RAVE - Cotogna

We've had this restaurant on our "gotta go" list for a couple months now, but it's always booked several weeks in advance. So it was a real surprise to find a table just a day in advance, for a reasonable 8.30pm.

Having got there, I was sitting on the fence with my verdict until we'd eaten. My first impression was slightly negative - it was packed and noisy, and in my view - literally - poorly lit. Add to that the fact that the menus and wine list were indistinctly printed on brown paper, and it was virtually impossible for an old man like me to read them. Of course, Mrs Page thought exactly the opposite - that Cotogna was warm and inviting. So, we both waited for our Tuscan liver crostini and Asian pear, prosciutto & smoked almonds, followed by a shared Bistecca alla Fiorentina.

The verdict was liver-y, game-y, and humungously fabulous.

We adored our appetizers, and the steak - the first Florentine-style steak we'd had since spending a couple summers in and around Florence a few years ago - was absolutely perfect. As I was eating it I could just hear my brother Lawrence arguing that he'd rather have it cooked more, but our medium rare was just perfect. 

So, yet another reason not to go to North Beach if you want great Italian food.

RAVE - Cloud Atlas

We've just seen either: 

1. One of the greatest films ever made, or

2. One of the worst films ever made

Either way, it was a remarkable film.

It has several concurrent stories, including a ship's voyage in the mid 1800s; two composers collaborating on writing music; a publisher trying to escape from forced retirement in a rest home; a tribe living on a pacific island; a writer investigating a crime at a nuclear power station; and a futuristic Korean capital featuring a soon to be rebel who will become a Goddess. And all of this with the same actors playing one or more characters in each of those stories.

Maybe it's no surprise that it seems to take forever to tell all those intertwining stories - the film is around three hours long.

The characters and the acting are sensational.

I struggled to find connections between the content of the film and the alleged story about a world searching for energy, but that didn't seem to detract from my enjoyment of this engrossing film.

REVIEW - Out The Door

One of the inelegantly-named offshoots from the revered Slanted Door team, which also lists Heaven's Dog, The Academy Cafe, and Moss Room as its sister restaurants.

This was the Pacific Heights' instance, and proved to be a much better experience than the horrible Heaven's Dog, or the full o' tourists Academy Cafe. Was it as good as the Moss Room, which I've found classy and laid back, if not exactly a boundary pusher?

Once you get past the cafeteria look and feel of the place - something that seems to go with the Vietnamese street-food roots of most of the group's properties (even Slanted Door) - and get to concentrate on the food, all is good.

We had - or should I say Holly, Pavey, and Tom "had", because they shared their meals in true family style, while I plotted my own route through the menu - a great meal. Typically, I ended up choosing pretty much the same as they had: the shaken beef, eggplant and rice, with the crispy salt and pepper squid, grilled pineapple, jalapenos, and toasted garlic, which was as good as any squid I've had.

Their hue dumplings, mung bean, sesame, scallion oil, spicy soy, and spring rolls, shrimp, pork shoulder, mint, and spicy peanut sauce looked great, but I was on a strict no share diet to the bitter end.

That end wasn't bitter at all. Out The Door is an unpretentious slice of Viet Francisco that, with the kind of company I had last night, is a place I'd want to go back to time and again.

REVIEW - Take Shelter

A construction worker starts having hallucinations, imagining thunderstorms, twisters, huge flocks of birds circling the sky. Then the dreams start: his dog attacks him, he has a car crash, and each time he wakes up in a sweat. So nothing has actually happened - all these portentous goings-on are in his mind.

Then he decides to clean up and extend an underground storm shelter in his garden.

At the same time he reads library books dealing with mental illness, and starts talking to his doctor and a counselor.

Things get worse. They always do in this kind of film. There's a certain inevitability about the need to pile on the suffering, forcing someone who's already approaching the brink to stamp on the accelerator and go plummeting to the bottom of a cliff in a fiery explosion.

I usually hate movies like this: ones that have a series of ominous events that mostly turn out to be in the mind of some troubled individual.

But is our hero correct in his preparations for an imminent cataclysmic event?

I wouldn't go as far as agreeing with the poster declaring this "Stunning. An American masterpiece", but it's definitely worth seeing.

RAVE - Argo

I don't know which is more amazing - that Argo is based on a true story, or that it's taken over thirty years to tell this story. Either way, it's a cracking story.

It's set in 1980, just after the Iranian revolution had ousted the Shah. Demonstrations were happening all over Tehran, and one such demonstration at the US Embassy threatened the lives of everyone inside. While most Embassy workers fretted about what to do, six managed to escape to the nearby home of the Canadian ambassador, where they hid out for over two months while American officials dreamed up various schemes to get them out. 

