Hongkie Town

I think it was around 1968. There was this thing at the New York Coliseum, a rock & roll exhibition thingie selling musical instruments, records, posters, and a few live performances. I saw the Al Kooper Big Band. Kooper had just left Blood Sweat & Tears and was getting to release his first solo album. But the stand-out in his band was the drummer, Bernard "Pretty" Purdie.

Purdie has gone on to be one of the most influential drummers in rock and r&b history, appearing on more than 4,000 recordings, from Aretha Franklin to Steely Dan. Now he's playing drums for the Broadway revival of Hair. Here's a good NY Times profile on him.

During a concert with Ray Charles in Chicago, when Mr. Purdie started playing a few bars too soon, Charles barked, “Don’t play, drummer,” into the microphone, a rather public embarrassment before a huge crowd.“He would turn around and look at you — I always thought the guy could see,” Mr. Purdie said. “And he’d say, ‘What is your problem?’ Now, what are you supposed to say to that?”

“You’d do a first take, and he’d put on his overcoat as if he was about to leave,” said Donald Fagen, the Steely Dan keyboardist. “The problem was that some of the other musicians had just become comfortable with the chords. You had to cajole him to do some other takes so everyone else could polish up their parts a bit.”

Which led me to this YouTube video of Purdie explaining his technique:







Which then led me to this fucking incredible video by Israeli artist Kutiman, who made a music/video mash-up from various music videos all over YouTube. This one's called The Mother of All Funk Chords and it rocks the house. More of these at his web site.

"It's wonderful to be gathered here on just the other side of intimacy. So I'm so pleased that you're here. I know that some of you have undergone financial and geographical inconveniences. We're honored to play for you tonight."

"It's been a long time since I stood on a stage in London. It was about, about 14 or 15 years ago, I was 60 years old, just a kid with a crazy dream. Since then I've taken a lot of Prozac, Paxil, Wellbutrin, Efexsor, Ritalin, Focalin. I've also studied deeply in the philosophies and the religions but cheerfulness kept breaking through."

"I was having a drink with my old teacher. He's 102 now. He was about 97 at the time. I poured him a drink and he clicked my glass and he said, 'Excuse me for not dying.' I kind of feel the same way. I want to thank you not just for this evening but for the many years that you've kept my songs alive, I appreciate it."

There's a new 2 CD set Leonard Cohen Live in London, taken from his performance there last year. It's also out on DVD. The quotes above are from his between song patter. He's now 74 years old and his live shows are up to 3 hours long.

Have been listening to the CD a lot, haven't had time to watch the DVD yet. May write about this at greater length after watching the DVD. Cohen fans probably will not be disappointed and those new to Cohen may find this a good introduction.

Here's a clip from the DVD, Cohen performing what has become his best known song, Hallelujah (even if it's not his version that's famous, this is a wonderful performance of the classic).

Skype for the iPhone comes out today. The real Skype, not a 3rd party add-on like Fring. Om Malik has reviewed it (sorry, lost the link, it's at GigaOm) and pronounced it "awesome." Searched for it this morning before leaving for work (I'm on the US iTunes store), not there yet but should be there tonight. Skype for Blackberry comes out in May, I believe.
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I think this season of Lost, season 5, is shaping up to be my favorite. Via Gizmodo, some guy has uploaded these six fabulous fake Dharma ads to Flickr. Namaste indeed.

Last night was a rough night for a variety of reasons but this morning is almost sunny, birds are chirping away and whatever sort of insects there are that make noise are busy making noise.

I am, quite frankly, still having problems putting the events of last week into perspective. I know this is happening to thousands if not millions of others around the world. Hell, it's happening to everyone in my department. An excerpt from an email a member of my team sent to me over the weekend:

Thinking back when we first started this, only a handful of people, you've literally put us on the map (so to speak) and basically started up the whole thing where it didn't exist before.

And with the decision that came Tuesday, it simply undoes everything you've done for the last ~6 years, and I know it SUCKS!

Is that self-serving for me to post? My entire blog is an exercise in egotism, isn't it? But it does suck. I've managed to keep this entire team together for six years and it wasn't easy. Honestly, I don't understand the economics of paying out millions in severance pay and out-sourcing to a company that charges more per person than was being paid to staff; I don't understand the benefits of letting go of hundreds of employees who have years of experience and detailed knowledge of how a company operates and replacing them with consultants and contractors who have little if any vested interest beyond how many billable hours they can get each week; I don't understand why it makes sense to hold onto the executives who made the bad decisions that got us into this mess and let go of the people who executed those orders in good faith.

Shared misery offers little, if any, consolation. I confess that I somewhat subscribe to the Mel Brooks 2000 Year Old Man theory of comedy and tragedy - comedy is you fall off a cliff, you get eaten by a tiger; tragedy is I break a nail, I stub my toe.

I didn't have my first suit and tie, corporate job until I was 36 years old. Since then, I've worked for six different companies. On average, I stayed at a job for about three years, and with one exception I worked for very famous companies. When I leave this company in November, I will have been with them for just over eight years. I have major accomplishments I can look back on with pride. If no job is perfect, at least this was a company with products I not only enjoyed, I took pride in them. I loved the reaction I got whenever I gave someone my business card. Despite the more than occasional frustrations, I was hoping this would be my last job, to ride this one out for another 5 years before having enough socked away for a vaguely comfortable retirement and calling it quits. That's not going to happen now. I find myself, like millions of others, about to be out of work in the worst global economy in 70 years. My age is also a disadvantage and may outweigh the significant experience I have managing staff and projects in almost every country in Asia Pacific across a variety of business sectors. I can look at this as an opportunity, to make a career change, to start my own business of some sort, but haven't made any decisions yet on what direction I should follow.

The deal is structured in such a way that if I remain until November 1st, I will receive a truly golden parachute. If I leave before then, I get nothing. With seven months to go, that limits the immediate steps I can take. I'm trying to network like crazy - phone, email, Facebook, LinkedIn, etc. But there seems to be little sense in my blitzing the headhunters and job boards this early.

One proactive step I plan to take immediately is to resume my Putonghua studies, which I started four years ago at Fudan in Shanghai. I actually did pretty well at the time (long time readers of this blog may recall that during that period I had a girlfriend who didn't speak any English) but I've forgotten more than I remember. At this point, if pressed, perhaps I remember just a couple hundred words and characters. Instead of moaning about being monolingual and how that's a disadvantage in job searches here at the moment, I've got seven months to do something about it. If anyone wants to recommend a school or a tutor, please do - preferably Hong Kong side, MTR-convenient.

Fumier seems to have this thing about Wales and all things Welsh. I've never been there but I did date a Welsh lass once and I'm amazed to this day that she didn't drive me to suicide.

At any rate, take a gaze upon this photo gallery at Totally Crap titled "A Drunken Night Out in Cardiff." Looks like it makes Wanchai look like Disneyland by comparison.

The Wrap reports that Sacha Baron "Borat" Cohen's upcoming film "Bruno" has received an NC-17 rating in the US.

Among the objectionable scenes is one in which two naked men attempt oral sex in a hot tub, while one of them holds a baby. In another, Bruno -- a gay Austrian fashionista played by Baron Cohen -- appears to have anal sex with a man on camera. In another, the actor goes on a hunting trip and sneaks naked into the tent of one of the fellow hunters, an unsuspecting non-actor.

Cohen is contractually obligated to give Universal an R-rated film. He has appealed the current rating but seems like there are still some edits to be made.

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Uncle E's Musical Nightmares digs out a guy who seems to purposely write bogus CD reviews designed to piss people off on Amazon. "Once you’re in on the joke, though, it’s hard not to admire this villain." His negative reviews include these:

On “Purple Rain” by Prince”: …particularly one who falsely refers to himself as a prince and who produces trash like this. When Doves Cry is an unashamed rip off of MC Hammer’s excellent Pray and the title track is far too long for my liking. Save your money.

On the Stone Roses debut: When Mike & The Mechanics ushered in the `Madchester’ scene with The Living Years it was only a matter of time before these jokers attempted to jump on the bandwagon. If you want to be adored you should write some decent songs lads!

Stuff he likes?

On Ringo Starr’s “Blast From Your Past”: He’s Done It Again!! While much praise was heaped on the nonsensical Mr Lennon, anonymous Mr Harrison and Mr McCartney who only got good once he left Beatles, those in the know realised Ringo was the only real talent in the Beatles - and he certainly proves his worth here! `Back Off Boogaloo’ is better than anything Mr Lennon ever came up with and it also has a fun name. Quality throughout.

On Shakin’ Stevens, “The Collection”: The word ‘genius’ is thrown around all too easily these days but few would deny it sits very comfortably on Stevens shakin’ shoulders. If the youth of today stopped listening to 50 cent and gave stuff like this a chance there might be some hope for them.

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Speaking of music, Neil Young's Archives Volume 1 has a new confirmed release date, June 2nd. Along with that, prices have been dropped - now $300 for the 10 (or is it now 9?) disc Blu-Ray set (previously announced at more than $400), $200 for the DVD version and apparently now there will be a CD version for $100. Looks like reason has prevailed.

Your Way to Music has the full track listing and cover art here. Two of the ten discs were released individually last year.

From the SCMP, as reported by the euphonious Barclay Crawford and Nick Gentle (whom I suppose is related to failed American Idol contestant Norman Gentle):

A former Fijian Sevens rugby player has been convicted of assaulting a police officer after a vicious rolling brawl through the streets of Wan Chai early yesterday.

Paula Maisiri, 32, who was playing for the Playmore Phantoms in the annual GFI Hong Kong Football Club Tens tournament, pleaded guilty in Eastern Court to assaulting an officer outside the Dusk til Dawn bar at about 5am.

Maisiri, of Palmerston North, New Zealand, a professional rugby player, was fined HK$500.

People in Wan Chai early yesterday said Maisiri was one of the key figures in the melee, which lasted for an hour before eventually being brought under control by officers outside Dusk til Dawn, on Jaffe Road.

