→ January 22, 2012
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Animal Kingdom.

I’m a bit behind here as I’ve been researching and now writing up the top 100 prospects, but I’ll try to at least get some fresh content up on the dish this week.

When I was slowly making my way through the 2010 nominees for the Academy Award for Best Picture over the course of the second half of 2011, several readers mentioned the Australian drama Animal Kingdom as an unjustly overlooked candidate for that honor (although Jacki Weaver did receive a Best Supporting Actress nod). It’s a harsh, bleak film that uses crime as a springboard for examining motivations behind individual decisions – including the fungible ties of family – without ever lapsing into pure crime drama, with a minimalist approach to dialogue and plot that kept the pace up even with such stark subject matter. And it was far better than two of the Best Picture nominees I saw, Black Swan and The Kids Are All Right, and is probably ahead of The Fighter for me as well.

As the film opens, we see Jay, a sullen teenager, calling 911 (or the Australian equivalent, I suppose) without any emotion to report that his mother, sitting next to him on the couch, appears to have OD’d on heroin. Even after her death, he calls his grandmother, Janine Cody (Weaver), from whom his mother was estranged, to ask for help, yet still shows very little emotion at all – what could be shock, of course, but turns out to be more than that. Janine is the head of an organized crime family, based on the real-life Pettingill family and the real murder of two police officers of which one of the Pettingill sons was accused, and Jay finds himself gradually folded into the family business without ever quite understanding his role in it until he’s arrested after the deaths of two police officers. From there, Jay finds himself forced to choose between the only family he has left and the morally correct option presented to him by the lead investigator, Sergeant Leckie (Guy Pearce, excellent as always), who tries to offer Jay a way out in exchange for the testimony to damn his uncles.

Although the Cody brothers are violent and disturbed, particularly Andrew (“Pope”, played by Ben Mendelsohn) and the paranoid Craig, the film’s setup puts them in the role of prey rather than predator, which at least explains their actions as those of desperate criminals rather than criminals who are violent for violence’s sake. Pope is at least a sociopath, Craig’s paranoia is the cause or result (or both) of his drug abuse, and it’s hinted that Darren is suppressing his homosexuality; all three in an unhealthy home environment, chased by a crooked police force, create a powder keg that the viewer expects to explode. (That’s not to forgive any of their violent acts, but provides depth to the characters beyond the simple “bad guy does bad thing” motif.) Jay, on the other hand, spends most of the film as its Nick Jenkins, mostly passive observer, occasional fringe participant, until events force him to choose sides and grab the wheel of his own fate.

Much of the dialogue in the film, especially spoken by Jay and his uncle Darren, is mumbled, and between that and their Australian accents I had to rewind a few times to catch what was said, although I assume the mumbling was by design, as those two characters share a certain reluctance to go all-in on the family’s activities. The film is often dimly lit, adding to the bleak feel but making it a little tough to watch. And since the film is driven not by violence (although there is some) or by action, but by dialogue and reactions between pairs of characters, it doesn’t fit neatly into buckets like “crime drama” or “action film” that might have made it more of a commercial success. (It earned just over $4.9 million at the box office in Australia, which made it one of the top earners of the year in that country – a fact that surprised me, since I tend to think of Australia as more populated than it actually is.)

Animal Kingdom was largely ignored by the Oscars, but it set records in Australia’s version of the awards for both nominations (18) and wins (10), the latter including best picture, director, screenplay, actress (Weaver), actor (Mendelsohn), and supporting actor (Joel Edgerton, as Barry “Baz” Brown, which was an odd choice if you’ve seen the film). It is loaded with strong performances and one of the most perfect endings I can remember to any film – it resolves one major plot strand, yet opens a new one just as large that remains unanswered.

I’d be curious if any of you have seen another Australian film written by Edgerton, The Square, a neo-noir drama that also received much critical acclaim.

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→ January 19, 2012
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Top Chef, S9E11.

A recap of this week’s edition of Top Chef: Beverly…

* We lead in with residual bitterness from last week, when Beverly won on her dish, leading Lindsay and Sara to cry wee wee wee all the way back to San Antonio. Paul clearly thinks it’s funny that Beverly won. I think Paul is awesome for thinking that.

* Speaking of Paul and awesome, he’s waffling things for breakfast at the house. The Waffleizer would be proud.

* Quickfire: Grab ingredients off a fairly quick-moving conveyor belt and craft a dish using at least three of them. The belt has a weird mix of processed foods (I saw some Oreos on there; I’m offended that no one took them and sincerely hope they did not go to waste) and the occasional high-end item, like lobster, which provided perhaps the best comic relief of the season when Chris J. made like a cat chasing a laser pointer (except that eventually he caught one). But wasn’t there a general lack of proteins on the belt?

* I actually had no idea what whole bitter melon looked like, but I have eaten it … and it’s bitter. I have made that face that Eric Ripert made after tasting Paul’s deesh.

* Ed’s sauerkraut soup just sounded awful, as did Sara’s cottage cheese sauce (which Eric called “surprising,” but never said it was good). I like cottage cheese anyway, but it’s kind of grainy and lumpy, and I don’t know how you would get that smooth enough for a sauce.

* Ed’s comment that Bev should have cheated was funny, prescient, and wildly ignorant of the Defcon 5-level bitching that would have ensued had she done it. Although watching Sara’s head explode may have been worth it.

* Is it just me, or do they love to say that a chef DQ’d in a Quickfire would have won had s/he finished the dish? Bev just forgets one element, gets disqualified, and her Moriarty wins. But even Lindsay acknowledges in confessional that she came in second. Can she and Sarah finally shut it after Bev won an elimination challenge and had the best dish in the subsequent Quickfire?

* Did Padma get dressed in the dark for the Quickfire? My wife wondered if Padma was going to drive the train back to San Antonio after the show.

* I enjoyed the in-show commercial for this upcoming Snow White movie. Note: I may not actually have enjoyed this at all.

* Charlize Theron is lovely. But Seth Rogen and I still prefer Kate Beckinsale.

