RANT - The Dark Knight Rises

I wasn't exactly dragged kicking and screaming to see this, but I wasn't enthusiastic at the notion either.

To say I'm not a fan of juvenile comic books, and the overblown films made from them, would be an understatement as big as some of the explosions their directors seem to find unavoidable. 

And my dislike is not the product of a miserable disposition caused by advancing years or gout. Ever since I was 12 years old and my father owned a store that sold, among other things, newspapers and magazines, I used to work and hang out at the store reading every comic available. And even then, the ridiculousness of grown men who manage to render themselves unrecognizable to their closest friends simply by taking their glasses off was not lost on me.

So, with all of that prejudice weighing me down, I went to see The Dark Knight Rises.

With this kind of film, you're not really expecting, or looking for a complex story, or plot twists. Instead, the audience is waiting for pulsating action, cool effects, and sinister villains.

And so it was. So it ever was.

This was a mind-numbingly dull film, played at maximum volume with minimum subtlety. Clearly I'm not the target audience. The numbskull two rows back, who kept gasping at all the effects, and non-shocking turns - he and his pals were the target audience.

And they're welcome to this dud.

RAVE - Headhunters

Named for the lead character's job - a corporate headhunter, not a tribal one - this spins a story that is so original, so full of surprises, and so gripping, that it's bound to get an American remake - this original is in Norwegian.

Roger Brown is a headhunter who helps fund his expensive lifestyle by stealing art. That alone provides grounds for an inventive story. But the trouble he gets into when he tries to steal an alleged Reubens from the former CEO of a Dutch company, and the lengths he goes to in an attempt to get out of that trouble, all add to the depth and color of this film.

I'm nowhere near doing this film justice, but I don't want to give away any those turns and twists.

The fact that this is in Norwegian, with English subtitles, means just one thing - that most people will not see it. And that is a huge shame.

RAVE - Ame

I have to begin this by saying "Despite being a restaurant in a hotel ..." despite it being one of the better restaurants in one of the best hotels in town, The St. Regis. 

Well, I don't absolutely have to, but for many people, being a hotel restaurant would weigh heavily against Ame. 

But if you're in the mood for a date night, and Mrs Page was, this is one of the best places to conduct the required assignation.

Cocktails in the bar of the St. Regis, followed by dinner at Ame, go well with valet parking and the whole service thing going on there. It's good to be pampered every now and then.

Dinner was suitably excellent too.

I had the crudo - sashimi - with extra virgin olive oil, lemon and sea salt. Perhaps a little too simple, but inoffensive. Mrs Page had the raviolo of pheasant with petit ragout of sweetbreads, chanterelles and umbrian summer truffles, which was absolutely gorgeous. Then she had the broiled sake marinated alaskan black cod and shrimp dumplings in shiso broth which she described as "excellent". I tried the grilled NY strip steak with goat cheese and eggplant lasagna, basil scented squash puree and romesco sauce, which was very good if unnecessarily pre-sliced. Why do they do that?

A wonderful way to spend a Saturday evening. 

RAVE - Savages

There were problems with this Oliver Stone film, but all in all it was an enjoyable thriller.

Admittedly, it was no JFK or Wall Street, but the story was interesting, and the action was steady and solid enough to carry the thing.

Two friends living in Southern California grow the finest weed around. Ben's the botanist, Chon's the ex Navy Seal. They share their business and their girlfriend, Ophelia. All is going well until a Mexican drug gang muscles in on their action, kidnapping Ophelia to convince them to keep their side of the "partnership".

There are no surprises, no fast action, just a somewhat typical Oliver Stone measured pace. But the ending was a mess, like Stone couldn't make his mind up how to end the tale.

Benicio del Toro manages to achieve sinister, even with a hairdo like a dead badger, and John Travolta plays a bent cop with a whine and similarly non-Hollywood hair. His made him look like a fatter, older, whiter Tiger Woods.

RAVE - Central Kitchen

For a new place that's almost painfully hip, Central Kitchen is surprisingly good, with a lot of attention paid to the complex, flavorful ingredients rather than just having arty farty descriptions given to the dishes.

In fact, the menu was missing any arty or farty items. Instead, plain English was all that was needed to describe each of our tasty, carefully composed courses.

My adorable partner chose the squid, avocado, celery, and pine nut mousse. I went for the plain sounding, but fabulously rich ham, greens, herbs, marinated bread, and white cheddar. Then we shared an in-between course of lamb belly, cumin, eggplant, basil, and salsa verde, and each had the hen, roasted and confit, nettle puree, and crispy potatoes. Just because it was our first time there, and we wanted to see what else they could do, we had the excellent lemon cake, nectarine, yogurt mousse, and almonds.

Central Kitchen almost made us wish we still lived on that block, because the locals now have that plus Universal Cafe, Blowfish Sushi, and Flour and Water within just a few yards.

Despite its Mission location, Central Kitchen doesn't appear to be aiming for a budget-conscious crowd. An eighty dollar bottle of Vouvray pushed dinner up to $250 for the two of us, but I'll be itching to return there nonetheless.

