Blue Ruin

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Blue_Ruin

This is the time of year Melanie and I follow the movie award committees to see what’s getting attention. Those with the most nods are good contenders for recognition from the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences - the Oscars.

Last night we streamed “Blue Ruin” via Netflix.

Wow. What an amazing indy movie.

It’s gotten a nomination for breakthrough actor/actress for the lead Jeremy Saulnier from the Gotham Independent Film Awards, most promising new director from the Chicago Film Critics Association, and a best indy picture nomination from the National Board of Reviews. Susan Wloszczyna at the Roger Ebert site (still alive and well) gave it 3.5 out of four stars. And it was available for streaming, so we gave it a try.

This is what independent movies can be when they’re done right. Obviously not much of a budget, but subtle and riveting. There’s an authenticity to this you don’t often see in film. The characters behave the way real people probably would in similar circumstances. There’s very little cliche here and a few surprises, thanks to a great script and nuanced acting and directing. By the end you realize this is what modern day Hatfields and McCoys might look like. I don’t want to give anything away about this one which is hard because I also can’t say enough about it. It’s a very pleasant surprise. Melanie was as riveted as I was. Check it out and let me know what you think.

(PS: Kim Jong-un is a pussy. Thought I'd throw that in there in case North Korea trolls my blog.)

The Beatles Mono Vinyl

Got a bit of down time tonight so I’m listening to more of The Beatles’ mono vinyl box set and loving it.

“Revolver” is for me the revolutionary Beatles album. Most people say “Sgt. Pepper’s” but for me “Revolver” set the stage for what was to come. It was the real breakthrough, the real subversive album.

Let me backtrack. I started with “Help!,” which is another favorite. I love this album, so catchy, so musical and warm, very acoustic, very rhythmic, and singable. Or sing-along-able. (One problem I have playing any Beatles album is I sing along and don’t hear how good the pressing/transfer/release is.)

“Help!” follows an album I don’t think much of, “Beatles For Sale.” That album always struck me as tired and a bit of a retread of what they’d done before. With “A Hard Day’s Night” they proved they could write enough original material for a full album - and great material - but they followed that up with an album with again a lot of covers, “Beatles For Sale.” It’s cool, it rocks, but in their evolution, it always stuck me as a step backwards.

“Help!” is a bit dismissed maybe because people think of it as a soundtrack album. And in the States “Help!” was originally released with a lot of orchestral music on it, movie score stuff, so a lot of fans maybe dismissed it. But if you listen to it again, you’ll hear some amazingly advanced music from the Beatles just three years after their first album was released. The music is rich, full, confident, and adept. The playing is strong, and the songwriting craftsmanship shows real growth. Yes there are some covers here as well - I’m talking about the current release, the CD that’s been available for years in the UK and the US as well as the mono vinyl album I played tonight - but there’s a bit more life on “Help!” than there is on “Beatles For Sale” and a bit of musical development I think. Though the song “Help!” isn’t one of my favorites (though I love the lyric), this is a surprisingly full album. “The Night Before,” “You’re Going To Lose That Girl,” “Ticket To Ride,” “Act Naturally” (great Ringo cover), “I’ve Just Seen a Face,” and the ever-covered “Yesterday” sounding much fuller and tighter in the mono vinyl release. If you’re a Beatles fan and haven’t played “Help!” lately, put it on and enjoy.

So from “Help!” I moved onto “Rubber Soul.” “Rubber Soul” is the first album where they began to break from the pop music mold. In the “Anthology” program, George (or Ringo?) says “Rubber Soul” and “Revolver” sound like sides A and B of the same album. For a while I got that and agreed with it, but especially tonight, listening to them back-to-back in the original mono mixes, it’s clear how “Revolver” is worlds away from “Rubber Soul.” “Rubber Soul” still has the nice acoustic strumming of “Help!,” the bouncy catchy vibe. Cool, likable songs that get under your skin and don’t go away, but again, not a huge advance. Yes I hear some of the heavy drumming Ringo later used to great effect on “Tomorrow Never Knows” in “Rubber Soul,” and you hear the band flexing its muscle maybe, or embracing its freedom as a top act that can try their own things. But an odd album. It opens with “Drive My Car,” certainly no one’s idea of a brilliant song. Then you have the amazing “Norwegian Wood (This Bird Has Flown),” brilliant musically (for pop) in 6/4 time, but I think a little lacking lyrically. We know now this was about a fling John wrote about, but I’m not crazy about the lyrical structure. Of course, that’s just me, your mileage may vary.

Other tunes I love on the album include “Nowhere Man” and “I’m Looking Through You.” But this isn’t a huge advance beyond “Help!.” Great strong album, but again, part of the same mold.

Then you get to their next album, “Revolver.” Now THIS is revolutionary. By the time the album closes with “Got To Get You Into My Life” and the final song “Tomorrow Never Knows,” you know things will never be the same. This is a seismic shift in what pop music is capable of. Those final two tracks epitomize everything that made The Beatles great: catchy melodicism, innovative recording techniques, and a bit of daring avant-garde which they delivered with great musicality. The ballsy attack of “Tomorrow Never Knows” is simply brilliant to me. How did they get away with that, and how did they make it sound both threatening and cool at the same time? Both scary and hummable? Even today that song has an impact.

The ONLY false step on the album is the misfire of “Doctor Robert,” a song that would fit more peacefully on “Rubber Soul” than “Revolver.” One of the only songs the Beatles admitted to being a “drug song” (duh), it’s horrible. Musically nice, catchy, great swampy snaky vibe, but lyrically obvious and an attempt at clever cuteness that fails. Yuck. Great music, terrible lyric. (Though if you want to talk about terrible lyrics, we could pick apart John Lennon’s shocking “Run for Your Life” from "Rubber Soul," but let’s save that for another post.) I love the fantastic opener on “Revolver,” George’s “Taxman,” which rocks and shows how strong his contributions had become. Then you have “Eleanor Rigby,” “She Said She Said,” “Good Day Sunshine,” and “I Want to Tell You.” That makes a strong argument for this being their pinnacle achievement.

Next up: Another playing of “Sgt. Pepper’s.”

Multi Processing

For a while a lot of attention was paid to multiple CPUs in computers, multi-core processors, in Macs especially. They still tout them in the new Mac Pro.

Multi-core processors are like having several computers all working at once on your motherboard to speed things up because they can work in parallel, they can share the things your computer is trying to do; they can divide and conquer. While you’re downloading a movie or a song here, you can be surfing the web there, and playing a game here, while checking out Facebook there, and looking at your iPhone pictures over here, and letting that spreadsheet run a monthly tabulation down here. All at once. Instantaneously. Because each activity has a CPU, a processor, a core, handling that task.

Except that doesn’t happen.

Operating systems were designed with one core in mind, and as far as I can see, they - or the software that runs under them - aren’t designed to take advantage of multi-core hardware. Operating systems aren’t delegating tasks amongst the processors, and as good as the computers might be, the operating systems and software haven't caught up.

That pisses me off.

I spend a lot of time waiting for my multi-processor computer to respond to what I’m doing. It doesn’t. It can’t, because its OS isn’t able to delegate the work (I think).

Why?

Computer companies need to make money, so they’re catering to the next big thing; pocket devices, cell phones, smartphones.

The iPhone 6 is keeping my real computer from advancing.

That pisses me off.

The Black Keys at Barclays Center Brooklyn - 9/24/2014

Melanie and I saw The Black Keys last night at the Barclays Center in Brooklyn. It was a fun night and I enjoyed the band's performance.

I've never been a fan of concerts in arenas, which are built for sporting events with little consideration given to acoustics. It was also weird going to a big rock show in the middle of the week. Since it was a school night I wasn't in Party Mode especially, but we enjoyed a couple of beers and once we settled in, it was easy to forget we had to get up the next morning for work. Oddly, the Barclays Center stopped serving beer fairly early, before 10:00p. I don't know if that's because it was a weeknight or if that's their usual policy, but I thought it was odd. Unfortunately, for the bigger acts, arenas are often your only way of seeing them.

The Black Keys are one of the few modern groups I listen to and follow. Not surprisingly, part of that is because they're a kind of rootsy, blues-based rock unit. I love their stripped-down aesthetic - they're like The White Stripes that way - and the lack of gimmicky studio production on their albums. They're kind of garage-bandy and are noticeably influenced by the blues. One of their albums, the EP "Chulahoma: The Songs of Junior Kimbrough," is all covers of the bluesman Junior Kimbrough.

