RAVE - Dobbs Ferry

This new-ish restaurant - at least it is to us - epitomizes comfort food; the place itself is comfortable, even the neighborhood is comfortable. 

Sometimes when I hear a restaurant described as serving "comfort food", I think it's a term that's often used in a somewhat denigrating way, almost as though the reviewer is saying "well, they don't serve top of the line food here, but at least it's pleasant, even comforting."

Dobbs Ferry serves food that is, yes, comfortable, but top notch too.

The dishes were pitched squarely in the middle of the road, cuisine-wise rather than at the haute end, but were nevertheless tasty and perfectly-prepared.

Olives, pate, ravioli, rigatoni, lamb loin, lamb shank - the four of us were treated to wonderful food and outstanding service.

I'd had a couple of Manhattans by the time the appetizers arrived, so I may be a little fulsome in my praise for Dobbs Ferry - at least Mrs Page thinks so, as she believes it was just an OK place.

REVIEW - Olympus Has Fallen

Strange that in all the tiresome, repetitive TV advertising for this movie they never once mention that it "stars" the even more tiresome and repetitive Gerard Butler.

I guess it was my own fault - doing no research before buying our tickets - but when the opening scenes featured McButler's cheesy grin I groaned.

At least we didn't have to dwell too long on that grin. The film wasted no time at all before plunging into the action: a heavily tricked out aircraft piloted by two North Korean terrorists manage to fly within a few minutes of the White House before being noticed by anyone. Thus starts two hours of mostly implausible activity which do little more than paint the president's home as a marshmallow-soft target and the various arms of the US military as toothless, inept buffoons.

All except for our sporren-wielding hero, who single-handedly manages to avoid the barrage of bullets from a small army of terrorists that appear from every truck in DC, makes his way into the now enemy-controlled White House, and rescues the occupants all while achieving that most important objective: putting a bit of much-needed pep back into his marriage.

With all the current talk of North Korean military posturing, this film is at least somewhat relevant, although its message is unnecessarily full of patriotic BS.

And doesn't anyone see the irony in the film's tagline: "When our flag falls, our nation will rise" - when the lead role, the one person who does "rise to the occasion" is a bloody Scotsman?

RAVE - Epic Roasthouse

Epic has all the ingredients for a great night out: an ideal position with a view of the Bay Bridge light show, valet parking, great bar and superb food.

Shame about the two blondes on the front desk, who couldn't organize a party in a brewery. But once past them, we were indundated with service - not all of it effective mind you, but they made up for it in numbers. We counted 9 people who served us!

Jan Beerbaum - owner and all around crusty host and head chef - got us off to a great start by helping us with our meat plate appetizer - pork rillettes, duck proscuitto, country pate, and so on, and then our lobster and artichoke salad and endive, treviso, apple, and walnut vinaigrette salad. Too much salad? Nah, it was just right.

I don't think we've been here for four or five years, when last time our friend Bill declared Epic as having the most expensive burger - $50, and not worth it - he'd ever had.

RAVE - The Sweeney

Rhyming Slang for The Flying Squad, The Sweeney (Todd) is at least the third movie remake of the classic 70s and 80s British TV series of the same name.

Starring the perennial hard-case Ray Winstone as the gravelly voiced Inspector Jack Reagen - a role performed by the comparatively erudite John Thaw (who more recently played the even more polished Inspector Morse) - this was a particularly brutish portrayal of London's Flying Squad, a branch of the Metropolitan Police.

With the team pursuing an equally brutish gang of diamond thieves, and Reagan having an affair with the wife of one of his superiors, the action is intense and nonstop. The old style squad features Ben Drew - UK rapper Plan B (according to Mrs Page) - as Reagan's second-in-command George Carter. 

It's all good, old-fashioned police work that reminds the viewer of all the stuff that happens in our city's underbellies that we'd rather not know too much about.

I'm not sure if it's a prerequisite that all members of the real-life Sweeney are hard-boiled cockneys, but I hope I never learn first-hand the phrase "Oi, on your face you ****ing slag, now!"

RAVE - Barbacco

Another place that I've eaten at a number of times, and one that on this occasion got the thumbs up from my co-worker and me.

We had lunch - perhaps the best way to enjoy Perbacco - and the food was just the ticket.

The lasagne bolognese met with grunts of approval from Alan, while my Rigatoni - dusted with herbs and filled with something meaty - was similarly grunt-worthy.

Complemented by Apple Polenta Cake, marmalade and creme fraiche - something I normally eschew at lunch-time but which I heartily recommend to non-eschewers - lunch was a tasty indulgence for both of us. 

And we discussed work projects while we ate, so it wasn't a complete goof-off.

REVIEW - MY China

This was our second visit to Martin Yang's showy restaurant inside the Westfield Mall, and it yet again annoyingly delighted and underwhelmed us at the same time.

Our last meal there was around the New Year, after which I bemoaned the mall setting, the diner / shoppers and their shopping detritus, all of which subtracted from an otherwise great meal.

To counter that criticism, my brother Lawrence declared it "the best Chinese meal I've ever had", while at the same time dissing the bathrooms that were shared between men and women. I can't disagree with his assessment of the food - after all, perception is reality - but I wonder about whether he actually went into the right bathroom.

Well, none of that's changed. Last night we started at around 8pm surrounded by the same subtractions.

We ate at the excellent bar with the uncomfortable seats - at least I found them so, with no back support making the couple of hours hard for my ancient back.