The brawl was sparked by an earlier incident in Carnegie's bar in which, according to police, one man attacked a player with a glass for no apparent reason. The victim was taken to hospital.

Fighting flared again outside the Amazonia bar, on the corner of Luard and Jaffe roads, before 5am when security staff refused to allow players to enter. Dozens of men then chased another man down Jaffe Road, followed by security staff and police. More players followed and the fight quickly escalated. Police using riot shields attempted to break it up but were met with a flurry of fists.

Maisiri was in the centre of things and continued to fight his way from one side of the road to the other, even after police sprayed him (and a number of onlookers) with pepper spray.

Order was eventually restored and a large group were detained behind a police cordon by officers in riot gear.

Actually if I was a man named Paula, I'd be pretty pissed off too.


Also amusing, the SCMP gets the name of Dusk till Dawn wrong, as well as the location of Amazonia, which is not on a corner.

Yes, after weeks, maybe months of procrastination, I have updated the HK links section over on your left. The section has gone from 52 links to 74 (in part because I have not removed any inactive links). I know this is overdue and my apologies to those who asked me decades ago to add them. But damn, blogrolling.com takes a shitload of time to load now.

Seems like the only way to stop procrastinating on this was to do this as a way to not do other stuff I should be doing. I've got a long list of things to do this weekend and so far have successfully managed to not do any of them.

UPDATE - just deleted links to 5 inactive blogs and 1 that requires an invite to access. This procrastinating is fun.

Sometimes it's the little things that set me off. And maybe I'm overly sensitive at the moment given other stuff in my life but still ....

Monsters vs. Aliens opens in the US today, it opens in HK on April 9th. An amusing trailer, probably not a great movie - at Rotten Tomatoes it's rated at 69%, 57% from top critics - but it's from the folks who made Shrek and Kung Fu Panda so it should at least be entertaining.

They're showing the IMAX 3-D version of it in the only IMAX theater in HK. And selling advance tickets now. So I went to the UA web site to buy tickets. Only to find out that the version they're showing there is the Cantonese-dubbed version. Why not alternate screenings with the English version?

UA Cinemas - fuck you.

been perusing help wanted ads. looking at anything and everything since i'm considering a possible career or direction change. this one was interesting (no, i'm not considering a sex change) Note the description given for "Roles:" - I'm sure I could do that!

Club Manageress

Position 05:

Position: Fine Dining Restaurant Manageress

Our Client: A Hong Kong based renowned private club

Roles: Responsible for hospitalizing restaurants’ customers.

The Ideal Candidate

§ A minimum of three years relevant fine dining/Banquet Services experience in hotels or clubs.

§ Outgoing personality with strong communication and interpersonal skills.

§ Excellent leadership skills

§ Good command of spoken and written English.

Regardless of my feelings for Fenwick, couldn't let the closing go by unobserved. So did have to stop in there for a little while (with my gf). With most of the 7's crowd already in town, when we walked through the door just before midnight, the place was seriously jammed, more people than I'd ever seen in there before. But there was no sign anywhere to say that this was their last night (did they somehow get a reprieve?). Originally I was thinking I would steal something, anything, even an ashtray, as a memento. But dealing with the crowd, the noise, the smoke, I quickly forgot anything like that, my mind was simply on survival.

I tried to take a few pics but only had my cheap pocket Sony with me. Without the flash, of course it was too dark. And with the flash, there was so much smoke, reflecting the flash back at me, everything was obscured.

We only stayed for about 20 minutes before we looked at each other and simultaneously said, "can we go someplace else?" And we did, for an hour or so before coming home. Most of the usual spots had crowds spilling out into the sidewalk and the streets. And it's just Thursday night. Friday, Saturday and Sunday are sure to be even busier. I have no intention of going back to that neighborhood again until Monday (a birthday party thing). For those willing to brave the crowds - and for those who actually like that sort of thing - enjoy!

Tomorrow, Friday, around 6 AM, when the bartender announces last call at Fenwick, it really will be last call, as the bar will close for good, unless they win an appeal with the liquor licensing authority, which refused to renew their license due to "ongoing incidents." This means they get shut down right at the beginning of the biggest bar weekend of the year.

Just last fall it looked like they would close down when the new landlord refused to renew their lease. But in a slumping market, they were able to change his mind on that. The liquor licensing authority doesn't care about the local economy, nor do they care that Fenwick was playing a vital role in supporting the economies of Thailand, the Philippines, China, Russia and various countries in South America and Africa. "Antics at the disco have frequently been mentioned on Hong Kong-specific blogs and were often the basis of in-jokes among the expatriate community," or so we are informed by Barclay Crawford of the SCMP. Antics. Right.

I've got mixed feelings about the closing. I've certainly done my time in there, though in the past year I've rarely gone near the place. The rumors of heavy triad involvement, the way the waitresses relentlessly pushed you to buy commission drinks, the look of desperation in the eyes of most of the women there. Probably no one reading this will believe me but in truth the only thing I've liked about the place in the last year or so was that the Filipino food coming out of the small kitchen in the back was much better than the crap served across the street at Cinta J.

It certainly wasn't the first place of its kind and it won't be the last, but for reasons that escape me, it was the most popular, the largest place and always the most crowded (after midnight). Tourist friends and business associates always seemed to prefer Fenwick to other bars I'd bring them to in Wanchai and I could never quite figure out why. The band sucked, the drinks were expensive, it wasn't a place where you could relax and have a good time.

At any rate, the owners are appealing the decision on the basis that this will throw 40 people out of work. Whether or not their appeal is successful, and if it can be done in time to host the Sevens crowd, remains to be seen. I've suggested to my girlfriend that we should be there for the historic moment and to steal as many mementos as possible. Perhaps the bar will even give out certificates, much like Cathay Pacific did if you flew into or out of Kai Tek in its final week. And if not the bar, then the girls could. "This is to certify that you fucked a Fenwick hooker on its final night."

Traffik Disco, same owners, is now open on the 2nd floor above Joe Banana's, but it's a much smaller place and you need to take the elevator to get to and from the place. The one time I went in there to check it out, it was pretty far from busy.

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When I'm depressed, I turn to shopping, and I'm certainly depressed at the moment. (No, not about Fenwick closing.) Combine depression with the fact that I'll finally be getting my year-end bonus this weekend and, yeah, you guessed it.

I probably shouldn't be spending money at the moment, but I've decided that I'm going to take a small portion of that bonus to upgrade my main camera. I'm really not happy with the results from my Sony Alpha 350. I love the ergonomics of it, the menu system, the button layout, their implementation of Live View, but the most important part, the sharpness and clarity of the photos I take, just isn't there.

This could be due to the fact that the only lens I have for the camera is a cheap one, a Sigma 18-300mm zoom. The camera has been relatively well reviewed - though some have singled out very poor high ISO performance. So I have two options - the first being to stick with the camera and buy a couple of better lenses.

The second option is to sell it and start over again. Since I only have the one lens and no other Sony-specific accessories, I don't have a huge investment in that format. And I'm very tempted by the Canon EOS50D. The Rebel T1, aka EOS500D comes out in May and that's a tad cheaper and can shoot video (but at only 20 fps at 1080p, weird) but shooting video isn't important to me.

There's also the Nikon D90 and D300. The D90's only advantage seems to be video which, again, isn't important to me. And the D300 is over a year old at this point, but based on the reviews I probably should take a careful look at that one as well.

Yes, I know, I should be focusing in on other things right now (pardon the pun) but I'm in need of distractions. A new camera, bring my girlfriend and the dogs out for an afternoon and put it through its paces, seems like the kind of distraction I need at the moment.

Music video for UNKLE's Heaven - Fully Flared Intro Video Remix, directed by Spike Jonze. Warning - the clip is 6 minutes and 50 seconds long and you have to get a little bit past the 3 minute mark to see the insanity and poetry of what's going on here. I think it's worth it.

Extreme sheep herding - closing in on 3 MILLION views on youtube. Even if it's a commercial, it's brilliant.

Have been getting emails and chat requests from people all day long. Sorry if I'm not responsive. It's not totally bad news but still, I need some time to digest all of this and figure out next steps. At the moment I can't see things too clearly, but I'll work it out soon, I always do.

Grace Mugabe, wife of Robert Mugabe, president of Zimbabwe, has been granted diplomatic immunity for her unprovoked attack on a photographer in Hong Kong. She ordered her bodyguard to attack the photographer and then joined in herself. She punched him repeatedly, drawing blood thanks to the blood diamond ring on her hand.

Grace is Mugabe's second wife, 40 years his junior. They had two kids together before they were married, the first while each were still married to others. Her daughter is a student at HKU, registered under an assumed name for what should be obvious reasons.

Mugabe is forbidden to travel to the US or the EU, and that ban includes his wife. Grace Mugabe is infamous for expensive international shopping trips despite the fact that most of her country is gripped by extreme poverty, one of the highest infant mortality rates in the world and an average life expectancy for males of just 37 years. Over the past four years she has withdrawn the equivalent of 5 million pounds from the central bank to support her lifestyle. Hong Kong welcomes dictators and tyrants and their family members as long as there is sufficient cash stuffed into their pockets.

A really enjoyable night at Underground 78 last night. Four solid acts. I'll be writing a review for the Underground web site.
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Rolling Stone ticks off the major album releases for spring and here are the ones I might care about:

Neil Young - Fork in the Road - April 7 (the horribly expensive archives set is now due for June)

Tinted Windows - s/t - April 21 the group includes members of Cheap Trick, Smashing Pumpkins, Fountains of Wayne and a Hanson.

