"Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull" - movie review (full spoilers)

In case you missed it in the title, this review of the fourth Indiana Jones movie is going to be chock full of spoilers, so if you haven't seen the film yet and don't want spoilers, why are you here?

A fourth Indiana Jones movie was something that I never thought I'd see. They've been talking about one for *years*, but it's never materialized because the script has never been right, a script that had to be approved by George Lucas, Steven Spielberg and Harrison Ford, with Ford apparently the hardest to sell on the idea. And without him, you have no movie. You can't do an Indiana Jones movie without Indiana Jones, and at this point in time, Indiana Jones can't be anyone other than Harrison Ford - at least not an adult Indiana Jones.

As the persistent rumours of a fourth film finally became reality, I was both excited and concerned. Indiana Jones is one of those iconic characters now - were they going to be able to live up to its history and reputation? The hardest part for me was avoiding as much information about the film as possible, which is seriously difficult given how much press this kind of film would generate. But I wanted to go into the film knowing as little as possible.

The little bits I learned because of casting were ok. Shia LaBeouf was going to play Indy's son. OK, the fact that Indy has a son isn't that big a deal, and I wasn't familiar with Shia at the time the announcement came out, but when I saw him in "Transformers", I really liked him, so I was happy he'd be Indy's son. I was most happy when it was announced that Karen Allen was coming back as Marion. I loved her in the first film, and I was decidedly, seriously, overwhelmingly irritated with Kate Capshaw in the second film (OK, yeah, so Steven married her - maybe she's a good wife and mother, and she might even be a decent actress [I did like her in "Windy City"], but her character was awful in the film - she was a shrill, screaming, helpless bitch, about as much the exact opposite of Marion as you could possibly get.), and I didn't care for Nazi bitch in the third film, so to see Marion back was going to be awesome.

There aren't too many films that we go to see within the first 24 hours of opening. The only films we've done that with lately are the new "Star Wars" films and "Alien vs. Predator" (awesome movie, btw). In most cases, we've gone the night of opening day, but with Indy, I didn't want to wait that long because 1) I was too excited to see this film and didn't want to wait longer than I had to and 2) avoiding spoilers on this kind of movie is extremely difficult, so an extra added few hours of trying to avoid spoilers, especially after it has already been released to the general public, was going to be even more difficult. (The film was shown at Cannes on the Sunday before opening, so all the media movie reviews were out by that night, and I had avoided any newspapers and didn't listen to any radio from Monday through Thursday morning.) By the time we had decided to go and figured that it wouldn't be showing at Mann's Chinese, we decided to go to the Arclight in Hollywood, and the 12:01am screening in the Cinerama Dome was already sold out, so we decided on the 12:30 screening in one of the other theatres. There were a few other showings between midnight and 12:30, but they seemed to be in smaller theatres, so I decided to opt for what appeared to be a bigger theatre. I do miss the experience of seeing an event movie like this at the Chinese, given the Chinese's history, but I do like the trade-off of not having to stand in line for hours and running to find a seat but rather, being able to show up just before the movie starts and have an assigned seat.

We got to the Arclight at about 11:40pm, and the place was packed, from all the people entering the parking structure and looking for a parking space to everyone milling about outside the theatres and in the lobby areas. I know that some people think going to these kinds of screenings is crazy, but part of the appeal of them to me is the event value - these are people so dedicated and interested in the film that they're willing to see it in the middle of the night, and that usually makes for a great crowd to watch a film with because there's so much energy and excitement there. I can't tell you how many people I saw there wearing the signature Indy fedora or even the entire Indy outfit.

OK, so I've talked about everything but the movie itself, so get to it, won't I? Well, I figured that would be plenty of spoiler space there for anyone who accidentally missed the spoiler warning above.

Generally, I liked the film. I had a fun time, there was some really nice dialogue, and the action sequences were kick-ass as you'd expect. Sure, there were things I didn't like as well, but that's true of both "Temple of Doom" and "Last Crusade". (I can't think of anything in "Raiders" that I really didn't like.) I think my perception of the film both suffers and benefits from my historical attachment to the series and the characters. Nostalgia value certainly plays into a lot of the things I liked about the film, but the film also had a hell of a lot to live up to.

Speaking of nostalgia value, I thought it was terrific that they used the old Paramount logo. At first, I thought it looked weird but couldn't pinpoint what was "wrong" until I realized what they'd done. And I absolutely *loved* the traditional morph of the Paramount logo into a mountain in the movie, but this time, it morphed into a prairie dog's mound! That was just too awesome.

I thought the story itself was decent. It was pretty complicated so that you had to pay attention to follow it, but that was true of "Raiders" as well. I think Harrison Ford did a good job of managing to convey the details that you needed to be invested in the finding of the crystal skull without making it tedious.