We had dim sum, and selected the first 5 dishes on the menu:

Shui Mai - pork, shrimp and wild seasonal mushroom

Whole Wheat Potstickers - pork, cabbage, spicy soy sauce
Har Gow - shrimp, spicy soy

Wild Boar Juciy Dumplings - ginger, garlic

Pork & Crab Juicy Dumplings - fresh crab meat, garlic, pork

They were all made well - perhaps an understatement. They were all made very well. All firm, with a pleasing texture. 

The fact that they were all served up together made it somewhat of a challenge of steady-stream eating, but one that we managed admirably.

With one or two standouts - the Shui Mai and the Har Gow - the others tended to taste too similar. Maybe it was our fault for ordering five adjacent items from the menu, but I think not.

RAVE - La Siccia

A charming, somewhat traditional rather than trendy Italian restaurant that looks much better when you get inside.

As always is the case with Mikki and Jonny, the conversation eclipsed the meal.

I can only remember a couple of the several dishes we shared between the four of us - the proscuitto and the semolina gnocetti with pork and pecorino cheese - the latter of which was sensational.

I found the Pork Loin with olive tapenade a little heavy on the olive - curious for me seeing as I normally crave everything olive, but Jonny wolfed his down without a frown.

An exquisite Sardinian Pinot Noir "on steroids", recommended by our excellent waiter, was a delight.

RAVE - Chocolate Lab

This little place is unusual - in a good way.

It was opened by chocolatier extraodinaire Michael Recchuiti as an extension to his main business of manufacturing and selling elegant and inventive chocolate products.

I should first say that Michael is a friend of ours, so it's a shameful oversight on our part that it's taken us so long to dine here, rather than just buy chocolates at Little Nib, his tiny retail store a few doors away from Chocolate Lab.

We were first of all surprised at how busy it was. Admittedly, it's quite small, with seating for around around twenty people looking not just to silence their chocolate demons, but experience the savory items on offer.

While more than just a cafe, the menu is brief and full of tasty dishes.

We had two of that day's specials - a gorgeous lamb casserole for Mrs. P, and a less-than stellar chicken pie for me. Both dishes - maybe everything on the menu - seemed to be heated up for us rather prepared on the spot. Nevertheless, they were very good.

Naturally, when it came for dessert, we were spoiled for choice.

REVIEW - Emperor

As WWII in the Pacific came to an end - post-Hiroshima and post-Nagasaki - General Douglas MacArthur, played by Tommy Lee Jones, is placed in charge of rebuilding Japan. 

In a country devastated by heavy bombing, he gives General Fellers, played by Matthew Fox, the job of determining whether Japanese ruler Emperor Hirohito should be given the death sentence for his part in taking Japan to war.

The fact that this was making Fellers a potential scapegoat for a decision that was either going to be unpopular with the Americans back home, or even more unpopular with the Japanese - because they considered Hirohito to be a God - was not lost on Fellers.

Alongside this main, true to the facts story, Fellers was also looking for a Japanese woman he had fallen in love with when he lived in Japan prior to the war.

This was a well-made, involving film, that wasn't quite the thriller the trailers would have one believe. Nevertheless, if you enjoy your history told big, you'll enjoy this film.

RAVE - Le Garage

Seafarers eat well. Or at least that would be the verdict if you considered the eateries that surround the marinas at Sausalito. I know it's not likely to produce an exact cross section of the seafaring community, what with the dollar-laden and be-jeweled residents and visitors to that particular enclave of mostly fairweather mariners.

But not to put it down, we were there for lunch after our seaplane ride on Sunday, and rather than go to  our usual hangout at Fish, we stopped at the next marina and ate at Le Garage, a cute half-open air, half indoor hangout that serves cafe fare with a French flair.

That meant Duck Confit for milady, with kumquat jus served, rosemary garlic and roasted potato, and pour moi les Oeufs a la Coque -  Soft-boiled eggs and black truffle butter mouillettes served with La Quercia prosciutto, roasted potatoes and chanterelle mushrooms.

The glass of chilled Chardonnay was icing on the cake. And the sunny day helped tremendously.

RAVE - Seaplane Adventure

One of the benefits of having a birthday, at whatever age, is the chance of a great surprise, whether it takes the form of a meal with your loved one, or - as was true today - it appears seaplane-shaped. 

Pavey organized for us to get a tour of the skies above San Francisco, in a seaplane flown by our pilot Dave, from Seaplane Adventures of Marin.

This wasn't our first flight in a seaplane, but it certainly was the most dramatic. 

We took off from beside a wharf in Marin, to the North of Golden Gate Bridge, flew out over Stinson Beach and South into the bay. 

We flew right over the Golden Gate, then around Alcatraz and in over the Palace of Fine Arts and the northern end of GG Park. Then we had a fabulous view of the City - the sky was perfectly clear and blue - buzzed our house on Potrero Hill and then back up to Marin.

It was - despite the previous night's special dinner - the high spot of the birthday weekend - in more ways than one. 

Sheesh. That line's right out of a travelog.

 

Despite the flowery language, this trip was a real treat, and one that I can thoroughly recommend.

"Thank you, thank you" to my lovely wife.

RAVE - Campton Place

I thought the point of ordering a Black Car with Uber Taxi was that you got a cool ride to your birthday dinner, and that ride happened to be black. The service was convenient, but the "black" car was a Prius. Not even a tired, old Town Car.

Ah well, Campton Place was definitely not a let-down. Everything about this restaurant - from the luxurious vibe, the sumptuous booths, the Chichuly chandelier (I think it was real Chichuly), the gracious and intelligent staff, and the fact that our waiter first asked if we'd like the white napkins exchanged for black ones (that wouldn't leave white fluff on our black clothes) - spoke to its high standard.

