Ramblin' with Roger

Movie reviews: Chef; and The Hundred-Foot Journey

We saw TWO food movies in four days.

WARNING: do NOT got to the movie Chef if you’re hungry. The Wife and I saw this film Sunday at The Spectrum Theatre in Albany, and we were practically salivating by the end. We’ve seen a lot of foodie movies, notably the classic Big Night, and this was among the best. I mean, a grilled cheese sandwich looked “to die for.”

Moreover, the music was great. The Wife is chair dancing, in the theater, and she is not traditionally a chair dancer. (I am in my office, but I was too.)

Chef Carl Casper (the movie’s writer/director/co-producer Jon Favreau) is a high-powered chef at a chic Los Angeles restaurant, has a good crew (John Leguizamo, Bobby Cannavale), and an ambiguous thing with Molly (Scarlett Johansson), who runs the front. If he could only ignore the controlling owner (Dustin Hoffman), life would be great.

OK, not so great. His work ethic has wrecked his marriage to Inez (Sofia Vergara) and has strained his relationship with their young son Percy (a very solid Emjay Anthony).

I could explain more, but all I’ll say is that the Oliver Platt and Robert Downey, Jr. characters play important roles in what comes next in the film, which is a relationship movie, a road movie – did I mention the food? The Wife thought the first half could have been tighter, and some critics agreed, but I liked it all. A scene involving Carl and Molly was very sensuous, but it involved no sex, only food. The film is rated R, largely for language, which is salty.

Then on Wednesday, we saw The Hundred-Foot Journey, about a family forced to leave India, who ended up in a little town in France, aided by fate, and a young woman named Marguerite (the lovely Charlotte Le Bon).

This is another food movie, as the papa (Om Puri) decides to open a restaurant VERY close (see title) to a Michelin star restaurant, much to the resistance of his family, even his culinarily gifted son Hassan (Manish Dayal) and his siblings. But open it they do, much to the consternation of the competing establishment’s head, Madame Mallory (the always great Helen Mirren).

There’s a bunch of stuff about intolerance and acceptance and a fun little war between Madame and Papa. Marguerite is often enigmatic. But by the time Hassan makes a major breakthrough, you know how the film is going to conclude. And given the long exposition at the front end, it was a difficult film for me to love.

I mean it was fine, it was nice, it looked nice – filming in India and France helps. The language was much cleaner than Chef, rated PG. It’s your basic 2 1/2 to 3-star film; 65% positive on Rotten Tomatoes. It was like a movie you might expect to be produced by Steven Spielberg and Oprah Winfrey, which, with Juliet Blake, it was. But while there was lots of delicious food, it wasn’t filmed as beautifully as the cuisine in Chef, and I cannot explain, on a technical level, why.

I wish I had seen these movies in the opposite order.

Music and other miscellany for mid-August

This started off as odd, mostly music, links, that I had saved for some posts that never got written. Then everything I found interesting about music in the last month (except Tosy’s U2 posts, which will be at the end of the month) got added.

The Pink Panther theme.

The Lone Ranger theme.

Playing For Change: Here’s Guantanamera, featuring over 75 Cuban musicians around the world. Also La Bamba.

The first rock and roll record ever recorded.

Led Zeppelin’s “Whole Lotta Love” cover on a mountain dulcimer.

Leningrad Cowboys / Red Army Choir. 1993/2003 mashup of Stairway to Heaven

Michael Nesmith performing Different Drum.

32 miles minus 7 equals 25 miles.

Tedeschi Trucks Band performing “perhaps the most morose song John Sebastian ever wrote”.

Santana’s “While My Guitar Gently Weeps” featuring Indie.Arie & Yo-Yo Ma

Born To Pump It Up (Bruce Springsteen vs Elvis Costello & The Attractions mashup).

President Obama Singing Iggy Azalea’s ‘Fancy’. Well, sort of.

Non-Beatles songs on Apple Records.

A live version of John Cage’s 4’33”.