One thing I really didn't like was that the lost civilization turned out to be aliens, and I *really* didn't care for the spaceship scene (which reminded me of the end of "The Abyss"). I could have lived with the alien story a bit more if they had found some other way for them to leave, maybe just mystically flying away or something, but the regular spaceship shape just seemed too pedestrian for an Indy film, even if they are supposed to be multi-dimensional beings. Oh, and I didn't care for the whole "Tarzan" sequence with Mutt - that was just too weird, even though the monkeys were funny. There were also some fairly preposterous things that happen in the film - like Indy surviving the nuclear blast by hiding in the refrigerator, which gets thrown miles away and bounces around, and he comes out with just a few bruises, but it's not really any more preposterous than a lot of things that have happened in previous Indy films, and there is a certain level of preposterousness and unbelievability that I allow for in these kinds of films.

One problem I think I did have was placing myself in the timezone of the film to be able to understand some of the points being made. It took me a while to realize that they were smack dab in the middle of the worst of McCarthyism, which accounted for the treatment that Indy got from both the FBI and the university. That period was also rife with tales of alien visitation (I was quite proud of myself for noticing the "51" on the inside of the warehouse door since I'm usually oblivious to that kind of thing), not to mention the testing of the nuclear bomb, so it did make sense to some degree to have all those elements in the film.

Once I'd seen the trailer and saw them in the warehouse full of crates, I did expect some kind of mention of the Ark of the Covenant, and I was not disappointed - I loved the shot of the Ark in the partially-destroyed crate. I liked the nod to "Star Wars" with Indy's line of "I've got a bad feeling about this". I didn't expect any reference to Henry, Sr. since Sean Connery could not be convinced to be in the film (I'm curious as to what they were going to have him do. I thought I remembered that he wouldn't have been in the film much anyway, that it was mostly a cameo role, so I'll have to do some research to see if I can find out what that part of the story was supposed to have been.), so I was happy to see his picture on Indy's desk at the office as well as the reference to him near the end of the film. I really didn't expect any reference to Marcus Brody, so it was nice to see his picture on Indy's desk as well as the bronze statue of him on the grounds - I hope they fix his severed head though.

The college where Indy teaches (Marshall) is a nod to long-time friend and fellow producer/director Frank Marshall. I wonder if Mutt's last name is a tribute to Steven's long-time musical collaborator John Williams?

Can I tell you how taken aforward (ok, not really, but I've never finished that particular homework assignment) I was when Indy and Marion were sinking in the not-quicksand (I loved Indy launching into his explanation of that, btw.), and Mutt finds something to help them - by heaving this gigantic snake at them to pull them out. I am TERRIFIED of snakes, and not just by live ones. I'm pretty much terrified of almost every representation of a snake with very, very few exceptions, this being one of them. So when I realized what Mutt had thrown at them, I don't know if Indy was more scared or if I was. Indy didn't have anyone to hide behind, but I did. I only watched that scene peripherally, because what's more scary than just a snake? A HUMONGOID ONE. Hmmm, given the same predicament Indy had - do I grab onto the snake to pull myself out or succumb to certain death by drowning/suffocation? - I'm not sure I could do what he did, and calling it a "rope" wasn't going to make a damn bit of difference to me. Two intellectual brain cells in my head were able to pull themselves away and wonder for a second whether it would actually be possible to use a snake for that purpose or whether the snake would snap first, but then the other billion scared-out-of-their-mind brain cells pulled them back into the fold, and the question wandered off into thin air.

I also wasn't too enamoured of the ant sequences. I didn't watch much of those when someone would fall into the ant pile, and the ants would presumably devour them - I don't know for sure because I wasn't looking. I did see a bit of the final ant sequence when they dragged an entire person into their ant hill. That was both cool and too disgusting to think about too hard.

Harrison Ford was terrific as usual as Indy. There had been a lot of speculation about whether he was too old to be doing that sort of thing, but he showed that he wasn't, doing his own stunts in the film. I did like that they didn't ignore his age and pretend that he was as spry as he used to be (I laughed when Mutt said to him something like "what are you, 80?"), but it's obvious from his actions and the stories he told that he had continued on his global jaunts since the last time we'd seen him and he hadn't just been a classroom professor.

As I mentioned, I was thrilled to see Karen Allen in this film, and I thought she did an awesome job. I *loved*, *loved*, *LOVED* her first line - "Indiana Jones" - done with the same inflection as in "Raiders". And I know I wasn't the only one that thought she was going to hit Indy, just like in "Raiders", when she was actually going to hug Mutt. I loved the back-and-forth between her and Indy and all the sassing she gave back to him when he commented about her getting kidnapped and her retort that he hadn't fared much better. She still had the same spunk as before, and I also loved that she drove off the cliff to get them out of trouble - she's no wilting flower. I did laugh along with everyone else when the camera panned to reveal the silly grin on her face after Indy told her that while there had been other women, none of them were her. I wasn't particularly thrilled about the wedding at the end - it's just not the Indy that I'm used to, and I didn't think they needed to be married to be together, but I suppose that's an acknowledgement of a progression on Indy's part - married man and Associate Dean, but the hat at the end contained at least the hope that he wouldn't just become a boring old guy now.