The two and a half hours at the table began with a surprise when our waiter said our great friends George, Cecille and Perry had ordered champagne to get us going. The crafty trio had found out where we were eating and phoned the restaurant with the order. Thank you friends, and well done.

The food - Mrs Page had the Chef's Spice Route Menu, while I had the Market Menu - was exquisite and comprised:

Dungeness Crab "Potli" - Puffed Black Rice, Soybeans, Coconut Curry and Hearts of Palm
Dorade - Malabar Chutney, Buttermild and Shallots
East Indian Duck Bun - Saffron & Game Broth, Sprouted Mung Lentils and Deghi Chili Oil
Slow Cooked Lamb Rack - Panch Poran, Pine Nut Pilaf, Spiced Pineapple Nage and Spinach
Winter Citrus - Meyer Lemon, Chestnut and White Chocolate 

- and -

"Winter Taste" - Sweet Potatoes, Hosui Pear, Serrano Ham, Mustard and Sherry
Main Lobster - Roasted Garlic, Pea Top, Carrot Tagliatelle and Brown Butter
Squab - Spring Garlic, Roasted Meyer Lemon and Arugula
Angus Beef Tenderloin - Root Vegetable Croquette, Rainbow Chard, Celeriac and Bone Marrow
Chocolate Carmelia Mousse, Dark Chocolate Ice Cream and Almond Praline Tuile.

Add in at least three amuses bouches and you're talking serious volumes of good stuff.

Without boring you with the minutae, Her Hotness thought the chef prepared genuine East Indian dishes, but thought the lamb was mis-advertised as "Rack" seeing as it was de-boned and tiny. And her Winter Citrus could have been billed as "Lemon Ice".

My menu was perfect - even the Lobster, which is never an easy choice for me. If I was pushed, I'd say the Beef Tenderloin and Squab could each have done with another minute or two on the old burner, but I was in too good a mood to let it dampen my enthusiasm.

Shame I'll probably have to wait until my next birthday to experience Campton Place again.

REVIEW - Side Effects

Directed by the normally-reliable Steven Soderbergh (Contagion, The Informant, Traffic, Oceans 11, 12 and 13 etc etc) this one seemed as though he was determined to stay in second gear. It felt like a "made for Lifetime TV" movie, rather than a "blockbuster" starring Jude Law, Rooney Mara, Channing Tatum and Catherine Zeta-Jones.

And the audience - which revealed it's true colors when the all-too-predictable husband-stabbing incident was met with gasps and screams of shock and horror - made up of Lifetime TV movie officianados was clearly the target of this Dr. Oz-paced, middle-of-the-road mush.

The story - which could and should have been so much more - concerned a wife who took a series of prescribed medications to fix her professed depression and sleep-walking. When she stabs and kills her husband the ensuing court case pits doctor Jude Law against her former doctor Zeta-Jones, and the drug company with which both were partnered.

Much hand-wringing and ass-covering ensues, all with little suspense, until the dastardly plot is uncovered. Yawn.

At least it proved that:

- Channing Tatum is talent-less

- Rooney Mara is virtually un-recognizable with her eyebrows attached (she appeared eyebrow-less in Girl With The Dragon Tattoo)

- Catherine Zeta-Jones is turning into an ice-maiden

- Jude Law does a good impression of Tim Nice-but-Dim

REVIEW - No

Mrs Page is taking nearly two weeks - she says it's only a week and a bit - to visit her family in the UK. While for most guys this would mean a punishing review of the house to-do list of fixing, painting and refurbishment, for me it presents an opportunity to remind the cats that it still requires a human to keep them fed and watered - even if that means the normally-avoided man of the house - and an even more important opportunity to watch all the TV and movies that are better enjoyed without the woman of the house around (and I don't mean smut).

With that in mind, I went to see a movie that her ladyship would avoid like the plague, because it's a) in Spanish and b) covers political history.

First of all, I felt a real outsider making my way to the front row of a theater packed to the rafters with Chileans. A Chilean speaker was introducing the film, and it was clear everyone else was there, not because their respective other halves were out of town, but because they had a personal stake in Chilean life and politics.

Augusto Pinochet was an army general and dictator of Chile from 1973 until transferring power to a democratically elected president in 1990. This film was a dramatization of creation and delivery of the advertising surrounding the respective campaigns.

It was decided that both sides - those who will vote "Yes" to extending Pinochet's rule, and those who will vote "No" to Pinochet in favor of freedom and a new direction - will be treated to nightly campaign communications created by mainstream advertising companies.

Gael García Bernal plays the left-leaning but otherwise non-political director of the "No" campaign, while his business partner is eventually picked to lead the "Yes" advertising.

There follows some mildly interesting slices of media life and the way the two sides play their angles. For the "Yes" team, that means heavy, officious content, while the "No" team creates advertising content the same way they normally produced their Coca Cola ads - all happy, smiley people and jingle-laden scenes of how happy Chile will be if they vote "No".

At the end of the day - and bearing in mind my level of interest: everyone already knows the "No" vote triumphed and Pinochet was ousted - the movie necessarily (I guess) looked like a bad 80s TV program, and played out with little drama.

RANT - Dredd

This was so bad, it should've been called Dread.

I don't know about you. but I hate movies that are shot with little or no lighting. No doubt the director thinks it's cool, but I think it just means the budget is so low, or the sets are so shabby, that s/he is ashamed to shine bright lights anywhere near the actions. Dredd is shot - surprise, surprise - in almost total darkness.

The plot - a city in the future, two cops: Dredd and a rookie, a huge block of apartments taken over by a cutthroat gang of, er, cutthroats - is choc full of cliches, stereotypes, and other ordinariness. 

