American Gangster

American Gangster is a great movie. That's all there is to it. Denzel Washington gives a great performance, as does Russell Crowe. I thought all the supporting actors were good as well-many rappers played not only members of Denzel's gang, but were cops as well and all aquitted themselves honorably. Denzel plays the bad guy-a heroin dealer who goes straight to the source in Southeast Asia and cuts out the middleman, while Russell Crowe is the cop who is intent on bringing him down. Denzel is the family man, who cares for his wife, his mother and his brothers, while Russell is a negligent father, who admits it's not safe for his child to be around him-but both are dedicated to their respective jobs. While both Russell and Denzel ever been a big fan of his movies. He's always had a great cast and a story but he always has to throw in flashy camera angles and turn it into a spectacle. He wasn't always this way-Alien, using a very small set and a great cast was a great scary movie. But then there was Blade Runner (yes, it needed to effects but it was really flashy and slightly annoying), Legend, Conquest of Paradise, Gladiator and Kingdom of Heaven. Why all the epics when he proved he could tell a great story without all the show (I'm thinking of Matchstick Men and Thema and Louise-both of these were great stories without the "Epic Sweep" of which he is so fond)? So I was happy to see that although this is a "big" movie if only by virtue of it's tremendous cast, it's still a story, focusing on two men determined to do their jobs as best they can. No epic, no sweep and grandeur, just a great story told very well. The scene where Russell and Denzel finally meet is a case in point-Denzel has been in church with his family and comes out of the church to find the street, once full of cars and people, is now bare. He sees his car, the only one out front, with a telephone pole blocking the view of the whole car. He looks around and sees the street has been cleared, with police cars and officers blocking every road. He moves his head a bit to the side and now sees Russell, leaning against his car. And that's it. You know the scene is over, you know he won't run and there's nothing of the "you're under arrest" crap-it's a great scene.
Unfortunately, it is almost undone by what follows. Denzel and Russell next have a great scene where they discuss what Russell has on him and how's he's going to put him away-it's two actors who know what they're doing and enjoying it. But after...it's turns into five minutes of a buddy movie. The two of them laughing and joking and working together-oh God it was stupid. I won't say it ruined the movie, but after spending almost three hours of good cops, really bad cops and gangsters deal drugs, kill each other and hunt each other down ina very hard-nosed way, it was very disconcerting to watch it turn into the "ha ha, let's join forces and go get the bad guys" cliche and it was a shame because it was so good up to that point.
Regardless, it was still a great movie. I sat there for the three hours and never wondered when the movie was going to end (or praying that it would end soon), I was caught up in every single moment. Would I see it again? Definitely. I'd also like to say how nice it was to see black actors in a movie-it reminded me that so many movies lately are about white people (white men in particular) so to see a movie with some great black actors (not just Denzel who can pretty write his own ticket)-well, it was nice. Could we get some more of that please?

Wild Wild West

Please don't talk to me about the horrendous movie of the same title-I'm talking about the TV show. I don't want to talk about the movie (which I have to say I've never seen) merely because I think it was a travesty of the series.
Yes, I grew up watching this show. I was too young to remember when it was on at night (I think it came on after I had to go to bed and my parents may or may not have let me watch it anyway) but when I came home from school...(this was in grade school and middle school-not high school when I started watching soap operas with my friends-we had a good time mocking them). I would come home from school-my brother would be there and luckily we always agreed on what to watch. The Brady Bunch, anything with Lucille Ball and Gilligan's Island were all out but Star Trek, Wild Wild West and anything with Bugs Bunny were okay. So of course I had to get WWW when it came out on DVD (not the first season in black &white though, I couldn't deal with that). I was a little concerned-would it really hold up? I had loved the mixture of adventure, science fiction and western, Robert Conrad's stiff acting and Ross Martin's love of costumes and accents-what would it look like after all these years?
To my relief, the good episodes were still very good and even the crappy ones had something to recommend them. The funniest thing is seeing who is in them-how did this happen? It seemed like everyone and their brother were making guest appearances on WWW in 1965 (ohhhh-that explains it. I don't think I HAD a bedtime then-I was practically still a baby. Okay, a toddler.). Anyway, in just the few episodes, I watched, I saw: Peter Lawford and Sammy Davis Junior (in the same episode!), Agnes Moorehead, Hurd Hatfield (in a role that was a nice nod to The Picture of Dorian Gray), Richard Pryor (what was HE doing on this show? And playing an evil ventriloquist?) Beverly Garland from My Three Sons? It was all a little weird. However, the show was still great fun, with Doctor Loveless (a wonderful Michael Dunn) and his endlessly complicated plots to take over the world, a living house, a submarine and underwater city and a tontine (an agreement made by a group of people over money or land-whoever lives the longest gets the goods). And people wonder why I am the way I am-the more I write about this show, the more I realize the sc-fi thing started fairly early for me. Go watch it-at least one episode. If you know old TV actors and some old movie stars, you might be surprised who shows up on it.