Ben Affleck plays a CIA extraction expert, and together with a genuine Hollywood producer and director, puts together a fake film project. Affleck then enters Iran posing as a film producer to meet the six embassy staff whom he enlists as location scouts for his "film".

Argo starts with a brief history of the troubles in Iran, and the various interferences run by US Governments and the CIA. With such a checkered history, and the benefit of hindsight, it seems a pretty dangerous job being an embassy worker.

The tension is non-stop, with the chances of the lone Affleck plucking the nervous team of embassy workers from the clutches of the heavily armed revolutionaries seeming very distant.

In the end, this is an exciting revelation of recent history.

RAVE - Seven Psychopaths

A film with a great story, and an original one at that.

It's a comedy and a thriller, with lots of killing - well, how can you have a film about seven psychopaths without there being lots of psychopathic action?

Colin Farrell plays a screenwriter; Christopher Walken and Sam Rockwell play his kooky friends who make their living by kidnapping dogs, then turning them in for the reward money. 

Things go pear-shaped when they kidnap the dog of gangster Woody Harrelson. 

With people of this caliber in the main roles, it's maybe somewhat of a surprise that Sam Rockwell blows everyone away with his role. He has the best character, the best lines, and he delivers them better than anyone else delivers theirs.

There are some really funny moments, especially during the gratuitously bloody shoot-outs.

The film inescapably covers Tarantino territory, but has a funnier, less sinister feel. 

REVIEW - For Greater Glory: The True Story of Cristiada

Mark me down as someone who knew nothing at all about this war. 

The Cristeros War (1926-1929) - so I've now learned - was waged by the people of Mexico against the atheistic Mexican government.

A few years after the Mexican Revolution, the relationship between the Mexican government and the Catholic Church deteriorated as President Calles began strictly enforcing the anti-clerical laws written into the Mexican Constitution of 1917. These laws forbade priests from criticizing the government, and from wearing their religious "uniforms" in public, justifying the penalties by saying they were protecting the freedom of the people and holding true to the principles of La Revolution.

In response to those measures, civil organizations protested the new laws at first by peaceful means. The LNDR (League for Religious Liberty) was foremost among those organizations. 

Met with even sterner rules, people across the country took up arms. These men and women became known as Cristeros.

Starring Andy Garcia, an almost skeletal Peter O'Toole, and the not-at-all skeletal Eva Longoria, the film tells an interesting story about a country that one always thinks of as deeply observant of its religious roots.

It's a shame that observance doesn't extend to the violent drug gangs that infest parts of the country now.

If pushed to be hyper-critical, it's a long film - two and a half hours long - and I'd say the film veered a bit toward the self-righteous. But I'll approach the topic carefully when we're in Cabo at Christmas.

RAVE - The Raven

On October 7, 1849, Edgar Allan Poe was found, near death, on a park bench in Baltimore, Maryland. 

The last days of his life remain a mystery.

So goes the introduction to this rollicking thriller featuring John Cusack as poet and author Edgar Allan Poe.

I remember having a drink at the bar with John Cusack, at a show in a mostly derelict Chinese restaurant in East LA, turned for the night into a club called God Save The Queen. I forget the low-quality music being performed there, but I remember vividly the elegantly dressed guy dancing with a teddy bear, and of course a slightly tipsy Cusack.

Anyhow, it's good to see the classy Cusack in this role, as a part-time American Sherlock Holmes, although Holmes was of course fictional, and didn't appear until 1887, nearly forty years after Poe died.

At school I read Poe's Murders in the Rue Morgue, and The Pit and The Pendulum, both of which are depicted in this film. The latter had plenty of impact on the imagination of a twelve-year old, and that story still comes to mind whenever I rig up a massive axe to swing from the ceiling.

Back to the plot: Poe is called in by the police when a series of brutal murders are discovered, each of which copies the methods depicted in Poe's writings.

The film is nowhere near as dry as a classic Sherlock Holmes story, nor as pop-video-ish as those horrible Robert Downey Jr and Jude Law versions. And those differences are what make this film.

RAVE - Gossip, at Treasure Island Music Festival

Thank heavens for Gossip.

I say that because the rest of the line-up was decidedly ordinary:

Los Campesinos, an unlikely-named crew from the UK that tried its best on the smaller stage of the two.

El Radio Fantastique, who were set up on a fancy, barn-like stall and pumped out a feelgood style of country jazz that had the small crowd gathered around dancing and er, feeling good.