It was crushingly dull, and the only reason I watched it to the bitter end was that I was strapped into my airline seat rather than free to step out of a theater at the drop of an uncomfortably heavy helmet.

RANT - Thieving Restauranters, Singapore

I still can't believe that in thirty years of international travel, this was the first time I have been knowingly ripped off by a restaurant. 

The place was called Marina Bay Seafood, on Boat Quay in Singapore. The receipt showed the more telling company name behind the restaurant, the Fuqing Seafood Company.

I was surprised by the brazen nature of the place. After all, we were six guys out for the night. We sat down at this place, ready for a Singaporean feast, but not for a royal Fuqing. We ordered nothing special - no Lobster - mine was Pepper Beef. With a selection of similarly ordinary appetizers - satay, grilled vegetables, prawns, and so on - plus six Tiger Beers, we had a great time until the bill arrived.

As if to telegraph the rip-off, the restaurant had charged us fifty cents for each towelette we'd used.

At something over six hundred dollars - more than one hundred dollars each - for food that according to the menu should have cost barely half that sum - we were certain the restaurant ripped us off. After a brief questioning of the wait staff, learning that these were apparently market prices for the portion sizes we had been served - even though those sizes and prices had never been explained or knowingly ordered - we shrugged our shoulders and decided we'd each exact our revenge. 

That "revenge" consisted of warning off the other five hundred or so IBMers who were also at the sales conference, and blogging our disgust at this Fuqing rip-off.

REVIEW - Forum Seafood, Singapore

It's not too shabby having a job that took me to Spain and England one week, then Singapore the next. Or so I told myself as I hopped on my Eva Airlines flight (Eva who?) from San Francisco via Taipei to Singapore. Twenty hours, and two calendar days later, I alight in steamy Singapore, where everything runs efficiently if maybe a little antiseptically. 

After a day or so acclimatizing - i.e. sleeping off the buzzing in my ears caused by the crushing flight - I got the subway into downtown Singapore, and wandered for a couple of hours around the Marina. I was looking for one of the Hawker's Markets - the collections of stalls selling local foods. But all I found was a massive mall housing Gucci, Prada, etc, all at the foot of the Marina Bay Sands - topped by what looks like a boat that spans the three towers.

By the time I wandered the mall, the Marina, the Towers, and everything around them, I was exhausted, hungry, and hot.

So I found myself at Boat Quay, a delightful setting to look out over the Singapore River and address all three - my exhaustion, hunger, and temperature.

That can be the only reason I picked Forum Seafood, because it otherwise displayed everything that would normally warn me off a place like this, namely: the name - I don't lust after Seafood; the setting - a line of tourist-centric bars and restaurants, featuring everything from "genuine British fish and chips" to tanks full of revolting looking molluscs and fierce fish. Worst of all, my chosen eaterie had that hated feature of many tourist Chinese restaurants, boards outside featuring photos of each of their dishes.

Despite all of that, hunger won out, so I settled down and chose the beef satay and the crispy chicken. Washed down by a couple of pints of draft Tiger Beer, it made the usually dull experience of eating on my own - even somewhere as agreeable as harbor-side Singapore - to be genuinely relaxing.

RANT - A Lonely Place for Dying

It wasn't just the twenty-hour journey to Singapore that made this movie tiresome. It did that all by itself.

Ruined by lack of relevance - it's set in 1972, during the war in Vietnam, but heaven knows why we need a film as small as this, today, and a lack of action - this was a low-budget inaction movie.

Nikolai Dzerzhinsky holes up in an abandoned prison on the US-Mexican border, waiting for his contact from the Washington Post. Apparently, he's got some key evidence against the CIA, and he wants to trade it for asylum in the US.

Special Agent Robert Harper is there to meet the Russian, take his documentary evidence, and kill him.

If that sounds a little contrived, wait until you see the movie. Or don't, because it's tediously slow, dry as parchment, and not worth waiting for nothing to happen.

If that's a bad case of double negativity, forgive me. I could have included a lot more.

REVIEW - Killer Joe

A rare departure from Mathew MaConaughey's usual, dreary romantic comedy fare. That in itself doesn't make this film good, but at least it's a somewhat original story. 

Matthew McConaughey plays Joe Cooper, a Dallas police detective who moonlights as a contract killer. He's hired by Emile Hirsch to do a number on Hirsch's mother, with the agreement of her ex-husband, Thomas Haden Church, and their daughter and Hirsch's sister, Dottie.

Hirsch intends collecting the insurance money on his mother's life, with Dottie the alleged benefactor of that insurance money. Because he can't raise the money to pay the killer up front, Dottie is given to McConaughey as a retainer.

What follows is a mixture of hillbilly-style mayhem - McConaughey moves into the family trailer, to start taking payment of his retainer - and everything goes pear-shaped from then on.

I'm not sure why this got an NC-17 rating - unless our Matt's butt isn't deemed worthy of being seen by the general movie-going public - but the film's worth seeing if you like your cops dirty and your families hick.

RAVE - Supermercado San Miguel, Madrid

This was the absolute 'find' of our week in Madrid.

'Supermercado' only loosely translates as 'supermarket', the kind of place one normally avoids like the plague, and is generally only useful when one is running low on toilet paper or other such mundane but essential items.

In Madrid - and maybe other enlightened countries - the term Supermercado can mean anything from the giant Carrefours, to the relatively tiny grocery store.

This one, the Supermercado San Miguel was a medium-sized (fifty thousand square feet) market busy with fifty or more stalls, counters and mini-shops serving beer, wine, champagne, and every kind of food delicacy the worn traveler might desire.

We desired champagne from one stall, cheeses from another, port from another, olives, mojitos, candies and chocolates from others, all in a fabulous, crowded atmosphere that was a million miles removed from the 16th Street Safeway in San Francisco.