* I really don’t need to see the chefs’ phone calls home, although now that we know Chris J. is married, I have to say I can’t believe his wife hasn’t cut off his unicorn-ponytail in the middle of the night.

* Elimination challenge: Make a wickedly beautiful dish. How seven chefs took those instructions to Whole Foods without a single one of them even suggesting squid ink is beyond me.

* Beverly picked halibut as an FU to Lindsay. I don’t care what anyone says. And I fully respect this. Speaking of which, Bev using a ten-inch chef’s knife that looked longer than her forearm made me laugh.

* I had never heard of black chicken, but credit to Grayson for cooking something she apparently hadn’t tried before. The New York Times ran an article on these birds, properly called Silkie chickens, referring to their “deep, gamy flavor,” which says to me that they are probably easy to dry out if cooked incorrectly. Grayson seems more attractive now that I know she has a macabre sense of humor.

* Her table-side explanation was over the top, but Ed … come on already, the food’s getting cold.

* Charlize loves to eat, but weighs 90 pounds. Either she’s lying about how much she eats or she used her mirror-on-the-wall to steal the metabolism of a 15-year-old boy.

* Other elimination thoughts: Paul’s handprint was a brilliant touch, as was the off-to-one-side presentation, too gimmicky for a restaurant dish but perfect for this particular challenge … Chris’ apple-pie twist looked like it was rotting, which was a good thing for once; Tom was visibly giddy which he hasn’t been for anything all season … Sara’s risotto with amarone (a dry, Italian red wine – yes, I had to look it up) didn’t translate to TV; it looked mealy and clumpy like a thick sauce, but the judges loved the lamb heart and the presentation of the risotto, so it was probably just the difference between reality and TV … Beverly’s dish was the only one that didn’t seem “wicked” enough, with the dark element, forbidden rice, hidden under the halibut … Lindsay putting the spices from the stew on the dragon beans didn’t seem so revolutionary, but Tom thought it was, and his opinion matters more than mine does … After three dishes Parma looked worried because all three were too good. I don’t remember ever seeing that before.

* Very fun to see an episode where every chef nailed it. The judging snark is usually pretty entertaining, but to then see judges who can, at times, be quite vicious (especially Tom at several points this year) falling all over themselves to praise even the bottom three chefs made for one of the best episodes I’ve seen.

* Winner: Paul, proving once again he’s the guy to beat, since he can lose two elements and still win. This seems to me like Chris’s last stand; if he can’t win this challenge, perfectly suited to his mad-scientist-with-bad-hair approach, I don’t see him winning anything else.

* Judges’ table: I think the editing really did us a disservice here; the judges must have asked the three chefs to defend themselves, but we didn’t see that, only the defenses grafted awkwardly on to the end of the back-and-forth between the judges and chefs about the dishes. Beverly’s dish may have thickened as it cooled, a challenge of the competition but also not the greatest reason to go home. Is this really a coincidence that she barely missed immunity, and was then sent home? I suppose it is – Colicchio has always been adamant in defending the integrity of the show’s judging, which separates Top Chef from most reality competition shows – but that was the kind of drama a show like this wants to get word of mouth up. Also interesting to note that the male chefs clearly respected Beverly more than the female chefs did (including Grayson, who sideswiped Beverly at judging).

* Last Chance Kitchen: Just watch it. A photo finish. That’s real (TV) drama.

* Final three: Paul, Edward, (big gap), Lindsay. I still say Sara’s lack of range is her downfall.

* I don’t see a Hugh Acheson blog post this week, but reader Toby S. passes along this eatocracy piece by Hugh in which he puts down Paula Deen in a devastatingly polite manner.

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→ January 15, 2012
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The Wire, season three.

Season three of The Wire marks a pretty significant departure from the compact story arcs of the first two seasons, a shift with both positive and negative effects. On the positive side, this was the most abjectly political of the three seasons I’ve watched so far, making clear, cogent statements on the futility of the War on Drugs, the nature of government bureaucracies, and the immutable law of unintended consequences; it surprises me, in hindsight, to hear that senior government officials loved this show when it puts the lie to several of their policies. On the negative side, however, I found it the least compelling of the three seasons as it approached its conclusion because there wasn’t much of a conclusion; the one major storyline that ended in the penultimate episode (spoilers below) had such a slow buildup that the climax felt anticlimactic.

Season three continues with the theme of urban decay from the first two seasons, but the camera pulls back to show rot and corruption in more areas, particularly how the entrenched interests across the city will work to thwart attempts at reform, or any sort of unorthodox thinking. Major Bunny Colvin, under pressure to reduce violent crime in his district, carves out three “free zones” where the sale and use of drugs is effectively decriminalized, resulting in safer streets everywhere else in the neighborhood. He does this without the knowledge or sanction of any of his superiors, and is eventually undermined by the officers below him who can’t change their mindset from “catch bad guys” to “keep the neighborhood safe.” (Nothing in this season was more vicious than the depiction of the opportunistic, short-sighted media jumping all over the free zone story without an iota of consideration for its merits.)

The Colvin storyline intertwines loosely with the ambitious city councilman Tommy Carcetti, who is looking for a cause to help him make a run for mayor despite the disadvantage of being a white politician in a largely black city. (By the way, either they dropped the ‘h’ after the second ‘c,’ or everyone is pronouncing his name wrong – as it’s spelled, it should be ‘car-CHET-tee.’) Yet for most of the season Carcetti is just a run-of-the-mill politician, uninteresting and uninspiring until making one speech in the closing scenes of the season finale that starts to redeem the character at least in terms of his appeal to the public, if not in any actual substance. Perhaps his character improves in future seasons, but in this one, I found him, and his storyline, flat, far less compelling than any other story arc I’ve seen on the series.