Divine Fits, with their unimpressive set that seemed to drift off into unimportant and unoriginal territory.

Best Coast, who proved yet again their unoriginal spin on 60s California sounds.

M83, as above, but this time with an unoriginal French spin on beefed-up 70s Jean Michel Jarre and Rick Wakeman. A waste of all those fancy lights if you ask me.

Which brings us to Gossip.

Beth Ditto is for those people who think Adele is just too thin. 

This is the second time we've seen Gossip, and I guess like all women with strong voices, you wonder how long they can keep that up. The band thumps and bumps with her, delivering bass- and drum-heavy rhythms that get everybody moving.

Which is all just as well, on a weekend that every year seems to make this festival, in this particular location, like listening to your boom box on an ice-berg in the Arctic Sea.

RAVE - Hotel Yountville

If you're wondering what we used as our base for this weekend of good, not great dining in Napa, it was Hotel Yountville.

Aside from the sky-high cost of a "standard" king room - priced perhaps according to it being Napa's peak harvest season - the hotel was perfect. Well, steady on there Philip. Perfect? As in, "nothing whatsoever to criticize"?

Alright, aside from the staff starting their clean up routine around the hotel just a little bit before we were ready to hear them, the place was spacious and luxurious, the staff was attentive and always there when you wanted them, the food - we had breakfast in the garden - was delightful, the bar served killer cocktails, and the location was ideal.

It allowed us to walk to most of our stopping off places in Yountville, and was just what we needed to fill up the trunk with purchases from Dean and Deluca, Mumm Champagne, Duckhorn, and Round Pond wineries.

So yes, it was perfect.

REVIEW - Ad Hoc, Yountville

Sheesh.

Three restaurants, and not a RAVE among them.

Ad Hoc's ordinary REVIEW was the biggest surprise of the three. It's one of a growing number of places in and around San Francisco that burn so brightly that it's really hard to get a reservation. Ad Hoc is always fully booked two months in advance, so you almost need to get a reservation then plan your weekend visit to Napa, rather than the other way around.

Which was why we got this reservation for brunch, which may or may not have resulted in us being under-whelmed by the experience.

First thing to remember is that Ad Hoc offers just one three course menu per each meal. Seeing as this was brunch, our menu offered:

- Pattiserie selection, from Bouchon bakery

- Sausage, Canadian bacon, eggs, potatoes, and mushrooms

- Vanilla mousse with apple and peach

Now, on the one hand that sounds like a fairly ordinary meal - a little bit more inventive than Denny's, but hardly Michelin-starred greatness.

On the other hand, it was beautifully prepared, piping hot, and fresh as one could wish for.

What surprised us more than anything was the overall downwardly mobile nature of the place. It was little more than a regular breakfast place, with many a reverse baseball-capped diner in sight. Pavey will be having dinner at Ad Hoc with some friends in December, so we'll see if they do better then.

It just goes to show that the Napa air can get to everyone, infusing diners and restaurant staff alike with a superior - perhaps justifiable - view of the area.

REVIEW - Red Wood, at Yountville

This was another relaxing, while not especially memorable Saturday night out at Redd's Italian restaurant - come on, it's a pizza and pasta joint - in Napa's Disney-like town of Yountville.

I say Disney-like, because it's a little too-perfect a spin on Napa. 

In a totally un-Tuscan style, there's not a blade of grass out of place in Yountville, and the many restaurants and wineries in the town fit that slightly artificial vibe. That's not to say that a bit of perfection is ever to be sniffed at, it's just that when cracks in that image ever appear, they're all too obvious.

There was nothing at all wrong with the food. However, Pavey said her pasta was not quite as good as last night's at Tra Vigne. Aside from that, I had chicken liver toast - not as good as the excellent Bar Agricole's preparation - and a pizza. Forgive me for sounding churlish, but with so many pizzerias in San Francisco, I can't get that excited about yet another prosciutto, arugula, grana padano, and black pepper plate.

Our server was affected, in a way many servers have become - a little too much detail on which end of the garden offers up the best vegetables, what the chef was wearing when he pounded the pizza base, and so on. That trait was in evidence at all three of our restaurants this weekend.

So, it is what it is. A victim perhaps of Yountville's high standards yielding too many plates with too similar components, all cooked in too similar a way, and all sold with a too similar condescension.

REVIEW - Tra Vigne, St. Helena

We started our weekend in Napa by trying out a restaurant in St. Helena, which was supposed to be a sophisticated Italian but turned out to be a bit of a zoo.

