Remains of the Day

Tribeca Film Festival mini reviews

These thoughts about the movies I saw at the Tribeca Film Festival are really late, but then I've been behind on lots of things these past several weeks.

My introduction to the Tribeca Film Festival came in the form of David LaChapelle's documentary Rize (QT trailer). It tracks the rise of a form of dancing called clowning which evolved into its more well-known incarnation: krumping. Invented by kids in the ghettoes of Los Angeles, krumping fuses hip-hop, African tribal dancing, stripper dancing, and the convulsions of an epileptic in seizure. Its movements are so fast and furious that a disclaimer appears at the beginning: none of the footage has been sped up in any way.

The theme of the movie is that these youths struggling to survive in the ghetto have found a creative outlet of expression and an alternative to the gangster lifestyle in krumping. Midway through the movie, clowning originator Tommy the Clown (a birthday clown for the ghetto, second from the left in the pic below) leads his group of Clowners in a dance battle against a new wave of krumpers, packing an entire arena, and the intensity of the competition and trash talk reveal a competitiveness at the heart of krumping. At dance parties, krumpers regularly shove each other off the dance floor, but the physical confrontation, as aggressive and combative as it appears, is peaceful in spirit.

The most charismatic dancer was Miss Prissy (she's the crazy-ripped girl in the movie poster), and she was one of the few stars not to attend Q&A because she'd gone on to become a backup dancer for the rapper The Game. Is krumping a fad? It's too early to say. It has yet to spread beyond Los Angeles, but perhaps the release of this documentary will spread the movement to other parts of the country. Though the documentary ties krumping to the ghettoes of LA, its violent and uninhibited movements look like a physical release of universal teenage feelings: alienation, anger, rebellion, and the conflicting desires to stand out and fit in.

In Red Doors, the NY Narrative Award winner, nearly all the characters are nearly at the end of their story arcs when the movie begins, and the story cliches shorten the distance they travel. All signs pointed to a family dinner with everyone's significant others at movie's end (Joy Luck Club style), and so it came to pass. Maybe some of the familiar tropes of these dysfunctional Asian American family stories are just too familiar to me as other people around me seemed to really enjoy it. The story of how a few college girlfriends banded together to stitch together financing and bring the movie to the festival, revealed during Q&A, was the portion of the screening that caught my attention. It's the type of story one hears over and over at film festivals, but it still hasn't gotten old for me.

Puzzlehead revives the Frankenstein myth. In this sci-fi thriller, a man who builds a robot of himself, only to lose control of it. The main actor was so wooden, I lost track of who was the robot, who was the man. Poor acting is a risk with any low-budget movie, but an audience will forgive if the movie is original. This one isn't able to outrun audience expectations. I felt as if I'd skipped ahead in the presentation and reached the finish while the movie was still presenting the first chapter.

I loved the docudrama 24 Hour Party People, by Michael Winterbottom, and 9 Songs was said to include concert footage by Franz Ferdinand, among others, and lots of sex. The movie should have been more accurately titled: 9 Songs, 24 positions. A young couple, Matt and Lisa, meets at a concert and begins an affair that alternates between live music and home-schooling in the kama sutra. The story is narrated in retrospect by Matt, now working in Antarctica on some sort of geological expedition. Long shots of the desolate, icy white snowscape hint at the shallow and empty nature of Matt and Lisa's relationship, but that idea isn't as tragic as it aspires to be considering how shallow both Matt and Lisa seem. The overall effect is much less provocative than it sounds, though at least it's an attempt to push audience buttons, something movie festivals should provide as an alternative to the average fare at local cineplexes.

Runaway is directed by Tribeca veteran (yes, there is such a think even though the festival has only been around since 9/11) Tim McCann and follows a pair of brothers on the run from a dark family past. Older brother Michael works at a convenience store and leaves his younger brother Dylan at the cheap motel that serves as their home base. Michael begins to fall for a fellow clerk named Carly (a back from wherever she's been Robin Tunney with the best performance in the movie), and as she opens up about her past, so does Michael, leading to a massive twist at movie's end. It's the type of twist which has become somewhat popular in movies in recent years, using a visual metaphor for an internal state of mind (I won't reveal what the trick is as it would ruin the movie). The first time you see it in a movie, it's surprising. Now, having been used several times, it feels a bit like a magician's invisible string. It's a dangerous game, because the gimmick also causes the audience to have to re-evaluate much of what they've seen. Leaving aside the plot twist, though, the greater problem is that Michael isn't sympathetic; it mutes the tragic payoff.

Fox Searchlight had already picked up Night Watch for distribution prior to Tribeca, so the Stuyvesant High School auditorium screening I attended had an unusually strict security detail. At the door, they took my phone and backpack and still security-wanded me before allowing me in. The director came on stage beforehand and billed Night Watch as the first fantasy movie to come out of Russia.

Night Watch is the first chapter of a trilogy, so it's particularly unfortunate that it's a mess. Take a vampire movie, zombie movie, a few witches and magic spells, and a heavy dose of CGI, put in a blender, top with a dollop of squid ink to darken the cinematography, and puree. The ending is a setup for part two of the trilogy and offers little emotional satisfaction. I welcome new entries in various genres from foreign countries, but the same economic pressures that produce unoriginal but globally palatable Hollywood fare can work in reverse. Night Watch feels a bit like Hollywood genre movies refracted back by a Russian fun house mirror, a Frankensteinian quilt of genre chunks. A movie like The Return, though it's in a genre with a long-standing tradition in Russia, feels far more original and unsettling.

Deep Throat

Deep Throat of Watergate fame is revealed as Mark Felt
A good excuse to go back and watch All the President's Men, one of my faves. The revelation is somewhat anti-climactic, even though it was on my list of things I hope happen in my lifetime (along with things like a Cubs World Series victory, contact with extra terrestrials)

New short fiction by George Saunders drops Sept 6

Nine common elements of billion dollar movie franchises

Short profile of Daniel Negreanu
Dolly Brunson: "He may be one of the all-time greats. Maybe the greatest ever.''

Stream the new Paul Anka album (via Stereogum)
He covers everyone from Oasis and REM to Nirvana and Van Halen. Very weird.

Stream the new Coldplay album

Danny Hillis's Babble makes the invisible cone of silence a reality
Sweet!

Audition, Donnie Darko, and Primer: Movies that make you go hmm

Two movie interpretations to put out there to see what people think (and a review of another mind bender of a movie that's a real brain tickle)...

The first movie interpretation is from my old roommate Scott about the Japanese horror flick Audition, directed by Takashi Mîke. I first saw Audition last Christmas break while in Temecula, even though I'd owned it for years. My dad shares my stomach for disturbing movies, and I wanted to watch it with him. We stayed up late one night to screen it after everyone else had fallen asleep. If you thought Michael Douglas had a tough time in Fatal Attraction...

I'll have to test out Scott's theory with a repeat viewing, but maybe some Audition and Mîke fans out there have something else to add. Those who haven't seen it and can stomach some graphic, disturbing, and horrific imagery (I'll never see piano wire again without curling into a fetal position and whimpering) will be treated to a very smart and thought-provoking horror movie about male insecurities about women and the loneliness of urban life (especially in Japan). Mîke's movies are always provocative, often disturbing, but seldom meaningless.

Excerpts from Scott's e-mail (minor plot spoilers):

It seems pretty clear to me that all the horrible things that happen in the last third of the movie are taking place in Aoyama's head (the last scene in which Asami accepts his marriage proposal is the final "real" scene), brought on by issues he has over his fear, mistrust, and guilt with women. There are "revelations" he sees that he could not possibly know, and the end, in which his son does not die, suggests to me there are limits to the torture he dare imagine for himself. Yet, I've yet to see this thought discussed in any meaningful way by people who've seen the movie, which strikes me as potentially missing most of the interesting aspects of the movie similar to a person who doesn't realize the first 90% of Mulholland Drive took place in Diane's (Betty's?) head.