Fun bonus fact! Every time I watched this show as a child, my older brother said "Oh, I think this is the one where they die". It wasn't until he said it during a show I had seen before and therefore KNEW they didn't die, that I realized he had been lying to me. I was simultaneously relieved in knowing that they never died and irritated that I had actually believed him when he said (I was eight or nine, I think). I never trusted him again without verifying what he had to say myself.

One More Story From My Vacation

This is one more story from my vacation-it happened on the last day.

So there we were-D and I were packing up to leave on Sunday. I had already showered and packed, so i was reading out on the porch waiting for her. Our room had a nice little porch-all the porches are separated from each other by walls made of intertwined branches. The branches are kind of thick, but the walls in no way insure privacy. It gives you an illusion of privacy but you can easily hear your neighbors. You have to make an effort if you want to SEE them but it's not private. I had already noticed the huge Escalade parked out front-I won't go into detail on how I feel about Escalades but I will say that the are the SUV of choice of people who want to be noticed but not in a good way. Okay, I think they're tacky. Fine.
So there I was, sitting out on the porch, enjoying a lovely day, when I hear the couple next door fighting. Fighting loudly about calling the kids and why she has to call them all the time, why doesn't he do it, dropping the f-bomb constantly...it was ugly. And as their door/window was open, I could hear the whole thing. What kind of person fights in Napa? It's a lovely setting, it was a lovely day...and then it got worse when he belched-loudly. Who does that when other people MIGHT hear it? And make no mistake, it was really loud and de didn't even try to hold it in. I looked around, thinking I was hearing things, but there was really no one else around. And then it got a little better when I caught the whiff of a foul smell...I actually went inside and saw that D was just about ready so we packed up. So we check out, hit a store in Calistoga and wind up a little while later in Dean & Deluca. We walk around a bit and I finally decide what I want and get in line. Ahead of me is a couple who I looked extactly how I pictured my neighbore. She:40's, big dyed blonde hair, short, slightly overweight. She had on a light blue t-shirt with much writing on it in shiny gold, white capri pants (I think it was November 4th? Also, it was a bit cool but would warm up later-still, probably more appropriate than the woman who came to the pool at Indian Springs wearing a wool bubble skirt, a black long sleeved sweater, pearls and big gold earrings when it had to be 80 or warmer, but still bad), on her feet-silver thong sandals. She carried an enormous gold leather purse and worse huge Chanel sunglasses, perched in her copious hair. Her husband wore a slightly raggedy t-shirt (black or navy, short-sleeved) and jeans (also raggedy). If I could have drawn a picture of my neighbors, what I thought they would look like-they would have looked just like these two-she was glitzy and tacky and he was schlubby. They looked like a couple from Long Island-the kind I read about who go wine tasting on Long Island but treat it like a day of bar-hopping and get drunk and cause enormous scenes. Her outfit would not have been out-of-place in NYC (although no less tacky) but it stuck out badly in November in Napa.
And my suspicions were confirmed by the sight of the Escalade in the parking lot.
I still don't forgive him for the belch-it was gross.

Food, Food and more Food...

By the time I left California, I felt like I would never eat again. We ate, we drank and we ate again and again...here's the story.

