A Great Movie

It's got plenty of competition, but this may be the best sequence from my favorite movie of the past thirty years, Local Hero, directed by Bill Forsyth. It's the story of a mid-level Texas oil executive (played by Peter Riegert) who goes to a remote part of Scotland to buy a scenic bay where a processing terminal is to be built. Of course, that description only hints at what the movie is really about, but you'll get a strong sense of its richness from this five-minute clip-- hopefully it will make you go find a copy of the whole movie to watch:

Friday Family Blogging Quiz

Continuing our Rosiek theme, here's a nice picture of Sara and Tom that prompts two questions: where was it taken, and who was standing behind the couple before I cropped this? Place your guesses in teh comments section.

Two weeks ago I wondered where a picture of Gerik was taken, and his mom nailed it: Theresa and Dan's backyard. Congrats to Lizzie. But let's see if I can get more than two guesses this week, huh?

Soup Diary 101022

A few words about buffets: they are almost always disappointing. The appeal, of course, is that you can really fill up on a lot of different dishes-- you really don't have to decide on just one thing to eat. In Las Vegas, all the casinos have buffets, some of which are pretty fancy, offering all kinds of exotic items. But in the end, they are almost always disappointing. The reason is because it is virtually impossible to just stick to the good stuff, as the temptation is too strong to try a bit of everything and inevitably very little of it lives up to expectations, and by then you're too full to go back and have a little more of the stuff you liked. In fact, my experience is that the salad bars tend to be the best part of the buffet, because they're hard to mess up. After our visit to Red Rocks Canyon, Bill and I stopped at a new casino/resort on the western edge of the city to check out the buffet. It certainly had a nice clean atmosphere, and as usual, a couple of things were pretty good (the roast turkey, for example, was fresh out of the oven, and they had some really nice calzones in the Italian section) but while I left full, I wasn't really all that satisfied-- not like the Ellis Island dinner I wrote about yesterday. Actually, one of the highlights turned out to be the soup. They had New England Clam Chowder (which I don't like) and Chicken Noodle, which, under the circumstances, had every reason to be very ordinary at best. But in fact it was very hearty, with huge chunks of chicken (bigger than any I spotted in the chicken enchilada from the Mexican station) which were more plentiful than the noodles, a real (positive) oddity. You know, that soup might just be enough for me to give in and go back to a buffet next time I'm down there, even though I usually find myself swearing them off immediately after every visit.

More Friday Family Blogging

Here's another shot from that aforementioned New York trip (last post). Here are Tom, Sally & Natalie on the ferry to Ellis Island.

Friday Family Blogging

Back in the summer of 2007, I traveled to New York City with the Rosieks, and we had breakfast in this bright cafe somewhere on Sixth Avenue in midtown. Do any of you in the picture remember this?

Friday Philosophy

This comes from a fella named Theodor Geisel (1904-1993), though many of you might recognize him instead by his pen name: Dr. Seuss:

"I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells.
Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living,
it's a way of looking at life through the wrong
end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and
that enables you to laugh at life's realities."

Classic Luna

Here's a video of the late lamented band Luna, who broke up about five years ago, but certainly linger in my memory. Luckily Dean Wareham and Britta Phillips still perform (I just picked up their new CD 13 Most Beautiful, comprised of tracks to back some screen tests shot by Andy Warhol, which is pretty good too). Check it out:

Soup Diary 101021

You know that, with the wide array of restaurants at our disposal in Las Vegas, that I was going to sample some of the local soups, right? On our first day we went to Ellis Island Hotel and Casino, a kind of a divey place off the strip that seems to cater mostly to locals. Despite it's less than glamorous facade, it houses one of the best restaurants in the city, renowned for both the quality of the food and the extremely low prices (maybe they figure on people saving enough on their meal that they'll be tempted to hit the gaming tables afterwards-- that did not work with us, by the way). One of their primo deals is a full steak dinner for like six bucks, and it is a steal. It comes with soup or salad, and naturally I went with the former, which on this visit was chili bean. Now in most places, chili bean is just watered down chili, but at Ellis Island, it's actually something of a treat. True, it was more brothy than a true bowl of chili, but that broth was outstanding, rich and beefy, so that you hardly noticed the relative absence of beans or veggies to thicken things up. Followed by steak, mashed potatoes and gravy with green beans, and some peach cobbler for dessert (ala mode of course), this was a truly first rate meal-- not exactly gourmet, perhaps, but I can't imagine enjoying the fare at some fancier place any more than this.