The return of the battle between the Major Case Squad and the Barksdale crew was welcome, as it worked on a macro level and on an interpersonal level, within each group and in the enmity between McNulty and Stringer Bell. The contrast in styles and aims between Avon and Stringer could stand in for almost any organization that has grown to the point where it faces attacks on all sides – from smaller upstarts, from government regulators, from suppliers, from would-be partners – or to the divergent goals of U.S. political and military leaders in the war in Iraq, to which this season made several allusions (including the series finale’s episode title, “Mission Accomplished”). The cat and mouse game involving the burn phones, including the MCS’s maneuver to move from one step behind Barksdale to one step ahead, was easily the best plot thread of the season, including Clarke Peters (as Lester Freamon) getting to step out of character as a slick con man.

But the resolution of the Barksdale/MCS storyline fell short of expectations for me. The death of Stringer, my favorite character – one of the few things on this series that has actually surprised me – speaks strongly to the emptiness of the drug war in the inner city. When McNulty is brooding over Bell’s corpse, the victory seems hollow for a host of reasons, from the fact that the death of a major player does nothing to stop the use or sale of drugs to McNulty’s personal disappointment in losing Bell before he could put him in cuffs. (And it speaks to the emphasis on chasing individuals rather than looking at the problem holistically, such as working to reduce demand, rather than supply, while decriminalizing use.) But from a plot perspective, Stringer’s falling out with Avon had been so far under the surface for so long that the acceleration over episodes S3E10 and E11 was too quick to generate the tension involved in, say, the Frank Sobotka storyline in the previous season. The discord was there, but without any crescendo until right before Avon sets Stringer up (reluctantly, as opposed to what Stringer does to Avon at the same time). A character as good as Stringer Bell shouldn’t be so easily written out of a series.

The season was just as smart as previous seasons, but just didn’t have that same narrative greed; I enjoyed individual episodes, but didn’t spend hours trying to figure out when I could watch the next episode as I did toward the ends of the previous two seasons. A disappointing Wire season is still miles ahead of a good network police procedural season, though.

Stray bullets…

* When Brother Mouzone handed the weapon to Omar and said he trusted Omar would “do it proper,” did he mean disposing of the weapon – or disposing of Dante? (Or both, really.)

* The war in Iraq was just 20 months old at the time the episode aired. I suppose you could at least argue that the war in Iraq had an end, but I wonder how much angrier David Simon would have made this season had he seen how much longer U.S. troops would be on the ground in that country.

* Good riddance to Johnny, perhaps my least favorite recurring character. Bubbles didn’t really need him as a foil.

* Finally, the series’ use of gratuitous sex scenes became ridiculous in this season, to the point where it’s just a distraction from what is otherwise one of the most intelligently-written American TV series I’ve ever seen. Carcetti cheating on his (very cute) wife with a trashy woman he met at a fund-raiser seemed more like a failed attempt at comic relief than any kind of illumination on his character – Terry D’Agostino, his campaign manager with a strong sexual appetite, provides far more humor in the bedroom (through role reversal) without anything that would force me to fast-forward if I’m watching it on an airplane. (McNulty’s experience in the brothel in season two? Now that was funny.) The Barksdale crew party house also served no obvious purpose for the plot or for laughs. Boardwalk Empire had the same problem in the eight episodes I watched before I gave up; does HBO just encourage producers to introduce sex scenes because, hey, it’s HBO, so let’s show some skin? It’s not offensive; it’s just silly, demeaning to the actors and the audience at the same time.

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→ January 12, 2012
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Top Chef, S9E10.

Restaurant Wars! This show makes me more nervous than the finale, because I have yet to see a Restaurant Wars episode where neither team ended up in the soup and at each others’ throats. Edward even gets the ball rolling by trashing Sarah, which becomes doubly ridiculous when we see that he shows more respect to servers who forget to put table numbers on tickets than he does to a competitor who suffered from heat exhaustion in triple-digit temperatures.

As much as I like Restaurant Wars, however, there are fundamental flaws in the execution. This year, the producers split the challenge over two days rather than having the teams operate their restaurants simultaneously, which seemed like a big advantage to the team that went second. We always get two chefs handling front of the house duties, thus forcing them to hand off their dish to a competitor who will inevitably not make the dish up to the first chef’s standards (even ignoring, for a moment, the second chef’s incentive to focus on his/her own dishes, let alone the possibility of sabotage). The chefs are also forced to waste time on décor, which would be great if this was Top Design; are the chefs really judged on this crap or is it just product placement for the sponsors?

To the bullets…

* The men (the chefs were split into two teams by gender) name their restaurant “Canteen” and not one person drops a “You’ll need a tray” reference? I am disappoint. Anyway, as is typical of Restaurant Wars, the teams worry more about restaurant names than they do about execution, as in the case of the men, who forget about the need for an expediter because they’ve never watched “Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares.”

* Canteen’s menu seemed to take a page – or a whole book – from Thomas Keller with dishes called ham and eggs, Almond Joy, and Cracker Jack, and if you’re coming at the king of clever nomenclature, you’d best not miss. They missed, although the peanut butter “noodles” seemed like a cool concept that just didn’t work out.

* The diner who said she’s “not a big pork belly fan” but loved Paul’s dish has probably never had pork belly done correctly. Seeing him judged by the standards of his previous output is a bit unfair, since it seems like Below Average Paul is still above everyone else here. He’s also the one chef who, both in live action and in the confessionals, shows some actual grace under pressure, focusing on getting the job done while trying not to offend Ty or Chris J., both of whom failed in some of their responsibilities.

* Ty gets hammered on the Thai lettuce cups, but I was more weirded out by the caramel sauce – I know caramel is a big thing now in savory dishes, but I find caramel (which I love in dessert) so overbearing that I can’t imagine putting it in a dish where it might overshadow the main protein.

* Chris J. makes one dessert, and it looked kind of like a kid gorged on Halloween candy and then threw it all up before he could digest any of it. Even before considering whether peanut butter and cherries are a good combo (I’ll vote no), I would flunk that dish on presentation.

* Edward makes a chocolate almond dessert and calls it Almond Joy because once, back in the kitchen, it sat next to a coconut. Good luck with that.