At their core, the band is made up of just two guys, Dan Auerbach on guitar, vocals, bass, piano, organ, keyboards, and synthesizer (though not at the same time), and Patrick Carney on drums and percussion. They tour with two additional guys, Richard Swift on bass and vocals, and John Clement Wood on keyboards, vocals, organ, synthesizer, guitar, and tambourine. That's the unit we saw last night.

I love the look of these guys, kind of nerdy cool. These aren't faces that normally sell records to teenage girls. But the band is big, and their approach and music heartfelt and organic without a lot of posturing. Not to say they aren't dynamic because they gave an energetic performance. Because The Black Keys are such a stripped down band, you could easily imagine them playing in a local bar, and part of their appeal is that such a basic band got to be so big.

The sound of the venue was obviously compromised, but the drums were mic-ed well. You could hear and feel the solidity of Carney's playing, the sharp thwack of his sticks on the skins, and the pounding of the kick drum in your chest. I like how prominent the drums are in this band. For a small group without a lot of embellishment or pretense, these guys rock with energy.

I've gotten most of their catalog over the years and they played the bulk of their familiar songs. Not surprisingly, they seemed sharpest on the material from their new album "Turn Blue." Even if you aren't familiar with the band, you'd probably be surprised at how much of their music you've heard before.

Great show.

Now if I could only catch them at The Rockwood Music Hall in the Village...

Boyhood

Melanie and I saw the movie “Boyhood” tonight written and directed by Richard Linklater, a fascinating movie shot over an eleven-year period as its lead grows up. Seven when the movie opens, the actor Ellar Coltrane is 17 or 18 at the end of the movie and it's fascinating to see.

I like this one. I like slice-of-life movies anyway which this definitely is, movies that lack the artificiality of manufactured story lines and conflicts and dramas that need to be cleverly resolved. Real life is adventurous enough on its own if you know how to depict it. And though not a documentary, "Boyhood" has that feel about it because you watch the entire cast age in real-time before your eyes.

Would the movie work without the gimmick? Would it work if shot over a two month period with different actors playing the kids at different ages? Yes, though having actors age over a twelve year period is a real tour-de-force that would be missed.

Ethan Hawke and Patricia Arquette play the mother and father and we watch them age with the rest of the cast. I applaud them both for committing to such a long project. And the acting is refreshing, natural, and honest throughout. I don’t know if Ellar Coltrane will continue pursuing acting - how determined was he to be an actor when he was cast at the age of seven? - but he’s a likable presence if a bit flat as he ages in the way of many self-conscious teenagers.

All around an enjoyable, tender movie.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Boyhood_(film)

Music Server

Enjoying setting up a music server at home. For a long time I’ve wanted to consolidate all my digital music into one easy-to-access hi-fidelity location, and after a lot of research and years thinking about it, I finally took the plunge. Especially with the rise in hi-resolution digital downloads, I wanted to put together a central repository for everything, including rips of my CDs and the digital copies I make of LPs on my computer (I clean the nosier records up, then burn my albums to CD for easier playback when I don’t feel like using my turntable).

Apple’s iTunes is how most organize their digital music, but people generally compress their CDs when they import them. Digital downloads too are typically compressed in lower-resolution MP3 files, or in Apple’s version of MP3 called AAC which is also a “lossy” compression format. I’m not a fan of MP3s and compressed audio formats. Especially at the most popular commercial resolution of 128k, MP3s are noticeably inferior in sound quality to CDs and vinyl copies of the same recordings. MP3s are fine for casual listening or playback on portable devices with mediocre earbuds, but on any good stereo system you can clearly hear the thinness of an MP3 file compared to a higher fidelity copy on CD or LP. I think of MP3s as being similar to typical FM radio broadcasts; not bad, but not true hi-fidelity. Years ago The New York Times ran a story where the reporter bought into the hype and described MP3s as having CD-quality sound. They printed my letter where I disagreed and compared the sound quality of typical MP3s to those plastic records you used to cut out of the backs of cereal boxes.

Fortunately you can import CDs into iTunes at their full resolution without applying any data reduction. The resulting files take up more space, but you don’t sacrifice sound quality.

There’s a lot of hi-resolution digital music available now via download in 96k/24bit resolution which is used by Super Audio CDs (SACD) and DVD Audio discs (DVD-A), and in the 196k/24bit resolution used by music Blu-ray discs. (What do you mean you’ve never heard of Blu-ray music discs?!) When it comes to resolutions, basically the larger the numbers, the better the sound.

Growing up, vinyl LPs were the best fidelity available for home playback. Pre-recorded reel-to-reel tapes were available for a while, but they were often released at the inferior playback speed of 3-3/4 ips (inches per second) instead of the better 7-1/2 ips. (The faster the record/playback speed of analog tape, the better the fidelity.) Recording studios record analog tape at 15 to 30 ips, whereas standard consumer cassette tapes play at 1-7/8 ips!

I love digital technology, but I also love vinyl LPs, especially some of the remarkable audiophile releases available today. Vinyl can have a wonderful warm sound and a great sense of space. But I love well-made digital recordings too, even CDs. I have a high-resolution download of an album by The Band and also a recent vinyl release of the same album made from the same masters. When I compare them, I don’t hear a difference, they both sound great, so I disagree that vinyl is inherently superior to digital. On other albums where I have the LP and a CD or hi-res digital download, I DO hear a difference, but that’s usually because one copy has been remastered to sound better than previous releases. 

To me, the biggest difference in sound quality by far is in the mastering and remastering of an album. The format you use - CD, LP, hi-resolution digital audio - isn’t nearly as important as are the ears of the engineers making the final product. On the other hand, no matter how well engineered, a cassette tape and a low-resolution MP3 will always sound inferior to a CD or LP of the same material.

So what this means is I’m fine with digital audio. My initial enthusiasm for CDs (Perfect sound forever! A copy of the master tape on a disc in your home!) abated when I realized how horribly bad-sounding some CDs were, but I think the technology itself, even at 44.1kHz/16bit, is fine.

I’ve thought about getting a central music server for a long time, but the stereo market hasn’t come out with a decent device yet, mainly because the field is still rapidly changing. There’s no one unit I’ve seen that logically organizes in an intuitive way all the different formats of music I have.

So using a Mac Mini as the brain, I built my own.

Last week I picked up a bare-bones Mini for about $600 which I’m paying off interest-free over a year. I got it with the default 500GB internal hard drive and connected two spare external hard drives I already owned for music storage and backup.

One problem with playing music back via iTunes is the signal gets processed through the computer’s noisy internal circuitry. This happens even on a full-resolution track. One way around this is to add a 3rd-party program to process the music. You can still use iTunes as the interface, but the 3rd-party software takes the original file, bypasses all the computer circuity, and outputs it in pure digital form through the computer’s USB ports. The way to convert the digital signal back to an analog signal for your stereo is by attaching a DAC (Digital Analog Convertor) to the USB port. This is a small box with high-quality circuitry which processes the signal back to analog format. By getting a decent 3rd-party program and an affordable DAC, you can end up with sound quality rivaling that of very expensive CD players.

Another problem with iTunes is it doesn’t recognize FLAC music files, and most hi-resolution downloads are in the FLAC format. But the 3rd-party software DOES read FLAC files and allows you to import those files and control them from iTunes. (These 3rd-party programs also play music directly, but the interfaces are usually not as good as iTunes which, though better, also isn’t perfect.)

One of the external drives I attached to the Mini is for music storage, and the other is a “Time Machine” backup drive (Time Machine is Apple’s built-in backup software.) Even if the worst thing happened and I lost both drives (very unlikely), I’d still have my original CDs so I wouldn’t have lost anything, though it would be a pain in the ass to re-import everything to a new drive!