Audition never struck me as having compromised with its ending, and the idea that Aoyama is "dreaming" a nightmare scenario for himself seems the most logistically and artistically satisfying of all possible conclusions.

First of all, Aoyama is f***ed up with women. His wife dies, oh, seven years before the true beginning of this story, and he hasn't really dated since? His teenage son is so much more wise about women that the son needs to give his father advice? His friend needs to fabricate a movie just so Aoyama can have the opportunity to talk to women? He fixates on one particular woman after seeing her picture and resume? This guy is screwed up! In the beginning we're introduced to a creepy secretary who suggests a Japanese Glenn Close, but by the end it seems obvious that Aoyama and her have had an affair in the past. It's actually Aoyama whose public indifference and inability to address the affair who seems ultimately troubled. He materializes his guilt into the form of his wife in at least two hallucinations, and he's all messed about about sexuality in general. Asami's dominatrix gear at the end seems to summarize Aoyama's overriding views of sex: he doesn't understand it, and he fears how it controls him. It's not clear whether Aoyama is even all that secure with the twin aspect of atavistic life: eating and f***ing. He doesn't seem able to even eat in the company of women (he just seems to drink a lot), and I thought it was particularly intriguing that he won't let his son's girlfriend make him dinner, but later on he envisions sleeping with her. It was just dinner, dude!

As for all the typical craziness that follows, well, I'm just going to call that "Miike-ness" for convenience. Remember when his friend tells him not to call Asami, and there's a scene where she's just waiting next to the phone (with a big burlap bag ominously in the background)? That's more Miike-ness. This is the thing: taken upon themselves, the Miike-ness just doesn't have any logical consistency. If we were to assume that the end was REAL, and the moment where he falls unconscious the only hallucination he has, we must wonder how he knew certain things. For instance, he clearly visualizes the same house we see earlier in the film (where Asami is waiting for him to call), but hey, how's that possible? Was he dreaming that earlier scene as well? There are several details that don't add up, including how he could possibly know Asami's fondness for wire before she gets to work on his ankle. The only logical explanation is if we discount as imaginary EVERY SCENE Aoyama is not in.

Asami's dialogue before they sleep together is admittedly a little odd, but doesn't it stretch suspension of disbelief to the limit when she disappears entirely for a couple days, and then re-appears to "gimp" Aoyama? Did she need to Fed-Ex some needles her way? Aside from wearing unusually frou-frou clothing, and looking like she only eats on days that start with "T", is there ever any real hint that Asami might have a crazy psycho hiding inside? While we're talking about characters, doesn't everyone seem really strange after Aoyama and Asami sleep together? A tenant sounds gleeful describing the body parts in the bar below, and a dance instructor (who barricaded himself inside by nailing planks to the OUTSIDE) spends his days heating pokers for, I guess, the unlikely scenario he gets another pupil.

So, I guess my very simplistic psychobabble explanation for why Aoyama dreams this really terrible nightmare is that he has large feelings of guilt for his wife, secretary, and Asami; he's fearful of the sex, openness, and commitment Asami requests of him; and perhaps after losing his wife he just expects something else terrible to befall him. He fixates on some careless words from his friend Yoshikawa (who probably said that because he saw Aoyama getting way too serious way too fast... and possibly with a little envy), and bolsters a subconscious mistrust he has of Asami. He's also startled by the depths of her devotion before they sleep together, and that plays into his Misery-on-crack hobbling delusion. The montage of nightmare elements in his "poisoning dream" are carelessly interwoven with all the women in his life, suggesting, at a minimum, this is really about more than his relationship with just Asami.

In doing some further research, I found this thread at IMDb that tries to distinguish dream from reality. It mentions an audio commentary by Mîke, but it's not on the DVD I own. Apparently Mîke's commentary states that all the torture scenes are reality. He would say that. I

Over Christmas break I also watched Donnie Darko again. Alan and Karen were seeing it for the first time. After watching it, Alan had an interesting interpretation, the details of which I've forgotten. One thought remains: he saw Roberta Sparrow/Grandma Death as a John the Baptist figure. She synthesizes both a pure scientific view, as represented by Noah Wylie, Most people regard her as a loon, but Donnie sees her as a prophet of sorts. Her writings train Donnie to harness his abilities. In the end, Donnie sacrifices himself in a Christ-like fashion by going back in time to die in the jet engine accident (a deleted scene shows Donnie impaled like Christ among the accident debris). In doing so, Donnie saves many others, like Gretchen, and also prevents the end of the Universe.

I should note that I have not seen the Director's Cut of Donnie Darko. So painful when a second and more deluxe DVD of a movie is issued after fans already purchased the original. The new DVD includes a documentary on the meaning of Donnie Darko as interpreted by some British fans. Sometime I'll have to check that out. Another resource is the Donnie Darko FAQ.

A few weeks back I rented Primer from Netflix. A low-budget indie movie shot for $7,000 [1], it took the Grand Jury Prize at the 2004 Sundance Film Festival. A beautifully clever movie, it inspired an almost immediate second viewing with the director's commentary on just so I could try to untangle the plot timeline, no small feat because the movie is about time travel [2]. A couple young garage inventors stumble into the creation of a time machine. How each of them reacts to this and how they each use the mechanism is the story. The writer Shane Carruth also directed and stars as Aaron, one of the main characters along with his fellow inventor Abe (David Sullivan).

The second time watching it, much more became clear to me, especially with some hints from the director's commentary. I'm happy to trade theories with folks, but the forums at the movie's official website should answer most people's questions.

The acting is stylized, with both Aaron and Abe rattling off science speak like a couple of traders discussing derivatives. Some may find the acting flat, but I much prefer the stylized deadpan delivery in independent movies than over-emoting from actors not up to the task. This movie is not about the acting, and the acting doesn't distract. The sound mix is muddy, but the director acknowledges it in his commentary and vows to do better next time. The director was on such a budget that he had to use film frames in which he is visibly saying "cut" (he simply cuts the audio out on that sequence). Films shot on a low budget can be forgiven for many flaws, but not a lack of originality. This movie is emotionally cool but intellectually rich, and what remains after one viewing is a pleasant lactic acid burn in the brain.

[1] Attend enough film festivals and you'll realize that no indie director ever reveals how much it cost to make his or her film unless the number is astoundingly low. This makes sense. If the figure is extremely low, that becomes a story in and of itself, portraying the director as a heroic artist, able to leap massive obstacles armed only with a credit card and passion-fueled ingenuity. If the movie looks lousy, the low budget is a built-in excuse. On the other hand, if the budget wasn't low, it serves no PR purpose to reveal the cost and in fact can work against you if the movie still doesn't look all that impressive despite an adequate budget.

[2] MIT recently hosted a Time Travelers' conference, though no one from the future showed up as the conference organizers had hoped. The idea was that if someone in the future had invented time travel, the conference would serve as a target in history.

Gorillaz in Union Square

Damon Albarn and Jamie Hewlett of the Gorillaz visited the Union Square Virgin Records store yesterday afternoon along with their latest producer, DJ Danger Mouse. Virgin was giving away 7" picture discs (A-side: "Feel Good Inc" B-side: "68 State") with the purchase of Demon Days.

left to right: DJ Danger Mouse, Damon Albarn (2-D), Jamie Hewlett (Murdoc)

Midgets remain safe

The Van Cliburn competition will be streamed live over the web this year

The lion and midget story that broke in the BBC? Fake!
Someone created it to win a bet with a buddy. Both this and the link above via TMN.

Morse code more efficient than text messaging

Embarrassing things that might happen to you while using a lightsaber
"You make that sharp crackling noise with your mouth each time you clash it with your opponent's lightsaber—having forgotten that the noise happens naturally."