Eminem - Relapse - May 18 - he's been away so long and his last album wasn't so great

Green Day - 21st Century Breakdown - May

The Dead Weather - Horehound - June - Jack White with members of Kills, Raconteurs, Queens of the Stone Age

Regina Spektor - Far - June

Wilco - June

Bob Dylan - Together Through Life - April 28

Bob Mould - Life and Times - April 7

Allen Toussaint - The Bright Mississippi - April 21

Depeche Mode - Sounds of the Universe - April 21

Conor Oberst - Outer South - May 21

New York Dolls - 'Coz I Said So - May 5 (reunited with Todd Rundgren, who produced their debut)

Steve Earle - Townes - May 12

Sonic Youth - The Eternal - June 9

Elvis Costello - Secret, Profane & Sugarcane - June 2

Dinosaur Jr - Farm - June

Flaming Lips - July
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Hmmm, for some reason, Lightroom on my PC doesn't like the RAW files from my Canon G10. (Should have brought the Sony A350 with me but "forgot"). Here are some jpg's from the Journey concert in Macau:

I tried turning on the digital zoom for a few shots, results were mostly like this:



Been thinking I should get a bag that more properly accommodates my SLR & laptop. Shaky got a Crumpler bag and he seems pretty happy with it. Any other suggestions in a similar vein?

Just back from Macau. Not quite an overnight, left HK at 5 PM, back home at 3:30 AM.

Cotai Ferry to Taipa and then over to the Venetian. My friend previously liked Blue Frog so we had dinner there and I won't say it was horrible but it certainly wasn't worth what we were charged. Nachos - had to dig through the stack of chips to find the little dribble of cheese that was on the plate. My MOP$220 8 ounce rib eye steak - probably 3 ounces of fat and gristle. My friend's bleu cheese burger just looked sad. As were we when the bill came out to MOP$600.

Then Journey, but first, HK band Audiotraffic. (And kudos to Journey or their management for giving a local band a chance for wider exposure like this.) My first time to hear Audiotraffic and it was a very competent set. Nothing that really leapt out at me and made me scream, "the world needs to hear these guys!" but good enough that if they were in the US or the UK they'd probably have much more of a following.

And then, Journey. The backstory is far more interesting than their music. In case you don't know ... the band was founded by two members of the original Santana band and their first albums were mostly instrumental. The records tanked and the record company told them to add a real singer. Eventually they found Steve Perry and racked up a lot of power ballad hits during the 80s that I don't much care for. They broke up late 80s, reformed mid 90s when their greatest hits CD sold 15 million copies. But Perry left soon after that and they've had a revolving door for singers.

In 2007, Neal Schon was watching videos on YouTube and came across Filipino singer Arnel Pineda from the Philippines singing Journey songs with his band. Schon was impressed, flew him out to California to audition for the band, and their 2008 album with Pineda (11 new songs, 11 old hits re-recorded) went to #5 on the Billboard charts. Some of you may be familiar with Pineda as he frequently played HK with a variety of cover bands at Igors, Cavern and other places.

The show was not sold out - they had divided off the room in half and hadn't bothered to sell tickets for the top deck and there were still empty seats. More than half the audience was Filipino, there to cheer for Pineda.

Journey played for about an hour and 45 minutes and I was bored most of the time. Most of their songs sound alike to me, I don't care for the majority of their hits and their newer material isn't especially memorable. They're all very good musicians but not particularly unique in any way. I thought Schon was playing basically the same solo for every song.

I have to admit that Pineda was very good. A great, strong voice, working the entire stage and crowd non-stop for the entire time, high kicking jumps off the drum riser. It's that Mark Wahlberg movie, Rock Star, come true. And an interesting marketing concept - at least in this part of the world - where Journey probably couldn't fill a hall on their own but combining an aging American band with a young Filipino singer meant a lot more sales. I imagine they're doing at least one gig in Manila, if they haven't already, and that's probably going to be packed.

The first part of the set was heavy on newer songs. The second part had all the hits and whipped the crowd into a semi-frenzy. Then, just plain weird, they did some blues jamming for the encore and found themselves in a position where the show was over and no one was applauding. They took some bows and Pineda said "we'll be back" and the audience shuffled out.

I'll upload some photos tomorrow if they came out okay - I was shooting mostly RAW and no energy to start playing in Lightroom tonight.

Following the show, we went over to the oddly named and brightly lit up Grand Waldo Hotel & Casino, to a disco there called Monkey Bar. Which featured, oddly enough, a Filipino cover band. Who didn't do any Journey songs, thank Buddha. However you may be interested to know that this bar features topless dancers from 6 to 9 PM six nights per week - but we were there after 11.

Several drinks and several other bars later, but no adventures worth relating, back home again.

From io9 via Gizmodo, ads for a New Zealand TV screening of Alien vs Predator. Love these!

A senior police constable, deep in debt, stole a woman's purse and then kicked her as she lay on the ground. He pleaded guilty and received a jail sentence of 28 months. He got what he deserved.

Meanwhile a famous TV actress drives drunk, hits a motorcycle stopped at a red light and sends its two riders to hospital and is lucky she didn't kill them and she gets a $1,500 fine and community service, which in her case probably means attending a few charity fund raising dinners.

Where is the outrage?

I'm a huge fan of Ian McShane based solely on his starring role in the hugely ambitious HBO series Deadwood, which is one of my all time favorite series. I know he had a long career before that but I'm not familiar with it.

He's now got a new series on NBC in the US called Kings. This series, based on its opening two hour episode, is also hugely ambitious, especially for broadcast TV in the US. It is, as McShane called it on the Daily Show, a cable TV series on broadcast TV. It takes place in an alternate version of modern times. McShane plays Silas, King of Shiloh, a country locked in war with neighboring Gath. The show is all about political intrigue, plots within plots, economy, religion vs. politics, the whole ball o' wax. (Though I think someone who watches this and doesn't like it may be reminded more of earlier shows like Dallas or Dynasty.) I don't think the pilot was entirely successful but it certainly was promising - however this is clearly an expensive show to produce and the premiere came in last in its time slot, which doesn't speak well for it lasting beyond 13 episodes.

Be that as it may, McShane was the guest on The Daily Show on St. Patrick's Day. He was witty, charming, non-stop funny, and of course you get that amazing theatrical voice as well. "Ian McShane - Lord of the Dance!" And doing impressions of the queen. "Incest might be series 2." And a brief discussion of scientific porn.

Watch the interview here if you can't see the embedded clip below:






Springsteen will be on Daily Show Thursday night!

See how fricking smart Comedy Central is? No geo-checking on their clips so lots of bloggers like me link to them and embed their stuff which increases their numbers on the web (and probably on cable as well). Maybe the major US networks will learn this lesson in another 10 years. The first episode of Kings is online at nbc.com but not viewable outside of the US. Idiots!

Didn't realize it but at some point this month my hit counter passed the 700,000 mark. Thanks to all readers and all those who link to me. (I promise I'll get my links stuff updated soon.)

Some stats of possible interest: Back in 2006, when this was a very different sort of blog, I had over 225,000 page loads from 151,000 unique visitors. In 2007 and 2008, when the tone of this blog drastically changed, I've had about 165,000 page loads per year, 120,000 unique visitors per year, which astonishes me. Thanks to everyone who reads this stuff; special thanks to those of you who for whatever reason felt entertained enough to return.

All of this traffic has earned me approximately US$94 on Google AdSense. Guess I won't quit my day job or be flying first class any time soon.

Seriously, thank you all.

Holy crap, I'm booked for 3 nights in a row, possibly four.

Thursday - I'm speaking on a panel. Nope, not gonna tell you which one or what it's about or where it is, just hoping I don't embarrass (my hosts or) myself. It's a chance for some much-needed career networking and I think I get a free dinner out of the deal. Plus, I gotta wear a suit, and I never wear a suit in the office in HK - jeans and sneakers and dressed up translates to a button-down shirt instead of a t-shirt - which means there will be gossip and rumors galore. Should I survive that, later I'll be at the Wanch for the latest edition of BC Unplugged. Richie Lam, A-dAY's, The Private Broadcast.

Friday - going to Macau to see Journey at the Venetian, with opening act Audiotraffic. Let me make this clear. I liked the first two Journey albums, when they were a basically-instrumental off-shoot of the original Santana band. I lost all use for them once they opened the door to Steve Perry and that pop schlock ballad stuff they purveyed for decades. But the ticket is free and it's an excuse to spend an evening in Macau and I'm sure, if nothing else, that they will provide professional entertainment. I'll be polite, I'll applaud, but don't look for me to be holding my zippo lighter high begging for an encore.

(BTW, Tata Young is playing at the Venetian next month. Top ticket price MOP$1590. Top price for Journey is a comparatively modest MOP$980. Where does Tata Young come off? It might be worth that much if she throws in lapdances for everyone in the audience.)

Saturday - judging at Underground 78. Jingan Young, Life in Motion, Quasar, Sway Dog. They don't usually make this a competition and not sure what's different this time, but free entry and free beer, how could I say no?

And then ... Sunday, possibly, not yet confirmed, is the day my gf returns to HK.

No prizes for guessing which night I'll enjoy the most.

Lenny Bruce famously said, "In the halls of justice, the only justice is in the halls."

The SCMP reports that HK TV star Angela Tong was sentenced to 160 hours of community service, a fine of HK$1,500 (that's about US$225) and loss of her drivers license for one year. The woman was driving drunk. She hit a motorcycle. She hit a motorcycle that was stopped at a red light. With two people on board, one of whom ended up on the hood of her car, both of whom needed to be hospitalized from their injuries. A breath test showed that Tong was four times over the legal limit for alcohol. She could have killed these people but she received no jail sentence because Judge Amanda Woodcock thought she's "unlikely to re-offend."

Just last week, another TVB star was also convicted of drunk driving. Michael Tse lost his license for 18 months, has to pay a HK$9,500 fine and got a suspended jail sentence.

What the hell is wrong with Hong Kong judges?

Does this mean I can kill someone and tell the judge that it was a one-time only deal and I promise not to do it again and I can get off?

=================================

A couple of potentially useful articles from the very slow loading Harvard Business Review online - How to Handle Lay-Offs and How to Manage Your Stress Level.