* To the women, who named their place Half bushel (snicker) … It’s Sarah’s turn to be the villain, bossing everyone around like she’s been possessed by the spirit of Heather, even after she’s told everyone that they have to remain calm in the kitchen, thus flambéing her credibility with her colleagues.

* Did Lindsay just happen to have an outfit that coordinated with the décor of their restaurant? Did she just pick up a few separates at the interior design store?

* Every year on Restaurant Wars, we see the judges arrive at one restaurant when the host(ess) is in the back or otherwise absent. Is that staged? Although in this case, Lindsay was clearly spending too much time in the kitchen – I don’t think they ever showed Edward in the back – so it wouldn’t have been hard to have the judges show up when she wasn’t out front.

* Speaking of which, this was the ideal judges’ panel: Padma and three legit chefs, one of whom is Hugh, who had less opportunity for snark this week. Although one week they need to have Paddington at Judges’ Table, because he can do that cold, dark stare they do better than anyone.

* Grayson’s salad looked like a work of art, but was it too simple? Anyone could make that if you could get the produce, although Hugh pointed out that the cheese was at the right temperature, which I imagine is tricky in a hot kitchen. And good for Grayson for standing up to Lindsay multiple times.

* Why is Sarah firing three courses? Three chefs in the back, six dishes, so … check my math for me here … but isn’t that two per chef? I think Paul did the same, but of course, he’s a better chef.

* Did Lindsay actually explain Schaum torte to the judges, or was that just for our benefit?

* So, at judges’ table: Lindsay throws the team under the bus before learning they won. She seemed to have the worst individual performance. Her dish wasn’t well made (of course, not entirely her fault), but she was also in the wrong place much of the time she was on camera.

* The verdict: The women beat the men, and Beverly beats the women. Grayson smiles, Lindsay and Sarah are steaming like a couple of xiao long baozi. Hey ladies, maybe if you hadn’t tried to put Beverly in timeout earlier, this would have gone better for you. Meanwhile, Ty’s dull Thai wrap was … I’m not saying it. He’s been on the bottom enough times that I never thought he had a chance to win this thing, and while he may not have been the worst of the eight chefs remaining, he wasn’t top three material anyway.

* LCK: Make a dessert in 30 minutes, using one of the eliminated chefs as your sous. Nyesha makes a baked custard with coconut and lime. Ty’s “dark chocolate mousse” (melted dark chocolate combined with mascarpone) looked like pâté, an unappetizing color combo that I think gave him a distinct disadvantage against Nyesha, who wins yet again. (I did predict a long winning streak for her, and I believe this gives her four.) Very impressive to see Heather and Malibu Chris work as if their own fates were on the line.

* Final three: Paul and Edward, probably still Lindsay despite the bad week, but Grayson coming on strong (I feel like I thought she lacked range as a chef, but other than the modernist quickfire, has that ever really been accurate), and Nyesha a legit threat if she does end up the winner of LCK. But this is still Paul’s competition to lose.

* One final thought. Hugh Acheson’s blog post on this episode has Lindsay calling Beverly “fucking retarded,” and if that is true (I didn’t catch it), she should be ashamed of herself, to the point where producers should have considered whether to keep her on the show. Using the r-word in a pejorative sense is always reprehensible, but using it as a direct insult to another person’s face is worse than inappropriate, worse than unprofessional. We’re in hostile work environment territory with this one. So the prediction that Lindsay makes the final three is not a rooting interest.

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→ January 11, 2012
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Downton Abbey.

I’m a little late to the Downton Abbey party – not as late as I was to the Wire party – but we just ripped through the first season on Netflix Instant over the last three nights as well as Sunday’s U.S. premiere of season two, so I’m up to speed. It’s soapier than I’d like, but so witty and smart with many compelling characters that I’ve been happy to get sucked in by the drama that drives the show’s core.

(Warning: There are some spoilers in the bullets below, including one pertaining to the start of season two.)

Downton Abbey is set in the 1910s on an English estate of that name and revolves around the family of Lord Grantham (the upstairs) and the multitude of servants who actually run the house (downstairs). There are short plots and multi-episode arcs; stories limited to the earl’s family, stories limited to the servants, and stories that intertwine the two; and larger themes around conventional morality and the changing political and social landscape of the time. It is ambitious in scope, yet is filmed with short edits, quick dialogue, and tremendous focus on individual characters – both in terms of writing and cinematography.

An ensemble show like this cannot succeed with a weak cast, since there is no single star or even a subset or two or three who participate in enough of the story to carry the entire series. Dame Maggie Smith, who won an Emmy for her performance in season one*, plays the Countess Dowager Lady Violet with enough haughty facial expressions to merit her own meme, providing comic relief on top of a serious role as the voice of the old English order that is under assault from all sides. (She played a similar character in Gosford Park.) The seething sibling rivalry between the elder two Grantham sisters, increasingly central to the biggest story arc on the show, is only effective through the acerbic delivery and withering looks from the actresses in those parts. But for me, the real stars are the less-known actors and actresses playing the servants, especially the two villains, Siobhan Finneran as Nurse Ratchett Mrs. O’Brien and Rob James-Collier as Thomas the sociopathic footman; Brendan Coyle as the maddeningly proper John Bates (operating under his own moral code, it seems); and Jim Carter as the imperious butler Mr. Carson.

* Downton Abbey was nominated in the Best Movie/Miniseries category, which allowed it to win six awards – but it felt as hollow as Lady Violet’s flower show wins because the deck was stacked. I think this show could easily hold its own against Mad Men in the drama series categories, and it’s a more apt description of the program, which was aired in the UK as seven individual episodes, all between 47 and 63 minutes excluding commercials. The miniseries category has lost its relevance anyway – this ain’t Shogun, which was longer, told a complete story, and was aired in its entirety during a single week – and Downton Abbey should be treated as the Emmys treated its spiritual antecedent, Upstairs, Downstairs, which won three Emmys for Outstanding Drama Series (the last PBS series to do so). Stop treating them like Boise State and let them fight the big boys. They might actually win.

