Got to enjoy Anthony Bourdain at The Paramount for the second time last night.  This time he was here with Eric Ripert, another famous chef and friend in the business.  We saw him come to town with Mario Batali a couple years ago in 2009 (brief crowd video from that here), that talk was moderated by Luke Burbank (of Tbtl and NPR fame) and was very entertaining.  This time was just mano-a-mano, just the two of them.

They started by having Bourdain ‘cross-examine’ Ripert on a folding chair at the front about his restaurant, some of his career past, his interactions with other chefs and industry people, and some choice anecdotes obviously meant to skewer him in a friendly way.

Then Ripert becamse the ‘cross-examiner’ and started peppering Bourdain with questions – and here there was much more to skewer, as Mr. Bourdain’s mouth often proceeds him in the public venue.  But to his credit, he’s honest (sometimes brutally so) and isn’t above accepting a few shots based on his past statements where people disagree with him.  But naturally the recent ‘Paula Deen scandal’ was fairly amusing to hear retold – and I have to agree with him – while she seems to have managed the situation pretty well, she’s a pretty big hypocrite when the whole story is told, even if he’s over the top about it.  Ripert pressed his advantage on this one and similar stories, trying to determine if Bourdain was a ‘hater’ or not – fairly entertaining to see the answers here.

There was also a later anecdote where Bourdain told a story of his wife being annoyed with him for maligning Grant Achatz’ Alinea restaurant in Chicago – he said she then bought a plane ticket to Chicago, dined there, loved it and said so publicly – he said to ultimately ‘give him the middle finger’ 🙂

After the sessions with the folding chair – they retired to a couple lounge chairs and debated other topics of note – Sustainability (Bourdain largely played devil’s advocate on this one, especially with his largely hyperbolic Bluefin Tuna example); GMOs (was very glad they brought this up) and the subject of which has the most adverse impact on the food industry – chicken or foie gras.  After some more chat, they opened it up to the floor for questions for about half an hour until they called it a night.

Like before, there’s a definite contrast between Bourdain, who to me is very knowledgable on many levels but also relishes his public role as industry curmudgeon – in some ways he’s a sort of Howard Cosell – just ‘telling it like it is‘.  Ripert by contrast seems to be one of the nicest guys out there – although Bourdain did skewer him on the topic of Gordon Ramsay – and seems more an ambassador of the profession (think Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, etc. – willing to share their knowledge and help nearly anyone).  They took definite pains to show Ripert’s efforts to make the profession ‘nicer’ in the kitchen, believing that the old-school way of chef training via abuse and humiliation has become obsolete and is counter-productive.  It was also interesting to hear how intimidated AB was by Martha Stewart – too funny.

All in all, a great show – as we already get our regular quota of A.B. via his TV shows, it’s nice to see him in a somewhat different situation where he’s not controlling *all* the dialog, and getting to see him debate other equally (if not more) respected industry people like Ripert.

Saw 1997’s Mrs. Brown Friday night. While a pretty ‘sedate’ movie compared to most of my usual fare, it was interesting and a tragic, human story nonetheless.

I originally wanted to see this because it has Billy Connolly and Judi Dench in it. They play Mr. Brown and Queen Victoria, respectively. I’ll pretty much watch *anything* with Billy Connolly in it, and having seen Judi Dench in a number of movies and shows over the years, she is one of those actors always worth watching, regardless of the subject matter. Geoffrey Palmer and even a young Gerard Butler play key surrounding roles also, amid the other supporting cast.

Here, Mr. Brown is a former friend called in from Scotland by the Queen to be a personal assistant while she continues her mourning in seclusion over her dead husband, Prince Albert. He rapidly shakes things up, being a brusque, non-nonsense Scotsman amid an otherwise huge group of bootlicks and suck-ups surrounding the Queen in her daily routine – this includes her large family of children (9) who seem to live there too.

This movie is as much about personal relationships, loyalty and ‘office politics’ as it is about the main characters. And as we see all too often in real life, the outsider is rapidly the subject of multiple attempts (both subtle and direct) to ruin him and roust him out of a position of influence.