Three Pictures- Black and White Vegas

These three photos were taken on the plaza in front of the Bellagio Hotel. The Bellagio is famous for its water show-- loud music with coordinated jets of water shooting into the air. It's cheap entertainment, and draws a big crowd, some of which you see above.

If you can ignore the lights and traffic of Las Vegas Blvd, just a few feet away, you can sort of imagine you are hanging out near a pool in some fancy Italian garden on a warm summer evening. But, frankly, it's pretty hard to maintain the illusion for more than a few seconds.

Okay, I know this isn't actually black and white, but I'm thrilled with the way it turned out. These are folks strolling through the plaza with the streetlights casting some great shadows.

Thought for the Day

Something to keep in mind as the election season heats up over the next couple of weeks. This is courtesy of that noted political commentator Groucho Marx (1895-1977):

"Politics is the art of looking for trouble,
finding it everywhere, diagnosing it
incorrectly and applying the
wrong remedies."

Funny Scene

I got a lot of laughs out of the TV show Cheers over the years it was on (originally, and then again in syndication). I don't think any were bigger than those elicited by this classic scene, when regular Cliff Claven returned to the bar after a brief stay in the hospital:

Red Rocks

On our recent trip to Las Vegas, my friend Bill and I spent about half a day wandering around Red Rocks Canyon, just west of the city. Here are a few pictures I took while there.

There's some starkly beautiful landscapes in the park, which is mostly desert in the center, by ringed by the titular rocks, as seen in these shots. The interplay of light, shadow and color make it a great place to take pictures.

One of the interesting things about Red Rocks is that it is close enough tot he city that people bike out to ride its trails. We passed dozens of folks on their two wheelers as we drove out, but once we got there, it was easy to wander away from any crowds to just enjoy the natural wonders.

I'm still in the process of going through the hundreds of pictures I took on the trip. No doubt I'll eventually post some more from Red Rocks as I get a chance to review them all.

The Last Movie I Saw

I can trace my interest in film as something more than mere entertainment back to a series produced by the critic Richard Schickel for PBS back in the early seventies called The Men Who Made the Movies. In that series, Schickel interviewed a number of the greatest directors from Hollywood's Golden Age (a few of whom were still active at that time), including Howard Hawks, Frank Capra, Raoul Walsh, John Ford, and several others. Each episode traced the course of one man's career, with plenty of clips and attention to the common themes that ran through their work. Later, I would learn this was an auteurist approach to the subject of movies; that is, a strong director, whether he actually wrote the script or not, exercised the greatest influence over how a film turned out and their work could be recognized by certain signature elements that were somewhat consistent from one project to the next. Not every filmmaker was an auteur, but those who were, were largely responsible for the greatest movies ever made. It's easy to see how such a series could emerge from the early seventies, as that was in many ways the second Golden Age of strong directors. Guys like Ford and Hawks made their reputations in the thirties and forties; the 1970s saw a younger generation of guys like Francis Ford Coppola, Martin Scorsese, Bob Rafelson, and lots more reassert that strong directorial voice in the best films of their generation. Sadly, the movie industry has moved away from a system that promotes that level of artistry-- not totally, but in large measure-- and so today's auteurs, especially in relation to big budget studio projects as opposed to small independent features, are few and far between. One of the exceptions is David Fincher, the director of The Social Network and before that, movies like The Curious Case of Benjamin Button, Zodiac, Fight Club, and Seven. If you know those movies, you know that each features a character or characters struggling to figure out how they fit into a world that is largely alien to them. The Social Network, based on the story of the founding of the Facebook internet community, may be Fincher's definitive statement on that theme. What's most remarkable about the movie (and a mark of Fincher's other work) is how the strong characterizations propel the story forward. In this case, that's essential, since the narrative "action" revolves largely around guys sitting at a computer terminal and typing. Yet the film is nonetheless exciting, because Fincher has mastered the art of depicting the inherent tension and conflict that exists in so much interpersonal communication; or, in the absence of such communication, the even greater skill of visually depicting the internal struggles of his characters. It helps that he has access to talented actors like Jesse Eisenberg here, but the fact that these traits are in evidence across his body of work strongly suggests this as the defining characteristic Fincher's autuerism, as much as Frank Capra's commitment to homespun individualism or Hawks' to his characters focus on getting a job done (not their only traits, of course, but certainly among their strongest). It's gratifying to know that it is still possible for someone working in the mainstream to aspire to and actually create great movies that reflect such strong personal visions, no less than what we expect from a a great painter or novelist. I may have written this before (after seeing Benjamin Button), but Fincher has solidified his spot on my very short list of directors whose work I'll go see regardless of what it's about, since I know he's going to make it both compelling to watch and intellectually stimulating.