Next time I'm in Madrid, I'll know to make straight for this place and skip some lesser eateries.

RAVE - Casa Lucio, Madrid

It looks like all of these reviews of the restaurants we tried in Madrid are going to turn out as RAVES. How else can you vote, when you're working in Madrid and every evening is like being let out of the asylum?

Casa Lucio was our taxi driver's response to our request for a place that served Paella. At least he got us here quickly, because in every other respect he failed. After waiting 10 minutes to be shown to our table, which seemed to be through a warren of empty-table-filled rooms, up two flights of stairs and to the back of another empty-table-filled room, we sat down, ordered our cervezas, looked at the menu to find no paella, not even tapas.

Our enterprising foursome proved upstanding and resourceful however, so we ordered - and mostly shared - the Chorizo, Huevos Estrellas, Ensalada Lechuga, Cordero Asada, Merluza Romana, and Cochinillo Asado. That lot proved to be mostly pork, ham, and eggs. All were equally outstanding, and we left through the now bustling and completely packed restaurant, at close to midnight.

RAVE - Riofrio, Madrid

One of our less successful finds in Madrid, at least atmosphere-wise, where it had less of that than one can expect on the surface of the moon. 

Riofrio is a huge place of indistinct architectural heritage - too much glass, brass, and shiny, indiscriminate wood around to make out what era they were going for. The place seemed like it would happen at any moment but never quite did.

But at least the food was great, if not exactly as planned. I had the Jamon Croquetas, which I worked out using schoolboy Spanish meant Ham Croquettes. So far, so good. Then my Triangulos Cochin - which I translated as Triangles of Pork - turned out to be (and I should have guessed this) the only pork pieces that are naturally triangular - namely, ears!

Anyhow, I can testify that pig's ears taste fabulous. Cooked that is. Cooked crispy, with one side pork-cracklingly tasty, and the other side succulently porky. Now there's a description you're unlikely to find in this month's Bon Appetit magazine.

RAVE - Kitchen Stories, Madrid

A whole week in Madrid, Spain. (I have to add 'Spain' as many Americans will assume I meant Madrid, Texas, or somewhere 7,000 miles from Espana).

This was a business trip, so I spent most of the week enclosed in a dreary Airport hotel, only venturing out into the cold each evening. Each adventure required a twenty minute cab-ride into the city, so what with the vagaries of an unknown city plus and equally unknown driver, we experimented by pointing to one of the numerous big plazas on the map and said "there" in broken Spanish (i.e loud, belligerent English).

This restaurant was a lucky find, as Reggie and I were looking for somewhere near the Supermercado San Miguel (more of that later).

Kitchen Stories is an all-white place, which at first looked a little stark for us, but it soon warmed up as we downed a bottle of Mar de Frade.

Our spicy tuna, berenjenas (egg-plant, or aubergine), guacamole and hummus wouldn't necessarily tax the average host, but proved an ideal base for the gastronomic festivities we had planned for later that night. Everything happens "later that night" restaurant-wise in Madrid, as each evening most restaurants are empty until 10:00pm, when everyone seems to descend en masse to the city's eating places.

We were determined to catch them out by trying to talk business early each morning, but we seemed to be less able to do the "dine 'til midnight, rise at dawn" thing than the average Spaniard.

REVIEW - The Words

4 stories in one - Dennis Quaid is the narrator, telling the story of Bradley Cooper, a writer who finds someone else's manuscript in an old briefcase bought from an antique store. Cooper types up the manuscript, word for word and gets it published as his own work. Then Jeremy Irons shows up as the guy that wrote the original manuscript. He confronts Cooper, telling him how he used his life in wartime Paris as the basis for his manuscript - this is boring me writing the review almost as much as the movie did.

Some say this film has been "sadly overlooked". For me if falls short on several fronts. 

First: the outcome is obvious from the start. You know it's not going to end well for the plagiarist. Second, it's basically a romance film thinly disguised as a literary drama. Third, it's tediously slow, and not helped by the plodding narration, first by Quaid and then by Irons.

I'd like to say that something arresting happened to bring this to a dramatic finale.

RAVE - Escape from Camp 14, by Blaine Harden

The story of one of the few people ever to have escaped from a North Korean political prison. Shin Dong-hyuk was one of around 200,000 people held in North Korea's brutal prison camps, which have existed twice as long as Stalin's Soviet political prisons and twelve times as long as the Nazi concentration camps.

Shin was born in prison - his parents were imprisoned for some minor mistake, transgressing any one of the numerous illogical and inhuman rules of this backward nation - and after years of working in the prison's coal mines, sewing machine factories, and pig farms, he risked everything to clamber through electrified fences and basically walked and hitched rides across thousands of miles of North Korea and neighboring China, to eventually make his way to South Korea and true freedom.

This story brings us right up to date - Shin is now living in the USA - and details the horrors of murder, starvation, cruelty, and back-breaking work heaped on so many of his kind.

Not as flashy as many, similar escape stories, but nonetheless it's a vivid account of the desperate lives of so may thousands who are still held against their will by a repressive government.

RANT - I Want My MTV, by Rob Tannenbaum

Billed as "The Uncensored Story of the Music Video Revolution" this was little more than a few hundred pages of quotes from musicians, producers, and directors who participated in the creation of the videos we all used to love, or hate, back when the M in MTV stood for Music.

Those quotes rank from the genuinely insightful: "Tom Preston: We were like an Internet start-up. We were lean and mean and didn't know what the hell we were doing. At the beginning, we were working out of a couple of rooms at the Sheraton Hotel in midtown New York. My first office was a soda storeroom. People thought I was delivering soda to the building" ....