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Last year I had Panasonic's DMC-TZ5 camera and was quite happy with it until it was stolen. Panasonic has recently announced the updated model, the DMC-TZ7 - a pocket sized digital camera with a 12x optical zoom (25mm to 300mm equivalent) and shoots video at 720p resolution. (Here's a review.)

Last year Panasonic basically had this field to themselves but this year Canon will soon release the Powershot SX200 IS. Also a 3 inch screen, also a 12x optical zoom (in this case 28mm-336mm equivalent). The Panasonic had a much higher resolution LCD screen and allows for optical zooming while shooting videos. The Canon offers more control options including a full manual mode. It will be interesting to see how these two compare once the Canon is released.

Both of these from Billboard:

Bob Dylan’s new studio album, "Together Through Life" is set for release on April 28, Columbia Records announced today. "Together," recorded late last year after Dylan was asked to compose music for a forthcoming film by French director Oliver Dahan, takes its musical cues from classic 1950s Chess and Sun recordings.

"I like the mood of those records - the intensity," Dylan says in an interview published on his website. "The sound is uncluttered. There’s power and suspense. The whole vibration feels like it could be coming from inside your mind. It’s alive. It’s right there. Kind of sticks in your head like a toothache."

The "Together" songs "have more of a romantic edge" than the music on "Modern Times," Dylan's 2007 album that debuted on the Billboard 200 at No. 1. "The songs on "Modern Times" songs brought my repertoire up to date, and the light was directed in a certain way. You have to have somebody in mind as an audience otherwise there’s no point," Dylan says.

"There didn’t seem to be any general consensus among my listeners. Some people preferred my first period songs. Some, the second. Some, the Christian period. Some, the post Colombian. Some, the Pre-Raphaelite. Some people prefer my songs from the nineties. I see that my audience now doesn’t particular care what period the songs are from. They feel style and substance in a more visceral way and let it go at that. Images don’t hang anybody up. Like if there’s an astrologer with a criminal record in one of my songs it’s not going to make anybody wonder if the human race is doomed. Images are taken at face value and it kind of freed me up."
==============================

Here's an odd movie from 2008 that no one expected but almost everyone who has seen it liked it - JVCD.

Here's the plot: Jean-Claude Van Damme is 47 years old. He can't get a role in any decent movie. He loses out on a part to Steven Seagal because Seagal promises to cut off his pony tail. He loses a child custody case in L.A. when his daughter testifies that all her friends make fun of her whenever a JCVD movie is on cable. So he returns to his home town, just outside of Brussels. He stops into a post office and steps into a robbery/hostage situation. The dimwit robbers make it look to the outside world as if it's JCVD who's in charge.

It could be said that JCVD is to Van Damme what The Wrestler was to Mickey Rourke - except that Rourke was once touted as a great actor and let his career slip away; no one ever said that Van Damme could act. Mickey Rourke has films like Diner in his past; Van Damme's high points were Bloodsport and Universal Soldier.

And yet here, he does indeed act - and if it's not an Oscar worthy performance, it is a pretty darned good one. Van Damme doesn't rely on his martial arts skills here (except in a humorous opening sequence), he relies on his face and body language and pulls it off. He even pulls off a bizarre 5 minute monologue towards the end of the film, as his chair floats up above the set into the rafters and then back down into the scene again.

That chair bit also neatly serves to illustrate the problems with the film. Director/co-writer Mabrouk El-Mechri isn't content to just tell the story, he wants to be all arty-farty with it. He tells the tale out of sequence, and doubling back a la Tarantino, he breaks the 4th wall needlessly, he lets the frame skip a few times to wink at the audience. He should have just told the story and let it stand on that. There's also very little feeling of menace from the robbers and the photography looks cheap. And with the police command center being located in a video store across the street from the post office, why didn't they do something with the video store itself? Why aren't the cops sitting there watching JCVD DVDs? Why isn't there a shot of a bargain bin stocked with his old movies selling for 1 euro each? So many opportunities wasted.

But a tip o' the cat to the Muscles from Brussels for being aware enough to so thoroughly deconstruct his image and start fresh. At one point in the film he begs his agent for any part in any Hollywood studio film and that he'll work for scale, on the basis that one decent role there will lead to 6 more films elsewhere. Thanks to this film, maybe he'll get that shot.

I love TV comedy shows. I always have a hard time picking a favorite because as soon as I think of one that I love, dozens more come to mind. Seinfeld, The Office, Monty Python, Fawlty Towers, Mary Tyler Moore, Cheers, 30 Rock, Curb Your Enthusiasm, The Larry Sanders Show, SCTV, Honeymooners, Kids in the Hall, Simpsons, South Park .... I could go on.

I recently went back and watched a couple of episodes of I Love Lucy. Specifically, the one where Lucy is in Italy stomping grapes and the one with the Vitameatavegamin commercial. I've watched these episodes dozens of times and it doesn't matter how often I see them, I crack up each and every time. 50 years later, they're as good as they were when they were first aired.

Not saying that I Love Lucy is the funniest show of all time but it's way up there.

One could make a case for it being the most innovative show and all of that is due to Desiderio Albert Arnaz y de Acha III, aka Desi Arnaz.

Arnaz hired Karl Freund, the director of photography of Metropolis and Dracula, to be the dp for the show and together they came up with the concept of having 3 cameras simultaneously filming the show - which allowed them to shoot in sequence with a live audience. They further insisted on shooting it on 35mm film instead of 16mm (and paid for the difference out of his own pocket). And by paying for it himself, he used this as leverage so that their production company, Desilu, retained the rights to the show.

Desilu studios was a very profitable operation and not just because of I Love Lucy - The Andy Griffith Show, Mission Impossible, the Dick Van Dyke Show, even Star Trek (The Original Series) were all shot on their soundstages.

Oh, and in the How Far We've Come Department, the network execs thought that the American public wouldn't accept big star Lucille Ball having a Cuban husband on TV, even though Desi was her husband in real life. Network execs also didn't want to have Lucille Ball on TV when she was pregnant - they thought that would be unacceptable to viewers! 50 years .....

For the past few weeks, the mp3 newsgroups on usenet have been under attack. My guess is that this is not the work of isolated individuals; I suspect it is "security" firms hired by the record companies or the RIAA to mess up the (admittedly illegal) distribution of mp3s via usenet.

Two weeks ago, someone was uploading thousands of what was described as "warez" files to the mp3 groups. These files purported to be cracks for just about every version of every bit of commercial software ever released. The uploads were small and undoubtedly contained viruses. These were being uploaded via Giganews and I sent a complaint to the abuse@giganews.com email account (probably others did as well) and they stopped after a few days.

Now there's a new tactic - someone is recycling all of the previous posts - each subject line begins with a "." and ends with either "ultra-compressed.MP5.exe.zip" or "ultra-compressed.MP5.exe.rar". Each message comes from a different uploader, yet they're all coming from the same account.

As an example - today I updated headers on alt.binaries.mp3 for the first time in 7 days. Reviewing the headers, there were 265,000 of these bogus messages posted within a week. They are being separately posted to at least a dozen other newsgroups, including alt.binaries.sounds.mp3, alt.binaries.sounds.mp3.complete_cd, alt.binaries.warez.uk.mp3 and others.

They are easy enough to deal with - just set a filter for "ultra-compressed" and delete all of those messages. But downloading 265,000 bogus message headers (as opposed to just 10,000 "legit" headers) obviously takes a lot of time.

Making matters worse, these seems to be coming from an account at usenetserver.com but emails sent to abuse@usenetserver.com are bouncing back.

Anyone have any suggestions?

Wow is the weather nice today. After the cold and wind on Friday night, I didn't think things would recover so quickly. But just back from taking the dogs for a walk ...

I was wondering about Friday the 13th. I'm not superstitious generally but was thinking to myself that this is a year with 2 Friday the 13ths, and how often does that happen, and what might it mean? I found out, getting into a rather severe argument with my girlfriend - a long distance one, via SMS and phone calls - and I got quite drunk but managed to not do anything severely stupid and we'd recovered by Saturday. Something far worse happened to a friend of mine - something I can't go into here and something possibly worse to another friend. So does that mean there really could be something to all this superstition bullshit? Probably not.

So I've opted for a quiet weekend. Saturday spent the afternoon shopping in Mong Kok. Not much, a new jack for the car and a new pair of sneakers and something for the gf at Ladies Market. At the market, I was stopped by two young-ish guys doing a survey. I didn't bother to ask, but clearly this was slanted towards preserving Ladies Market from the rapacious developers and idiot city planners, so I went all the way over to the positive side. When they asked what I would do to change it, I said, "Make it bigger!" They used their mobile phone as a voice recorder to tape the interview as well as logging my answers on paper and then I had to pose for a pic with one of them. I guess I could have pressed them for more details but I was loaded down with bags and hungry.

I've learned a long time ago not to bring the car to Mong Kok on a Saturday afternoon. I'd get more pleasure from plunging 6 inch needles into my eyeballs than attempting to deal with that traffic. Luckily there's a red mini-bus that goes direct from Sai Kung and Mong Kok (and I finally know where to find it for the return trip), costs all of HK$14 each way and is basically non-stop, so just 30 minutes each way. The stuff in HK that works really works. (But why don't the red mini-buses take Octopus?)

Saturday night, stayed in. Thought about going out for dinner but couldn't figure out what I wanted, just rummaged through the fridge.

Watched Bunuel's Viridiana. I know some say this is his masterpiece but it's not my favorite of his. I enjoy the back story more than the film itself.

Here's the deal - Bunuel, a leftist, was of course radically opposed to Franco. He spent decades in Mexico. But in 1961, he returned to Spain to make this film. Leftists were outraged that he would do that.

But there is a description of a 3 panel cartoon - cannot find the image anywhere - in the first panel, Bunuel is welcomed to Spain by Franco. In the second, Bunuel hands Franco a gift-wrapped box. In the third, the box blows up in Franco's face. And that's what happened with the movie.