Maybe I’m Amazed – Paul McCartney. I first saw this on the Ed Sullivan Show near the end of its run, disappointed not that it was video – the Beatles had done that before on Ed’s show – but that there was no interaction. But I love this song.

Poem: Hellish Mind Music.

Yes, I signed the petition to have Weird Al Yankovic headline the Super Bowl XLIX Halftime Show. Even noted that he was a multigenerational talent who works clean.

The story of Lily the Pink.

What Does a Photograph Sound Like? (You may be able to hear most of the songs on Spotify.)

Sleeplisten with Me to the Los Angeles-based funk band Vulfpeck.

The stupid faux Sonny Rollins article.

Michael Franti & Spearhead : Time To Go Home.

“The True Spirit of American Rock,” by Peter Buck, October 1984 issue of Record.

Short Attention Radio.

According to Pitchfork, people in the US bought 6.1 million vinyl records last year, a resurgence. but still just 2 percent of album sales overall, AND there aren’t enough vinyl presses to meet the current demand.

Four Simple Notes Captured Listeners Across Centuries. Is this the world’s oldest riff? BTW, the article is referring to, according to a musician of my acquaintance, Am-G-F-E7 motif – not specified in the article.

Furor and fuss over Black Jesus, which references Jesus Christ Superstar, Life of Brian and John Lennon.

The Wisconsin Chair Company started the Paramount label. “And they accidentally ended up recording… some of the most incredible performers in American musical history.”

Grooves was a mid-1990s budget subscription that sent out 17-track CDs for $9.99 (cassettes $7.99). It was aggressively targeted at promoting Alternative Rock to the young married adults who had become disillusioned with the music on the rock stations of the time (and there were plenty of them out there).” I have all of these, except #4. They’re great, and the latter volumes have live pieces with a spoken word intro. It has a great version of Brick House by Joan Osborne; I can’t find it online, but here’s a live version featuring Bob Weir.

Waste of time and money: dividing California

Creating MORE members of Congress, with the requisite expense, does not seem like a winning scenario.

I read, from Evanier, but also elsewhere, that some joker has promoted a ballot initiative to split the Golden State into six states. Even if the ballot initiative somehow won in November – and I have relatives there (sister, niece – Don’t Vote for This Nonsense!) – it still wouldn’t go into effect. Evanier noted, in a conversation about whether Texas, which had been its own country briefly, and would theoretically have the right to splinter:

“You have to consider Article IV, Section 3 of a little document called the United States Constitution. That particular section says…”

New states may be admitted by the Congress into this union; but no new states shall be formed or erected within the jurisdiction of any other state; nor any state be formed by the junction of two or more states, or parts of states, without the consent of the legislatures of the states concerned as well as of the Congress.

If you are a US Senator from a small state, populationwise, such as Delaware or Alaska, would you want there to be 12 US Senators from CA when there were two? And if you were from a large state, say Florida or Illinois, why would you want them to have many more Senators than your state?

BTW, Chuck Miller, my fellow blogger with the Times Union, came up with what a divided up New York State might look like. It was a highlighted blog for that day.

Given the disdain with which most of the American people see Congress, creating MORE members, with the requisite expense, does not seem like a winning scenario.

Robin Williams has died. SHAZBOT!

It’s damn disconcerting that the comedic mask hid such despair.

I had heard that Robin Williams had passed away while I was hanging out with some Times Union bloggers Monday night, Chuck Miller and Don Rittner and David Kalish. My first thought that maybe it was a hoax, which says a lot about the news these days. But it wasn’t until I got home that I discovered that he had apparently committed suicide.

The FIRST person I thought of was Amy Biancolli, who I’ve met, whose husband – I have a signed copy of one of his books about faith – was a very public suicide. I wondered how she would react to the news. Unsurprisingly, she dropped her phone “onto the kitchen counter and wept. Really wept.” And at that moment reading that, so did I.