REVIEW - Shopping for clothes in an Indian store

Summer is time for the annual Indian wedding clothes Mrs Page needs to buy for her cousins' weddings in England.

This warrants a post for many reasons:

1. To an Indian girl - and Mrs P is Indian born in the UK, living in the USA, that most complicated of women - if someone is not an actual sister, they're a cousin, or an aunt. I've tried to explain that someone's not really your cousin unless they're your parent's siblings' kids, but apparently the family tree works differently for Indians.

2. An Indian wedding, even - or maybe especially - one in England, calls for several days of celebrations, with several parties and naturally, several changes of loud clothes. Maybe that should be .. several loud changes of clothes, but either way if you live in San Francisco it requires traipsing down University Avenue in Berkeley to see what's available.

3. To a white, adult male, married or not, every store looks like an explosion in a paint factory, caused by glitter grenades. And it's downright impossible to tell one outfit from the rest when it's folded among hundreds of clear, plastic bags on a shelf. 

4. There's no such thing as a sticker price. Or at least, nothing that anyone takes a blind bit of notice of. I was given my warning as we pulled up at the first store. "Don't you get involved in any discussion about price. I'll do that", I was told. Therefore, in full knowledge that she was going to spend several hundred dollars per outfit, she explained to the first assistant "I'm looking for something around two hundred dollars; something bright, something modern". Now, having already admitted to suffering the dual curse of being white and male, I have to say that EVERYTHING in the store was BRIGHT, and EVERYTHING looked to be the same style. I know I'll lose that part of the argument, but I may as well start out with that position. Regarding the alleged sticker price, or absence thereof, she was shown a saree with a price tag of seventeen hundred dollars, and the shop assistant said "that one will be seven hundred and ninety five". What's the point in wasting money on price tags if everyone immediately quotes a lower price. I'm not fooled by that, and I hope that Mrs P - oh, wait, she's fallen for it.

5. When the assistants - for no shopper in these parts gets just one assistant - start tearing open the plastic bags, only to be met with stares and shakes of the head from her ladyship, and words like "No, I want something for the evening reception", they all respond with "Oh, you want something NICE?" I thought "nice" was one of those unspoken prerequisites, but clearly it signaled "Oh, you intend spending more than two hundred dollars".

6. Anyhow, cutting to the chase - which wasn't much of a chase seeing as it lasted nearly four hours, and was punctuated after two hours by me returning to our car for a well earned rest -  madame exited the store with two lavish outfits, suitably modified to fit in all the right places.

All I can say is, it's a bloody good job she looks so good in them.

REVIEW - Lockout

I like Guy Pearce. Mrs Page does not. And the reason is the same. He makes edgy (Mrs P calls them "weird") movies.

There you have it.

But I could have made my case more easily if this was a standout film, weird or otherwise.

Set in 2075, Pearce is a prisoner framed for espionage against the USA, but offered the opportunity for freedom if he rescues the president's daughter who is being held hostage at a prison in space.

As I typed that sentence, I realized the plot sounded far-fetched, even stupid.

Anyhow, in an all too familiar example of racial stereotyping, the first two prisoners broken out of suspended animation just happen to be nutters, and Glaswegians!!

Meanwhile, Pearce is whisked via space shuttle - that's handily already gunning its engines on the launchpad - to the most expensive prison in the universe.

Aside from the many, many questions raised during this film, most of which concerned the illogicality of much of the story, one that stood out for me was "how can they have so much shooting, and so many explosions, on a spacecraft?"

And another, general observation: this film uses other lapses in physics not seen since the Flash Gordon TV episodes from the 1950s.

RAVE - Boomerang: Travels in the New Third World, by Michael Lewis

Another recommendation, this one from Peter Weston, and another vacation read, was this thoroughly enjoyable review of just how far up the creek we are in the financial canoe.

Peter is one of those friends who manages to have an intelligent and often violently funny opinion on virtually any topic. This leads to hugely enjoyable, but all too rare (he lives in the UK) face to face meetings, and occasional trading of observations, gossip, and jokes by text.

This book covers many of those news items that, if you're like me, just prove that first reactions like "how on earth did someone with that little experience get catapulted into a position where they could influence the spending of billions of dollars on worthless junk?" are so often proved worryingly accurate.

Topics include:

Wall Street on The Tundra. The stock market rennaisance, and bomb, in Iceland, by a nation of fishermen who were absolutely convinced they were ideally placed, and possessed of divine right to set up a market, and sell slices of what proved to be suicidally bad investments in futures, derivatives, and other toxic financial instruments.

And They Invented Math. The similarly ill-advised positions taken by a nation of tax dodgers - i.e. Greece - and the swift plunge they consequently experienced into the European financial toilet.

Ireland's Original Sin. On the back of newly-minted European Community investment in what became the largest road network in the most pointless of locations - Ireland, this nation of hod carriers have built a countryside full of housing estates, office blocks, and pubic buildings that no-one wants or can afford to buy. Includes reference to that fabulous quote from Bertie Ahern, Irish prime minister: "Lehmans was a world investment bank. They had testicles everywhere".

The Secret Lives of Germans. The curious case of the Germans, who despite their financial probity and - maybe because of - their predilection for fecal rather than fiscal debate, now find themselves having to fund the mistakes of other EC members.