Through the self-serving "There were no rules. We had a policy not just to break the rules, but to blow up the ****ing rules" ....

To the downright banal "Nancy Wilson, Heart: Everybody wanted their MTV so bad. I remember craving it like crazy".

But after a while, I got sick of reading stuff like "Man, there was so much coke. We were out of our heads for the whole shoot".

Yes, it was a revolution. But surely it could have been made to sound a little more intelligent.

RANT - The Imposter

A true story, told documentary style, of a 13-year old boy from Texas who disappears, never to be found again.

That kind of gives away the ending, as does the title and the fact that when a guy claiming to be the missing boy is found 3 years later, in Spain, he has a distinct French accent.

These facts, and the plodding speed of the whole thing, fly in the face of one fan - presumably someone connected with the production - who pronounced on IMDB.com that "you're pretty much open-mouth and on the edge of your seat throughout the film's entirety". 

The only open-mouth-inducing element of this film was how on earth this imposter duped the authorities, and even the missing boy's family for so long. I'd stopped bothering with that conundrum long before the film ended, so it's a bug thumbs down from me.

REVIEW - John Dies At The End

It's hard to categorize this little number.

A friend said he was reading the book, and was confused ... was it a comedy, or a horror story?

I've just seen the film, and I'm similarly perplexed. It's hardly a comedy, although there's a light-hearted, if not flat out comical way the story unfolds. And it's hardly horror, although there are "monsters" and other such ingredients.

The shame is, in the end it's neither of those, nor is it that rewarding.

Two college dropouts experience a new street drug - they call it Soy Sauce - which opens up the users' minds, allowing "things" from other dimensions to enter ours, and vice versa. 

Sounds interesting, and starts off that way. Trouble is, it turns out to be less than gripping. In fact, it sent me to sleep at least twice. I had to repeatedly restart the movie to catch up with what I had slept through, and almost wish I hadn't bothered.

REVIEW - Safety Not Guaranteed

The title comes from an advertisement posted in a Seattle newspaper - "Wanted. Someone to go back in time with me ... Must bring your own weapons"

Fueled by that alluring advertisement, a journalist and two interns from the newspaper set off to track down the individual who posted the ad, and find out more about the proposition.

The film is ultra-low budget, but not in a way that detracts from the story. 

Rather than being a sci-fi extravaganza, it's a warm look into what makes an apparently unbalanced individual tick - he claims he's time-traveled once before, after all - and how one of the interns gets involved in the preparations for a trip back in time. It turns out - as it often does - to be the scent of a woman that's enticing the main protagonist to risk life and limb in a home made time-traveling, er, boat.

It hardly requires a 3D cinema experience to enjoy this - my iPad aboard a trans-Atlantic flight was enough for me - but it's nevertheless worth watching. If nothing else, to see whether there's anything to this offer.

RAVE - The Sessions

Inspired by the true story of a guy who uses an iron lung, and decides he wants to lose his virginity. He has five or six sessions with a professional sex therapist, who not only fulfills his wish but develops a serious relationship with the intelligent but deeply incapacitated patient.

Fantastic performances by the able-bodied John Hawkes - I had to check he wasn't an iron lung user in real life, such was the perfection of his acting - and the newly re-appeared from the ashes Helen Hunt - who braved the critics and the cold by playing this role.

This film was funny - but not a comedy; touching - but not a weepie, and in the end rewarding. A low tempo but high skin-quotient affair that had me wondering how on earth the therapist was able to deliver such services while being - apparently happily - married, albeit in the 1980s Republic of Berkeley.

REVIEW - Here Comes The Boom

Not a film I'd like to brag about seeing, but when you're sat in an uncomfortable Delta Airlines seat for five and a half hours, you have to find whatever diversions exist, and this one was a film I'd downloaded to watch on my iPad.

I'm sure you've all seen the "hilarious" trailers: school music program faces cuts thanks to a lack of funding, so the normally lazy biology teacher (Kevin James) decides to rekindle his high school wrestling skills and enter a 10-fight series of mixed martial arts bouts in an attempt to win the $50,000 needed to save the program.

His honorable intentions, buoyed on by his thus far failed attempts to win over the heart of school nurse Selma Hayek - what school, on what planet, ever had a nurse that looked like Selma Hayek? - meet the highs and lows that can be easily predicted from a Kevin James film.

Better than having needles inserted into my eyeballs by a miserable seventy year old flight attendant with a lousy job, but only just.

RAVE - Farina

It's been a while since we last visited Farina. Our initial love for this modern Italian restaurant was tempered by our repeated (over) indulgence in their rich pastas and focaccia dishes, so we detoxed for a few months.

Last night we welcomed friends from Houston who were reveling in the SF climate and needed to be reminded of how well "we" can cook.

Our role as hosts was executed with flying colors, as everyone enthusiastically chowed down on Farina's fare, including: Prosciutto di San Daniele, burrata e focaccina - Imported San Daniele prosciutto, burrata cheese and lightly fried sage foccacina; Prosciutto di San Daniele, burrata e focaccina - San Daniele prosciutto, burrata and lightly fried sage foccacina; Focaccia di Recco tradizionale - Stracchino cheese melted between two layers of thin dough typical of Recco; Focaccia di Recco con prosciutto cotto - Focaccia di Recco with Rovagnati ham, and not forgetting our vegetables, Cavoletti di Bruxelles saltati in padella - Pan roasted brussels sprouts with extra virgin olive oil.

Accompanied by bottles of Gavi and Nebbiolo we were thankful to our designated driver and our elastic-waisted pants. 