A friend of mine of 20 years wrote a lengthy piece that began: “My grandfather, aunt, and father committed suicide… Clearly, we must be more connected in a true, loving, helpful, connected way; we must reach to those who are struggling.” I had had no idea; I was slack-jawed.

SamuraiFrog was “rather surprised by the depth of the emotional reaction” he was having to the news. Me too, actually. (Here’s his follow-up.) It’s damn disconcerting that the comedic mask hid such despair.

I have few words. He was a comic genius, sometimes too “on”, as Evanier mentioned, but brilliant nonetheless. Dustbury noted that “seemingly everyone in my tweet stream posted a favorite comedy or dramatic bit — and in a full hour, there were no duplicates.” Here are a bunch of tributes. Even President Obama noted his passing. Got to read a story of his kindness.

I saw him in a LOT of things. His last TV show, The Crazy Ones, I caught only about 15 minutes of.
2008 Law and Order: Special Victims Unit (TV series – episode) Not a show I tend to watch, but he did well.

2006 Night at the Museum – as Teddy Roosevelt

2006 Happy Feet (voice)
2002 One Hour Photo – good in a serious role

1998 Patch Adams – cloying, but that seemed to be what was called for. CLIP.
1998 What Dreams May Come – for the life of me, I don’t remember how this ended.
1997 Good Will Hunting – liked him in this a lot. CLIP.
1997 Deconstructing Harry – a small role.
1996 The Birdcage – actually played the more straightlaced part against Nathan Lane; liked that.
1995 Jumanji – I bought into the schtick

1994 Homicide: Life on the Street (TV Series – episode) Here’s an interesting remembrance.
1993 Mrs. Doubtfire – I totally related to this, a desperate situation required desperate measures. CLIP.
1992 Aladdin – brilliantly wacky as the genie. CLIP. Plus the Williams-Disney fight.
1991 The Fisher King – plays a person trying to find his way back quite convincingly. CLIP.

1990 Awakenings – he plays a doctor convincingly. CLIP.
1989 Dead Poets Society – I liked him as the inspirational teacher. Hear some music from the film. PLUS this CLIP.
1987 Good Morning, Vietnam – he was great as the crazy DJ; I have the soundtrack on LP, I just recalled. CLIP.
1984 Moscow on the Hudson – a tad hokey, but I enjoyed it anyway.
1982 The World According to Garp – strange film, as I recall, but I liked him.

1978-1982 Mork & Mindy (TV Series) – was there ever a better season of comedy than the first season of Mork and Mindy? Got strange later, especially Jonathan Winters as their son, but before that, quite entertaining
1980 Popeye – don’t think it worked
1978-1979 Happy Days (TV Series, as Mork) – funny stuff

More CLIPS.

Read this 2010 interview.

A very serious piece from CRACKED: Robin Williams and Why Funny People Kill Themselves

E is for Erinaceous

I have this hairbrush, and it looks a bit like a hedgehog.

Some website had this list of words that you “never see in a blog post.” That was practically a throwdown.

The word erinaceous means “pertaining to a hedgehog.” Appropriate because, as we ALL know, the scientific name for hedgehog is Erinaceinae.

I have this hairbrush, and it looks a bit like the back of the creature. It feels really nice on my scalp.

There is an animated creature called Sonic the Hedgehog that only mildly looks like a hedgehog.

Conversely, the protein sonic hedgehog, which “functions as a chemical signal that is essential for embryonic development, through cell growth, cell specialization, and the normal shaping (patterning) of the body,” sort of DOES look like a hedgehog, if you look at it in a microscope. “This protein is important for development of the brain and spinal cord (central nervous system), eyes, limbs, and many other parts of the body.”

Saving the hedgehog from the McFlurry, an ice cream product from McDonald’s.

LISTEN to a hedgehog snoring.

ABC Wednesday, Round 15

S	M	T	W	T	F	S
			1	2	3	4
5	6	7	8	9	10	11
12	13	14	15	16	17	18
19	20	21	22	23	24	25
26	27	28	29	30