But the tragedy here isn’t completely about Mr. Brown – the Queen bears responsibility for a lot of ‘drama’ here – both imagined and real. On the one hand, she’s already been in mourning/seclusion for several years before he arrives, and even despite his resulting positive influence on her, remains there for several years hence. But his devotion is unswerving and without exception, the only successful interruption to which is ultimately brought by Prime Minister Disraeli who makes an appeal to Brown directly.

It would be very interesting to have seen the real relationship play out in person (this movie is based on a true story) as the Queen here is all-too-often very harsh in her dealings with everyone around her – I wonder if that portrayal was accurate, exaggerated in the movie or worst case, understated? It is often painful to watch her switch back and forth to coming out of her shell vs. addressing everyone so formally while describing herself in the third person. I realize monarchies (well, from what i’ve read – monarchies in the USA are only created truly within the minds of the self-deluded, not that there’s any shortage) breed their family members to expect and demand complete ‘service’ wherever possible – it’s just still painful to see it in practice. Especially these days where the British Crown is even more a leech on the public finances than it ever was?

The performances here are great, imho. Billy C. doesn’t have to imitate any accent but his natural brogue (probably a good thing :)) and portrays the kind heart, blind loyalty and ultimately tragic figure of Mr. Brown very well. Judi Dench’s Queen V. comes across as frequently melodramatic and fairly black & white in her life outlook. She is sometimes on the verge of opening up back to humanity, but then quickly retreats into stiff formality and her role as Queen as a protective mechanism. It was also interesting at the start of the movie when Gerard Butler’s accent sounded forced and kinda fake compared to BC’s – he also plays a Scottish character in this movie – but in reading his IMDB bio, he’s actually also Scottish (but lived in Canada in his later childhood). Hmm.

Ultimately, this is a good movie and anyone who likes period pieces, these actors, or an insight into a completely different society (and historical period) than our own should like this movie. Be warned that it might be harder to find on DVD – we had to watch it on VHS.

candybowl

So, being a huge fan of The Prisoner, I thought it might be interesting to watch some other Patrick McGoohan movies to see a) what else he did in his long (but sometimes obscure) film career, and b) how those movies stack up.

So, in jumping around timewise, the first is/was 1995’s Braveheart, PMcG’s last major film appearance. The first few times I’ve seen this movie I didn’t know who he was (it was in the sad, ignorant days before I had watched The Prisoner :)) but man is he evil in this movie as the English King Edward Longshanks, the primary villain trying to corrupt and eradicate (or at best hopelessly cripple) any possibility of Scottish freedom. This is simply a great movie, great performances all around, but P McG has to be considered among the best here, definitely. I’m slated to re-watch this in the coming weeks, so i’ll update more comments in a later post.

Next up was 1968’s Ice Station Zebra, a Cold War submarine flick P McG did with Rock Hudson, Ernest Borgnine and football star Jim Brown during the waning days of filming The Prisoner in the late 60’s. P McG plays an elusive English spy (big surprise) on an American sub charged with investigating some troubling reports from an Arctic base that sent out emergency broadcasts and then went silent. With all apologies to Howard Hughes, this movie is BOR-ING. Roger Ebert is completely right on – I couldn’t finish it, gave up after the first hour. If you want a great sub movie, watch the over a decade-earlier Disney classic 20,000 Leagues Under The Sea; if you want a great cerebral special effects extravaganza, watch 2001: A Space Odyssey of the same year (which holds up well 40+ years later – that alone tells it all). Either of those movies are far more interesting and better in nearly every way. Sorry, P McG.