Conan O'Brien peers into his crystal ball

Out of tune

Bo and Carrie don't quite have American Idol nerves yet, do they? Something must explain how out of tune they were singing in the final showdown. Yikes. The judges only called them on it once or twice (Randy refers to it as "pitchy" and while Simon blames their nerves).

I do think the right two made the final (even though neither's music really grabs me). I gave Bo the edge up until the final. Maybe Carrie was a bit less off in the final, so if late performance counts for more, she'll be the next Idol with a country rock album hitting stores sometime in the fall this year. In the studios, any pitchiness can be corrected by pushing a few knobs and sliders.

The show itself needs little tweaking to remain a ratings monster. They'll continue to let a few disasters through to Randy, Paula, and Simon to record a long bloopers reel. Add a dose each of Seacrest cheesiness, Randy's "yo dawgs" and double Spiderman webslinging hand signals, Paula's constant battle with lunacy, and Simon's honest and accurate feedback (always booed as mean-spirited by everyone else in the auditorium). Toss in a huge group of aspiring singers, most of whom sound like local karaoke champions, and ensure that one finalist has some skeleton in the closet. Lather, rinse, repeat.

The other big reality finale of the evening was The Contender. Why is the winner still called the contender? Shouldn't they be called the champion? Seeing the show live reveals just how much editing does for not just this show but reality TV in general. The audio production on this finale was just awful. Sound dropouts, murky dialogue, uneven sound levels...this was The Contender without makeup. I missed the subtitles during the closeups of each corner between rounds. The final interview with the winner, Sergio, was nearly drowned out by a loop of the Contender theme song by Hans Zimmer. It sounded like a record skipping. Al Trautwig was joined at the commentary table by Sly Stallone and Sugar Ray Leonard, both inexperienced color men, and it showed. They spent most of the fight pre-selling a rematch ("This is the fight of the year!" "We have to see a rematch!"). Those two were more entertaining when they were out in the audience, oohing and aahing and shadowboxing. Bring in the real boxing color men.

The fight was shown in its entirety, but thankfully it was an action-packed punchfest so the lack of editing wasn't missed as much. I did yearn for the occasional slow-mo replay on key punches. If there is a season two, and I hope there is, these are things they can improve upon. They should also improve upon the challenges.

Lions, midgets, and zombies, oh my

Lion mauls 42 midgets in Cambodia in staged battle
CMFL: Cambodian Midget Fighting League. Hmm. Cambodia sounds like a crazy place--they had a zombie outbreak there, too.

Idaho Legislature House Concurrent Resolution No. 29 commends the production of Napoleon Dynamite (via Mr. Sun)

WHEREAS, tater tots figure prominently in this film thus promoting Idaho's
most famous export; and
WHEREAS, the friendship between Napoleon and Pedro has furthered
multiethnic relationships; and
WHEREAS, Uncle Rico's football skills are a testament to Idaho athletics; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's bicycle and Kip's skateboard promote better air quality
and carpooling as alternatives to fuel-dependent methods of transportation; and
WHEREAS, Grandma's trip to the St. Anthony Sand Dunes highlights a long-
honored Idaho vacation destination; and
WHEREAS, Rico and Kip's Tupperware sales and Deb's keychains and glamour
shots promote entrepreneurism and self-sufficiency in Idaho's small towns; and
WHEREAS, Napoleon's artistic rendition of Trisha is an example of the
importance of the visual arts in K-12 education
WHEREAS, Pedro's efforts to bake a cake for Summer illustrate the positive
connection between culinary skills to lifelong relationships; and
WHEREAS, Kip's relationship with LaFawnduh is a tribute to e-commerce and
Idaho's technology-driven industry; and
WHEREAS, Kip and LaFawnduh's wedding shows Idaho's commitment to healthy
marriages;
WHEREAS, Napoleon's tetherball dexterity emphasizes the importance of
physical education in Idaho public schools;
WHEREAS, any members of the House of Representatives or the Senate of the
Legislature of the State of Idaho who choose to vote "Nay" on this concurrent
resolution are "FREAKIN' IDIOTS!" and run the risk of having the "Worst Day of
Their Lives!"

Darwinian's survival of the fittest in action

People spend more on golf clubs, but their scores stay the same

Eat Hufu, the healthy human flesh alternative (via Marginal Revolution)
"It's not people!"

Alex Ross reviews the the Opera Bastille production of Tristan und Isolde, done in collaboration with video artist Bill Viola
I'm a fan of Viola's work and would love to see this. It would mean going to Paris, though I don't need an excuse to visit. New experiments like this are exciting. During your typical three to four hour opera, my attention is almost guaranteed to waver at times. A video that evokes the themes of the opera might not only serve as eye candy but add to the audience's understanding of the opera's themes (especially to those sitting so far away that they can't discern the expressions of the performers.

China tops Italy to become the world's fourth most popular tourist destination behind France, Spain, and the US
I hope to visit there myself this summer.

What would your Wu-Tang Clan name be?

Bateman...or Batman?

At the end of this Batman Begins trailer, Christian Bale quips, "Guy dresses up like a bat clearly has issues."

James and I immediately thought the same thing: that brief clip looks and sounds like Patrick Bateman, Bale's character in American Psycho (what's this, a Killer Uncut Edition DVD of American Psycho on the way in June?!). We're huge fans of both Bale and American Psycho, and the symmetries between the characters Bateman and Batman/Wayne (both wealthy urbanites have two identities, one of them being dark and psychotic) are so beautiful that the casting of Bale as the lead in both movies seems like more than coincidence.

That led to a e-mail exchange of imagined Bateman as Batman dialogue, one of them being simply Bateman, verbatim (btw, I'm not guaranteeing these are funny, but they're certainly more amusing if you hear them in your best Patrick Bateman voice):

"Robin gets his costume from the same designer as me, though I have a slightly better cape."

"Owen has mistaken me for this d***head Clark Kent. It seems logical because Clark also works for DC Comics and in fact does the same exact thing I do and he also has a penchant for caped costumes."

"You'll notice that my friends and I all look and behave in a remarkably similar fashion, but there are subtle differences between us. Green Lantern is the biggest a**hole. Flash is the yes man. Hawkman is the most wired. I'm the best looking. We all have elaborate costumes."

"There is an idea of a Bruce Wayne, some kind of abstraction, but there is no real me, only an entity, something illusory, and though I can hide my cold gaze and you can shake my hand and feel flesh gripping yours and maybe you can even sense our lifestyles are probably comparable, I simply am not there."

An early iteration of the Batman outfit

"Aquaman? Oh yeah, he's part of that whole Justice League thing. Aside from being a closet homosexual he probably does a lot of cocaine. You know, that whole Justice League thing."

"Alfred, it's Wayne, Bruce Wayne. You're my butler so I think you should know: I've killed a lot of people. A couple goons in an alleyway, a guy dressed up like a scarecrow. I left him in a parking lot behind a Krispy Kreme. I killed Dick Grayson, my old sidekick, by accident. I killed this clown called the Joker with a ninja star shaped like a bat, I had to, he was going to kill all these people. I killed this old fat guy with flippers who calls himself the Penguin by running him over with my Batmobile. His body is dissolving in Gotham river somewhere. I don't want to leave anything out here. I guess I've killed maybe 20 people, maybe 40. I have tapes of it, you can watch them in the Bat Cave. I did this while, um, dressed up as a giant bat. I'm not sure how much longer I can get away with this. I guess I'll uh, I mean, I guess I'm a pretty, um, I mean I guess I'm a pretty sick guy. So, if you have time tomorrow, meet me in the Bat Cave, keep your eyes open."