The writing is more dramatic, or melodramatic, than I’m used to seeing, especially in British dramas, but still falls short of the mind-numbing sentimentality that infects so much American broadcast network programming. What bothers me more about Downton Abbey is the time-out-of-joint flashes of modern sensibilities, behavior and dialogue that would have been uncouth a century ago but that goes unremarked upon within the show (an assessment I’m basing on literature I’ve read from the period, since my wayback machine is broken, preventing me from evaluating this firsthand). It also seems like there’s a second writing voice that’s less faithful to the vernacular of the time period.

But the speed with which the script’s dramatic elements move, delaying or sacrificing some character development, is one of the show’s strengths – they’ve adapted the British period piece/costume drama to the shorter attention span of the modern audience, hooking everyone with shorter story arcs so we all stick around for the longer ones. It’s an intense, fast-moving show, often very funny, occasionally sentimental, and always smart, worth your time even if you might ordinarily turn your nose up at a show with this much drama and yet so little conventional action.

Spoiler territory:

  • Mary : Elizabeth Bennett :: Matthew : Mr. Darcy. Discuss.
  • I still don’t understand why Mary never said anything, even to her mother, about the Turkish gentleman arriving uninvited in her bedroom. It doesn’t nullify the infraction, but I would have thought this would be the first thing out of Mary’s mouth.
  • I don’t care about the age difference between Anna and Mr. Bates – and really, Joanne Froggatt can make a face to shatter your heart, so let’s get them together already – but am I the only one to think he generally speaks to her more as a father might to a daughter?
  • Elizabeth McGovern, as the American wife of Lord Grantham, is the weakest link in the cast. In trying to sound supercilious she sounds more like a mother talking to an infant, regardless of who else is in the conversation.
  • The actress who plays Daisy is 26. And I thought I looked young.
  • A tumblr called Downton Pawnee. Solid, with at least one panel from a DA episode that hasn’t aired here yet.
  • And the spoiler question on S2E2 (aired here on Sunday together with S2E1): Was Thomas the source of the razor? I say yes; my wife looked at me like I was fashioning a tin-foil hat. What say you?
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→ January 9, 2012
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Margin Call.

Margin Call jumped on my radar when the late, lamented Yahoo! blog The Projector gave it a glowing review back in October, and then named it their must-see movie of the week a fortnight afterwards. Featuring an absurdly deep cast, the film follows an investment bank or hedge fund heavily exposed to CMOs during a 24-hour period right at the start of the U.S. housing market meltdown. It features no violence, no sex, no weapons drawn, no manufactured drama, and is entirely gripping from the moment a junior analyst (played by Zachary Quinto, whose production firm financed the film) discovers that his employer is, in effect, bankrupt.

Quinto plays Peter Sullivan, a former engineering student turned financial analyst whose boss, Eric Dale (Stanley Tucci), is fired in the opening scenes after 17 years at the company. Dale hands Sullivan a flash drive with an unfinished spreadsheet on it that he indicates is important – and it is, as Sullivan discovers, dragging his new boss Will Emerson (Paul Bettany) back into the office at 10 pm to point out that the firm’s portfolio has it on the verge of collapse. Emerson goes to his boss, the depressed, disgruntled Sam Rogers (Kevin Spacey), who takes it to his boss, the amoral Jared Cohen (Simon Baker), who eventually calls in the head of the firm, played by Jeremy Irons (I told you the cast was strong) as if this was an updated work of Shakespeare and he is both the play’s central figure and its empty conscience.

Margin Call‘s central energy source is that one bit of knowledge – that the market is close to a panic, and such a drop in the housing market would drive this unnamed firm out of business – which it uses to power all of its characters, allowing us to sit back and watch their reactions. There’s no gotcha moment, no twist of a bit of unknown information revealed in the final scene to change the film’s direction; most of the movie takes place overnight, when U.S. markets are closed and thus can’t move. This movie is about the reactions of professionals with widely varying backgrounds, loyalties, and years of experience in the industry, and how they move in response to the news that the empire they built is crumbling, and that saving it will hurt others, and could even cause a wider financial panic. It’s not quite a character study, as we don’t stay with any one character long enough to give him/her sufficient depth, but a characters study, almost like witnessing a sociological experiment.

It felt to me far more like a great play than a typical movie – or perhaps more like a British film than an American one, with an emphasis on dialogue and interactions to move the story forward rather than exogenous events inserted by the writer(s). Irons’ arguments with Spacey, who seems to be growing a conscience or merely working harder to suppress it, Bettany’s conversation with the seemingly-principled Tucci, and Quinto’s vaguely comic-relief chatter with a younger colleague played by Penn Badgley had me hanging on their words, not just for their import to the story but to how they were structured and delivered. There is, of course, a message about greed, and the disconnect such traders felt with the owners of the mortgages they swapped and sold without regard to the effects on those ‘regular’ people; I also thought the dog symbolized the soul or conscience of its owner (saying more would spoil it). But I was far more wrapped up in the intensity of the conversations, the emotional reactions to the news coming down the wire, and the way characters rationalized their actions to themselves than I was in the larger themes the film might have wanted to express. It had slow moments, including a long ramp-up to the handoff of the flash drive that kicks off the main plot, and some less effective subplots (including Demi Moore, delivering little in an empty role other than appearing in the hackneyed “sitting sideways on window bench overlooking Manhattan” shot), but as a fan of simple, cerebral dramas, I found more than enough strengths to overcome some slight choppiness of the script.

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→ January 5, 2012
→ By

Top Chef S9E9.

Notes from one of the better episodes, hitting both ends of the culinary spectrum:

* Before we even get started, Edward’s trash-talking Heather for using his cake recipe, which he gave her, so, um, don’t give out your recipes any more, genius.

