullest aliens - just sparks of electricity! - battle it out with a few kids and some Russian rebels who appear almost as magically as the aliens.

The film is notable only for featuring Joe Kinnaman - detective Stephen Holder from my favorite current TV series, AMC's The Killing - in a role where he looks a little more presentable.

Who cares what happens?

* but not enough funding to make decent aliens

REVIEW - The Deep Blue Sea

It's nineteen-forty-something. Rachel Weisz is the wife of a UK Judge, and she's having an affair with a Royal Air Force pilot.

The tension between the Judge, his mother, and his wife, is almost too much, making conversation at home even worse than it is when the mother is not around.

The film is unusually sequenced, with the apparent outcome shown in the first scene, then a bit of the affair, then the uncovering of the affair, then the relationship that led to the affair. 

Despite this cinematic juggling, the film is so dry it almost cracks. It's serious. It's slow. But it's rescued by having a great story, and featuring excellent performances by all.

Don't watch it if you don't like angst and a tortuous violin-led soundrack.

RANT - Travellers

A British film about four friends on a motorcycle adventure weekend.

They camp in a field and wake up in the morning to find an apparently abandoned caravan parked nearby. One of the friends has handily brought along suitable "adventure" gear - a rifle and a hunting knife. He tags the caravan with "Piky scum". 

"Pikey" is a UK slang term for "Traveler". After pointing out the graffiti artist has spelled "Piky" wrong, they spot the returning family of travelers and leg it.

Within a few minutes, one of the bikers is killed, another is captured and left tied up in the caravan, and then it all goes pear shaped.

It suffers from a total lack of budget, although I don't know what they would have spent money on. 

As it is, it aspires to be Southern Comfort, or Deliverance, but misses the mark by so far it seems a shame to have grouped this disappointment in with those classics.

REVIEW - 96 Minutes

It starts out with four teens in a car - two bangers who've hi-jacked it and two girls who came with the car. 

One of the girls has just been shot in the face by one of the guys. They're racing around avoiding the police, trying to find their way to a freeway, and arguing about whether to find medical help for the girl.

The shooter - a white sixteen year old jerk - is trying to get accepted into the other guy's black gang.

Then it dodges back and forth with their lives, and the day building up to car jacking - the guys are going to high school, about to graduate or flunk, the girls are in dismal relationships.

I kept hoping, in vain, that something would happen. In 96 minutes, nothing much does. Certainly nothing we've not seen before in a dozen movies.

REVIEW - Battleship

A US Navy fleet participating in maneuvers in and around Hawaii encounters a similarly gun-toting armada from Planet G. 

Rihanna's presence as Petty Officer Cora 'Weps' Raikes, and the fact that the whole mess is made courtesy of toy-maker Hasbro tells you where this film's heart is. And it doesn't fail to go there. 

The usually admirable Liam Neeson playing Admiral Shane, with his undisguised Irish accent, only caused me to ask "how does an Irishman get to be an Admiral in the US Navy?" Mind you, there may as well have been a pub full of Irishmen for all the professionalism of the Navy's, and everyone else's response to the alien invasion.

"Captain, that doesn't look like anything from this planet. I think we'll take one of the rubber dinghies over and climb on it to see what it is" just about sums up the laughable reaction to encountering the first alien ship.

Basically, Transformers at sea. A bit of a childish joke. No surprise there, seeing as Hasbro own Battleship: the game and Transformers: the toy. Shame they don't own Battleship: the decent script.

RAVE - Restaurant round-up

To those of you who bemoan the recent dearth of postings - GET A LIFE!

I've had people saying "what's up, why haven't you been out to eat lately?" just because I haven't posted reviews every couple of days.

To put your minds at rest, it's not because my recent Nutrisystem diet is hampering my style. It should be, but it isn't. If it's good enough for Charles Barkley, it's good enough for me. The fact that he's a fat, over-the-hill, ex basketball player might arguably put his needs a fair way off from mine. For example, I'm not an ex-basketball player.