Superman: "Good coloring."
Batman: "That's ebony. The chest plate coating is a kevlar titanium composite."
Wonder Woman: "Kevlar titanium?"
Superman: "It is very cool, Wayne. But that's nothing. Look at this. Blue lycra full body suit, red accent speedo goes over the top, matching red cape and boots. What do you think?"
Batman: "Nice."
Wonder Woman: "Jesus. This is really super, Clark. How'd a nitwit like you get so tasteful?"
Batman (v.o.) "I can't believe that Wonder Woman prefers Superman's outfit to mine."

Batman: "When I see a pretty girl walking down the street, I think two things. One part wants me to be real nice and sweet and treat her right."
Superman: "And what did the other part think?"
Batman: "What she'd look like in a Wonder Woman outfit."

"My nightly bloodlust has overflowed into my days. I feel lethal, on the verge of frenzy. I think my mask of sanity is about to slip."

"Two things. One. You can't bleach a Batsuit. Out of the question.
Two, I can only get this suit custom made. This is a very expensive
suit and I really need it clean. Understand?!?!"

On a similar note, Samuel Jackson's Mace Windu would've been 10X more endearing if he was, well, the cussing, angry Samuel Jackson (this old Top 10 Things We Want to Hear Samuel L. Jackson, JediMaster Mace Windu, say in the Star Wars Prequel list still holds true for Episodes II and III). One can only dream that such line readings will be included on a future, R-rated special edition box set of the Star Wars Ep 1-3 trilogy DVD.

On a less similar but still related note, Liam Neeson really has cornered the market for sage teacher to future heroes, hasn't he? Episode I: The Phantom Menace, Kingdom of Heaven, Batman Begins. He's taken the baton from Mister Miyagi and shows no sign of letting go.

Episode III

Back from a midnight showing of Episode III: Revenge of the Sith. More like a 12:30am showing by the time the 20th Century Fox title animation appeared on screen. I'm so tired my eyes look like Anakin's after he turns to the dark side and my face probably looks like Chancellor Palpatine's in his Darth Sidious phase (the Dark Side is a pathway to many abilities, some considered unnatural, but apparently they don't include cosmetic enhancement; the best looking Sith Lord ends up being an 83 year old Christopher Lee as Count Dooku, unless you were hip to the pagan black, red, and horny look of Darth Maul).

Some more thoughts on the movie tomorrow, when my mind is in a better place. Exhaustion leads to confusion. Confusion leads to incoherence. Incoherence leads to unintelligible prose.

Jump

Robert Evans describes how he met his 7th wife during a nude photo shoot with Andrew Blake
Now this is what we want out of Huffington Post.

Stereogum has been posting MP3s from the new Paul Anka album of covers
The CD releases June 7, so for now, you are at the mercy of Stereogum's generosity. Jump on that quick.

Many of American Rhetoric's top 100 American speeches are available for download

Filmcritic.com lists its top 100 movie voices
I'd add Denzel Washington, Harvey Keitel, and Morgan Freeman. Maybe also Rex the dojo from Napoleon Dynamite.

Tor is a toolset that anonymizes your Internet activity

Liev Schrieber's moustache in the new Broadway production of Glengarry Glen Ross is awesome
His Ricky Roma's the best thing about the production, one that doesn't quite live up to the movie version.

Voices of Light by Richard Einhorn is haunting
Especially when accompanying the amazing movie that inspired it, Carl Dreyer's The Passion of Joan of Arc.

Video clips of games on the PS3: Madden (annoying ad pop-ups) and Killzone 2
Wish these were in high def/H.264 so as to provide a better sense of the true picture quality, but even these poor facsimiles hint at the awesome graphics power of the next-gen consoles. Actual game play almost always fails to live up these stunning game trailers, but maybe soon that will change. Console wars, begun again they have.

The Da Vinci Code teaser trailer steals the Batman opening concept
That's a star-studded cast. I wonder who drew the short straw and ended up as the albino monk.

Hello Moto

In March, I visited Mike and Joannie in Chicago. Originally, I planned to take them to Alinea for dinner, but it hadn't opened yet. Fortunately, Chicago hosts more than one "post modern" or "avant-garde" cuisine restaurant (this food movement has yet to settle on a term for itself, and molecular gastronomy is not the most appetizing of terms). Chef Ferran Adrià is widely credited with founding this movement with his restaurant El Bulli, situated a few hours north of Barcelona and voted best restaurant in the world by Restaurant Magazine just a few years back. Besides Alinea, Chicago also hosts chef Homaro Cantu's Moto and Graham Elliott Bowles Avenues. I opted for Moto.

I'm not an expert on post-modern cuisine, and this was my first experience with it, but some of the tenets seem to include the following:

• Dining out should be an event in and of itself, a show both fun and intriguing
• A meal should appeal to senses other than taste to a greater degree than they do today
• Taste buds deserve something new, too
• Distinctions between highbrow and lowbrow food are artificial and should be bridged
• New technology can help to create new dishes with unique flavors and textures
• Food can appeal to the intellect

Located on Fulton St., Moto is a bit cool in atmosphere, and on this Wednesday night (Mar 16), the austerity was amplified by the emptiness. We were one of just three tables occupied, and the hushed silence caused the three of us to whisper subconsciously. I killed my cell phone even before reading on the menu that "moto is a cell phone free environment unless we issue one to you" (italics theirs). One data point can't be extrapolated in any direction, but the restaurant is a bit out of the way for a Tuesday night feast for working folk. The lighting is quite dim inside. The website explains: "the minimalist decor of the main dinning room allows our guest to focus on the main attraction: Chef Cantu's food." I maxed out the ISO on my digital camera and still could have used a tripod for pics (as some of the blurry shots below will attest). I'd love to see mini spotlights at each table, perhaps on telescoping arms, or from mini table-standing lamps, or even hanging on long cords from the ceiling, to highlight the colors of the food. Ones eyes can't make out the color and texture of the food as well when everything is bathed in dim lighting.

Moto offered three tasting menus. The base menu includes five courses for $65, the next step up includes ten courses for $100, and the grand daddy is the Grand Tour Moto (GTM), eighteen courses for $160. The GTM is described on the menu as "the best way to experience our vision in the post modern movement," but my wallet's appetite could only stretch to the ten course taster. Our waiter told us that all three tasting menus included the same amount of food, and the thought of the portions in the GTM gave new meaning to molecular gastronomy.

Our first course was the sushi cartoon, one of Moto's more famous dishes. Homaro Cantu had devised a means to feed food dyes through an inkjet printer, and this roll of sushi included photos of the fish printed on the outside of the rice paper wrapping. Novel, but more interesting conceptually than taste-wise. Cantu has a patent out on this method of printing on rice paper, and our waiter noted that Cantu hoped to enclose flavored rice paper in plastic for distribution in magazines and other outlets in the future. The culinary equivalent of perfume samples in magazines, it might be a way to market a restaurant directly to diners' taste buds.

Course two was champagne & king crab. The grapes in the photo had been carbonated somehow (with a syringe?). Each bite provided a fruity fizzling in the mouth that took me by surprise, and the dry champagne and sweet-tart grape complimented the salt and seafood flavors of the sturgeon and king crab nicely. See the piece of plastic below? It housed another of Cantu's inkjet creations. In this case, he had printed a piece of rice paper with the flavors of the dish below. After eating the dish, we were told to put the "negative" on our tongue for "developing." The result, if executed properly, was to be a reminder of what we'd just had. Cantu named this concoction deja vu. I didn't follow directions and got the negative stuck on the roof of my mouth where, presumably, humans have few if any taste buds. Joannie's negative stuck to the roof of her mouth also, suggesting that the deja vu idea needs tweaking. The result was more of a fuzzy Polaroid than an Ansel Adams print, but I still loved the dish.