I have the Mini by my stereo and am using my TV as a monitor. I also have a spare bluetooth keyboard and mouse from my old 2006 Mac Pro which died a year ago. I can control everything that way, or even better, I downloaded a free app to my iPad called Remote which controls the Mini’s iTunes. Using Remote, I don’t need to turn on the TV/monitor at all. Remote lets me see all the album art and information, making it a very handy controller/interface. I can access my collection by artist, album, song title, playlist, genre, or type in a search phrase. If I turn on the TV/monitor, I can also see the 3rd-party software interface (Audirvana Plus) which looks like a CD player and displays the resolution of the original file, album title, artist, track composer if any, and the album art. So I can control playback via the Mini’s Audirvana or iTunes software using the TV/monitor, or directly from the Remote app on my iPad.

I’m in the process of setting everything up and importing my CDs (I have a spare external CD drive attached to a USB port for that). They import pretty quickly - maybe five to seven minutes per CD - but I have a lot of CDs so it will take a while (I should be done by 2025). But once they’re imported, I basically don’t need the discs anymore, I’ll have all my music in full resolution on the music server. In effect the original CDs become the backup discs.

So what are the advantages of a music server? For one thing, I’ll have all my music in one location which I can access all at once. This includes CDs, hi-resolution digital downloads, LPs I’ve recorded to digital, and even MP3 downloads. I can control the entire system with my iPad and can see cover art, and album and song information on the tablet. And the system delivers true audiophile quality. I can search for any song or album or artist I want and can create endless playlists. And I won't waste my time looking for a CD or record I misplaced because it will all be on the server. And did I mention it delivers true audiophile sound? 

It’s also easy to use. One goal was to make sure it wasn’t so complicated Melanie avoided it, I wanted her to take advantage of it too and am importing all her music. I wanted it to be a convenient and easy system and I think I accomplished that. The Mini is always running, so all you need to do is turn on the stereo, select “Tuner” as the input, and play anything you want using an iPad as the controller. We now have limitless access to ALL our music - or will once I import everything - in high-quality sound, or as high-quality as the original music is encoded for.

I’m still waiting for the DAC to arrive so in the meantime I’m using the headphone/speaker output of the Mini (1/8” jack) and connecting that to the stereo. It sounds pretty good, but the system won’t be fully ready until I get the DAC and send the audio through that. After reading tons of reviews, I settled on the Schiit Bifost with the optional USB port and the “Uber Analog” stage as my DAC, and the Audirvana Plus audio processing software.

Here’s how the Audirvana looks on the screen:

Here’s a picture of the Schiit Bifrost:

Highline Ballroom Falsified My Signed Credit Card Receipt

A couple of weeks ago Melanie and I saw a fantastic musician at The Highline Ballroom (431 West 16th Street), Ana Popovic. When I got the bill, the "Amount" was $105.61. Below that was a line that said "Included Gratuity" listing $14.55. I took this to mean the "Amount" included a gratuity of $14.55, so I wrote $105.61 for the total and signed the receipt.

The next day I looked at my receipt and contacted The Highline via their web page to ask if I'd inadvertently stiffed the waitress of her tip. I said I'd gladly arrange to give her a tip if it hadn't been included, and I asked if I'd interpreted the receipt incorrectly. They never responded.

I now see on my credit card statement The Highline put a charge through of $120.16 EVEN THOUGH I'D WRITTEN $105.61 AND SIGNED FOR THAT AMOUNT! I'm pretty sure that's ILLEGAL, and I'm very very disappointed at the way The Highline does business. For me to ask The Highline about it, AND for The Highline to ignore me, AND for The Highline to falsify the amount of my signed credit card receipt really pisses me off.

-----

I got this reply tonight from The Highline Ballroom:

Hello Mr. Hughes

My name is Christian Morasco, General Manager of the Highline Ballroom. Ive been notify by Yelp of your review of our venue. After some research I was able to find your email and review your situation. I wish I was alerted immediately, I would have responded right away. 

I deeply apologize for not getting back to you the same day. In response to your initial question, the net amount of your bill was 105.61$ to that the included gratuity of 14.55$ was added. The total amount was 120.16$.

As of late we no longer apply auto gratuity.

I would like to invite you and your guest at our venue and Ill personally make sure you'll have a wonderful experience.

Please take a look at the calendar on our website, Ill be glad to comp 2 tickets for any of our shows. 

Again, we are sincerely sorry. 

You can also contact me directly on my cell phone at 917.207.0837.

Hope to hear from you soon.

Best Regards

Christian Morasco

-----

I replied with this:

Thank you for getting back to me. I had contested the charge with my bank and told them to reduce payment to $105.61, the amount I’d originally authorized. Now that I know the $14.55 is for an 18% gratuity, I’ll contact my bank and ask them to honor the full $120.16 charge.

However, there’s still a problem here. I wrote a total amount of $105.61 on my receipt and signed that, and The Highline had NO right to change the total and charge me more without my approval! A gratuity is not mandatory and it’s not the law. If I or anyone chooses not to leave a tip, The Highline has NO RIGHT to add the tip to my signed receipt and charge me for it, none. This is completely unacceptable. As I said, because I'd meant to leave a tip, I’ll let the charge go through, but I’m very upset about this.

The problem is in the confusing wording of the receipt. An “included gratuity” implies the gratuity has been included in the amount shown. If not, it should be referred to as a “suggested gratuity" or a “recommended gratuity," NOT an “included gratuity.”

Thank you for the offer of comped tickets, but I don’t want them. I don’t mind paying a fair price and leaving a fair tip (I usually leave 20%, not 18%), but thank you anyway. At the moment I’m not sure I’ll be going back to The Highline Ballroom.

The 100-Foot Journey

Tuesday night Melanie and I saw an advanced screening of “The Hundred-Foot Journey” starring Helen Mirren and a bunch of unknowns. Although the critics seem divided so far – it has a 59% rating on Rotten Tomatoes – I’d probably give it three or 3.5 out of four stars.

“The Hundred-Foot Journey” is a bit old-fashioned in its sentiments and, according to Melanie, a little corny. It’s a character film based on a best-selling novel whose literary pedigree is on display in the intelligent structure and clever dialogue. (Early in the movie a car’s brakes fail and a character says, “Sometimes brakes break for a reason.” That’s a real writer’s line, a clever line, and it gets repeated.) This is an effective, feel-good movie, well-motivated, with intelligently drawn characters.

Helen Mirren’s Madame Mallory is the standout, showing character growth through the film, something great actors thrive on. Or maybe they create it. None of the other characters has quite so developed an arc. Why? The screenwriters (Steven Knight and Richard C. Morais) have no reason to flesh out one character more than the others, so you have to conclude the character’s nicely executed transition is at least partly the result of Mirren’s talent. The other main characters are also shaped by events through the film, but only Mirren fully satisfies as being multi-dimensional; the other actors are a bit one-note in comparison. They’re not bad, but when you consider the depths Mirren pulls from her character, you understand a bit more what makes her so good.

The movie is about an Indian family whose restaurant is burned down during social and political unrest. They emigrate to Europe with no clear idea of where they’ll end up. While driving by a small French village, their car breaks down and they go into town looking for repairs. Serendipitously the town has an abandoned restaurant for sale, so the father of the brood – Papa, played with humor and warmth by Om Puri – decides this is where they’ll stay. They live in and restore the restaurant, which is across the road – exactly 100 feet - from a Michelin one-star restaurant. Helen Mirren runs the Michelin restaurant and doesn’t welcome these illiterate foreigners who dare to bring their lack of sophistication and vulgar cuisine to her town (not to mention the possibility of their stealing her patrons). Tensions soon spring up between the two factions and we get a lot of expected cultural biases and stereotypes, some mined for humor, and some depicted less pleasantly.

One of the sons in the Indian family - Hassan Haji played by Manish Dayal - has a passion for food and cooking. There’s a pretty young French woman working for the enemy (Madame Mallory) who attracts Haji’s attention, as you know she will from the moment they meet. Of course he’s attracted, look at her smile, she could be a movie actress. She’s the sunny Marguerite played by Charlotte Le Bon. We expect a relationship to form between the two attractive young people, and one does, though not exactly as we expect.

We follow as Haji’s skill grows to the point where Madame Mallory offers him an apprenticeship of six months at her restaurant. She sees a future in him and thinks they’ll both benefit from the experience, she by getting a second Michelin star with Haji on her staff, and Haji by learning French culinary methods to add to his repertoire. It’s a nice story development and feels organically motivated. From that point on the movie shifts away from the two factions and focuses more on Haji’s growth. The movie loses a bit of its warmth in doing that; I would have liked seeing more of Haji’s family in the second half of the film.