* Then, the night before the Quickfire, the chefs get a copy of Modernist Cuisine at the house. If you haven’t heard of it, it’s a controversial, groundbreaking, backbreaking (weighing over 50 pounds), five-volume set, spearheaded by polymath/Microsoft billionaire Nathan Myhrvold, that rethinks cooking from the ground up, using a scientific approach. It’s not all molecular gastronomy, but that’s a major focus, which freaks out a few of the chefs.

* Quickfire: Moto Chris calls Myhrvold “Chef Nathan.” No.

* Then Moto Chris explains miracle berries to Padma and Nathan (who has to one-up the chef by mentioning in a somewhat offhand way that he grows miracle berries in his basement).

* Grayson referring to molecular gastronomy as “magic” was pretty funny, as was Beverly’s foam disaster (although I did feel bad for her when she referred to herself as socially awkward). Meanwhile, Sara ends up in the top three for ravioli with a raw egg yolk inside … which we see chefs do a few times a year on this show. That seems about as modern as harvest gold kitchen appliances, but the judges approved anyway. She didn’t win, which would have annoyed me, but when Ty got the nod (and the books) Moto Chris looked like he wanted to commit hara-kiri. (Or maybe he finally saw his own hair in a mirror. I’d feel the same way.)

* Elimination challenge: The chefs must stay up all night at Salt Lick BBQ – I think this was their original location; I’ve only been to the one in Round Rock – and prepare five dishes: chicken, pork spare ribs, brisket, and two sides of their choice. This is anti-modernist cuisine, and that’s awesome.

* Two of the three teams decide to go boring and literal. They could have sent all six of those chefs home and I wouldn’t have been upset. Grow a pair already.

* At Whole Foods, Malibu Chris (much better than “Chris C.”) reads the grocery list, with “liquid smoke” on it. Um, Chris, I’m pretty sure that’s what the barbecue pits are for.

* Edward gets more ornery as the show goes on, because apparently when Heather left, she took Edward’s self-awareness with her. So now we have a new villain. I get Edward’s point that he and Ty had developed a “system” for serving without Sara while she was on the disabled list, but isn’t there some obligation to re-integrate her when she comes back? At least Ty realized that, you know, there’s a damn camera on us, you idiot.

* Meanwhile, why can’t a team that’s down a member borrow a body from the restaurant just to help them serve? Was it fair for Ty and Edward to suffer in the judging because they had to compensate for another chef’s heat exhaustion (if that was indeed Sara’s malady)? I don’t get it. If the point is to identify the best chef, then let’s get the extraneous variables out of the way and focus on the food.

* I was surprised to see Beverly’s bourbon fire set off the smoke alarm in the RV, since I have, in fact, produced a fire quite a bit like that only to discover it barely gave off any heat and didn’t singe anything it touched (including, I believe, my eyebrows). Her inability to handle the fire was kind of a concern, though.

* Beer can chicken isn’t Q. Period. Automatic DQ in my mind.

* My wife was singing along with Grayson’s bullfrog song. She didn’t make the faces, though. Also, I refuse to believe Grayson only says mildly inappropriate things like “sex in the mouth” when she’s sleep-deprived. Speaking of which, Hugh’s recap might have been his funniest yet.

* Judges’ Table: Paul wins again, by going a little off the board. I know this was a team win, but it seemed clear this was Paul’s menu.

* Did Team Acrimony really put orange mint in their cole slaw? I did think Tom criticized them unfairly for slicing the meat ahead of time, unless he was willing to say explicitly that he thought they could have sliced to order fast enough to serve the guests.

* Nathan Myhrvold was a good judge except when he tried to be funny. But his comments were pretty specific and he’s obviously passionate about food and incredibly knowledgeable about it.

* I was less disturbed by Malibu Chris basing a BBQ sauce off a Texas beverage (albeit one I don’t drink) than by him thinking, again, he would get a mistake (oversalting) by the judges. I get why he went home, especially after two straight times in the losers’ bracket, but I still think he had more potential than Moto Chris.

* Last chance kitchen – did the on-screen description of Nyesha’s dish actually say “twill” instead of “tuile?” Twill is a type of fabric weave. Tuile is food. Don’t even get me started on toile.

* Both dishes seemed really strong, but it sounds like Nyesha won for making more of “a restaurant dish.” She’s cooking angry now, and I like it.

* Final three: Paul, and it’s looking like it matters less and less who else is there with him. Malibu Chris was in my projected final three as of E7, and I see much weaker chefs still here (Beverly, Moto Chris, and Ty). I’ll go with Paul, Edward, and Lindsay for the final three, with the caveat that we don’t know when the Last Chance Kitchen champ might re-enter the mix.

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→ December 31, 2011
→ By

The Last Good Kiss.

A reader, Michael L., recommended James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss to me about fifteen months ago, knowing my affinity for hard-boiled detective novels. (This should also give you some idea of how long my to-be-read queue is.) Michael described it as very Raymond Chandler-esque, with influences from later, more “sordid” writers. It is undoubtedly more lurid and graphic than Chandler’s novels, but shares the master’s sense of characterization and his knack for weaving complex mysteries among a very small number of flawed people by layering intrigues and peeling them back one by one for the reader.

Crumley’s detective hero/antihero is C.W. Sughrue, a war veteran and possibly unreliable narrator (so maybe he’s not a war veteran) who handles unglamorous P.I. jobs like spying on wayward spouses for divorce cases or locating deadbeats for bill collectors. While retrieving a wayward author named Trahearne for the man’s ex-wife, Sughrue starts a brawl and shooting match that ends with him earning a job to locate a woman, Betty Sue, who’s been missing for ten years. Betty Sue was in San Francisco with a boyfriend when their car became stuck in traffic, at which point she opened the car door, walked away, and was never heard from again.

The pursuit of Betty Sue is the main plot point that drives the novel forward, but it’s the layering, mostly around Trahearne, that makes the novel so rewarding. Trahearne is a war veteran who fought at Guadalcanal, published three pulpy novels and some volumes of poetry, and lives on an estate in Montana with his wife, his ex-wife, and his mother, running off on semi-regular benders, one of which puts him on Sughrue’s radar. When the two men strike up an odd friendship and Sughrue’s hired to find Betty Sue, Trahearne cajoles Sughrue into letting him tag along, which is when the layering – and the lying, because no one in this story seems to tell the truth at first or even second blush – begins.