Course three: French onion soup with a hot - frozen crouton. The waiter added a cube of liquid nitrogen at the table to cool the soup, causing smoky plumes to emanate from the bowl. The waiter explained the reasoning behind the liquid nitrogen, but I don't recall the details. Perhaps rapid cooling locks in the flavor in a more concentrated fashion?

Dish four: lobster with freshly squeezed orange soda. The orange is to the right in the photo below. The lobster was served over pureed celery root with brown butter icea cream. The orange, like the grapes earlier, had been carbonated. I'm a fan of the carbonated fruit. It adds a playful touch to the traditional palate cleanser. The lobster was magnificent. I love lobster, and any dish that incorporates lobster has to let the lobster be the center piece. Let lobster be lobster. This dish did.

Dish five: sunchoke, lemon, thyme, & kalamansi. Our waiter filled in the details: sunchoke (Jerusalem artichoke or sunflower bulb) sorbet, lemon and thyme jelly, and kalamansi foam. Kalamansi is a Japanese citrus fruit. The foam texture is said to deliver a more concentrated dose of Kalamansi flavor, but I'm not sure I've ever had Kalamansi so I can't comment on the success of the technique.

Before bringing out dish six, our waiters brought out a thermal polymer box heated to 400 degrees. Inside rested a raw piece of monkfish, soon to be dish number seven after it finished cooking on our table. Until then, dish six: french fry potato chain links with sweet potato pie. The potato links were carved from one potato. To the left below: porcini mushroom ragout. To the right: fennel and cabbage topped with juniper marshmallow.

Below, Joannie demonstrates that the potato links indeed formed a continuous chain. This is something I did not learn in my knife skills cooking class. The cook learned the technique from Andre Soltner of the French Culinary Institute in NYC. I'm quite certain it's something I'll never attempt.

Dish seven: monkfish bouillabasse. The waiters removed the monkfish from the thermal polymer box and placed it over bouillabaisse made from powder and the juices of the monkfish itself.

Dish eight: prime dry aged beef with braised pizza & garlic. What makes the dish noteworthy is not the democratic inclusion of pizza but the utensils. The top of both the spiral metallic fork and spoon speared a grilled(?) clove of garlic. Before each bite, we were to smell the garlic. This, the waiter explained, would fool our taste buds into tasting garlic without actually having to eat it. The effect was mild, but I had a stuffy nose. I have no problem with garlic breath, so I'd prefer my garlic in my mouth, but the beef and pizza combo was still a winning one.

Dish nine: doughnut soup. The blurry shot below is just a bit below actual size. We each received an espresso-sized shot of this dessert, and it was my favorite of the night. I don't have the adjectives to describe it, but just imagine drinking a Krispy Kreme glazed donut. The liquid had the consistency of skim milk, and the flavor was just the right level of sweetness. This is a shining example of where molecular gastronomy goes right. It's as if the flavors and smells of a donut had been magically distilled into liquid form, delivering something that tasted more like a donut than a donut itself, if that makes sense.

I had to know how the dish was made, and our waiter provided a brief description which has blurred over the passage of time. I believe they boiled a few Krispy Kreme donuts in milk, then strained the liquid and added sugar. Then they pureed a few Krispy Kreme donuts, mixed it all together, and strained the liquid out again. I hope Cantu (or is this the work of pastry chef Ben Roche?) releases the actual recipe someday because this is something I'd try and make at home. I hope to attempt this soon, and if anyone wants to trade recipes or secrets, do e-mail me.

Avant-garde cuisine has spiced up the dessert canon with its willingness to tap fast food and school lunch snacks. Another Moto dessert is Kentucky Fried ice cream (tastes like fried chicken!), and chef Bowles at Avenues incorporates Rice Krispie treats in one of his dishes.

Lastly, manjari chocolate cake with hot ice cream. The flourless chocolate cake was covered with walnuts and filled with maple syrup that gushed out once I breached the outer wall with my spoon.

No, wait, another dish, courtesy of the kitchen. Packing peanuts. The texture was that of, well, packing peanuts (when avant-garde cuisine succeeds, dictionaries fail because the food tasted just like it's named), the taste was that of popcorn, complimented by a caramel dipping sauce. We also opted for tea to conclude our three hour plus meal, having as one of our selections a tea called Iron Goddess of Mercy. Our waiter shared its history.

This reserve grade oolong tea was made from a 1400 year old tree. It gained its exalted status after curing a Ming Dynasty emperor and was made from only the middle leaf of the three leaves on the end of each branch. Why only the middle leaf? I don't know, but it makes for a good story.

Our waiter, coincidentally, had trained under Grant Achatz (of Alinea fame). He had nothing but praise for Achatz and was training to open a place of his own in the future. All waiters at Moto work in the kitchen as well, and our team of two or three waiters were trained in the techniques of high-end dining service. All our dishes touched the table at the same instant, and all wine labels were rotated towards diners while being poured. Occasionally, a waiter would even come over and adjust the placement of my wine glass which was too much attention for my taste. The timing of the arrival of each course was precise, so I can't imagine how long the GTM might take. One might be at the restaurant for four or five hours.

One last surprise remained. Our waiter had noted me jotting notes in my notebook and snapping the occasional photo, and he'd fielded many more questions from us than the other diners. When our check arrived, he brought with it a laminated copy of our menu, dated March 16, 2005, signed by chef Homaro Cantu! A perfect memento of an already memorable meal.

My lasting impression of Moto and avant-garde cuisine is a positive one. I'm as much a fan of simple cuisine as anyone (especially in my own kitchen), but letting my tastebuds experience sensations and flavors they've never been is the equivalent of traveling to undiscovered countries. The mixture of familiar cupboard favorites (A-1 steak sauce, e.g.) and childhood favorites (PBJ, cotton candy, e.g.) with expensive ingredients (foie gras, lobster) is not just playful but often successful, and many of these dishes are not just gimmicks but successful attempts at extracting flavors in their purest forms for seamless and intriguing integration.

This food movement is still young, and as such, some of the chefs' attempts will be unsuccessful. However, we have enough restaurants that know how to crank out steak frites, braised lamb shank, or Chilean sea bass, and only a handful of offshoots of El Bulli experimenting at the frontier of cooking. At this point in the movement, the risk-reward ratio for both the chefs and a foodie like me is still far in favor of experimentation. Foodies already treat meals as events, and they're the target audience here.

Those of you wishing to sample some avant-garde cuisine need to travel to Chicago, New York, Washington, D.C., London, or Barcelona (and you'll need more than a dose of good luck to score a table at Alinea or El Bulli):

El Bulli, Roses (Girona) 972150457 (reservations)

Minibar at Cafe Atlantico 405 8th St., NW, Washington, DC 202 393 0812

Alinea 1723 North Halsted Street, Chicago, 312 867-0110

Moto 945 West Fulton Market, Chicago, 312 491-0058

Avenues Peninsula Hotel, 108 East Superior Street, Chicago, 312 573-6754

WD-50 50 Clinton Street, New York, 212 477-2900

A few more pics from Moto...

Unleashed

Today our family welcomes Ryan's little brother (the baby to be named later) into the world! I simply wish that he be prepared to defend himself with the strength of a grizzly, the reflexes of a puma, and the wisdom...of a man.

Feel Good

Eat fat to lose fat
Now there's a headline I can get behind.

Party Ben mashes Gorillaz and Cake: "Never Feel Good" (MP3)
Gorillaz "Feel Good" is the catchiest single I've heard this year. Not sure how long until the new Apple commercial spoils it for me, but not yet. It stands alone better than it does mashed up. Ironically, it sounds best played large, on a full-size sound system. I love my iPod, but it's not the best device for really showing off music, and people who only listen to music on the iPod are missing out on something good (and possibly damaging their hearing)

Alinea, the latest entrant in the avant-garde food movement, debuts
Let's hope the food is better than the website. Grant Achatz is widely regarded as a prodigy in the culinary world. I wanted to go there when I was in Chicago earlier this year, but it hadn't opened. Instead, I took Mike and Joannie to Moto. I've been meaning to write up my meal there. Before I do, though, let me summarize: I'm a fan. My dessert at Moto was donut soup. It tasted like a liquid Krispy Kreme donut. Awesome.