This is a “food” movie and it seems there’s been a lot of them lately. Like the others, this one gives you mouth-watering shots of food being prepared and eaten, something dubbed by critics as “food porn.” But that term, already a cliché, is too dismissive here. I’m not sure it’s easy to film food in a way that makes you desire it, almost taste it. For me, these shots, images, and montages of food work. And, like many of the other food-centric movies I’ve seen lately, this one isn’t about food so much as about life and love. That’s a metaphor we’ve seen before, yes, but it works here.

Of course we expect the initial animosities to eventually thaw, and they do, but it’s done well and you go with it. Melanie called the movie too predictable, and though I understand her point and could also tell where the major storylines were going, I took a lot of pleasure in letting the movie get there. We know in every movie there are going to be elements we’ve seen before. Certain devices are almost required to tell a story we’ll follow and be interested in. We know we’ll get conflicts of some kind, and romances will probably start, almost fail, then rekindle. But when these are properly baked (ahem), the movie works. 

This movie works. It’s charming with rich scenery and evocative cinematography (despite the cheesy Disney-animation fireworks). There’s a great tracking shot that weaves in and out and over and under the action as people work to restore the restaurant. I didn’t expect that kind of cinematic enthusiasm in a movie like this. The shot doesn’t call a lot of attention to itself, but moves along at a leisurely pace like the rest of the movie. Yes, the movie is leisurely, but in a good way, don’t confuse “leisurely” with “boring.” The movie has a steady, believable rhythm.

Most of the time. There are flaws. Haji’s rise seems to happen too quickly, too easily. Where and how exactly did he learn his techniques? We know his mother taught him Indian cuisine, and he seems to have had an innate understanding of food from a young age, and Marguerite does give Haji French cook books on the sly, AND he has his apprenticeship under Madam Mallory, but he's depicted almost as a bit of a savant; it doesn't sufficiently explain his rise.

Yes, the big relationships that form are predictable, but that doesn’t make them unsatisfying. I like the relationship between Haji and Marguerite. They’re clearly attracted to each other, but they don’t rush into bed together, this isn’t that kind of movie. The characters are thoughtful and deliberate. Actions and behaviors are measured and believable. Marguerite also yearns to become a successful chef. As they get closer, she clues Haji in on some of Madam Mallory’s secrets. Later, when Haji is offered the internship by Madam Mallory, he rushes to share his good fortune with Marguerite. But Marguerite is jealous and angry and accuses him of using her to get the position. He tries to console her, and in a lesser movie he’d win her over, but not here. It’s a nice moment. We learn she’s as driven to succeed as he is and won’t be reduced to being a supportive girlfriend – or any other kind of girlfriend, from the way things are looking.

There are other well-played scenes that help define the characters. At one point earlier in the movie, when Haji is rebuffed by Madame Mallory during an attempt at a truce, we expect Marguerite to offer consolation, but she doesn’t, and Haji is left to make sense of what happened on his own. Nice.

There’s another relationship that develops slowly with Madam Mallroy and someone. I won’t give it away, but there’s a nice scene at night where she walks away from her potential suitor, who feels rejected. The camera cuts away to Madam Mallory’s home and we see she's left the large bay doors wide open, her curtains billowing gently out in the evening air, a wonderfully suggestive and erotic invitation.

I enjoyed this one. It had great warmth, and if some of it is predictable, so what, it works.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hundred-Foot_Journey_(film)

Drobo 5D Drive Array

I take a lot of digital photos and I’m always afraid of losing them to computer failure. During an upgrade of my operating system a few years ago, I lost about six months of photos including those I’d taken on a vacation in Egypt. I still had the lower-resolution copies I’d made for sharing, but all the masters were gone. At the time I had backups on an external drive, but during the upgrade I reformatted the drive thinking everything on my main drive was safe. Big mistake. The upgrade failed and I had to reformat the main drive and I lost everything. (I had backups on DVD of all my earlier photos.)

These days I store my photos on a 3TB external hard drive and back them up automatically every hour to a separate external hard drive via Apple’s Time Machine program. In addition I back up my photos to archival-quality Blu-ray discs, and Amazon.com’s standard DVD discs.

I still worry about losing my photo hard drive and the backup hard drive at the same time because those are the only “complete” sets of all my photos (I only backup to Blu-ray & DVD when I have a lot of new shots). Though unlikely, this is possible.

I’ve been aware of the Dobro line of drive arrays for a long time and finally took the plunge and bought a 5D. The 5D holds up to five hard drives in one enclosure which is seen by your computer as one big hard drive (or “volume”) up to 16TB in size. If you reach that limit, you can create another volume. You can install hard drives up to 4TB in size, so five of those gives you 20TB. You can also mix and match different-sized hard drives. If you want to replace a smaller drive with a larger one, simply pull the old drive out while the unit is running and slap the new one in, the 5D handles the rest. I’ve tested this and it works well.

The Dobro arrays have automatic data protection. Using something they call BeyondRAID technology, the array can be set up with “Single Disk Redundancy” or “Dual Disk Redundancy.” Under single disk redundancy, you could lose any one drive in your array without losing any data. That means if one of your drives completely dies, all your data is still safe. With dual disk redundancy, you could lose any two drives in your array and not lose any data. (The 5D requires a minimum of two drives under single disk redundancy, and three drives under dual disk redundancy.)

The 5D protects your data by storing it more than once on different drives. You give up some of your available space for that protection, but you gain peace of mind. Using dual disk redundancy, you end up being able to use roughly half the available drive space.

Dobro has a calculator to determine the usable space depending on the different drive capacities in the array. Let’s say you have five drives: 4TB, 4TB, 3TB, 3TB and 1TB. Sizes are always a little smaller than listed so this 15TB is actually 13.64TB. With this collection, you’d have 6.35TB of usable, protected hard drive space. Any two drives could fail and you wouldn’t lose any data. Under single disk redundancy, you’d have 9TB of usable protected space.

If you had five 4TB drives, that would be 18.19TB of space and 10.89TB of usable protected data under dual disk redundancy. Under single disk redundancy, you’d have 14.52TB of usable protected data.

This is perfect for the kind of storage, access and protection I need. With the drives I have on hand, my array will eventually contain (once everything’s set up) five drives: 4TB/4TB/4TB/3TB/2TB. That’s a total of 17TB which is actually 15.46TB. With dual disk protection, I’ll end up with a usable protected data capacity of slightly more than half that, 8.17TB. (Under single disk redundancy, it would be 11.8TB.)

I’ll keep backing photos up to Blu-ray and possibly DVD, but I’ll feel less urgency in doing it. It’s still a good idea because I could store those discs somewhere outside my apartment for added safety.

The 5D is visible to Melanie too when she’s on our network so she can copy her own pictures and anything else of value and know they’ll also be protected.

The 5D reformats the drives you insert so any data on them is blown away. That means you can’t take drives with data already on them, pop them into the 5D, and automatically have the data protected. The drives you put into the 5D must be empty or contain data you don’t mind losing. Once the drive is in the array, the 5D quickly reformats it and your total capacity increases.

I started with two fresh 4TB drives using single disk redundancy (the default setting). I transferred all my photos from an external 3TB hard drive attached to my iMac. I verified everything had been copied correctly, then reconfigured my photo editing software (Adobe Lightroom) to find the photos in the new location. After all that was good, I disconnected the external 3TB hard drive and added it to the 5D to increase the total storage. I then switched to dual disk redundancy. After that I started transferring my audio and video files from an external 2TB drive. When that’s done, I’ll add that drive to the array. The last thing I’ll do is take my external 4TB Time Machine hard drive and add that as well. I’d been using Time machine to back up everything; my iMac’s 750GB internal hard drive, and all my photo, audio, video and other files. Going forward I’ll back up only the 750GB internal drive with Time Machine to a separate external 1TB drive and let the 5D protect everything else. Over time, if I need more storage in the array, I’ll replace the smaller drives with larger ones. Likewise if drives fail, I’ll pop in replacements.

Another advantage to the 5D is instead of having five separate hard drives connected to my iMac (via USB hubs) and five different icons on my screen, I now have only one Drobo “drive” icon with the combined storage of all the drives. And the Drobo has a Thunderbolt cable which should give me faster transfer speeds than the USB cables I’d been using on the separate drives.