But don't you worry. We have recently eaten at our perennial favorites: Foreign Cinema, Chez Papa, Anchor and Hope, Blowfish, and Bar Agricole. I rarely post my reviews of repeated visits to the same place, preferring instead to only post reviews of new places we visit.

With movie reviews, there just hasn't been much (if anything) worth seeing. Much as I'd love to rate Avengers or Wrath of The Titans, I have to be careful of my close friends and relatives who will stop inviting me out if I lay into those titles with two flaming swords and a silly hat on.

There, I've got a heart after all.

REVIEW - Piccino

Michael Bauer is the local God's Gift To Restaurant Reviewing, but contrary to his own opinion, he's not infallible.

And how do I know this? 

Because he thinks Piccino is wonderful, giving it his maximum three stars.

He also believes it "captures the spirit of the emerging (Dogpatch) neighborhood the way Nopa did a few years ago."

Now, I won't argue against Piccino capturing the spirit of Dogpatch, but as a biased local who could practically throw a decent-sized stone down the hill to the Dogpatch, I bemoan the desperately straight-laced clientele that I regularly see in Piccino.

And Bauer can stuff his three stars right where the sun don't shine, along with Piccino's overly-dry and crusty pizzas, puritanical salads, and miniscule plates of food too far from decadent to be of much interest.

Having said that, if you're hankering for a dry and crusty pizza, a puritanical salad, or a miniscule plate of non-decadent food, shoulder to shoulder with the City's Birkenstock-wearing finest, cut along to Piccino.

We did today, and had a couple of the aforementioned salads, a horrible glass of Rose and a thimble-full of espresso.

RANT - The Devil Inside

This starts out trying not to be your usual Exorcist movie, focusing on investigating the murder of three people by a woman while she was being exorcised. 

The investigation is being done by the woman's daughter who is making a documentary about the case.

Needless to say, there are the obligatory scenes of priestly mumbo-jumbo, and during one exorcism hey presto, the daughter herself gets possessed.

So, we've seen it all before, done more slickly and more professionally.

REVIEW - The Inbetweeners Movie

Hampered by the entirely predictable dialog, this film is further constrained by the UK TV series on which it's based.

Not that being a comedy series from the UK is any shame, but The Inbetweeners was one of those shows that got repetitive and unfunny after the second or third episode.

The plot - ha! - for this movie has the 4 boys celebrate their graduation from school by hitting Crete for 2 weeks' vacation. Cue endless jokes about sex and booze, booze and sex.

The fact that this was the "fastest-grossing live action comedy in UK box office history" is an indictment of so many British comedies and comedy-goers.

Laughter optional.

REVIEW - The Agression Scale

An apparently ultra-low budget "thriller" about a family moving into a new house in the country, and how they come to be vying with a brutal gang in pursuit of their boss's $500,000.

It jumps around a bit, switching from a fast-paced, no-sense series of killings with little explanation, to long, drawn-out coverage of the family move-in.

There's nothing to indicate the two threads are linked until a half-hour into the film, so it takes some patience.

All's going quiet and straightforward until the gang interrupts the family's move-in, which is where the fun begins.

Of course, it's handy that the 10-year old son has had "issues" and unbelievably is a small arms aficionado. Normally, you'd want to forcibly restrain him, but in this story he becomes somewhat of an asset.

All in all, OK for what it is, a bit of escapism with a couple of big plot holes. No different in that regard than half of Tom Cruise's films.

RAVE - Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

The audience at The Kabuki Theater was sooo appropriate for this story of a group of aging English people who retire to a crumbling hotel in Jaipur, India. 

It too was ancient.

This was a cute movie, perhaps a bit too cute. The humor was a bit predictable, with the elderly retirees turning their noses up at the squalor, the stench, the food, and the people in India. But the audience lapped it all up, with geriatric chuckles at every juncture.

However, I'm being churlish. Mrs. Page loved it, and that was enough for me.

But you can strike India off my list of ideal retirement spots.