Which reminds me - despite living in the USA for fifteen years, and very recently becoming a US Citizen, I still have trouble referring to trousers (the things you wear on the outside) as pants (the things that in the UK we wear on the inside, and are I guess better described as under-wear, briefs, or knickers). Anyhow, last night I needed elastic everywhere.

RAVE - Region

I try not to post multiple reviews of the same place, but this second visit to Region was a special occasion - Mrs. Page's birthday. She was disappointed enough with her initial birthday meal at Girl and The Fig to suggest (i.e. demand) that we go somewhere we already knew would satisfy her palate. That turned out to be Region.

Despite it eschewing a more descriptive name - like Shanghai, or Shanghai 1930 (both now defunct) - or a classic name - like Lotus Flower - this place adopted the somewhat colder, less expressive name Region. Which Region, exactly, requires further investigation. 

We shared the Crispy Shrimp and Port Chao Zhou Rolls, the Beijing Duck, with homemade pancakes and duck sauce, and the Grass fed Mongolian Beef with Black Rice. We knew the meal would be top notch, and so it was.

Region boasts a gorgeous dining room with birch trees that line the back walls, together with a cool bar serving excellent cocktails.

My "but it's not perfect" companion wasn't happy with the techno music chosen as (hardly) background for the evening, feeling the invisible DJ should break out his collection of Asian-inspired chill out sounds, but for me that was a minor observation.

Nevertheless, the Lady's suggestion was that we make Region a regular choice for take out food, and that way she can have a cocktail while we're waiting, and not have to spend all evening listening to Skrillex.

REVIEW - Aunt Mary's Cafe

No, this isn't a plug for my (non-existent) Aunt Mary. It's a funky eaterie on Telegraph Avenue in Oakland. And I wasn't exercising my new US Passport in traveling over the Bay Bridge for lunch. I met a group of friends who had flown into Oakland and were on their way to Calistoga for a weekend of wine-fueled frolics.

Which led us all to Aunt Mary's Cafe. The menu was Southern-centric, with plenty of spicy grits, grains, and griddled dishes. The ambiance was suited to the comfort food on the menu - therefore avoiding any luxury touches or pretensions. The group of old, not-so-old, and downright new friends was great to meet, and well worth the miniscule journey. After all, they had flown four and a half hours while I had driven for barely thirty minutes.

I'm not a fan of particularly spicy food - unlike Woody, who splashes hot sauce on her chili dishes - nor grits - there must be better ways to serve up what is essentially porridge.

A quick perusal of Wikipedia told me that "Modern grits are commonly made of alkali-treated corn known as hominy" and "Grits are similar to other thick maize-based porridges from around the world such as polenta or the thinner farina". Reading on, I found "The word 'grits' derives from the Old English word 'grytt' meaning coarse meal. This word originally referred to wheat and other porridges now known as 'groats' in parts of the UK, maize being unknown in Europe in the Middle Ages".

Of course, I wish I'd known all of this while eating there, as I would have had another way of boring everyone with my "you've stolen your language from us English / Scottish / Welsh / Irish, and bastardized it en route". A line that is neither wholly true nor particularly relevant. But hey, I'm full of that kind of line.

REVIEW - The Girl and The Fig, Sonoma

This proved to be a mixed bag: my roasted local mushroom salad - with mixed chicories, bacon lardons, torn croutons, roasted garlic, and shallot vinaigrette was excellent, while my steak and frites - a six ounce prime flat iron steak, frites, point reyes blue cheese was a perfect sized and tasting brunch.

But my wife didn't rate her meal at all. Her fig and arugula salad - with toasted pecans, dried figs, pancetta, goat's cheese, fig and port vinaigrette - was a mush of overly sweet cheesy vegetation. And her omelet with short rib, white cheddar and onions was inadequately seasoned and in the end, unappealing.

It wasn't a complete waste of time - we turned the drive to Sonoma into a champagne pick up at Gloria Ferrer - but the rave reviews we've heard of The Girl and The Fig proved unreliable on this visit.

RAVE - Capannina

Outstanding food. It may just make up for the place, which has the feel of your gran's sitting room - if she's into chintzy red velour and lacy curtains.

Despite the middle-aged vibe thrown off by the room, and the bulk of the diners last night, the kitchen staff and team of waiters made it a wonderful evening for our party of four.

My Calamari Ripieni Con Granchio (fresh Monterey Calamari stuffed with Crab and Potato) was fabulous, and my Puntine di Manzo Brasate al Vino Rosso (Braised Short Ribs with mashed potatoes in a red wine sauce) was smooth and tasty - so smooth in fact that the ribs melted in my mouth just like the mashed potato!

My better half similarly enthused about her pasta, and our friends sounded equally pleased with their choices.

Capannina is a traditional Italian restaurant serving wonderful food in a room that's comfortable enough for the retiree in us all.

RAVE - Django Unchained

Say what you will about Quentin Tarantino - cartoon character wielding, pointless violence featuring - he manages to turn out an interesting, funny, and rich story each time he directs a film. 

You've seen the trailers, you know the essential plot - German bounty hunter Christoph Waltz buys the help of freed slave Jamie Foxx to pursue their respective targets, which leads them to rich plantation owner Leonardo Di Caprio and Foxx's wife who is still a slave - now you need to see that story played out in all its Inglorious Basterd-ness.

You have to overcome any concerns you have about the depiction / glorification of racism and recognize it's all just acting appropriate to the time and place - seeing Samuel L Jackson hamming it up should put your mind at rest.

A great film, even if it's no Pulp Fiction.

RANT - Hit and Run

Bradley Cooper managed to slide this low-budget, low-thrills caper into his higher-impact and better-received Silver Linings Playbook, Hangover, and Limitless resume.