By the time D picked me up at SFO, it was late (by my time, anyway) so I was cold and hungry. We decided to go eat first and then check in to the hotel. After a bit of fussing (on her part, not mine, because at that point I would eaten a chair leg if it had enough sauce on it, we wound up at Paragon. It was nice-a little chichi, but there were people with small children there and many couples too. I had chicken and D had halibut (a pattern we were to repeat many times), sad to say. But the chicken was really good-the skin was crisp and flavorful, the meat was moist and tasty. I do have to say that the macaroni and cheese I had was really special. Cheesy, with a crunchy top, the pasta not overdone, the cheese a mixture of cheddar and Gruyere-it was just what I needed.
Then we checked into the hotel-the Harbor Court Hotel ,and it was really nice. Really, really nice. It's a Kimpton and we got a special rate, the people were really nice-it was great. In the morning we got (we were going to go to the YMCA gym next door but that fell by the wayside of sleeping and than getting coffee). We walked over to the Ferry Building and braved the Saturday crowd of the farmer's market and I had the best mocha I'd ever had. I don't really care about coffee (I know this is heresy for some of you) but that mocha (at Blue Bottle or Bottle Nose or something) was great. We walked along the Embarcadero and chatted...D is my best friend and I've known her for many years...so it was nice to just walk and chat. We talk on the phone and email but it's not the same as just hanging out. And she's the best person to shop with, to eat with-she's great fun. After our long walk (on a beautiful day) we went to Oakland/Berkeley. We went to her favorite store there-a home store, but with great jewelry and clothes called Vessel. It was great and she got bought my birthday present there-a beautiful necklace (we split the cost). She thinks I should buy nicer jewelry, so this was her contribution to it. We went to Oliveto's for lunch (pizza with anchovies for her, a ham and cheese with tomato for me). It had to be the lightest, crispiest, tastiest sandwich EVER. And she liked her pizza but I hate anchovies so we did NOT share. After hitting every home store (and apparently there are a lot of them in Berkeley, who knew?) we went to Chez Panisse for dinner. We went to the Cafe-it's cheaper and you have a choice, as opposed to downstairs-where you have to eat whatever they're making that day. We didn't have a reservation, but we went early and they squeezed us in. I had chicken with sweet peppers and tomato soup with fennel to start and d had halibut and a salad. It was the best chicken ever-I didn't know chicken could really taste like that. It was moist and tender and so flavorful...but dessert was perfect. A sour-cherry crisp with vanilla ice cream. It was one of the best things I've ever had (that line will be repeated but I don't want to get ahead of myself).
This is the saddest part of my narrative-we stayed in SF on Sunday and went shopping 9a good day, we both found things we liked at good prices at the resale stores-it's not always the case) and D found jeans she liked (which was a goal, even though the clerk was snotty) and then we went to to Fillmore Street to shop and eat...and our favorite restaurant was gone. Goodbye Chez Nous! We had many great meals there and more than our share of frites. Goodbye beloved spanakopita and mussels-we loved you. So we went up the street to Florio and shared a roasted chicken with vegetable and frites. It was very good, the broth the chicken was in was garlicky the frites were crisp and hot and the service was great (although they charged her twice).
The next few days were in Palo Alto-a Mexican place we go to a lot when I visit (good chicken soup but I always get the carnitas and she gets prawns), the next night at a noodle place that had spectacular yellow curry with chicken and potatoes-it was great, and the next night at a Chinese place that we've been to before. they have good Mongolian beef (tasty and tangy) but she likes the tangerine beef which is too sweet for me (hard to believe, I know).

Then we headed to Napa and Cindy's Backstreet Kitchen. Cindy Pawlcyn is a well-known Napa chef and she has three places in Napa. It was funny, because we went there for the first time last year and then sat at the very same table again this year. We both had marinated hangar steak with fries. It was wonderful-marinated in garlic and sugar and some spices, cooked to perfection with a pat of butter with garlic and something else in it...(I have a picture) it was great. I had it last year and I'll have it again next year. Also, I was drinking champagne everywhere we went but I didn't bother to notice what they were-except at Cindy's. It was a Mumm's Blanc de Noirs (yes, it was pink but I don't care, it was dry and cold and just right). For desert we shared an apple crisp, which was good but did not compare to the sour-cherry crisp at Chez Panisse.
We had mud baths the next day and hung out by the pool. the weather was beautiful (80 and sunny every day), it was perfect. We went to dinner at Zasu, a tapas place in Napa. I had pumpkin and squash soup and polenta-D had a bunch of salads. She raved about them but it was SALAD. however my food was very good. The soup was slightly spicy and tasty, was the polenta was hot and crispy, with a nice flavor (and bacon on top!Yum!0. However dessert..a pot au creme...well it gave the crisp a run for its money. Soft, velvety chocolate that was like whipped creme but thicker and hugely chocolate..it was one of the best things I've ever had.

The next day we went to Healdsburg (another home store)...to be honest, the food I had there was good but was not as good as the other places and it was more expensive. The Squash soup was great but the crispy rabbit was difficult to eat. the risotto was good though. This meal was really notable for the fact that D was taking my picture at dinner (we were sitting outside and it was a really nice setting) when she stopped and had an odd look on her face. I asked why she stopped and she whispered that she would tell me later. So we ate and then I looked around a bit...and right behind was a woman with enormous implants and long blond hair-she looked like a porn star (and clearly from LA or Las Vegas). Her top was tight and cut very low, he was tan and his shirt was unbuttoned to his waist-it was tacky and hilarious. D told me that when she started taking pictures, she thought D was taking HER picture and started to pose. It was pretty funny and more memorable than the food.
Sunday we went to Cesar in Berkley (next to Chez Panisse) the way back to Palo Alto. I just had some serrano ham and we split some frites. It was good but not spectacular. I liked it but I'm not sure I'd go back.