A Wednesday Quote

Francis Bacon (1561-1626) was an English philosopher, a contemporary of Shakespeare's (and one of the candidate's offered as the actual author of the latter's work). Here's something that he produced under his own name:

"He that gives good advice, builds with one
hand; he that gives good counsel and example,
builds with both; but he that gives good
admonition and bad example, builds with
one hand and pulls down with the other."

Boy, Do I Like This Song

When Sleater-Kinney broke up a few years ago it was a sad day for rock and roll. But now Corin Tucker has returned to recording after taking time off to raise her kid, and the results make the long wait seem almost worthwhile (Janet Weiss continues to make good music with Quasi, while Carrie Brownstein apparently has something coming out soon too). This is just one of my new favorites off the album 1,000 Years by the Corin Tucker Band:

Another Captain Renault Moment

I'm shocked-- shocked!-- to find out that another Tea Party gasbag is nothing but a sniveling hypocrite. Matt Taibbi reports on the details here.

A Classic Top Five

On this week's Dr. John's Record Shelf, we had no Top Five list (mainly because I only returned to Dillon a few hours before I went on the air and didn't have time to come up with something). The feature will return to the airwaves next week, but for the blog I thought I'd go ahead and share an old edition of the feature, which originally aired back in the late summer of 2008:

Today's Quote

Today's quotation is from the eminent art critic Clement Greenberg (1909-1994), and relates to how tastes are often shaped by something other than aesthetic concerns. Funny that he picks on Raphael here, since Greenberg was most famous as an advocate of modern movements like abstract expressionism:

"One of the afflictions of art and of taste is the untruth you may tell yourself about the operations of your taste, or let's say, the results of your taste and the untruth you may tell to others. You're told that Raphael was a great painter and you can't see it yourself, but since you've been told it, you've read it everywhere and so forth, you look at a Raphael and you may look at a failed one and say, "well, it's got to be good because Raphael is so famous, the authorities say he's so good." That's one of the worst ways in which to begin or to continue looking at art."

Battle of the Bands Winner

Jethro Tull was one of the groups that will be moving on to Round 2 in the Battle of the Bands unfolding on Dr. John's Record Shelf. This is the song that helped them squeak by Thin Lizzy:

Some More Vegas Photos

I've been going down to Las Vegas once or twice a year for over a decade now, and I don't think I ever saw as many street musicians as on this last trip. I wonder if some local ordinances have changed, or if the casinos are looking for any kind of cheap entertainment to draw gamblers close.

The buskers were mostly on the walkways crossing the major streets (mainly Las Vegas Blvd.), and frankly, they did not seem to command much attention from those strolling past. I remember back in New York that many of these performers could draw a little crowd, but in Vegas they seemed as ignored as the Mexicans handing out strip club tickets.

By the way, all of these photos are of the "hip shot" variety, where I was just walking around with my compact snapping things without actually framing the shots. It's a real hit or miss way of taking pictures, but sometimes captures interesting composition and lighting that one would never employ consciously. Even though the percentage of good images is extremely low, it's a lot of fun, especially in a place as busy and active as Las Vegas, where everything is on the move.