So far the device is working as advertised. I’m still a little leery about the long-term reliability of the system, but I think it’s a great solution. No it’s not perfect, but neither is analog photography. Negatives and prints can be lost in fires, stolen, damaged, or fade over time. Likewise digital devices can fail or become obsolete. The advantage to digital is you can make perfect copies of your data and store it redundantly and off-site to minimize your risk of disaster.

Cool device. Well designed, attractive interface, and fairly easy to use.

http://www.drobo.com/

The Sixties

Watching the very well done CNN mini-series “The Sixties.” My cable got iffy when the series started so I’m seeing these a bit out-of-order, but wow is Episode 5 spectacular, “Long March to Freedom.”

At first I was kind of, eh, another news program about civil rights in the 60s. Seen all the footage, know all the stories.

Yes and no. I’ve never seen the events of the time reported this well.

One example. George Wallace had a famous standoff at the University of Alabama at Tuscaloosa when he tried to deny admission to two black students, Vivian Malone and James Hood. JFK stepped in and the students were admitted. That’s a well-known incident. What’s brilliant about this episode is how CNN found new footage, from obviously disparate sources, and pieced it together, along with existing audio, to show the scene unfolding almost in real time. We get crude B&W TV footage, film footage on higher-resolution stock, color footage which I’m guessing comes from amateur film cameras in the crowd, and other footage of varying quality. It’s edited together seamlessly and in sync with the audio. It’s so well done, I didn’t realize how smooth it was until I watched that segment later again tonight with Melanie.

One more surprise. Martin Luther King Jr.’s famous speech at The Great March on Washington. Mahalia Jackson sang at the event and stood nearby while MLK spoke. According to Clarence Jones, Jackson shouted to King during the speech to talk about “the dream.” King then set aside his prepared speech and delivered his famous “I have a dream” segment, apparently off-the-cuff and from the heart.

Wow.

I get emotional when I see greatness, and watching that got me teary.

This series isn’t just an expert view of the Sixties, it’s simply a fantastically well done documentary of an era. Check it out.

http://www.cnn.com/SPECIALS/us/the-sixties

Truth and Memory

My friend Todd and I were talking about knowledge and opinion the other night, and he brought up a line from a song by an artist we both admire, Paul McCartney. It was “Early Days” from his latest album “New,” an autobiographical sentiment which seems to harken back to McCartney’s days with The Beatles. He sings:

Now everybody seems to have their own opinion
Of Who did this and who did that
But as for me I don't see how they can remember
When they weren't where it was at

I like this, but I disagree with it in part.

We’ve probably all reminisced about something with the people who were there, only to hear them tell completely different stories of the same event. I know I’ve experienced this many times. I’ll recount a childhood memory with my mother and she’ll remember something else, different facts, different bits of information.

Who’s right?

All of us.

Journalists and writers know that the subjects of their biographies are not the most reliable witnesses.

The way we see the world, what shapes our memories of ourselves, is often viewed through rose-colored glasses. Even when not flattering, our memories of ourselves are often imprecise.

Why?

I think our emotional memories are stronger than our factual memories. We have vivid and precise memories of how we felt and reacted, but we often get the facts wrong.

Who are we if not our emotional realities?

Biographers can research and improve upon facts, but they often fall short of DEFINING their subjects, of knowing and understanding them, of giving us a sense of who they were and why they did what they did.

I think two things. I think biographers, when they’re qualified, can tell more accurate stories of their subjects than their subjects can. But I also believe only the subjects can give us accurate depictions of who they are.

Related to that, I see most of life as imprecise, having few absolutes. I think we need to accept and embrace the grayness. They say the best actors are those who live in the moments apart from their rehearsed expectations. That makes sense to me.

I don’t know if this relates much to the conversation Todd and I had, but it got me wondering about what truth, knowledge and reality are.

Calvary

Last night Melanie and I saw the movie "Calvary" as a selection of the New York Times Film Club. It stars the always engaging Brendan Gleeson as a priest in a small Irish town.

The story line deals with a man who becomes a priest after losing his wife. During confession one Sunday, someone we never see threatens to kill the priest the following Sunday. As the days tick off, we meet the strange characters who make up the parish and the community, and the initial comedy of their outrageous and unfiltered eccentricities soon gives way to a feeling of doom and hopelessness. It's a great who-done-it - or who's-going-to-do-it - and refreshingly original. The unexpected ending is a bit of a head-scratcher, but in a good way, in a way that makes you consider everything that comes before as you form a more complete understanding of the film. It's fascinating and thought-provoking and I'll probably see it again at some point.

I wanted to read reviews afterwards to see if I could get a better handle on it. Here's one from January written after the movie played Sundance. It's a brilliant review by Justin Chang and there's nothing more I could add to it. Enjoy.

-----

Film Review: "Calvary" by Justin Chang, Chief Film Critic for Variety

Writer-director John Michael McDonagh and actor Brendan Gleeson made a big international splash with 2011’s “The Guard,” a terrifically entertaining action-comedy that offered little indication of the depths of humor, compassion, despair and grace they would achieve in their masterful follow-up, “Calvary.” Grounded by a performance of monumental soul from Gleeson as a tough-minded Irish priest marked for death by one of his parishioners, the film offers a mordantly funny survey of small-town iniquity that morphs, almost imperceptibly, into a deeply felt lament for a fallen world. A completely sincere work about the persistence of faith and the Catholic Church’s soul-shattering legacy of abuse, this literate, beautifully crafted picture should translate near-certain critical plaudits into a distinguished arthouse reception worldwide.

Given the B.O. receipts and Oscar nominations racked up by Stephen Frears’ anti-clerical dramedy “Philomena,” it will be intriguing to see how McDonagh’s less ingratiating but vastly more accomplished picture plays with audiences in Ireland and beyond. The director has described his second feature as “basically Bresson’s ‘Diary of a Country Priest’ with a few gags thrown in,” a description that for all its absurdity nails the essence of this caustic yet contemplative film: Leisurely paced, unapologetically talky and overtly concerned with matters of spiritual import, “Calvary” may not achieve the record-breaking success of “The Guard” (still the most successful Irish indie of all time). But for sustained maturity and tonal mastery, it upstages not only McDonagh’s debut but also his brother Martin’s comic thrillers “In Bruges” and “Seven Psychopaths,” all while retaining the pungent fatalism and bleak humor that run so indelibly through both filmmakers’ work.

“I first tasted semen when I was 7 years old,” an unseen man tells an unnamed priest (Gleeson) in the dark shadows of the confessional. He goes on to explain that he was repeatedly raped by a priest over the course of five years, a crime for which he will exact retribution in the most irrational and unexpected way imaginable. “There’s no point in killing a bad priest,” he says. “I’m going to kill you because you’re innocent.” He sets their fateful next appointment for the next Sunday, exactly one week later, leaving our anxious hero of the cloth to determine which member of his flock is planning to murder him.

What follows is an existential detective story of sorts, or perhaps an Agatha Christie whodunit by way of Hitchcock’s “I Confess,” in which the priest goes about his coastal village, tending to his flock while a seven-day clock ticks quietly away in the background. What he finds is a community steeped in anger, disappointment and, despite their continued presence at mass, a near-total indifference to the notion that faith, repentance and good works have any real meaning.

There’s a butcher (Chris O’Dowd) who is initially suspected of beating his town-slut wife (Orla O’Rourke), until he explains that she probably sustained her injuries at the hands of her Ivorian-immigrant lover (Isaach De Bankole). There’s also a vaguely sinister police inspector (Gary Lydon, reprising his role from “The Guard”) whom the priest interrupts mid-tryst with a saucy male prostitute (Owen Sharpe); a doctor (Aidan Gillen) who makes no secret of his violently atheist views; an extravagantly wealthy man (Dylan Moran) whose riches have failed to bring him any lasting happiness; a sex-starved young man (Killian Scott) considering joining the army in order to vent his violent impulses; and an aging American writer (M. Emmet Walsh) determined to end life on his own terms.