Eliot Spitzer brokers a deal b/t Time Warner and Cablevision so Mets and Yankees games can be seen by Time Warner Cable customers (like yours truly)

Two thoughts: how ridiculous is it that a huge portion of NYC, the largest baseball market in the world, couldn't see their home teams on TV, and what doesn't Eliot Spitzer do?

Is their a way to get Mac OS X Tiger's Dashboard widgets to persist? If not, there should be, especially for the multi-day weather forecast widget.

Roast pork, docile elephants

After reading a stellar write-up of this joint in The New Yorker, I had to try Tony Luke's. Headed up towards Central Park, I stopped in along the way for a sandwich. It's most well-known for importing its cheesesteak ingredients (and a chef who apprenticed with Tony Luke himself) from Philly, but I opted for its other claim to fame, the Roast Pork Italian sandwich. With variations of just three basic sandwiches on the menu, Tony Luke's sticks to its specialties.

The restaurant itself is nothing to speak of, though people who know give it props for an authentic Philly atmostphere. White tile floor, fluorescent lights, and a counter and bar stools on the right and left lead to an ordering window at the rear of the shop. The woman behind it slid the window open, took my order, and slid the window shut. I felt like I was at a Western Union waiting for money to be wired over from family on another continent. A short while later, a different window opened, and a pair of arms passed me my sandwich.

The roast pork Italian is $7.95 and offers roast pork, provolone cheese, and broccoli rabe on foot long, soft-baked bread. They don't cheat on the length--I think mine may have been a foot and a half long--and they also don't cut the sandwich in half or offer any utensils. If there's an elegant way to eat the sandwich, it's likely limited to people with Michael Jordan-sized hands. I just stuffed my face with it, pork and rabe and provolone and grease spilling out in all directions.

Simple, and effective. The bitterness of the rabe, the sharpness of the provolone, and the saltiness of the pork form a beautiful love triangle, delivered on a plush bed of dough whose starchy taste stays out of the way. My one grips is that the restaurant offers only napkins. You need a sink with soap or at a minimum three wet naps to clean the grease off your hands afterwards.

Tony Luke's is on 9th Ave. between 41st and 42nd St. Next time I visit (after my arteries clear)? Cheesesteak.

Before stopping for a sandwich, I stopped at the Ashes and Snow photography exhibition (at Hudson River Park's Pier 54 until June 6). The exhibition is housed in a "nomadic museum" building designed by Shigeru Ban and built out of shipping containers and paper tubing (Ban is famous for building all sorts of structures out of cardboard tubing).

The photographs and 35mm film by Gregory Colbert reveal elephants, whales, cheetahs, falcons, and other animals living in peace and harmony with humans. In many of the photos, man and animal seem to be meditating together. Having lived without pets and in cities most of my life, the photos seemed fantastic, even artificial in the empathy depicted, but nothing I read at the exhibit indicated that the animals were anything but wild, or that the photos were manipulated in any way. In fact, one text said that the man free diving with the humpback whales was Colbert himself.

The 35mm film featured slow motion footage of the same subjects, but in motion they're even more mysterious. One shot showed a young girl lying asleep in a canoe, drifting down the river. The shot was from overhead and followed as the canoe passed below an elephant standing in the river. Was the elephant wild? How did they film some of these scenes? The large crowd of onlookers stood in rapt attention, like pilgrims in a temple.

If you're in NYC and looking for a peaceful way to spend an hour or two, Ashes and Snow is well worth a visit. If you're not in NYC, perhaps the nomadic museum will stop near you in the future, or you can check out more of the photos online or purchase some of the work here. A few more Colbert pics after the jump.

Media bits

iTunes 4.8 released, offering playback for Quicktime videos
After ogling the H.264 codec clips in Quicktime 7 on my G5, I can finally envision paying for video downloads through the web, for viewing on my computer. This new version of iTunes could be a step in that direction. People have speculated that Apple might focus on video downloads for a device like the iPod, but they could easily start with downloads for playback on laptops and desktops if those are the only devices capable of hurdling a minimum quality floor.

A torrent of New Order's May 5 concert in NYC at the Hammerstein Ballroom (and a bonus Peter Hook DJ set at Hiro in the Meatpacking District from that same night)
Hearing Peter Hook's bass riffs and New Order's distinctive guitar melodies makes me feel nostalgic.

The next song to be featured in the iPod commercials: Gorillaz' "Feel Good Inc" (iTunes Music Store)

Catchy tune.

Epic confrontation between good and evil

Eliot Spitzer goes after spyware and adware developers

Steven Spielberg sees Episode III: Revenge of the Sith and weeps

Malcolm Gladwell reviews Steven Berlin Johnson's new book, Everything Bad is Good For You

Editing 101

Reality television shows might not have any resemblance to reality, and their intellectual value is debatable, but one thing many of them have mastered is editing. The typical Mark Burnett reality show seems to be shot with multiple camcorders, following all the contestants from multiple angles, acquiring hundreds of hours of footage.

The magic happens in the editing room, when all that footage is condensed into forty minute episodes packed with drama and a storyline. I wouldn't be surprised if the shooting ratio is something like 20:1. Need a villain? Find a moment when one of the contestants lets his guard down and lets loose with a snide remark, then toss in a few angry responses from some of the other contestants.

Or highlight two rivals who don't particularly care for each other. Start with a few old clips where the two clashed. Interview each of them and ask pointed questions about how they feel about their rival, but don't show or reveal the questions. End the episode with a challenge pitting the two rivals against each other.

Days and days of footage are condensed into 40 minutes of non-stop action and conflict, set to a military soundtrack from Hans Zimmer. It's conflict concentrate, and one suspects that many minor conflicts are transformed into epic clashes in the editing bay. Whether you accept that or not, it is a model of efficient editing, straight out of the Michael Moore playbook.

This latest episode of The Contender was one of the better ones, pitting the easygoing good guy Jessie Brinkley against uptight, intense, cutthroat reality show contestant Anthony Bonsante, who lied about who he was going to call out in an earlier episode so he could challenge someone who wasn't prepared to fight. In Bonsante's defense, he's a single father of two who works as a K-Mart Overnight Production Supervisor, and he didn't break any contest rules.

The episode's fight build-up a confident, fit, and focused Bonsante, while Brinkley seemed mentally distracted, overweight, lazy, and a bit unsure of himself. Jessie had to lose eight or nine pounds of water weight in one day to make his fight day weight requirement of 161, going out for a jog in the sunshine in black, plastic sweats. Even then, he had to hop back on the treadmill in sweats again a few hours before the fight to drop an additional half pound. Brutal.

[As an aside, I was shocked to find out these guys weight just a few pounds more than I do. TV really does add 10 pounds and about six inches.]

The five round fights in The Contender are also examples of ruthless editing. You don't see much of the fighters circling each other. The edited footage of each round includes only flurries of punches, spliced together with reaction shots from the crowd: Sly and Sugar Ray tossing mock punches and cringing at big hits, the wives and mothers and children screaming bloody murder or gasping in horror, and occasionally a token celebrity guest like James Caan or Sharon Stone clapping and enjoying the life of leisure of a celebrity.