Next up – The Three Lives of Thomasina from 1964. This was an early 60’s movie he made (weird career choice IMHO vs his typical fare of the time – the complete opposite of spy thrillers and high drama) that is set in a Scottish village in 1912. He plays a stern, small-town veterinarian who is widowed with a small daughter and a cat, Thomasina. Controversy ensues, some harrowing things happen to the cat, but happiness results by the end (of course) and life lessons were learned by all, most notably by P McG. I had seen at least part of this movie when I was a kid, remembering the very weird ‘dream sequence’ narrated by the cat (gotta love 60’s movies and the obvious drug culture influences that often substitute for special effects or hallucinations). There are a number of moments that are outright funny, or simply bad acting by the kids in the movie – one of them looks like the ‘Scottish Peter Brady‘ – and according to kerewin, the youngest two of them were later ‘recycled’ in Mary Poppins as brother and sister. It’s not an action flick, but it does have a certain charm about it – and of course, P McG provides a few choice quotes, yelled in the shrill, increasing-anger voice he perfected later in The Prisoner – such as ‘That Cat has Tetanus!’. After watching this movie, I promised our cats I’d never take them to ‘Dr. McDhui’ – because P McG spends half the movie simply ‘putting down’ the animals he is too self-centered to otherwise care for and save. Ah, but that’s the tough life in turn-of-the-century Scotland, I guess 🙂

candybowl

After a long series of ISP hassles a couple months ago I won’t bore you with, the home network/site situation has been looking (back) up. And as part of this hopefully continued success, the Amiga server is back in the pink, too after some overdue tweaks and maintenance. What is an Amiga, you say?

Click here for a fairly concise and accurate history of one of the coolest computers ever made. As I drift back towards Amiga-land, including using an actual modern Amiga (my server is getting near 20 years old, I am not making that up!) it will mean reacquainting myself with an old friend, and a computer that’s actually FUN to use.

I guess that’s my main beef with most computer systems these days. Windows is about as subtle as a power drill and even less fun to use. I don’t use it for games, barring say Solitaire, Mahjong or FreeCell and the less time I spend using it excepting certain programs, the better. And living in Seattle means (still) enduring people who never used anything else and think Micro$oft invented everything to do with computers. Those sad, sad people….Thankfully M$’s arrogance, ineptitude (Vista, anyone?) and the resurgence of the Mac and Linux have quieted them down considerably (plus many have since ‘retired’ as wealthy stock barons since anyway).

Yes, the Mac is more ‘elegant’ (whatever that means) and isn’t near as hacky, crash-prone or virus-ridden. But again, barring usage of certain programs, it’s ‘meh’ to use for me. It can do many cool things and had I never used an Amiga, I’d probably prefer it above all others.

FreeBSD, the *nix I regularly use on my ThinkPad (soon to be FreeBSD 8.0 in a couple of days) is secure and stable, but still has a way to go on the user-friendliness aspect. But it’s getting there, just like the various types of Linux i’ve used in the past. The interesting thing about Unix/Linux is that despite many users’ strong and continued efforts to mold it into a Windows-killer – there is just as much interest in NOT EVER DOING THAT. Because Unix (and to a somewhat lesser degree Linux) is a geek’s OS, first and foremost – and wasn’t developed originally to be anything different. The windowing systems (X11 and beyond) and GUI elements that came much later were in part a reaction to systems like the Mac, and many users still *like* being ‘in the know’ – without the rest joining the ‘cool kids club’ of Unix users. In other words, if you want to use Unix, earn your stripes, Marine.

Which brings me to the Amiga – as I get back into hopefully using it regularly again, I’m sure i’ll run across things I now take for granted elsewhere that got left behind in the Amiga’s comparative years in the wilderness since 1994 – but the 4.x versions are a promising re-start and there’s ample cause to be optimistic given the nutty lawsuits are now over (hopefully for GOOD). I will leave it to the reader to review the history materials linked above, but here’s to my happy reconversion back 🙂

candybowl

PS – the Amiga site is here: http://www.amigau.com – it is hosted on a vintage 1989 A2000 68060/50mhz machine with 64mb RAM. For an original-spec Amiga, this is a comparative powerhouse machine (not by modern standards of course – but how many ‘modern’ computers are still running almost 20 years later after debut, either?) And yes, I know there are many dead links on that site – i’m working on it 🙂