The story has two distinct parts. A woman (Silvia Pinal) about to take her vows as a nun is ordered to go visit her uncle (Fernando Rey), who is dying. The uncle has a huge farm that has fallen into disrepair. The woman is the spitting image of the uncle's dead wife, and he tries to keep this would-be nun with him, offering to marry her, attempting to rape her. When his efforts fail, he kills himself.

Now the woman has inherited the farm, along with the uncle's illegitimate son. He takes over half the place, modernizing it, starting to work the fields again. She makes her half into a dormitory or refuge for all the beggars in town. Things go very, very wrong.

The script was passed by Franco's censors with just minor changes - they objected to the ending and Bunuel managed to get them to approve a possibly more radical one in its place - and the film went on to win the Golden Palm at Cannes. At which point it was denounced and banned by the Vatican. And not merely for this restaging of The Last Supper with physical and mental invalids ....


.... or the fact that the "photo" is taken by a woman's crotch ("a camera my mother gave me").

Be that as it may, most of the prints were seized and destroyed. The film couldn't be legally shown anywhere for more than 10 years - Spain wouldn't claim it and therefore they couldn't get an import certificate to bring it into other countries for screenings. The star, the great Mexican actress Silvia Pinal, rescued one print and it was smuggled into and out of different countries for private screenings. It took more than 15 years to get it classified as a Mexican film and for it to receive wide distribution.

Anyway, here's a pic of Silvia Pinal in her prime:

And for no rational reason at all, here's a pic of her daughter, Alejandra Guzman, who is a TV and recording star in Mexico. (If you like it, do a Google image search on her, lots of interesting photos ....)



I'm gradually catching up on the Bunuel films that I've missed. I know and love his first films (Un Chien Andalou, L'Age d'or) and his late films (Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, Phantom of Liberty, That Obscure Object of Desire). Criterion has released lots of his stuff, decent transfers, good bonus stuff, makes it easy to make my way through his output.

Following Viridiana, what would make a suitable film for a double bill? I thought a good subversive choice might be Paul Blart Mall Cop, from the director of Daddy Day Care and Dr. Dolittle 2. I generally get some laughs from the films produced by Adam Sandler's Happy Madison company, but this was just too depressingly standard cookie cutter stuff and I gave up about 45 minutes into it.

Put on the new-ish blu-ray disc of Raging Bull. Holy shit is this a great transfer. The movie looks fine on regular DVD but it just leaps off the screen on blu-ray. Scorsese's powerful images - yes I know Thelma Schoonmaker got a well deserved Oscar for her editing but how did Michael Chapman not win for his cinematography? More than likely the Academy wasn't going to give that to a (mostly) black and white film in 1980.

I've got no intention of replacing the bulk of my DVD collection with Blu-Ray discs. 99% of the time, the standard DVDs are just fine. But when you're talking a movie as great as this and a carefully done transfer, it's worth the money. Here's what the folks at DVD Beaver (the web site that does the best comparison reviews among multiple versions and releases) have to say about it:

A film like Raging Bull, which is cinematographically attempting to capture a certain period with utilizing a heavier stock and presenting the film in black and white(for the most of the onscreen activity) produces a more subtle visual improvement than many are used to seeing in high-definition. Even the speckles - that continue to exist - augment the overall style of the film benefiting the aura. So while the differences may not seem immense - the larger the system viewing it the more prominent these will become. Contrast is superior (see matts, towels, shirts) and much more of the intended grain is noticeable. Detail also improves as the image tightens-up in the higher resolution. The bitrate appears to be about 5 times the last SE DVD and technically this is dual-layered with the Blu-ray feature taking up about 36.5 Gig. I toggled back and forth and even on my smaller system the disparity was clearly evident. The biggest differences are the contrast and grain while I was a bit surprised at the amount of speckles. The Blu-ray is far'n-away the most film-like image and faithful to theatrical of all editions.

(And for whatever reason, this is the first time that I spotted John Turturro in the film - he has no lines, just seen in two shots.)

So that's about all .... Sunday afternoon, chilling out at home, some work, some more movies to watch .....

The unedited, uncensored Jon Stewart / Jim Cramer interview on Daily Show is online now. This is serious stuff. Stewart rips Cramer and CNBC and the banks a new one, over and over again, yet giving Cramer plenty of uninterrupted time to talk and state his case, and without resorting to name calling (with one lapse). They shake hands at the end.

Anyone who has ever watched CNBC, who lost money in the stock market, who lost their job in the current economic meltdown ... watch this.

Intro



Part 1



Part 2



Part 3

Comedy Central's web site is one of the few that streams entire episodes of shows without any geo-checking, meaning folks around the world can watch everything there. Which is great since I'm a huge fan of the Daily Show.

For the past week, Jon Stewart has been going on a veritable comedy rampage against CNBC - for giving bad advice. "If I'd only followed CNBC's advice I'd have a million dollars -- provided I'd started with $100 million." Jim Cramer, one of CNBC's on-air personalities, has taken this personally, attempting to start an anti-Stewart vendetta by appearing on lots of NBC shows. To date, Stewart is the winner, as this article in Variety notes:

Jon Stewart is capitalizing bigtime on his war of words with CNBC.

Stewart's eight-minute screed against CNBC host Jim Cramer has rippled far beyond the confines of "The Daily Show." It's generated a torrent of media coverage and 1.3 million online views in the past week, according to Comedy Central.

The feud will get a fuel-injection Thursday night when Cramer goes mano a mano with Stewart as a guest on "The Daily Show."

Cramer's "Daily Show" appearance follows a week of counterpunches delivered on various other NBC Universal-owned platforms, which included guest spots on NBC's "Today" and MSNBC's "Morning Joe."

Stewart threw the first punch on March 4, following the last-minute guest-appearance cancellation by CNBC correspondent Rick Santelli, he of the now-infamous "Tea Party" rant on the floor of the Chicago Mercantile Exchange days earlier.

Santelli had called ill-fated home buyers "stupid" for getting themselves into mortgages they ultimately couldn't afford, and Stewart took him and his network to task, effectively making the point that consumers weren't always given the best financial information from money media sources like CNBC.

"If I'd only followed CNBC's advice I'd have a million dollars -- provided I'd started with $100 million," the comedian quipped.

On Monday, Cramer responded defensively in his column on financial site MainStreet.com, claiming Stewart's clips took his message regarding Bear Stearns and Lehman out of context.

The move caused Stewart to pour even more ridicule upon Cramer on Monday evening's "Daily Show" installment. But then came Cramer's back-to-back Tuesday appearances on "Morning Joe" and "Today," during which he scornfully remarked that he was being "attacked by a comedian."

This was tantamount to walking straight into an overhand right from Stewart, who playfully noted -- in a segment titled "Cramer vs. Not Cramer: Basic Cable Personality Clash Skirmish '09" -- that the pejorative remark made it sound like a "comedian" is "some kind of buffoon, just flapping my arms with crazy buttons and wacky sound effects."

Stewart, of course, then cut to a series of "Mad Money" clips, showing Cramer flapping his arms amid crazy buttons and sound effects.

Stewart may get the last laugh. Overall, unique usage for the "Daily Show" website is up 65% this week, according to Comedy Central.

Stewart notes that Cramer continued to recommend Bear Stearns stock as it sank from $133 a share - I think the company was sold for $2 a share. It starts here. And gets better and better - Cramer's appearance should be fun. And get his bit on the Dow Jones as an indicator of Obama's performance - "So what seems to be being suggested here is that opinion polls don't matter. The stock market is the only rational objective indicator of a Commander-in-Chief's performance. You know, but they're all kind of dancing around it, no one's really just flat out stating it .... isn't the Dow Jones industrial average just a short twitch numerical representation of a bunch of guesses about other peoples' assumptions about the financial well being of an arbitrarily chosen group of 30 out of tens of thousands of possible companies?"

Jonathan Demme is one of the more successful graduates of the Roger Corman school of film-making. He went from making films like Caged Heat and Crazy Mama to Melvin & Howard, Stop Making Sense, Something Wild, Married to the Mob and, oh yeah, Silence of the Lambs and Philadelphia. Rachel Getting Married is his best film in 15 years.

And yet, I wasn't entirely satisfied with it. The film owes a huge (acknowledged) debt to Robert Altman's The Wedding and possibly an even bigger debt to John Cassavetes. It's shot entirely with handheld digital video cameras that are constantly in motion. Combined with relatively rapid editing, it's a somewhat disconcerting effect. The intent, I believe, is to make you feel as if you're watching a home movie.

The script is the first by Jenny Lumet, the daughter of director Sidney Lumet and the granddaughter of Lena Horne. The families depicted in the film are ones she clearly knows and is herself a part of - artistic, wealthy, successful, multi-racial. It's loose and feels largely improvised. The scene of the family dinner the night before the wedding, one of the film's major set-pieces, seems to last about 30 minutes. Is it too long? Yes. And no. By going on at such a length and at such detail, everything in it feels completely real.

The plot ... Kym, played by Anne Hathaway, is given a temporary release from rehab to attend her sister's wedding. The movie unfolds over the course of a weekend, during which we learn a lot about Kym and Rachel. Hathaway, as the recovering junkie with a dark secret in her past, completely sheds her teen star image here; she's totally believable in this role. Bill Irwin plays her father, Debra Winger the mother. Tunde Adebimpe (lead singer of TV on the Radio) plays Rachel's fiance, and there are cameos from Corman, Sister Carol and Robyn Hitchcock, among others.

With a 94% "top critics" rating at Rotten Tomatoes, David Edelstein at New York Magazine has pronounced this film a masterpiece. The NY Times says "it would be a shame to miss" this. Roger Ebert gives it four stars. On the other hand, Time Magazine's Richard Schickel wants to know when Demme lost his sense of humor.