Sughrue might be the fourth- or fifth-most interesting character in his own book, which separates this from the best of Chandler, whose novels always revolved around Philip Marlowe. Sughrue certainly mimics Marlowe’s exterior toughness, dry wit, and natural cynicism (especially around the motives of others), but I didn’t find him compelling – he often takes a backseat to the beer-swilling bulldog Fireball, whose loyalty to his owner may merely reflect a desire to protect his main enabler. Trahearne is the real star of the book, complex enough to border on the ridiculous, an emotional train wreck on the inside with a buffoonish exterior. Sughrue makes his presence felt, but more as the machine that makes the other characters go; his best scene is his assault on a house in Colorado where he’s trying to rescue a kidnapping victim, and he has to deal with the house’s defenses and the idiocy of his overbearing, heavily-armed sidekick.

It doesn’t measure up to the best Chandler – which, for me, would start with Farewell, My Lovely – but it’s a quick read that was hard to put down but never insulted my intelligence while holding my attention.

Side note: I’m shocked that this was never made into a film. It certainly has all of the elements to satisfy a major studio – sex, violence, humor, sharply-drawn characters – but has the smart dialogue and layered plotting of a good Coen Brothers movie.

Next up: Carol Shields’ novel The Stone Diaries, winner of the 1995 Pulitzer Prize for Fiction.

–

I’m burying the lede here a little, but I want to thank everyone who’s offered kind words and positive thoughts after this week’s rumor regarding me. I have no comment on the rumor itself, of course, but so many of you have written via one method or another, including a number of readers who have never reached out to me before, that I want to make it clear how much I appreciate your messages and your continued readership over the last five-plus years. This job would not be half as much fun without you guys.

Have a safe and happy New Year’s celebration tonight. If you choose to drink, please give the keys to someone who hasn’t.

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→ December 28, 2011
→ By

Of Human Bondage.

Another pretty good deal on Amazon – the complete BBC series Planet Earth: The Complete BBC Series is just $20 on DVD. I’m picking it up as a gift for someone who will probably see this so I’m going to stop talking about it now.

I also answered three questions for Keep Food Legal, the only organization dedicated to fighting for “culinary freedom” in the U.S. Hands off my unpasteurized cheese.

No Klawchat this week.

–

W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage, #66 on the Modern Library 100, is a dense, autobiographical, highly philosophical novel that takes its protagonist, Philip Carey, from the moment he becomes an orphan at age nine through the end of his twenties, during which he tries several careers, loses his faith, and embarks on several ill-fated affairs, including one disastrous obsession that nearly ruins his life. It’s a book I’m glad I read, but will certainly never read again because the slightly awkward prose and the long internal monologues made it an arduous read.

The book opens with the death of Philip’s mother and his removal to the country home of his uncle, a vicar, and submissive aunt, who comes to love him as the son she never had but lacks any authority in her own home. Philip chafes under the restrictions of this life, finding solace by reading the books his uncle owns for show, but finds his life taking a turn for the worse when he’s shipped off to boarding school where his club foot makes him an object for derision and social isolation. After discovering he no longer believes in God (if he ever truly did), he begins a series of misadventures at university and in various careers, including a stint in accounting and an attempt to be a not-starving artist in Paris, before settling into medical school in London. At the same time, he begins an on-again, off-again affair with the unattractive, selfish, manipulative Mildred, who seems to view Philip as a personal ATM, only showing him attention or affection when she needs something from him, popping up in his life when he least needs her all-consuming distractions.

The novel relies heavily on events from Maugham’s own life. Like Philip, Maugham was orphaned before he turned ten, and was raised by a strict, religious uncle and an ineffectual aunt who expected him to take orders after school. He also drifted through several potential careers before studying medicine for five years, during which time he continued to observe people and their emotions and worked on his first novel, Liza of Lambeth, published when he was 23. (By comparison, Philip doesn’t become a writer in Of Human Bondage, and doesn’t complete his medical training until he’s nearly 30.)

Maugham’s prose is choppy and his inconsistent use of cockney spellings, even outside of the dialogue, is a distraction, but he makes up for these deficiencies with strong use of symbolism throughout the novel. Philip’s club foot stands in for Maugham’s own personal shame (at least earlier in his life) at his homosexuality, a theme that pervades the entire novel even though Philip never develops anything stronger than a friendship with any other male character. Philip’s sense that his disability causes his ostracism, leads others to mock or simply underestimate him, and prevents him from living a full life seems to stand in well for the obstacles before a gay man in England in the late 1800s/early 1900s, when any sexual act between two males was illegal and punishable by a prison term. Maugham was in medical school when Oscar Wilde was tried for “gross indecency” and sentenced to two years in prison, which convinced Maugham to keep his own sexuality (he was either gay or bisexual) a secret, both in his private life and in his early writings. Rather than make his protagonist gay, Maugham gave him a physical disability that could cause similar social disadvantages by making him sufficiently different from the rest of the guys.

The “bondage” of the book’s title, taken from a phrase in Baruch Spinoza’s Ethics (which, along with Renan’s Vie de Jesus, was a major influence on the personal philosophy of the young Maugham), refers to the multiple societal constraints that appear to limit our ability to find happiness in a life that is, according to Philip, devoid of inherent meaning. The strict religion of the Victorian era and the accompanying moral codes, the expectations a man’s breeding and/or education placed on his career, all of which also limited whom one might choose to love (if one even has such a choice), are bonds Philip must consciously break to find any sort of personal happiness in a universe that will not deliver happiness to him in this life or anything after it. The introductory essay in the edition I read says that many readers found the book’s positive ending jarring or unrealistic, but in my reading, it made perfect sense: Philip casts off all of his bonds and chooses a life he believes will make him happy with a woman well-suited to his temperament, for whom he feels genuine affection (if not actual love). I read this as Maugham’s own private yearning for a world in which he, too, could cast off the societal bonds, and live openly as a gay man. (Maugham had at least two longstanding, not-exactly-secret relationships with men, but passed away two years before the Sexual Offences Act of 1967 began the process of decriminalizing “homosexual acts” between consenting adults.)