Former getaway driver Charlie Bronson jeopardizes his Witness Protection Plan identity in order to help his girlfriend return from their middle-of-nowhere, quiet life to Los Angeles and her new job. His former partners-in-crime Bradley Cooper and some unknown manage to intersect with the Charlie and his girlfriend en route to LA, with predictable results.

This was billed as a "comedy" but managed to leave my sides decidedly un-split, and the rest of me un-moved by what was a hit and run movie with few hits and not much of a run.

Low budget Tom Arnold, Beau Bridges and a few other inconsequentials fill out a cast that turned this into a pedestrian movie that had little to recommend it.

REVIEW - The Master

Joacquin Phoenix plays a seaman at the end of WWII. He's an alcoholic, mixing up killer cocktails from industrial fuels and medicines, as well as having a number of emotional and behavioral problems. JP is somewhat (justifiably?) typecast in these roles.

After finding himself out of the navy after the war's over, he gets and loses a series of jobs, only to stow away on a boat that's carrying Philip Seymour Hoffman's daughter and husband-to-be's wedding party. 

Hoffman is The Master - the leader of a cult that uses hypnosis and other techniques to explore and control the minds of its devotees.

What then transpires is basically well-acted nothingness. Two hours of engaging, but eventually pointless tracing of the cult's travels and JP's naive and slavish following.

I say "pointless" because nothing is resolved, no life-changing is experienced, nothing and no-one is debunked.

RANT - Texas Chainsaw 3D

A totally predictable, three-dimensioned pile of derivative poo that I should be shot for allowing myself to see. The grammar there is probably just as bad as the film it's attempting to describe, but at least it's accurate.

I was in a strange city (Atlanta), and with no preparation or planning I got a taxi from my hotel to the nearest movie complex and stood in line to see what was playing. I'd seen most of the films already, except for "Texas 3D". I hadn't heard of a film called "Texas", 2D or 3D. It was rated R, so at least I knew it couldn't be a kid's film, so I paid my $11.50, bought my Diet Coke and sauntered off to sit, virtually alone in Screening Room 11. I was just congratulating myself on arriving, unplanned, precisely when the movie was starting, when the horrible news played out - Texas Chainsaw.

It was much warmer there in the theater than it was outside, so I stayed and watched the unlikely story of a surviving member of the original murderous family who attacks a party of stupid twenty somethings (i.e. a group of dumb asses who never turn the lights on when they venture into a dark basement, and never think that it's unwise to explore an empty house alone).

It's a testament to the predictability and greed of Hollywood that there have been FIVE remakes of the 1974 "classic", from Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Next Generation, through Massacre 2, Texas Chainsaw Massacre - The Beginning, and one remake that was so lazy and unimaginative that it used the same name as the original.

Needless to say, avoid this one like there's someone threatening you with, um, a Chainsaw.

REVIEW - Fish and Farm

Decent food but a not too pleasant ambiance that turned what could have been an enjoyable experience into something much less.

First of all, it's part of the Hotel Mark Twain, which does little for its reputation as a happening restaurant. To be fair, you don't have to go through the hotel to get to Fish and Farm, but you definitely get the feeling that at the wrong time of day you could be shoulder to shoulder with a bunch of expense account eaters. 

And shoulder to shoulder is definitely what you'll be, because there's not much space between the tables. It was also too warm (it was hot!) in there. The place is also echo-y and therefore noisy. And it smelled of the Fish. Someone - or rather, a lot of the clientele - had clearly chosen fishy mealz prior to our arrival, as that was the pervading aroma when we entered.

We didn't help, as we started by sharing the Calamari (not bad at all, and not the usual breaded and fried variety, but crisp and grilled, with olives, garlic, shallots, arugula and frisee), and then Pavey had the Halibut ("over done, not properly seasoned, and one of my least enjoyed halibuts for a long time"), while I had the Ribeye (a great steak, one that madame kept taking slices of as a substitute for her less than stellar halibut).

I'm glad we went there, but not so glad that I'll be pressing to go back soon.

RAVE - Zero Dark Thirty

I feel somewhat guilty finding fault with the time this film took to get going, and the pace it sustained once it had. Both were a product of the level of detail the director focused on - normally something I really look for in a good movie, but which proved just a bit much here, especially when we knew where this was all going.

The final half hour, when the marines flew their cloaked choppers into Pakistan, touched down in Bin Laden's compound and gradually - in pitch darkness - carefully picked the place apart looking for their target was, to repeat an over-used and inadequate phrase, awesome.

It was easy to confuse and compare Zero Dark Thirty with the TV series Homeland, which covered very similar territory - a female CIA operative driven by her conviction and determination to follow an investigative trail over years. 

Both had their faults, but at least the film was over in three hours.

RAVE - The Impossible

This film gets a RAVE review, not because I particularly liked it, but because I can't bring myself to knock a creditable effort like this, and one that is so interminably serious.

Of course, it's a serious subject: the Christmas 2004 tsunami that struck south-east Asia, killing 200,000 people. The film deals with The Impossible story - a true one - of a family of five who were vacationing by the beach at a resort in Thailand when the tsunami hit.

Revealing why it was "impossible" would mean giving away the end, but in my view you don't need to see it all the way through to realize this film is constructed like a chick flick, with all the heart-rending emotion wound up to 11.

And I wonder what the Spanish family who suffered the tragedy around which the film is based, and the various Spanish companies that funded the movie, think about their roles being played by English actors Ewan McGregor and Naomi Watts.

Yes, it was moving. Yes, it was compelling. And yes! the effects were stupendous. But.