One thing's for sure about Demme, he is one of the few directors to focus on women, to provide them with multi-dimensional roles in which they are given room to breathe and to express themselves. This is a character driven film, with an ending that struck me as simultaneously ambiguous and true to life. I can see why Hathaway got a best actress nomination and Debra Winger, in one of her increasingly rare appearances, probably came this close to a supporting actress nod. The film isn't mainstream by any means but if you're a fan of Altman, Cassavetes or possibly the Dogma 95 movement, this should appeal to you.
=================================
I always advise my girlfriend to note the name of the director, not just the cast; that the director is a better advance indicator of a film's potential quality than the stars. What Just Happened was directed by Barry Levinson, a very successful mainstream director who started off well with Diner but since then has been all over the map.

The film is produced by Art Linson and based on his nonfiction book, What Just Happened: Bitter Tales From the Hollywood Front Line. Linson is an A-list producer, one who has managed to remain on the (Hollywood) cutting edge with films that include Into the Wild, Fight Club, Heat, Fast Times at Ridgemont High. He's directed just two films, one of them Where the Buffalo Roam, the one where Bill Murray plays Hunter S. Thompson. The book was not well reviewed and the film is a complete mess.

Robert De Niro plays a fictionalized version of Linson (and looks quite a bit like him). The cast also includes Bruce Willis, Sean Penn, John Turturro, Robin Wright Penn and Catherine Keener (who's terrific as a studio head who takes business calls on the toilet).

The problem is that we're presented with a story that we can't really care about. Will the British director recut his film to make it more commercial in time for Cannes? Will Bruce Willis shave his Grizzly Adams beard before the cameras roll? Will De Niro get his kids to school and still make it to a studio meeting on time? Who cares? This is a movie that only Hollywood insiders will enjoy but there have been others along this line (The Player, Swimming With Sharks) that have plumbed these depths far more successfully. This movie has little to recommend it.

I just don't get De Niro. From 1965 to 1998, the man barely made a wrong move. But then came Analyze This, Rocky and Bullwinkle, Meet the Fockers, Righteous Kill, one disaster after another. He's King Midas in reverse now (to quote the Hollies song) - is he so hard up for a paycheck that he has to take everything that comes along? Granted, he and Linson are probably friends, but still, Bob, once in awhile just say no.

Anthony Bourdain gives his opinion on other cooking shows on TV. Some highlights:

Bizarre Foods With Andrew Zimmern
I don't know how he does it. I respect his stamina. Most of the food that he's been eating, I've had. I've got to hand it to the guy for being able to get up in the morning and face nothing but lizard parts and testicles, especially in some tropical climate without the benefit of alcohol. I honestly don't know how he does it. I would have hung myself in the shower stall.

Hells Kitchen
Gordon doesn't get much love and respect in the States from his peers. No one really gives a damn about his restaurants here. This show is a freak show. It's a circus of cruelty, like shooting fish in a barrel with a cut-down 12-gauge shotgun. There's no cooking. It's just a bunch of dimwits -- the lame, the halt and the delusional -- and him pretending to be angry. There's no suspense. None of these idiots would be qualified to work a Fryolator at a Chuck E. Cheese much less ever work in any Gordon Ramsay restaurant. The whole concept of the show is ridiculous. He would never hire these guys. Executive chef at one of his restaurants? I mean, please.

Top Chef
I'm a fan. I like watching the show, even at its worst. I like being on the show as a judge. I watch that show because Tom Colicchio makes that show for me. First of all, they ask the chefs to do very difficult things; it is a genuine challenge that requires people to dig really deep. From a professional point of view, it's exciting for me. It's a good quality competition. It's the best cooking competition on television by far. It's due entirely to Tom. He keeps the show straight; no producer is ever going to go up to Tom and say, "We can't send her home this week because she's cute or she's got a good backstory." By virtue of his personality and his impeccable credentials, Tom makes the show riveting viewing. Toby Young, what's up with that? He's an egregious add-on. They were looking for a snarky British guy, and Toby wrote a successful book that made a good case for his uselessness. He's lived up to that promise.

Spain ... On the Road Again
I love Mario, worship the ground he works on. I think "Molto Mario" is the greatest stand-and-stir cooking show that was ever on the Food Network. It was valuable and informative. Mario is good for the world as few chefs are. He's changed the landscape of restaurants in really great ways. He's used his celebrity constructively to move dining in America forward. That said, I hate that show. I think it's no fault of Mario's. I just think it's badly produced. There's nothing worse than seeing a genius like Mario -- he's the smartest, funniest guy I know -- waste his talent. I hope he had a great time making the show. And Mark Bittman, I don't think he adds value to anyone's TV show. He doesn't come off well on TV. Let's put it that way. I saw him make paella once on a TV show; he's been dead to me ever since.

Can't say that I agree with him about Bittman ...

(click to view larger)

Yes, last night, the most eagerly anticipated, most hyped moment in 2009 Television history, Steve Wozniak made his debut on Dancing With the Stars.




Okay, so one judge described it as looking like "watching a Teletubby go mad." But did anyone really think that watching a geek, let alone an ubergeek like Woz, dance was going to be graceful and pretty? It was fun ... and got me to watch this sodding miserable show for the first time.

Just love me them asiaxpat classified ads:

Kneclaces in semi-precious stone:
1/ kneclace made with Black Tourmaline in the center, Rose quarzt and Jais (charcoal fossilized)
Price : HK$ 8,500
2/ kneclace made with Rutilated Quartz ( rare quality: transparency, cutting and big size) mixing with rock cristal, silver beads and silver original lock.

This one, nothing wrong with it, except that it's posted under "new items for sale":

1998 Honda Odyssey for Sale

1998 Honda Odyssey for sale. Great family car. 7-seater. Excellent condition. Features: electric sunroof, leather interior, new JVC 12-CD player. Low mileage (67,000 km). Licensed to 21/06/09.

HK$35,000 o.n.o.

No, not so much. A vaguely restful weekend, with one movie, a little bit of shopping, lunch with a friend, otherwise just taking it easy. On Sunday apparently it was "32 degrees, feels like 39 degrees" there and yes, it did feel like 39. Walking slowly, staying with air con, keeping ambitions low seemed to be the order of the day.

Saturday night we went to see Watchmen.

The first thing is, by the time I booked the tickets, Saturday at lunchtime, it seemed as if we were getting shitty seats, 4th row, looked too close to the screen. But Manila has proper movie theaters, and that meant there was about 20 feet from the screen to the start of the first row, so 4th row was just fine and dandy. Huge screen, very loud THX sound, clean print, good way to see it.

Some spoilers ahead I suppose:

If you're not familiar with Watchmen the graphic novel, it's set in a 1985 in which Nixon is still president. A major theme running through the film is threat of nuclear war with the Soviet Union, in particular over their incursion in Afghanistan. In other words, the book worked as an allegorical tale about the very specific time in which it was published.

All these years later, there is no more Soviet Union, America is the one fighting in Afghanistan, and depending on how you view things, George Bush was a far more destructive president than even Nixon.

And (SPOILER) perhaps in 1985 nuclear destruction of a dozen or so major cities around the world would have led to global piece, but in 2009 if you blew up New York, London, Beijing, Tokyo, etc., it was simply have Al Qaeda and the Taliban dancing around bonfires and calling for more.

So the story is no longer relevant to our time. It's a time capsule at best. I guess Snyder had to walk a tightrope between pleasing the legion of fanboys out there vs. trying to update the story and make it relevant to now, and he chose the former approach.

So it's a good representation of the comic - a bit long, awkwardly paced, but otherwise a fairly decent film for its genre. See it if you like this sort of thing. But if it's not your bag, this is not the film to convert you.

Arrived in Manila after a terrible flight - terrible in that the row behind me had 3 babies, kicking and screaming the entire flight. Luckily it's just a 90 minute flight.

But once in Manila, feeling totally de-stressed - which is not so much Manila as just the temporary change of scene from HK. The fact that I'm spending the weekend with my gf might also be helping a bit.

We wanted a late supper last night, close to midnight, and since our hotel is right in the middle of Greenbelt, we walked over to Greenbelt 2's restaurant row to see which places were still serving. Since it was Friday, the answer was all of them. We went to Spicy Fingers, simply because one of the owners of the chain is a friend (and sure enough, her husband was there and bought us a round of drinks). My gf went for pasta, I of course had to go for something from the local side of the menu (crispy tadyang, not as good as at Abe but still a respectable effort). And we stretched out with the food and drinks, enjoying the view, which on a Friday night was quite good indeed.

Manila is the shopping mall capital of the world, that's a fact of life here, and despite the poverty and political instability a small handful of companies continues to build these malls and compete in terms of design and services. And unless you want to deal with a taxi ride in Manila's infamous traffic, walking to the nearby mega-mall is a respectable choice for an evening out. There's been a ton of this kind of development here in the past 5 years and the choice is more varied than you might expect.

Greenbelt, owned by the Ayala Corp, has several different food areas, running a gamut from fast food to higher end choices, lots of places with plenty of outdoor seating and greenery. Of course all the dreaded American chains are represented - Outback, Tony Roma, Bubba Gump, Chili's, etc. But they also have a good variety of locally-owned places.

The only problem with Greenbelt 2 is that there is this row of about 10 bars and restaurants, all with outdoor seating, and all blasting their music as loud as they can to try to draw your attention. Sitting outside of Spicy, we're blasted from speakers with the music of the bad cover band playing inside and also getting it from the dj's at almost every other place along the strip. Quiet it's not. But, as I said, we were sitting comfortably outside and the endless parade of people on a Friday night meant we had a good view.

11:30 AM. What I presume is the Philippine National Anthem starts blasting through the hotel PA while lights are flashing in the hallway and bells are ringing. "We're just testing, sir." Sigh.

Meeting a friend for lunch and then getting tickets so we can see Watchmen tonight. I showed my gf the trailer last night, asked her if she wanted to see it, she said, "Yes. 100%!" Right now, with 198 reviews in, it's running 65% on Rotten Tomatoes (NY Times hated it, Roger Ebert gave it 4 stars) and I liked Snyder's "300" but didn't think it was all that, so my expectations are just middling, but what the heck.