Philip’s obsession with Mildred provides the narrative greed for most of the middle third of the novel, and I appear to be in good company in finding it inexplicable. She is presented without any redeeming qualities; she is rude, dismissive, haughty, plain, unfeminine, manipulative, and an unloving mother to the child she bore to another man she was sleeping with even as she is coaxing Philip out of some of his money. Philip’s obsession is presented in vivid, realistic terms, but there’s no logic to it at all beyond the possible desire he feels for a woman who won’t have him. He throws another relationship overboard, jeopardizes his career, and loses much of his savings for her, only to have her exact a rather severe punishment on him (albeit one that loosens yet another bond, that of a man to his property) in the end. She could have been just as awful a person, yet depicted as beautiful, and the obsession would have been more believable, yet Philip stands by her despite a lack of physical attraction and even as she openly mocks him by using his money to run off with another man. Is she merely a stand-in for the irrational, emotional impluses which bind us in our daily lives?

That same introductory essay, written by Professor Robert Calder of the University of Saskatchewan, who has written two biographies of Maugham, classifies Of Human Bondage with other autobiographical bildungsromans (coming-of-age novels) of its era, including A Portrait of the Artist as a Young Man (which I found excruciating), Sons and Lovers, and The Way of All Flesh (both on my to-be-read shelf). It’s a highly introspective, emotional style of novel, with long digressions on the author’s own psychological and philosophical development, and attempts to explain how external forces (people and events) shaped that development. As someone who reads for plot over all other elements, it’s never going to be my favorite subgenre, and Of Human Bondage didn’t offer me great prose or highly compelling characters to balance out that weakness.

Odd fact: One of Maugham’s great-grandsons, Derek Pavancini, is a blind, autistic savant pianist.

Next up: James Crumley’s The Last Good Kiss.

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→ December 27, 2011
→ By

A High Wind in Jamaica and After Dark.

Richard Hughes’ A High Wind in Jamaica, ranked 71st on the Modern Library’s list of the top 100 English-language novels of the 20th century, is an anti-adventure novel that deglamorizes the traditional pirate story and instead uses pirates as a vehicle for a serious novel about innocence and its loss.

The novel tells the story of the Bas-Thornton children, five preteens who live on a plantation with their parents in Jamaica, but who are sent back to England after a terrible hurricane convinces their parents that life on the island is unsafe. Traveling with two children from a neighboring plantation, they have barely embarked when their ship is set upon by pirates, led by the Danish sailor Captain Jonsen, who takes the children as well as all of the cargo. The cowardly captain of their original ship believes them killed and reports as such to their parents, who don’t learn the truth until the end of the book. Captain Jonsen tries to leave the children with a matriarch in a pirates’ haven on the island, but is rebuffed after an accident befalls one of the five, leading to several months at sea during which tensions rise between crew and captives and their “adventures” prove more harrowing than thrilling.

Unlike typical novels set on the high seas, A High Wind in Jamaica veers straight for the more serious themes, including rape and murder, that would be required in any realistic depiction of piracy. Forcing children who do not as yet understand mortality, and all of whom but one remain unaware of sexuality, into a situation where they will be confronted by the harsh realities of adult life allows Hughes to explore innocence and the cognitive dissonance children utilize to deal with events they can’t fully understand.

Hughes’ skill in dealing with this extends to his ability to bounce between the children when providing perspectives within the book, and aside from the one real murder of the novel, often describing occurrences in obscuring language to mirror the fog a seven-year-old might perceive when older children are discussing sex. The way Hughes jumps from child to child also seemed to me to mirror the rocking of a boat sailing somewhat aimlessly on the open seas, as Captain Jonsen wishes to rid himself of his human cargo (without harming them) but fears that he will be charged with kidnapping or worse if he tries to hand them over to another ship.

The book reads quickly as Hughes’ prose is straightforward, but lacked much narrative greed – there seemed little chance that Hughes would simply wipe out all of the children to end the book, so I read it assuming full well that there would be a reunion before the novel’s conclusion. Those final few short sections are critical, particularly to the resolution of Emily’s story, as she ends up the most central of the child characters, but I found my involvement within the plot to be rather limited.

–

I haven’t even acquired Haruki Murakami’s new book, the mammoth 1Q84, and probably won’t until it ends up in paperback next year. (When I’m reading a book, I tend to carry it all over the place, including on planes, and a three-pound book just isn’t my cup of tea.) I am still working my way through his back catalog, and read the somewhat inconsequential After Dark earlier this month. Telling the story of a few lost souls on one peculiar night in Tokyo, Murakami slips in a little magical realism, a few touches of his usual violence (off screen, for a change), and a lot of the vaguely philosophical dialogue that populates most of his novels.

The two main characters, Mari and Takahashi, meet by chance, and then are thrown together again by necessity, launching them on an all-night conversation that links their story to the parallel tale of Mari’s sister, who has been asleep – but not comatose – for what seems to be months, the result of a depression that is never explained but that has taken a toll on Mari as well. The parallel narrative trick worked more effectively for Murakami in Hard-Boiled Wonderland and the End of the World, another book of his I’d rate below his average (which is still above most contemporary writers’ averages). In After Dark, all edges are blurred, perhaps a nod to the darkness and the way our vision is distorted by artificial light, but that same blurriness keeps his characters at arm’s length, and the novel is so brief that we never learn enough about any of the central characters to understand what’s driving them to or away from anything.

Next up: I just finished W. Somerset Maugham’s Of Human Bondage – I can think of at least one thing wrong with that title – and have moved on to James Crumley’s hard-boiled detective novel The Last Good Kiss.

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