Bonsante won the first two rounds, Brinkley the third. Then Bonsante went into his frenzy mode in round four, throwing about five hundred punches in a row like Agent Smith pounding on Neo against the subway wall. Brinkley was down 3-1 with one round remaining, so he had to have a knockout. Bonsante came out in frenzy mode again even though he only needed to play defense to win the decision. For more than half the round, the aggression worked, and it looked hopeless for Brinkley. Then, suddenly, the camera went into slow motion, always a cue in The Contender that a momentous punch is on the way. Brinkley tossed a huge uppercut that had Bonsante spinning, and when the spinning stopped, Brinkley lined up another huge right uppercut that displaced Bonsante's head about a foot. The edited fight footage cut from a slow mo of the uppercut immediately to an overhead shot of Bonsante falling back onto the canvas with an audible thud, arms and legs sprawled in all directions like Wile E. Coyote running into a rock wall. A beauty of a cut.

Though Bonsante got back up, he was loopy, and Brinkley pounded him as Bonsante's daughter looked on with tears, screaming. Bonsante's mother ran to the ringside screaming "Stop the fight! Stop the fight!" I have no problem with boxing, and the violence is beautiful, almost lyrical, but one of the more uncomfortable aspects of The Contender is watching the fighters' really young children at ringside watching their fathers sustaining bloody beatings.

We need to sic the world's reality television show editors on the hundreds of thousands of hours of home videos around the country.

Footnote: Bonsante on Sly: "Sly's had three marriages and God knows he hasn't made the best movies, but he capitalizes on everything."

Children's fantasy on the big screen

Two fantasy franchises teased online this weekend, both in Quicktime:

• The Chronicles of Narnia: The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe
• Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire

I remember the event of reading The Lion, the Witch, and the Wardrobe but not what happens in the book itself. I think I was in third or fourth grade, and we were over at a family friend's house in Naperville (before we moved there ourselves, many years later). The adults were playing Mah Joong or something like that, and I, being a shy and somewhat antisocial youngster, wandered the shelves of the library with my eyes. The Chronicles of Narnia paperback boxset stopped me for some reason.

By the time the adults had finished an entire four rounds of Mah Joong, I had finished the first volume. As a child, I always had a soft spot for books about children who travel alone to fantastic lands to deal with unimaginable problems. As children, we never feel that anyone, especially adults, understands the daily challenges we work through. These books use fantasy as a metaphor for these feelings of alienation, transforming rites of passage into larger-than-life confrontations with mythical beasts. It's no coincidence that the mysteries in the Harry Potter books/movies are never solved by the teachers at Hogwarts, some of whom seem incompetent. Adults may appreciate the books/movies, but they are written from a child's perspective, with a youth's sensibility.

Wicked

Either Wicked or Spamalot is the hottest musical in town. Wicked has been running over a year now, and somewhere along the line it blew up. I receive e-mails from Ticketmaster offering tickets for Wicked shows six months from now. Most shows from now until then are sold out. A friend walked up to the box office and managed to score good seats to last Thursday's show, and while I'm not a musical aficionado, I look forward to heading out on the town for a show.

The Gershwin Theatre, one of the larger I've been to in NYC, was packed. The atmosphere was that of a rock concert. Everytime Elphaba (Shoshana Bean) finished a solo, dozens of young girls stood up and screamed their support. Depending on your frame of reference, it had the atmosphere of a Beatles or Justin Timberlake concert. Usually an overzealous audience is a drawback, but perhaps for a musical it helps to energize the cast. Most shows that have been running for a long time go stale which is why it's often worth the price premium to see a show while it's fresh and hot.

I didn't know much about Wicked going in except that Kristin Chenoweth (most familiar to me as Annabeth Schott from The West Wing) had originated one of the leads before leaving in July. As soon as the musical started, though, it was clear that Chenoweth had played Glinda. As played by Jennifer Laura Thompson, Glinda sounded and acted like, well, Kristin Chenoweth as a peppy, ditzy blonde. Either Chenoweth had made the part her own, or it was perfect casting. Probably somewhere in between, especially when I recalled the movie version of The Wizard of Oz and recalled that Glinda was indeed a bubbly and spacey fairy. If Phoebe Buffay was your favorite character on Friends, Wicked's Glinda makes this the musical for you. Her comic performance and plenty of faithful references to characters, events, and dialogue from the movie provide most of the humor and a-ha pleasure in the show. The production value of the set is top-notch; the giant animatronic wizard has an impressive mechanical grandeur.

Wicked is the back story of The Wizard of Oz, but it also spans the entirety of the movie. It's a canny concept, just the right mix of familiar and foreign that musical productions favor. None of the music stuck in my brain, and the surprise ending is awful, but musical fans will embrace it for many years to come. I suspect I'll leave New York City before Wicked does.

Tiger...just did it

Finally got my copy of Mac OS X Tiger from Amazon but haven't played with it much. My first thought is that it includes a lot of functionality I used to get from third party shareware. Spotlight takes the place of LaunchBar, and the Dashboard includes a weather widget that replaces WeatherPop. And multi-person video conferencing sounds cool, in concept, though who would I use that with?

Huffington Post launches, with blogs from a diverse group of 250 people from Mike Nichols, Ellen DeGeneres, John Cusack, and Warren Beatty to David Mamet, Norman Mailer, and Walter Cronkite.

The latest performance enhancer: MaxSight contact lenses
Made by Nike and Bausch & Lomb, they're used by, among others, Brian Roberts who is currently hitting the tar out of the ball in Baltimore.

Seattle's Space Needle to be converted into a giant wi-fi antenna [via Boing Boing]

Panasonic AG-HVX200

The camcorder that combines a lot of the features amateur filmmakers and videographers have been looking for--HDV, 16:9 CCDs, 24p, 1080p/720p--has been announced. It uses solid-state P2 memory cards as HD media rather than tape, and while it will improve quality, the cost of the camera with two 8GB P2 cards will be just under $10,000!

The exclamation point reflects amazement in both directions. The camera is cheap for what it can do, but my eyes (and wallet) are bleeding already. JVC also announced a new HDV camcorder at NAB. Can Canon be far behind?

2005 James Beard Foundation Awards

The Oscars of the restaurant world were announced. NYC is the Miramax of the restaurant world, or at least when Miramax was in its prime.

NY winners:

• All-Clad Bakeware Bakeware Outstanding Pastry Chef Award: Karen DeMasco of Craft, NYC - if I were a flying squirrel, I could jump out my window and glide to the doorstep of Craft. I really should go.
• All-Clad Cookware Outstanding Chef Award: Mario Batali of Babbo, NYC - is that the trophy Batali is holding, or is he about to bludgeon one of his foes on Iron Chef? I like a chef with a little heft; it's visible confirmation that they like to eat.

  

• American Express Best Chef, New York City: Andrew Carmellini, Café Boulud
• Ecolab Outstanding Wine and Spirits Professional Award: Joseph Bastianich, Italian Wine Merchants, NYC
• Illy Best New Restaurant: Per Se, NYC - Beat out, among others, Spice Market, Cru, and The Spotted Pig, also of NYC. I've been to Spice Market, and while the space itself impressed me, the food, supposed to recall Asian street food, left me unmoved and much poorer. I'd rather go to Asia and buy real street food for loose change.
• Waterford Outstanding Wine Service Award: Veritas, NYC, Wine Director Tim Kopec - the corollary to liking large chefs is trusting wine directors who hit the bottle. Tim didn't wait until the post-party to imbibe.

  

• Waterford Wedgwood Outstanding Restaurateur Award: Danny Meyer, Union Square Hospitality Group, NYC - hospitality is an appropriate name. Every Meyer restaurant I've been to has impressed with friendly service

Mini reviews

I consume and accumulate more media (DVR, Netflix, Amazon.com, RSS, e-mail newsletters, movie theatres, concerts, plays, the Sunday NYTimes, magazines) than I can write about, so perhaps a few impressions or mini-reviews will prove a more manageable format to clear the logjam in my head.

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The Interpreter is cool to the touch, much as I imagine Nicole Kidman's porcelain skin feels. She has a unique beauty, but it is a distancing type of beauty. The camera gazes at her in this movie from up close. She hides behind her bangs (so much so that it becomes a distraction), but even without the bangs, no camera can penetrate her statuesque features.