What we drank will be covered in another post...

2 movies

My netflix movie was The Ninth Configuration-written and directed by William Peter Blatty, who considers it the true sequel to The Exorcist (at least according to the IMDB).
If The Excorcist is about demons and evil, then this movie is about faith, belief and the power of redemption. Maybe. It's a difficult movie to understand and it makes you work for the understanding of it. It takes place shortly after the end of the Vietnam War-at a remote castle in the Northwest, where insane soldiers are sent to recuperate. The arrival of the new supervisor of the hospital (asylum?) is Colonel Kane, played by Stacy Keach. The Colonel is preternaturally calm in the face of all the madness around him-and there is a lot of madness going on around him. He allows the inmates to do whatever they please, in an effort to help them work through their problems. Does he really help work through their problems? It's hard to say, as all they is act out all day and it seems as if nothing really changes. But he does spend a lot of time arguing with Billy Cutshaw, an astronaut who had a breakdown on the launch pad and scrubbed the launch. He's had a nervous breakdown, and he tells the Colonel he believes in the Devil and evil because of all the evil in the world-but he cannot believe in God or goodness in spite of the good in the world. He asks the Colonel to name one person who has given up his own life for one other person and disputes the examples the Colonel gives him, although he does tell him that if there is life after death, could he please send him a sign? The whole situation comes to ahead when Cutshaw escapes form the asylum and heads for a bar in the nearest town and proceeds to get drunk, sitting at a table by himself. Unfortunately, the local biker gang recognizes him and starts to torment him. I will say this, I couldn't figure out if the leader of the biker gang was meant to be gay or not. He's a nasty piece of work, but with his big curly hair, scarf tied to the side of his neck and a LOT of eyeliner...it was hard to tell if he was gay or just a leftover from the 70's (this movie is from 1980). The Colonel comes in to rescue poor Cutshaw and ends up taking a beating himself, in order to get the gang to let them go. After enough torment by the gang and a sexual assault on Cutshaw (a particularly vicious scene, just for the sheer meanness of it) Kane loses it entirely. There had been debate in the asylum as to whether he was "Killer" Kane, renowned in Vietnam for being heartless killer and there is no doubt in this scene that they are the same person. Kane dispatches just about everyone in the bar, except for the college-age waitress (you have to wonder what she's doing working there, with her white shirt, striped sweater and fluffy blond hair. Could she not get in to a school in California?). Anyway, everyone else is toast, but Kane himself is in pretty bad shape by the time the police arrive. Kane takes the blame everything although the police are suspicious-but they let everyone go back to the hospital.
I don't really want to give away the ending, but let's just say that Kane proves, in his own way, that there is goodness in the world and gives hope to Cutshaw. There is also a nice twist to the story of Kane but I don't want to give that away either. I liked this movie-I could see why Blatty said it was the true sequel to The Exorcist, with its mediation on good and evil-if there is evil, there has to be good, right? Or not? Who is to say which is which? This isn't an easy movie, but it is worthwhile.

The other movie I saw The Darjeeling Limited. In it's own way, it has similarities to The Ninth Configuration. Both movies are about process and finding yourself-if you want movies that are strong on plot, you should look elsewhere. Darjeeling is the story of three brothers on a trip through India-ostensibly to see their mother who is living in a convent there (it's debatable as to whether she will actually see them or not). Will the brothers make through the trip without killing each other? Will they make through India without getting kicked out of the country or off the train? This movies is truly about the journey and not the plot and that's what I liked about it. No comment on the performances-they were all uniformly good-I was surprised (pleasantly) that Owen could give a performance that was outside is his usal character-it was nice to see that he's not always a stoner/loser/loveable idiot.

What I Read on my Vacation

The food thing will take more time, so here's what I read...

All I've been reading lately is the Dresden Files books, which I'm glad to say have improved over time. Yes, I still think they're slightly shallow (and maybe I feel guilty because they're so much fun) but I like them. If nothing else, they're very entertaining. I can't say I think the character has grown very much, especially after everything that's happened to him, but if you take these books on their own terms and don't expect too much, they're very good. I read the two latest books-White Night and Blood Rites and liked them both.