All these villagers are introduced, one after another, in a series of sharply written, compellingly acted and increasingly pointed moral discussions, during which the priest will offer his counsel while scanning for clues as to who the would-be killer might be. But the richest insights here are those we glean into the character of the grizzled clergyman himself, a widower and a father, a dog lover, a recovering alcoholic, and an unusually pragmatic, erudite soul (“You’re too sharp for this parish,” one villager notes) whose every nugget of hard-headed wisdom resonates with bitter life knowledge.

It’s a role that one cannot imagine in the hands of anyone other than Gleeson, who has never seemed less capable of hitting a false or inauthentic note. Despite the actor’s deliberately constricted range here, moments of gruffness, exasperation, resignation and quietly choked-back emotion all manage to register, fleetingly yet indelibly, in the those magnificently weathered features. This virtuous protagonist couldn’t be more different on paper from the surly, sozzled cop he played in “The Guard,” yet Gleeson roots both characters in the same bone-deep integrity, and the same fearless determination to follow their sense of duty to the unforeseeable end.

It’s not clear at exactly what point the film has made its shift from foul-mouthed village comedy to quietly devastating passion play; certainly the transition feels complete by the time the priest pays a visit to an imprisoned rapist-murderer-cannibal (played, in a particularly perverse casting choice, by Gleeson’s son Domhnall). Amid all the accumulated waste and despair, two scenes stand out for their extraordinary tenderness: a beachside reckoning between the priest and his troubled daughter (a superb Kelly Reilly), and a thoughtful conversation with a woman (Marie-Josee Croze) who has lost her husband but not her faith. Hope, it seems, has not been completely extinguished. And yet, as it follows the priest on the lonely walk to his own personal Golgotha (the seven days of his journey conjuring any number of biblical allusions), “Calvary” makes clear, with utter conviction, that the Church’s incalculable abuses have exacted and will continue to exact a terrible human price.

Putting aside the stylistic bravura of “The Guard,” McDonagh and his collaborators have delivered a technically immaculate work that feels appropriately austere by comparison. D.p. Larry Smith’s widescreen compositions are framed with unfussy precision; as stunning as the rugged landscapes are to behold, particularly the shots of waves breaking against cliffs (the production shot on the east and west coasts), the lighting and color balancing of the interior shots are no less exquisite. Patrick Cassidy’s melancholy score is summoned at just the right moments.

For the record, the press notes mention that “The Guard” and “Calvary” are the first two installments of a trilogy that will conclude with a film titled “The Lame Shall Enter First.”

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Calvary_(film)

Dawn of the Planet of the Apes

Melanie and I saw “Dawn of the Plant of the Apes” at the gorgeous Ziegfeld Theater on 54th between 6th & 7th in Manhattan last Thursday. Our friends Joyce and Todd joined us for what turned out to be a mostly disappointing movie.

Todd and I discussed this at length later and we agreed on a few things about why the movie wasn’t better.

First, you have to fault the writing. The first “Planet of the Apes” film from 1968 is a classic because of the imaginative source material (the novel “La Planète des singes” by Pierre Boulle was first published in France in 1963 and later translated into English as “Planet of the Apes”). That screenplay is attributed to Michael Wilson and Rod Serling. Wikipedia says this about the script:

One script that came close to being made was written by The Twilight Zone creator Rod Serling, though it was finally rejected for a number of reasons. A prime concern was cost, as the technologically advanced ape society portrayed by Serling's script would have involved expensive sets, props and special effects. The previously blacklisted screenwriter Michael Wilson was brought in to rewrite Serling's script and, as suggested by director Franklin J. Schaffner, the ape society was made more primitive as a way of reducing costs. Serling's stylized twist ending was retained, and became one of the most famous movie endings of all time.

I saw “Rise of the Planet of the Apes” from 2011 and didn’t think much of it; it’s a silly, light, popcorn movie with decent special effects. “Dawn of the Plant of the Apes,” while a bit more ambitious, is not much better. It tries for the Big Statement but executes it bluntly and poorly, hitting you over the head like a high school literature teacher with the idea that though societies might be different from each other, we should all try to get along. The dialogue is embarrassingly flat at times and though the cast is very good, they don’t have a lot to work with.

What sells this movie – to the tune of $172 million in ticket sales so far – is the special effects. I’ve never seen CGI creatures done this convincingly before. Andy Serkis, who was the body-double for Gollum in the “Lord of the Rings” movies, again serves as a motion capture model, here for the character of Ceaser the ape leader. It’s interesting how he gets an acting credit, blurring the distinction between an actor with makeup and something created with special effects. The movements are his, but you’re not really watching him, you’re watching a digital creation which is rendered on top of him. But however you define Ceasar, it’s a groundbreaking achievement. The character is fluid and convincing and appears to genuinely interact with the actors in the frame. I imagine Serkis stood with the actors during the shooting, so they did have someone to engage with. What’s especially impressive are the subtle facial movements and expressions, not stiff like those in the ape makeup in the 60s and 70s, but not overly exaggerated either, which would break the reality of how ape faces move. I also like the cast, especially Jason Clarke who you might remember from “Zero Dark Thirty,” or the good but short-lived TV series “The Chicago Code” from 2011. I liked seeing Keri Russell too, and I love seeing Gary Oldman in pretty much everything. But as I said, they’re underused here.

The movie itself, the story, is lame. The premise is, a virus has wiped out most of the human population while apes have become intelligent as a result of genetic modification. In the beginning we see the apes talking to each other in sign language, and when they encounter humans (as you know they must), we learn they can talk too in an animal, guttural way. Later in the movie they drop in and out of spoken communication with each other for no apparent reason, even when people aren’t around. The movie establishes this isn’t their preferred or natural form of communication, so by shifting gears the film doesn’t follow its own logic. A movie might be absurd, but if it obeys its own reality, you might go along with it. This one doesn’t do that.

In the 2011 film the apes gain intelligence from a gas called ALZ-113. Many are exposed to the gas, but I don’t remember their number being very high (though I could be wrong, it’s been a while since I saw it and I didn’t like it much). In this new movie, it seems hundreds of apes are now intelligent. Since the Ceaser character isn’t much older than he was in the first film, it can’t be that all these new intelligent monkeys have been born since the first film, so where did they all come from?

There’s a village of apes living in the woods on the other side of the Golden Gate Bridge and there’s a small group of humans in San Franciso, but miraculously the apes and humans know nothing of each other’s existence. We learn the people are running out of fuel, meaning they have some, so why don’t the apes see their lights at night?

The main goal in the film is the people need to get a damn working again to generate power, but of course it’s in the ape village. They need the power so they can use their radio to search for other pockets of civilization, but wouldn’t they have been doing that already with the fuel they had? The script is attributed to three people, Rick Jaffa, Amanda Silver, Mark Bomback. Maybe there were too many voices?

I’m not the audience for big Hollywood blockbusters. Even when I was a teenager I preferred character-driven, human dramas to big, loud, expensive, cartoony movies (though there are exceptions). After reading interesting things about “Dawn of the Planet of the Apes,” I’d hoped it would improve upon the previous movie; it doesn’t.

Along the way the movie does a LOT of explaining of EVERYTHING that’s happening. There’s not much subtlety here, and not a lot to involve you emotionally. The characters are two-dimensional and oddly less realistic than the CGI monkeys. Each side has a villain and in both cases you wonder why the group puts up with them. When a small band of rogue apes tries to attack the people – at least we’re led to believe it’s a small band - they suddenly become an endless army of fighters with rifles that never need reloading.

And, as my friend Joyce wondered afterwards, why don’t the monkeys have any butts? Where are their butts? They certainly have them in zoos!

The movie plays like a cartoon, and not a very good one. Yes, apes riding horses is kind of cool, but it’s also kind of silly looking too. But if you like fighting and explosions and great special effects, I guess this movie is for you; apparently, that includes a lot of people.

It’s not all bad, there are interesting things about it. In addition to the great special effects, I like how an attempt is made to make any kind of statement beneath the surface, however clumsily. It does do a good job of showing how things can be misunderstood between groups that don’t trust each other. And I like how the ending leaves things open, clearly with a sequel in mind, but also not needing to explain and resolve every last thing.