The flip side of all this rest and relaxation is that Monday I'll have to be up at 5 AM since I'm on the 8 AM flight back to HK.

According to the SCMP, apparently the top story today in Hong Kong is that Gillian Chung, a woman who (gasp!) had sex and then the public found out about it, sat in the mansion owned by her manager (a man who reputedly sleeps with all his female stars and also pimps them out to anyone who has the coin) for an interview that will air on pay TV on Sunday.

This fearless bit of investigative reporting includes objective writing such as:

"picked herself up for a grand return to showbiz."

and

"A year later, she still has not changed the way she thought of herself - or her appearance; her dark straight hair was centre-parted, just like the way she looked a year ago."

But never fear for Ms. Chung, who according to the lead in the article spent all of two seconds contemplating suicide, she's turning this into a huge payday. "Chung will make an official comeback next Tuesday as the regional ambassador for local fashion chain Bauhaus' TOUGH Jeansmith for which she will earn a seven-digit sum."

Yesterday's Standard reported that people were being arrested for having "e-cigarettes," a smokeless battery-operated nicotine delivery device, which is sold around the world as an alternative to smoking but is illegal in Hong Kong. Today's SCMP reports that police are having a tough time trying to crack down on people selling smuggled cigarettes by phone. "Customs had carried out successful operations against such phone-order services in the past but it was time-consuming. "

"Tobacco traffickers hand out fliers across the city listing brands, a price list and contact numbers before delivering the illegal goods to buyers."

Yeah, that's gotta be difficult, picking up a flyer on the street, calling them, waiting for them to come to you, then follow them back to their warehouse when they go to get their next order. Who's got the time for that?

Last but far from least, following an upsurge in the number of Hong Kongers barred from entering Macau for political reasons, our fearful leader, Donald Tsang, ran into Macau chief Edmund Ho in Beijing and, much like a TV psychic, "channelled concerns."

"I have channelled the concerns of the Hong Kong people to Mr Ho and he has listened to our views. I believe the chief executive will understand our feelings." And? Action? Agreement? Punitive measures? Apparently not so much.

"A Hong Kong government source said Mr Tsang had taken charge of the issue and was adopting a subtle approach rather than heeding calls by some lawmakers for retaliation."

A subtle approach? For which he was rewarded with a gentle pat on the head and sent packing.

from various classified ads on AsiaXpat

if intrasted send me number thanks

i have shinco dvd player very good condtion with remot 5 spekers and woofer

Just hook it to your PCCW modem and you can watch favorite chanales. if u intrasded send me your number thanks

carmea bag -un use giftfor professional carmea.

if u dont mind,its looks 80%new,cos im not using very tidy.....haha
but for sure 100% good working,

Perfect for watching NOW TV on another TV. Just hook it to your PCCW modem and you can watch your favorite football match at the living room without disturbing her from sleeping.

2 pieces of Motorola charger $50 for both.

over 98% new lamp

NO BOX USE FOR THREE MONTHS. WITH INTERNATIONAL GURENTE.

camear stand (never worn) [ad for a tripod]

This LCD for TV or Computer Mon
It's good condition just have 1" not apparent bar

flooding bed is easy to place easy and to use

Replacement fax film KX-FA55A for Panasonic fax machine (two rolls in box) [the accompanying photo is of an iPod and JBL speaker]

Beautify your balcony with plants and fist

Since Apple refreshed its line of computers this week, perhaps you're wondering which one to buy? Check this handy chart from CrunchGear (click on it to see it full sized).

I've pretty much decided that I'm not going to buy a Kindle. As much as I love the concept and while the reviews have been mostly positive, I'm not doing it because:

* One major component of the US$360 price is the wireless capability - both in terms of the hardware and the network usage (paid by Amazon but of course that's included in the price). My guess is this adds at least $100 to the price and this is a feature I will never be able to use.

* There are rumors flying of a touch screen Kindle before the end of the year and also of them going international, so I might as well hold off.

* Too many books that I've bought lying around that I haven't read yet. What am I going to do? Buy them again for the Kindle? Lug around a book and a Kindle? Doesn't make sense.

Oh, there's now a free Kindle app for the iPhone. But I don't know who in their right mind wants to read a book on a screen that small. Certainly not me.

Mine sure sucked. And I'll admit that 99% of it was my fault.

I may come from Car Culture, USA, but I don't know dick about cars. I'm a good driver but I know little about maintenance or tools. When I bought this car, I noted that the little thing in the trunk that holds tools was empty. I told the dealer to give me a full set and when I picked the car up, every slot in that box was filled up. I saw there was a spare tire there and figured I'm okay.

So today, driving to work, going down Clearwater Bay Road, at the point where it's a single lane going steeply downhill, there's some piece of debris in the road. I can't stop because there's a line of cars behind me and there's limited space to try to swerve, because it's a narrow lane and there are plenty of cars coming in the opposite direction. So I hit it, relatively slowly, but I could both feel and hear it going under the tire. It's not paper or cloth, as I was hoping, it's wood or metal. You can probably guess what happened soon after.

Within 5 minutes, as I'm on the approach to the Tseung Kwan O tunnel, I can feel the car swerving to the right. I cut the stereo, open the window and hear the sounds of a tire going flat. I pull over in that little center island just before the tunnel entrance. I pop the hood of the car, pull out the spare tire, pull out the little bolt thing that will undo the locked bolts, and then I go to pull out the jack.

No jack.

What I thought was the jack turns out to be some fancy little thing with hazard reflectors that one can unfold and put on the street behind your car. Oh joy #1.

Did I mention it was raining? Oh joy #2.

So I call my mechanic, tell him my problem and where I am, and he says he can't send anyone because maybe the tunnel guards won't let them stop there. Rather than argue with him, I simply hand my phone to the tunnel guard who is already standing there next to me, who tells him, yeah, duh, of course, send someone.

About 30 minutes later, the guy drives up, has a jack, jacks up my car, takes off the tire, grabs the spare. The spare is flat. Oh joy #3.

He talks with the tunnel guard for a bit and then tosses the spare in his car, drives off to get it inflated. Comes back about 15 minutes later, puts the spare on the car, and then notes that the spare is leaking. Oh joy #4.

Clearly I'm not going to be able to get back to Sai Kung. They suggest that I go to Kwun Tong. The guy on the phone says I should go to Shing Yip Street. The guy in the car says Hing Yip Street. Well, they're only a block apart, not a big deal.

Of course, me having stared at the map for 5 seconds and thinking I've got it committed to memory, going someplace I've never been before, I make a right turn about a block before I should have made a left turn. This being Hong Kong, it means I have to drive about a mile before there's any chance of getting back to the street I want. And this being Kwun Tong, the streets are jammed with trucks and traffic is at a standstill. Oh joy #5.

Finally I get where I've been told I need to go. My spare is totally flat at this point. People are walking into the street and pointing at my tire. Yes, yes, yes, I know. I drive down Shing Yip street and there's not a tire or repair shop in sight. Oh joy #6.

I round the corner and get to Hing Yip Street. There are three repair shops on the street, no tire shops. I stop at the first one. I see a display of chrome rims inside and feel optimistic. I ask the guy standing in front if they repair tires, he says no. I take a closer look inside - its a Porsche repair shop. There are about 20 Porsches parked inside, all years, all models, taunting me, calling out to me, saying, "we know you want one of us and can't afford one and all of us are laughing at you in your broke-ass flat-tire car." But then again, the one parked in front is purple, with a vanity license plate same name as the shop. Parked immediately in front of that one is a Porsche that's bright green. Who does that to a car? (Answer: people with more money than taste.)

Anyway, I explain my predicament to the guy in the shop, they try inflating the tire for me, it goes flat immediately. They take a closer look and decide to replace the valve on the tire, they re-inflate it and it looks like it will hold. They charge me only HK$50 for this.

I ask the guy where I can find a tire shop. I pull out my map book and he's pointing somewhere near Diamond Hill. So far? There's nothing closer? What about Kowloon Bay, I ask, so many car repair shops over there? Oh yes, maybe.

So I make it to Kowloon Bay, swing around Megabox, and the second shop I pass is a tire shop.

Stepping back in time about 14 months, when I was shopping for a car, I knew I wanted a BMW 328 or 330 convertible and I knew my price range. And at the time, I could only find one used one that was both new enough to have a glass rear window instead of plastic and yet old enough to be something I could reasonably afford. But not only was this car white, it had been pimped out by the previous owner. Front, rear and side body kits. Plus these fancy chrome wheels and 19 inch tires. It wouldn't have been my first choice, but it certainly was (and remains) eye-catching.

But of course, those 19 inch tires ain't cheap. And I needed at least one new one - or is it two for balance? But I also knew the car was coming up on 7 years old and had no idea when those tires had last been replaced. The treads looked pretty worn to me and, surprise surprise, the guy agreed.

Oddly enough, the cheapest option would have been to get something that the guy just happened to have lying around the shop - genuine BMW rims, but only 18 inches, and boring looking compared to mine. He tells me I can get those 18 inch rims and 4 Michelins for $10,000. Or keep my existing rims and get four new 19 inch Michelins, $12,000. Oh joy #7.

Now at this point I'm not in a position to comparison shop. I can't drive around for hours looking for other tire shops to see if I can get a better deal. I'm not gonna go over to 7-Eleven and buy some car magazines and start flipping through them and working the phones. I suppose I could have told him just to replace the one tire, he would have spent 15 minutes telling me why that's a bad idea, I would have prevailed and then put in hours trying to replace and match the other 3. Life's too freaking short. So I told him to do the 19 inch Michelins.

I walk over to Megabox and kill time by browsing in B&Q until they call to tell me the car is ready. Seems like I was missing a nut on one of the rear tires, so they've fixed that. And fixed up the spare tire as well. They're not charging me extra for that. Okay.