Next came the two new Charles Stross books-Halting State and the new Merchant princes book-the Merchants War. Both of them were really good. I don't want to go into too much detail about them, but as I've said before or, more accurately, my friend Y said), Stross writes about ideas-and in every one of his books (with me, at least) there comes at least one point where I have to stop and think about what he just wrote and the implications if it actually came true. This is not so true for the Merchant Princes stories (which seem to be heading steadily towards Roger Zelazny's Amber series but are still great) but very true for Halting State-which takes place only a few years from now. In Halting State, the plot kicks off with a bank robbery. In a virtual world. So why did they call the cops? Why they called the cops and the implications of the robbery are more far-reaching than you could guess. It's futuristic but in a very intelligent way-one we can recognize. And not o give anything away, but I would love the play the game SPOOKS, although it might get annoying.
To cleanse my palate and because this vacation had a lot to do with food, I next read Brillat-Savarin's The Physiology of Taste. Considering this book was written in 1820 or so, it has much to say about the way we eat today. He advises those trying to lose weight to "stay away from floury foods", is a big fan of salads and absolutely loves to eat. He tells a great story about visiting a friend in America who lived out in the country-when it came time for him to leave, his American friend pulled him aside and went on about how much he loved America, his freedom and the lack of war...but all Brillat-Savarin was thinking about was the delicious quail they had eaten and if he could get some at a market. This is a book that anyone who likes to eat will enjoy.
Robert Crais' book Indigo Slam is almost directly in the middle of the Elvis Cole series-so why did I read it when I had already read all the others before it and after it? The answer is that it came along with all the other Crais books and I wasn't being very picky about in which order I read them. Also, this one came in a bit later than the others and just decided I would read them without waiting for this one. I now regret doing this because the other books (particularly The Last Detective and The Forgotten Man) would have made a little more sense-and this book gives a taste of things to come. It's also in the middle in terms of writing-I give Crais credit because he really has improved as a writer as this series has gone on and tin the books after this he really stepped up and improved the series. That is not to say this is not a good book-it is. It's just not as good as the books that came after it. Elvis gets involved with a missing father, he's a runaway from witness protection, the FBI is involved...blah blah blah. It's very good except at for the semi-twist ending which anyone (meaning me) could see coming a mile away.

And then I finally got around to reading Light by M. John Harrison-and I still haven't decided how I feel about it. I've brought Light with me on my past three vacations and could not bring myself to read it. Looking at everything through quantum mechanics left me cold, I didn't like any of the characters and the plot confused me.
All these things are still true. In fact, I hated most of the characters-the female pilot is a spoiled brat (it was hard to feel sorry for her, even with her childhood trauma, seeing as how she kills people whenever she doesn't like them). Yes, she's a child who has never had to grow up because she chose to become a pilot of a special kind of spaceship and so lives in a tank with her brain wired into the ship's controls. As a result, she has a child's lack of understanding of consequences so she does whatever she likes. Her passengers (who paid her) have sex and she doesn't like that, so she kills them. She keeps one of them because she feels sorry for her but when she has sex with a guy Seria (the pilot) picks up to help her with an issue she's having, she strands them both on a planet and kills them. The physicist who started all this is no better-he may be brilliant, but he's a serial killer. The guy who is addicted to virtual reality and so lives in a virtual reality tank from which he is physically torn is a reasonably decent person, although in this book, if you aren't a serial killer, that makes you a decent person, comparatively speaking. There were many cool scenes and fantastic imagery but I hated the characters so much that it's hard for me to get past that. Yes, there many worthy mnoments in this book and many interesting ones but...well, I'm still torn.

Finally!

Yes, I'll write about what I read and what I ate on my trip to San Francisco and Napa Valley (in two separate posts, so you can decide if you like on topic better than another) but right now I just want to say that NOT ONLY has the announcement been made that the new X-Files movie will begin shooting in Vancouver in December, but Fox has also announced a release date for July 2008! Yay! Yes, I know other people don't care, but I've been teased too many times on if this movie is ever actually going to begin shooting or not, if there is even a script and could they get David and Gillian to work together again. But David, Gillian and Chris Carter all had lunch together a few weeks ago, everyone is signed and they got the whole thing done into pre-production before the writer's strike started as apparently that was the impetus to get it all in motion-if they had waited any longer, no one knew if/when they would ever get it off the ground. So, yay! (yes, again). All the times of "yes, we're doing it, we don't know when" have finally come true. I have to say that I won't believe it's true until I'm actually sitting in my seat at the theater but it looks like that may actually come to pass.