Too Fat To Fly. An examination of the parlous state of the State - and City - finances in the USA. The fact that I live in the number one financially buggered State, California, fills me with nothing but dread.

Ah well, it was fun being able to laugh at this excellently written situation report.

REVIEW - For The Win, by Cory Doctorow

Recommended to me by good friend, fellow music fan and ardent but - as this book revealed - not entirely reliable book recommender, Jon Larner, this was one of my vacation reads. 

The recommendation came when we discussed the great Makers, another Doctorow title I'd read. That book was a genuinely great story, about technology and invention within the context of a smelly economy.

Jon enthused about Doctorow's other books, particularly For The Win, which used a story about the mechanics, participants, and economics of MMORPGs (Massively Multiplasyer Online Role Playing Games). As Doctorow himself describes the book, "For the Win connects the dots between the way we shop, the way we organize, and the way we play, and why some people are rich, some are poor, and how we seemed to get stuck there".

What I didn't know was that Doctorow pitched this at "young adults", which epithet covers a wide audience, not exactly perfectly describing yours truly.

While I learned a lot about the dynamics and politics of these games, most of that was arguably useless, and certainly un-interesting, at least to me. I thought it would have been more relevant, as I like and play most games, but somehow the level of detail Doctorow covered proved tedious.

Whatever, I look forward to a discussion with Jon, armed with a +10 demon drencher, and a bagful of rocks, runes, and rubies.

RAVE - John Mayall at Yoshi's Oakland

A night of bliss, as I worshiped at the feet of one of my all time idols. Even Pavey's non-attendance - some BS corporate event apparently - didn't dampen my enthusiasm, nor did it stop me getting goose-bumps for most of the show.

For those of you who've never heard of him - i.e. pretty much all of my family and friends - John Mayall is generally regarded as the Godfather of British blues music. Throughout his fifty-plus year career, Mayall has been known for introducing some of the best musicians around. 

John Mayall's Bluesbreakers have at one time or another featured Eric Clapton and Jack Bruce, who went on to form Cream, Peter Green, John McVie and Mick Fleetwood who became Fleetwood Mac, Andy Fraser formed Free, and Mick Taylor joined the Rolling Stones.

There was no chance of doing any stage diving last night, as anyone who attempted it would have been impaled on the walking sticks half the audience seemed to be sporting. I felt sprightly and youthful with all the sixty and seventy year old grey pony tails on display, and all of those must have felt similarly sprightly at Mayall's eighty year old rocker antics.

RANT - Assassin's Bullet

The best thing about watching movies on demand, is not that you often get to see stuff you wouldn't normally find at your local multiplex, or that you can stop and start it to view it around your schedule. No, the best thing about watching movies on demand is that you can congratulate yourself on not wasting your time traipsing downtown to see something that's best fast-forwarded. 

Like this dismal offering.

Christian Slater - I should've guessed - is a semi-retired CIA operative lazing around in Sofia, Bulgaria. Donald Sutherland is the useless local CIA station chief. Timothy Spall is a boring psychiatrist. 

Somehow, the three bumble around with a night-club dancer who moonlights as an assassin. 

That's about it. There's no plot worth explaining, no action worth describing, and no art worth reviewing.

It's all a bit like Slater's movie career. Never amounted to much, and this perfectly illustrates that.

RAVE - Bora Bora and Taha'a

Well, what else am I likely to post than a RAVE review of our ten days in Tahiti?

But I'll stop short of calling it Paradise, like so many other vacation reviews I've seen.

True, Paradise would have to feature many of the basic elements of these islands: gorgeous weather, outstanding views in every direction, and the water (especially the crystal clear, warm sea water). 

It would also have to present plenty of laying around in the sun, reading opportunities. The blissful peace, with Tahiti being so far from anything likely to interrupt that laying-around-and-reading time, chalked another mark on the plus side.

The main cost of all that privacy is the time and effort involved in getting there. A flight to LA, then eight hours overnight to Tahiti, followed by a forty-five minute flight to Bora Bora, left us with a half hour boat ride to The Sofitel resort on the other side of Bora Bora. Most of the first day of five at The Sofitel was spent with me barely opening my eyes, let alone my Kindle. After that first day though, each horizontal minute by the pool, or on the pristine beach, or even on the deck of our overwater bungalow was not a minute mis-spent.

On day six, we had the half hour boat trip back to the airport (the most relaxing airport experience I've ever had, with the airstrip occupying a tiny sticky-out piece of the island), then a fifteen minute flight to Raiatea - the second largest island after Tahiti itself - and another half hour boat ride to the island of Le Taha'a. This was our home for the next five days, and was perfect in almost every way. Almost.

For being part of French Polynesia, it's a shame the islanders only got the French language as part of the deal, and not the cooking skills to go with the words they inherited. The lackluster meals could only be forgiven by remembering everything needs to get to the kitchen from somewhere far away. 

It would be churlish - consistent, but still churlish - of me to hold that against a place that otherwise would be right up there at the top of my list of places to spend one week out of every three or four for the rest of my days.