It's a large place, with a few entrances and several dining areas, inside and outside, upstairs and down. This, and it being Friday night, contrived to make it seem like we were bursting into a fight scene in an Italian opera. Alright, I doubt there are many fight scenes in opera, even Italian ones. But if there were, they'd be just like Tra Vigne on a Friday night.

The food was better than okay: the hand made Mozzarella, grilled bruschetta with olive oil was simple and good, while the Maltagliati Verde: herb infused pasta, slow cooked pozzi ranch lamb and sangiovese wine sugo was, according to Mrs P, "wonderful", while my smoked and braised beef short ribs were falling-off-the-bone goodness.

But the overall experience was less than spectacular. The service was courteous and complete, but it still felt like a glorified pizzeria.

One piece of good news was that cost-wise, it was equivalent to a glorified pizzeria, so nothing was lost.

RAVE - Maccabees at The Independent

We learned earlier this week that Maccabees is yet another word Americans manage to pronounce differently than us English. 

There I was, perfectly happy with my pronunciation of Mack-a-bees, when my local expert on Jewish affairs said it should be pronounced as Mac-aah-bees.

Aside from being terrible at using those phonetic thingamys you find in dictionaries, I'm guilty of going with my first pronunciation.

I must have spent too long in the indie music desert of San Francisco, because no-one I know has heard of them, despite their having released three CDs so far. And it looked like that unawareness was true of the rest of the city too, as The Independent was only half full.

Mind you, the support from Oakland's Mwahana must've kept people away in droves. They were a tuneless, mediocre outfit attempting to channel Pink Floyd's Arnold Layne days with synthesizer-driven psychedelia. My wife / comedienne said that when they announced they had one more song it was like being stuck at the airport and hearing you're flight's been delayed another 2 hours.

I can't imagine what possessed the Maccabees to pick this crowd of no-hopers as their support act, but at last our boys appeared on stage at 10.30pm and blew the place apart. They were sharp, lively, exciting and - unusual for a set containing only two songs we'd heard before - memorable.

In fact, these relative newcomers were miles better than last night's New Order.

Perhaps after this show, the word will get around a bit.

RAVE - New Order at Fox Theater Oakland

This is the third time I've seen New Order live, and each time was a very different experience.

The first time, at the Brixton Academy in London, they were supporting The Communards, and they were just okay. Maybe it was because I had such high hopes - they just couldn't be as good as I wanted and expected them to be.

The second time was at the Shoreline Amphitheater, just south of San Francisco, where they supported Moby. There, they somehow got lost in the huge space that is the Shoreline.

Last night was the turn of the Fox Theater in Oakland.

Not that I've ever visited one, but the inside of the Fox looks how I imagine a Turkish bordello, all stained glass and huge gold statues. Very regal, so not much like a bordello at all.

Anyhow, after a wimpy start - poor sound, and indistinct vocals - caused us to move closer to the stage, things picked up, and the band rattled through a ninety minute set consisting almost entirely of "hits".

Although they got started in 1980 from the Ian Curtis-less remains of Joy Division, and they're now without their founding bass player, and core sound-maker Peter Hook, I believe New Order's music to be timeless. Of course, that view is entirely personal and therefore worthless. I'm sure my dad believes the music of Gerry and the Pacemakers to be similarly "timeless".

RAVE - A busy weekend in SF

They say - and you know they are never wrong - that this weekend will see more people in San Francisco than at any time in its history.

With the Americas Cup World Series staging its 'battle of the bay' it's likely that there'll be more of a battle getting around town, let along down to the waterfront where Fleet Week also sees the Blue Angels performing daily air shows, the Parade of Ships filling the various water parking lots, and the Fleet Week Band Challenge meaning you'll have even more trouble than usual getting on a bus with your trombone. 

Added to that, we have the Hardly Strictly Blue Grass concerts filling Golden Gate Park, the SF Giants hosting the Cincinnati Reds in the first two games of their playoff series, and - just to make sure you can't get into the City from the freeway, the 49ers are hosting the Bills on Sunday.

Last night we hit the Embarcadero to view the multi-million dollar yachts parked up for the night. What with the cost and the accoutrements - the floodlights, the armed security guards, the parking restrictions - it looked just like the paddock of a formula one race.

Because I don't follow sailing that much, I had to ignore those selling tickets for the VIP seating at $1,000 per day. So, I'll just cheer on the Olympic multi-gold winning Ben Ainslie and the J.P.Morgan BAR team - which is the closest thing we have to a British entrant - from the comfort of my living room.