Sean Penn's character is given a needlessly tragic back story. An actor of Penn's skill is quick to expose such plot contrivances; it's like giving a Yo Yo Ma a metronome for a live performance. His furrowed brow makes for a nice visual contrast to Kidman's flawless complexion, and some of the most interesting scenes are those in which the two of them converse.

The trailer ruins the movie's centerpiece, a cat and mouse game that ends on a New York city bus. Anyone who has seen the trailer knows how it ends. It's a serious movie, with righteous indignation, tears, and impassioned speeches about the dream that was the United Nations. What I wanted more of was Catherine Keener's FBI agent. She receives two lines of note in the movie, and both are zingers.

If The Interpreter had been made by Hitchcock with, say, Cary Grant as the FBI agent and Grace Kelly as the interpreter, sparks would have flown by movie's end. It wasn't, and they don't. The most that Kidman grants Penn is a hug, and that's what the movie gives its audience, a polite hug when we want a hot kiss or a slap in the face.

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In the first Fenway Park scene in Fever Pitch, mannequins are clearly visible in the upper right of the screen in the crowd. Not enough extras willing to volunteer to sit at Fenway? Perhaps Red Sox diehards were too appalled at the idea of Jimmy Fallon playing one of them to lend their support. Were my eyes fooling me? Did anyone else see those?

Fallon's line readings, as with his on Saturday Night Live, seem effortless. Not in a good way. He never seems to try all that hard, and it comes across as a rehearsal. Contrast that with Drew Barrymore, who enunciates her thoughts in romantic comedies with the measured deliberation of someone reading a difficult foreign language exercise, as if the precision of her wording is critical to the incantation that will transform one of the many doofuses cast opposite her into an adult. Now that Meg Ryan has been face lifted into oblivion, Drew is America's new movie sweetheart, with her forgiving smile and child-like wonder (see, I've never met her and we're already on a first name basis). Her charm is the opposite of that of a Nicole Kidman. Drew is one of the very few actresses who can be cast opposite a gawky guy like Jimmy Fallon or Adam Sandler and make the audience believe she could actually fall for them. For a while Jennifer Aniston encroached on this territory, but then in real life she married Brad Pitt instead of Tom Green.

The movie has some clever meet-cute banter, and the Red Sox fandom caricatures are tolerable in doses. When the movie makes Fallon's love of the Red Sox the centerpiece of their conflict, though, it's such a reach that I lost all interest. The fans in Fallon's section of Fenway don't feel like real people. They're almost as much mannequins as the actual mannequins I saw on screen, there to recite some expository dialogue for non sports fans who aren't aware of the Red Sox's tragic history.

Of course, the movie would have been far more poetic had the Red Sox actually lost the World Series last year, but me thinks that Red Sox nation will hang on to their memories and kick the movie to the curb.

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Last last last Sunday, Ken took me to the concluding game of the Washington Nationals (formerly the Montreal Expos) opening series at RFK Stadium, against the Diamondbacks. RFK Stadium is not going to win any design or aesthetic awards--it's in the vein of Busch Memorial and other concrete flying saucer stadiums built before HOK came along with its red brick "old is new" aesthetic--but it's perfectly suitable for watching baseball. We sat down the first base line, giving us a good view across the stadium at the seats behind third base. When the Nationals rallied to take the lead, the fans in that section started jumping up and down, and that section of the stadium visibly bounced. Why I don't know (temporary bleachers set up in the conversion from football to baseball stadium?) but it's cool.

One of the downsides of the stadium's construction is that the outfield seats are way up above ground level. Most home run balls will fall into uninhabited space behind the outfield wall instead of into a fans' hands.

The stadium wasn't full. It seats over 56,000, so I suspect that good seats will always be available. I don't have any feel for D.C.'s appetite for baseball, but I can't imagine it will be worse than that of the Montreal faithful (though to be fair, much of the blame should be pinned on the old ownership).

My one game there has me suspecting that home runs will be at a premium. A few balls that looked to be crushed died short of the warning track. That's unfortunate for one of my fantasy baseball teams that counts Vidro and Wilkerson among its starters.

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Since moving into an apartment with paper-thin walls, I've had to keep the volume on my stereo system down. That means most music I listen to now is piped in from my iPod, whether I'm listening at home on my computer or strolling around town. The Apple earbuds that come with their iPods are nothing special, and they don't fit my ears. For all these reasons and others, I felt justified in investing in Shure E3c Sound Isolating Earphones.

No regrets so far. The E3c's sound a whole lot better than the Apple earbuds and my old over-the-head sports headphones. They're not noise canceling, but they do an amazing job of sealing my ears from external noise, of which there is an abundance in NYC. When I saunter down the sidewalk with the E3c's on and music blasting, all of NYC seems like a massive music video playing out just for me (in which the citizens of NYC shoot condescending stares my way for daring to saunter).

Search the web; lots of online stores carry E3c's, and good deals can be found. No need to buy direct from Shure at full retail price.

The killer app of podcasting

I've been waiting for the killer podcast to lure me into that technology, and now it has arrived: the Paris Hilton podcast. Fashion, home videos, television, Tribeca Film Festival, movies, and now podcasting. Paris Hilton is a multi-channel multimedia mogul.

This was my first year at the Tribeca Film Festival. I'm not sure what to think of the fact that House of Wax showed at the festival. How does that movie, which already has distribution, fit with any of the themes of the Tribeca Film Festival? At Sundance this year, we ran into Jenny McCarthy and her husband in Park City. They were surrounded by an entourage of guys dressed in Moviefone jackets. I thought, "Oh cool, she's here to see some movies." Turns out she was the star of a movie playing at Sundance. It's both a democratic and a humbling business. Interestingly, IMDb reports the weighted average user rating of the movie as 2.6 out of 10; when you look at the actual vote breakdown, the arithmetic mean is 6.9, but IMDb says that "various filters are applied to the raw data in order to eliminate and reduce attempts at 'vote stuffing' by individuals more interested in changing the current rating of a movie than giving their true opinion of it...the exact methods we use will not be disclosed." Jenny McCarthy and friends stuffing the ballot box? Wouldn't be the first thing she stuffed to get ahead in life.

In all seriousness, though, I do enjoy dropping a few podcasts on my iPod in the morning before heading out around town. Sometimes I need some background music for a subway ride, but other times I'm in the mood for something like, say, The Leonard Lopate Show (podcast link). In this post-Tivo age, podcasts suit my temperament because the moment they lose my interest I just fast forward or skip to the next one. I find myself wishing that some of my music buff friends would compile podcasts of their favorite new music, though I suspect the licensing rights for something like that are in favor of the labels. Does anyone know for certain?

Star Wars Episode III..Trailer #10

Well, more of a music video/trailer, this being half a music video for John Williams "A Hero Falls" from the Revenge of the Sith soundtrack. Some new saber-fu footage.

Having seen Star Wars Episode IV and all these trailers now, it's fairly clear how each of the jedi fights in Revenge of the Sith will end up, but I didn't have the restraint to avoid the onslaught of advertising and promotion.

On a related note, if you consider John Williams scores to be classical music (Amazon.com, for one, classifies soundtracks in its popular music catalog instead), then John Williams might be the top selling classical music composer alive today. If recorded music existed way way back in the day, would that title have belonged to Beethoven, Mozart, Wagner, Strauss?

Oooh, purty

Those of you with an Apple G5 and the new Quicktime 7 will want to test drive them in this HD video clip gallery. I downloaded the Batman Begins trailer, and when it appeared on my LCD, filling up nearly the entire screen with an image so clear it was like looking through a piece of glass, I wet my pants and wept with joy.

H.264: awkward name but a real looker.