So far this year, my favorite movie might be Jon Favreau’s “Chef” with John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale, Sofía Vergara, Oliver Platt, and small but effect turns by Dustin Hoffman and Robert Downey Jr. It’s a great movie that opened on May 9th and has earned to date a staggering… $27.3 million. Oh well…

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dawn_of_the_Planet_of_the_Apes

And So It Goes

Everyone knows hookers and curmudgeons in movies end up having hearts of gold. Because we know this, there’s never any surprise when it happens. The one exception I can think of is Billy Bob Thornton in "Bad Santa." In the beginning he's a pig and in the end he's a pig; it’s delightfully refreshing.

Melanie and I saw the new movie “And So It Goes” last night as part of the New York Times Film Club. It stars Michael Douglas and Diane Keaton and is directed by Rob Reiner from a screenplay by Mark Andrus who wrote the modern classic “As Good As It Gets.” It opens Friday 7/25.

“And So It Goes” shows the budding relationship between Oren Little (Michael Douglas) and his neighbor Leah (Diane Keaton) (a character who doesn’t seem to deserve a last name) who are neighbors in an idyllic Connecticut town. Oren Little is a widower and soon-to-retire real estate agent selling his home of many years while living in one of his rental properties, a quaint, four-family lakeside house. Leah, an apparently retired widow, fills her time singing in a small town bar and occasionally sparring with Little.

Little is a curmudgeonly, apparently friendless heel, disliked by most and only tolerated (barely) by his colleagues. He has an estranged son and a granddaughter he’s never met. The son appears, after ten years, on the cusp of going to jail (nine months, six with good behavior). With no one to look after his daughter - we learn the mother is MIA and of low moral character – the son thrusts her upon Little. Little is no one’s idea of a loving grandfather and Leah quickly becomes involved and helps care for the nine (almost ten)-year-old girl.

The plot is largely predictable and old-fashioned in a not unpleasant way. It’s obvious from the start Little will have some kind of transformation and become a more likeable character, and we know a relationship will grow between Little and Leah. Is anyone surprised Little is attracted to Leah? She acts and looks just like Diane Keaton.

The movie has small-town charm and some nice interplay between the stars and other actors. It gets off to a bit of a self-conscious start and I couldn’t help examining it and studying the production more than being involved in the story. Things improve as the movie plays out.

Michael Douglas looks considerably older here. He was most recently seen in last year’s “Behind the Candelabra” on HBO as Liberace in a surprising and brilliant performance – he won both Golden Globe and SAG awards - and looked healthier and more vital. He doesn’t look bad here, just older and frailer. Recently Douglas has battled tongue cancer and the reports are he’s recovered, but he frequently slurs his lines and it makes him sound either drunk or a little feeble.

Diane Keaton is a pleasure as always, fresh and spontaneous with that quirkiness she does so well. Her character is a delight. She’s not the center of the movie, but is well developed and we see several sides of her. I like how much singing she does, there are several scenes of her performing in local clubs. She did a great rendition of “Seems Like Old Times” way back in “Annie Hall” so I knew she had chops. Nice to see her using them again. Her voice is soft and breathy and vulnerable above the bare musical accompaniments.

The movie has effective humor and a good amount of charm and it is enjoyable, but it’s predictable and derivative of a lot of movies you’ve seen. Not much is new here, and though that’s not always a bad thing, there’s not a lot to make this one stand out.

Rob Reiner hasn’t had many successes lately, disappointing for a man who began his directing career so strongly with movies like “This Is Spinal Tap,” “Stand by Me,” “The Princess Bride,” “When Harry Met Sally...,” and “A Few Good Men.” His only recent film I think I’ve seen is the only-OK “The Bucket List.” (Then again, how bad can a movie be starring Morgan Freeman and Jack Nicholson?) “And So It Goes” isn’t bad, but it probably won’t resurrect Reiner’s directing career.

I do like many things about the film, and Sterling Jerins is good as the granddaughter. It’s also refreshing to see a romantic comedy with two older leads who play off each other well. But the film is light and insubstantial; not bad, but I’m not sure it has enough for people to grab onto. It’s a little Hallmarky and schmaltzy - a little, not a lot - but I’m not sure you could remove that without making a completely different movie. I guess I was hoping for more from Rob Reiner and the writer of “As Good As It Gets.” I did enjoy it, but I’d probably only give it two or two-and-a-half out of four stars.

"Snowpiercer" and "Edge of Tomorrow"

I saw two movies yesterday, “Snowpiercer” and “Edge of Tomorrow” which I snuck into after the first movie was over. This was at the AMC 25 on 42nd Street, so named because it has 25 theaters on four levels. Once you get in for your movie, you’re free to ride the escalators up and down checking out the other floors and theaters. After “Snowpiercer” let out, I hit the men’s room, then looked for another interesting movie I could quietly slip into. The cleaning crew waited outside the “Snowpiercer” theater while the credits played and I didn’t want them to see me sneak into a nearby theater, so I turned into the lobby and ducked into theater 25 without looking to see what was playing or when it started. Turns out I walked in just as the trailers were showing, talk about great timing! And the movie ended up being “Edge of Tomorrow,” the new Tom Cruise Sci-Fi movie.

First, “Snowpiercer.” “Snowpiercer” is a South Korean movie (in English so it’s a joint production) set in a world frozen over after a chemical was dumped into the atmosphere to stop global warming (don’t you hate it when that happens?). The few remaining people travel the globe non-stop in a train separated by class into the rear (the wretched) and the front (the privileged). It’s a stupid idea and I’d normally give it a pass, but it got a good review on the Ebert site so I thought I’d check it out. Very silly. Fun and entertaining, but beyond preposterous. You really have to give up and just go with this one if you want to get anything out of it. Fortunately, it ends up being a fun watch. It somehow managed to get a fantastic cast with Chris Evans (Captain America), Tilda Swinton, Octavia Spencer, and Ed Harris. There are good action sequences in the confined spaces of the train, and I give the movie marks for originality. It’s goofy and ridiculous and an enjoyable, over-the-top two hours.

“Edge of Tomorrow” was pretty good. Being a Tom Cruise movie, it’s made well with convincing special effects, a tight, fast-paced story, and solid performances. Cruise is surprisingly good in this one. He rarely gives performances of much depth, but here he plays a character who struggles and grows as he accepts his fate and rises above it. The story is about how the Cruise character Major William Cage is forced to fight on the front lines as a Private against aliens who invaded the earth some time earlier. On his first mission he’s killed by an alien who oozes some kind of acid all over him, and suddenly Cage wakes up and it’s the day before all over again. He keeps getting killed and coming back, and during the movie you find out why this is happening. I love time-travel movies and this is a good one. I don’t think the movie is the blockbuster the studio was probably hoping for (IMDb has it earning 90 million after four weeks with a budget of 178 million) and that’s too bad because it deserves to do better. It’s entertaining, action-packed, and smart. Of all the movies to wander into, I picked a good one.

So not a bad day at the movies. I’d taken Friday off from work because I had some friends over Thursday night and didn’t want to worry about going in if I stayed up too late. Our cleaning lady came that afternoon so to stay out of her way, I went to the movies. There’s something deliciously decadent about taking a day off from work and going to the movies.

So I’d give “Snowpiercer” 2.5 out of four stars because I think it accomplishes what it sets out to be and it is fun, and I’d give “Edge of Tomorrow” 3.5 out of four.

Photo du Jour

King Kirby

Melanie and I saw a very enjoyable play last night at The Brick Theater in Williamsburg Brooklyn, one of the best Off Off Broadway shows I've seen, called "King Kirby" about the legendary comic book artist Jack Kirby. The theater is small and not well air-conditioned, and with last night's rain, heat and humidity, it wasn't the most comfortable of evenings. But the play is surprisingly effective even if you're not a comic book fan. You see the Lower East Side life Kirby grew up in and his enterance into comic books where he soon became one of its stars. The show explores his personal life and also the business dealings of the comic book industry and how even a giant like Kirby was treated. At times the show is a bit unfocused, and some of the projected images of the comic books don't match the time period of the action of the play, but the show is a real accomplishment. It's part of "The Comic Book Theater Festival" and though I can't speak to the other shows in the program, this one's a real winner.