But what really bugs me is that after paying five figures for new tires, they tell me that if I want to pay by Visa they are going to charge me 3% more, or I can get the quoted price if I pay by EPS. Oh joy #8.

By the time this is done, as you can figure, I have neither the energy nor the desire to go from Kowloon Bay to Lan Kwai Fong for Web Wednesday, and this was one that actually had speakers I was curious to hear. Just turned around, drove home, I'm ready for a nap.

Didn't notice till today that they'd finished the renovations on Sai Kung's Tin Hau temple. Looks beautiful to me.






Japanese restaurant that recently opened in town, kept meaning to grab a picture of this. Shushi?

Billboard reports that the China government, in its great wisdom, has canceled previously approved live appearances by Oasis in Beijing and Shanghai. No, it's not because they've decided that Oasis hasn't made a decent album in ten years. They just discovered that Noel Gallagher appeared in a Free Tibet concert in New York City in 1997.

They would have found this out sooner but it took them some time to get around the Great Firewall to get this information so vitally important to state security.

The Hong Kong concert is still on. I haven't decided if I'll go yet ... I'd definitely go if I knew they were going to include my favorite Oasis track, Wibbling Rivalry, in their setlist.

NY Times - South Park: A Vision and a Payoff

I stopped by the studio to talk to Mr. Stone because he had some news: the two men and their partner Comedy Central had consummated a deal with Netflix to stream the first nine seasons of “South Park.”

Like the studio boss he now is, Mr. Stone wouldn’t go into specifics on money, but South Park Studios already had streams of the 181 episodes on its Web site that had served up over 300 million views since it went live just last April. That’s a whole lot of naughty going on.

Standing in front of a glass wall that kept the humming computers in a sealed, cool environment, Mr. Stone explained how easy the deal is technically. “The way we are set up now, when, say, Netflix wants season five, we can just push a button and make it happen.”

.......

Although perhaps the real prophet was their lawyer, Kevin Morris, who struck a deal 12 years ago that gave Mr. Parker and Mr. Stone a 50-50 split with Comedy Central on all non-TV revenue. In 1997, that was no big deal. Ten years later when it was time to renew, it was a very big deal.

.....

“People just have to sit through a short commercial and then we give them every episode in very high quality that makes stealing it seem dumb,” he said. “Anywhere there is an iPhone, an Xbox, or a computer, people can watch the show now, which is good for us and for Comedy Central.”

“I just wanted to be on the Internet,” said Mr. Stone, “and now we have a piece on the chessboard.”

For my mental well-being, I am returning to Manila on Friday for 3 nights. The prices on Cebu Pacific Air are so cheap (HK$1,100 for round trip) that I can't think of any reason not to. Three nights with my girlfriend, lunch with a very good friend, crispy tadyang at Abe and crispy pata at Chef Laudico's. PLUS .... Watchmen opens in Manila on Friday, a week before it opens in HK, and their movie theaters are frigging palaces compared to the shoeboxes here. Took me all of 30 seconds to make up my mind!

For my physical well being, I am pondering this blog post at the NY Times by Tara Parker-Pope, written about one of my food "heroes," Mark Bittman.

Mark made the changes after developing high cholesterol, borderline high blood sugar, bad knees and sleep apnea, and realizing he was about 35 pounds overweight. A doctor suggested he adopt a vegan diet, which means no animal products. But for a food writer, Mark said, becoming a full-time vegan was both unrealistic and undesirable. Instead, he came up with a compromise:

I decided to do this sort of “vegan till 6” plan. I didn’t have huge thoughts or plans about it. I just thought it was worth a try. Within three or four months, I lost 35 pounds, my blood sugar was normal, cholesterol levels were again normal … and my sleep apnea indeed went away. All these good things happened, and it wasn’t as if I was suffering so I stayed with it…. I have not eliminated anything completely from my diet. I haven’t had a Coke in a while, but I didn’t drink that much Coke to begin with.

I'm definitely not 35 pounds overweight (15 or 20, probably), my blood sugar and cholesterol levels are within the normal range, but I definitely have sleep apnea. Over the past two years I've made some significant changes to my diet - cutting back on fast food, deep fried stuff and coca-cola roughly 80-90% - but I still have this sugar jones. I wonder if I could find the self-discipline to try something along these lines (he typed while eating a Reese's Peanut Butter cup). My variation would be more like "no processed sugar before 6 PM."

More from Bittman:

I would just encourage everyone to examine the portion in their own diet between processed foods and animal food and junk food on the one hand and plants on the other. To the extent the first group is much heavier than the second group, I say make some adaptations to change that.

Something to seriously think about.

I've just finished watching Synecdoche, New York. Words temporarily fail me, so first some review quotes that I highly agree with.

Manohla Dargis in the New York Times:

To say that Charlie Kaufman's “Synecdoche, New York” is one of the best films of the year or even one closest to my heart is such a pathetic response to its soaring ambition that I might as well pack it in right now. That at least would be an appropriate response to a film about failure, about the struggle to make your mark in a world filled with people who are more gifted, beautiful, glamorous and desirable than the rest of us — we who are crippled by narcissistic inadequacy, yes, of course, but also by real horror, by zits, flab and the cancer that we know (we know!) is eating away at us and leaving us no choice but to lie down and die.

Despite its slippery way with time and space and narrative and Mr. Kaufman’s controlled grasp of the medium, “Synecdoche, New York” is as much a cry from the heart as it is an assertion of creative consciousness. It’s extravagantly conceptual but also tethered to the here and now, which is why, for all its flights of fancy, worlds within worlds and agonies upon agonies, it comes down hard for living in the world with real, breathing, embracing bodies pressed against other bodies. To be here now, alive in the world as it is rather than as we imagine it to be, seems a terribly simple idea, yet it’s also the only idea worth the fuss, the anxiety of influence and all the messy rest, a lesson hard won for Caden. Life is a dream, but only for sleepers.

Roger Ebert:

I think you have to see Charlie Kaufman's "Synecdoche, New York" twice. I watched it the first time and knew it was a great film and that I had not mastered it. The second time because I needed to. The third time because I will want to. It will open to confused audiences and live indefinitely. A lot of people these days don't even go to a movie once. There are alternatives. It doesn't have to be the movies, but we must somehow dream. If we don't "go to the movies" in any form, our minds wither and sicken. This is a film with the richness of great fiction. Like Suttree, the Cormac McCarthy novel I'm always mentioning, it's not that you have to return to understand it. It's that you have to return to realize how fine it really is. The surface may daunt you. The depths enfold you. The whole reveals itself, and then you may return to it like a talisman.

So I'm immediately at a disadvantage. I've only seen it once. I think I could watch this every day and get something different from it, something more. But that's me. I think that most people who watch this film are going to be confused, bored or even hate it.

I don't even know how to describe the movie. Attempting to sum up its plot in a few sentences seems pointless because, well, it's not just that the plot is almost secondary. Yes, it's a film about a theatrical director who wants to leave something great behind, gets a warehouse and starts putting together a play about the lives of everyone in the world, everyone a leading actor in their own tale, all the tales taking place simultaneously, about rehearsing and refining for 40 years and never opening. But is that what it's about? It's wildly ambitious. It's a very funny film in spots. And it's overwhelmingly sad too. It's about failure and blown opportunities and misunderstandings and lies. And it's also probably the best movie about the creative process since Barton Fink.

I haven't seen this mentioned in any review that I've read but it strikes me that Charlie Kaufman has turned into the great surrealist director Luis Bunuel. It's not just little touches, like Hazel buying and living in a house that's on fire. It's the way the line is blurred between the film's reality and the reality of the play being seen within the film. What are we watching? When these people talk, who are they talking as? At one point we have the director and his assistant watching actors playing the director and his assistant directing a director and assistant.

And he pulls something towards the end of this movie that only Bunuel (as far as I know) ever attempted. How to even describe it? Caden (Philip Seymour Hoffman) has been secretly cleaning his ex-wife's apartment, replacing maid Ellen who never shows up. Millicent (Dianne Wiest) portrays Ellen in the play, or she portrays Caden masquerading as Ellen. And as Caden gets older and ill, Millicent takes over for Caden as director, and all of a sudden, the movie is about Millicent and about Ellen and Caden becomes just another character, someone reduced to taking direction via a wireless earpiece. We get Ellen's life and Ellen's dreams and Caden is speaking Ellen's lines, prompted by Millicent.

Anyway, this is the first film directed by Charlie Kaufman, who as a writer gave us Adaptation, Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, Being John Malkovich and others. It stars Philip Seymour Hoffman, Catherine Keener, Tom Noonan, Michelle Williams, Samantha Morton, Hope Davis, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Emily Watson, Dianne Wiest.

====================================

If Synecdoche is the cinematic equivalent of a literary novel, the other film I watched this weekend barely even qualifies as pulp fiction. I watched In The Electric Mist, being released straight to video in the US, because I'm a fan of author James Lee Burke and his series of crime novels featuring bayou detective Dave Robicheaux.

Burke is by no means a great writer, but he is a very good one, one who sometimes manages to transcend his genre. And if anyone is right for Robicheaux, that's Tommy Lee Jones. He's comfortable enough in the role but as portrayed in the film, the character is far less complex than the one in the novels. And this film, which also stars Mary Steenburgen (wasted!), John Goodman (wasted!), Peter Saarsgard, Ned Beatty, Levon Helm and Buddy Guy has no magic, no pacing and very little narrative drive.

Director Bertrand Tavernier (Coup de Torchon, 'Round Midnight) just doesn't bring it. One of many mistakes is that he has decided to change the setting so that it takes place post-Katrina (something that Burke dealt with in a far richer manner in a different Robicheaux book) and then he does nothing but use that for background. It's almost exploitation.

The only reason I'm mentioning this is that I've heard that the European cut is said to be very different from the American version. But honestly, if you come across this in a video shop and you like the cast and think maybe you ought to give it a try? Don't bother.