Here's the New York Times review from Monday:

The Amazing Adventures of Pencil Man
By ANDY WEBSTERJUNE 22, 2014

“King Kirby,” now at the Brick in Brooklyn as part of the Comic Book Theater Festival, opens with a scene that prompts knowing eye rolls to those familiar with the show’s subject: In 1994, a Sotheby’s auctioneer, hawking work by the comic book artist Jack Kirby, dismissively confuses Spider-Man with Iron Man. Of course she does; after all, this is comic book art, not “fine” art, and the cultural elite, like countless parents, have sneered at comics since time immemorial. Even comic publishers, as this show demonstrates, were once happy to shortchange their own creators.

Crystal Skillman and Fred Van Lente, the husband-and-wife playwrights behind “King Kirby,” know the score. She wrote the smart Off Off Broadway shows “Cut” and the fangirl-friendly “Geek”; he was a co-author of the graphic novel “Cowboys & Aliens,” later adapted for a Hollywood sci-fi western. With this supple, informative and poignant portrait, they offer penetrating insight into the tirelessly prolific Kirby (1917-94), whose brawny and dynamic yet nuanced style dominated comics for more than 40 years. Their play (Kirby was known as the king) documents a creator who attained immortality even as his life ended amid a morass of corporate exploitation.

With deft compression, the show outlines Kirby’s impoverished Lower East Side origins and his longtime collaboration with the writer-artist Joe Simon (played by Joseph Mathers), with whom he created Captain America at Timely Comics in 1941. (Their studio gofer was a young Stan Lee, later the editor of Marvel Comics.) It touches on Kirby’s courtship of his wife, Roz (Amy Lee Pearsall), and his service under Patton in World War II. And it depicts the comics industry’s postwar decline, exacerbated by the 1954 Senate subcommittee hearings into supposed links between comics and juvenile delinquency, embodied here in the toxic testimony of Dr. Fredric Wertham (Timothy McCown Reynolds).

In closest focus are Kirby’s knotty dealings at Marvel in the 1960s and ‘70s with Lee, who was then Kirby’s boss. (Nat Cassidy, in a sly impersonation, presents a tireless news media self-promoter.) With Lee, Kirby created a revolution in the field; Kirby visualized numerous characters now ubiquitous in movies, television and licensing. In the play, Lee — nephew of Marvel’s publisher, Martin Goodman (Mr. Reynolds again, embodying icy, ruthless capitalism) — parrots the company line, denying Kirby’s request for royalties, rights to characters, and even the vast majority of his penciled originals. Lee is a celebrity, while the humble Kirby, Marvel’s golden goose, is paid merely by the drawn page. “Why does everyone worship the bosses?” Kirby cries, defeated.

At a lean hour and a half, this production hits nary a speed bump, thanks to its fluid script and the director John Hurley’s assured pacing. Janie Bullard’s sound design and Olivia Harris’s set and lighting are unobtrusively effective, while Holly Rihn’s costumes nicely evoke changing times. The cast is uniformly on target, with Steven Rattazzi’s Kirby a sympathetic blend of street smarts, boyish creativity and a hard-working, over-trusting disposition.

The Kirby story isn’t over; his heirs still press for a share of the rights to Marvel properties. But the play ends as it should, with a montage on a screen presenting characters bearing his stamp. The X-Men, the Hulk, Iron Man, the Silver Surfer, Thor, the Fantastic Four — perhaps you’ve heard of them.

“King Kirby” continues through Sunday at the Brick, 579 Metropolitan Avenue, near Lorimer Street, Williamsburg, Brooklyn; 212-352-3101, bricktheater.com. The Comic Book Theater Festival also continues at the Brick through Sunday.

The Beatles' "A Hard Day's Night"

http://www.criterion.com/films/28547-a-hard-day-s-night

JESUS what an exhilarating movie.

I just finished watching the new Criterion Collection Blu-ray release of The Beatles’ “A Hard Day’s Night.” I’d pre-ordered it from Amazon.com and it arrived today.

The transfer is immaculate, brand-new looking. Crisp and natural and balanced with very few artifacts. Every now and then a shot has a slight amount of dirt making me wonder if certain bits came from further-generation sources, but overwhelmingly the film looks fantastic. Brilliant detail and gorgeous romantic black-and-white. There are more recent black-and-white films which I think are cinematically without equal - Woody Allen’s “Manhattan” for one - but this transfer of “A Hard Day’s Night” is close, real close in vibrancy.

Criterion got this one right. They care about releasing films in the best possible quality. They were big in the laserdisc era, then seemed to fade in the VHS years (not surprising, what a shitty format), then came back with DVD and especially Blu-ray. They use the best sources and spend the time and money to restore things when needed.

There’s so much to love about “A Hard Day’s Night.” It’s a movie about The Beatles, shot as Beatlemania was reaching its peak, and it’s a fictionalized depiction of a day in their life. The four of them are extremely charismatic screen presences, even more impressive given their lack of acting experience. I understand criticisms I’ve read of McCartney’s trying maybe a little too hard; I noticed that this time. I was also surprised that one or two of the tunes repeat which I’d never noticed before. The other obvious problems with the film are… Uhm… Well… Er… Yeah, I can’t think of any. There’s a great use of soft focus in some scenes which at first look like mistakes, but they’re repeated so I guess they’re deliberate. Unless the repeats are meant to throw off the mistakes? Who knows, who cares; they work.

What a joy this movie is. Of course there’s the music. Jack White said recently any musician who doesn’t get The Beatles isn’t a musician, he’s a poseur (I’m paraphrasing a bit). This is the first real Rock ’n’ Roll movie, the first movie completely by and about Rock ’n’ Rollers. It’s got that wonderful British humor, so like the Marx Brothers’. It’s also great because it lets us see The Beatles so early in their career and gives us the feeling that that’s really them. It’s very documentary that way. Great use of swish-pans, hand-held cameras, great documentary feel to the film. Brilliant masterful mix of the real with the scripted artificial. It comes off as improvised but it (mostly) wasn’t. The end result is it feels AUTHENTIC.

One of the best things I ever heard said about this movie was by the comedic actor Mike Myers, he of Austin Powers fame. In an interview he talks about how much he loves the movie, and when he first saw it he cried at the end, because as The Beatles rise up in a helicopter to go onto their next adventure, he wanted to go with them. That’s the feeling you get watching this. These guys are having the best time anyone can have and you want to be a part of it. I feel that still when I watch this movie, especially with this fantastic release.

Dion

http://www.allmusic.com/album/bronx-in-blue-mw0000355092
http://www.allmusic.com/album/son-of-skip-james-mw0000781400
http://www.allmusic.com/album/tank-full-of-blues-mw0002289381

The 50s musician Dion - Dion DiMucci, as in Dion and the Belmonts, known for “Run Around Sue” and “I Wonder Why” and “A Teenager in Love” and others - is still recording. Dion’s first hit records were released before I was born. I guess I was aware of his stuff as a kid because his tunes still got airplay and are so vibrant and musical.

In the past few years he’s been releasing blues albums. And they’re good, they’re really good.

A few years ago I was a member of an acting group in Long Island City Queens run by a music producer and former musician, and I copied one of these Dion CDs for him. Not sure if he ever listened to it (are you reading this Richard?). It was probably 2005’s “Bronx in Blue,” a fantastic stripped-down acoustic blues album. The producers behind this must have had no clue if it was going to work; a blues album by this old 50s ex-junkie doo-wop guy? (It does.)

In 2007 Dion followed that up with another fantastic blues album “Son of Skip James.” There’s a weird track on it where he proselytizes Catholicism in a spoken word thing, which is a bit of a surreal 180 for a blues album and not successful, but man what a great record. Or CD, since that’s how I bought it.

“Bronx in Blue” was nominated for a Grammy in the Best Traditional Blues category (right, try to tell me you knew that), but I never read anything about these albums. There didn’t seem to be any popular recognition of what I thought were great recordings. Also weird, they were on different labels. “Bronx in Blue” is on Razor & Tie, and “Son of Skip James” is on Verve Forecast. That means after a Grammy nomination, Dion got dropped and picked up by another label?

In 2012 Dion released “Tank Full of Blues.” I just got it. This album is rated higher than the first two on All Music Guide, but to my ears it’s not nearly as good as the first two, it’s way too slick. The first two are stripped-down, raw, bare, heartfelt, unfiltered. This latest one is full and almost lush. Granted I’ve only just heard it, but I’m a bit surprised. A bit disappointed. I’ll listen to it again, but so far it sounds like the worst of Eric Clapton, watered-down ball-less white-boy blues.