I thought Shia LaBeouf was pretty good in the film, though he really didn't have that much to do. The whole thing with his hair was pretty funny though. (Incidentally, I was laughing at the early part of the film when Mutt and Indy are in the soda fountain, and that whole scene just made me think that Steven Spielberg got to do his own "American Graffiti" segment.) He was really good during the entire car chase sequence as they're all exchanging possession of the crystal skull, and I loved his sword fight with Cate Blanchett's character. I did keep expecting them to explain his character name. I mean, Marion named him Henry, but instead of that name, he goes by "Mutt". Is this another case where a "Henry" decided to go by the pet's name instead? "We named the *dog* 'Indiana'." - one of the best lines *ever*. It was funny that Indy was referring to him as "Junior". Ummm, not so much since he's not a junior - he's Henry Jones, III, though calling someone "Third" is probably too weird. After the wedding, Mutt picks up the hat that's been blown to him, and he's just about to put it on his head when Indy walks by and snatches it away. You could have speculated that they wanted to continue the series with Indy's son, but I think that particular scene and the fact that Mutt never actually got to wear the hat shows that you can't replace Indy, even with his own son, and the filmmakers are well aware of and acknowledge that.

I thought John Hurt was excellent, as was Ray Winstone as Indy's sidekick/nemesis, I thought Cate Blanchett was ok (I'm not usually a fan of hers, except in "Notes on a Scandal"), and while I liked Jim Broadbent, I didn't know he was only going to be in so little of the film.

Now that the shock value of seeing an Indy film that I'd never seen before has worn off, I want to see it again, where I might be able to appreciate it more for itself. In the grand scheme of things, I'd put this in a tie for second - nothing tops "Raiders", so that's obviously first. Given a choice between this film and "Last Crusade", I can't decide. I like this for Marion being in it and the other things I've mentioned, but having Sean Connery and Harrison Ford play father and son was just too awesome. Pulling up the rear is, of course, "Temple of Doom". I didn't have the problems with the violence in the film that others did, and I would actually like to see the film again, but I'd be happier and more inclined to do so if someone would do me the favor of rotoscoping Willie Scott out of the entire film because I just can't deal with her.

Hmmm, I've read some stuff that there were originally planned to be five films in the series - does that mean there might actually be another one forthcoming?

OK, last bit - apparently, this film has pissed off the communists. OK, whatever.

Whiskey Tango Foxtrot, part 5

Situation 1

A couple of weeks ago, I was at a place for lunch that was sort of cafeteria style. There were different stations for salad, pasta and pizza, and you're supposed to just go to each station to get what you want without having to wait through each station even if you didn't want stuff from that particular station. Well, on this day, the pasta line was backed up, so people waiting to get pasta were lined up in front of and past where the salad station was. I wanted to get a salad from the salad station, so since the people were just stopped in front of it, I approached in between two people and asked if I could just step in and get a salad. The lady who was facing me stepped back a step to let me in, so I thanked her. The lady who had her back to me because she was ahead turned to her friend and commented about how rude people were to be cutting in line. WTF?!?!?!? She was already past the salad station that I wanted something from, and she didn't get salad, and even if she had wanted salad, she would already have been able to get it. It wasn't like she had to stop her movement to let me in - the line was at a stop and had been for about a minute and wasn't about to start moving anytime soon, so she was just standing there. And, she didn't end up having to do anything because the lady behind her moved back a step to let me in to grab a salad. What if someone else had been standing further back in that line and only wanted a salad? Well, I'm sorry they didn't figure out that they didn't have to wait in line with the pasta folk to get their pasta before this person could get their salad if they didn't also want pasta. I've been in other situations where I've been stopped in a line and happened to be in front of a drink station, and if someone just wants to come in and get a refill, it's customary to make room to let them since I'm just standing there anyway. On the flip side, when I've been the one wanting the refill, I've never had a problem with people allowing me in while they're waiting in line.


Situation 2

There is a particular intersection that I'm at every day on my way to work. There are three lanes total, with the left lane turning left, and the middle and right lanes turning right. If I get to the intersection when there's a green light or a green arrow to go right, it works fine. When there's a red light, you obviously have to stop, and then if the traffic is clear coming from the left, then you can make the right turn. After I initially come to a stop, I then creep forward a little to be able to see past the car on my left to see if there's traffic coming down the street or if I can turn. So what happens on more than one occasion? THE CAR ON MY LEFT CREEPS FORWARD AS WELL!!!!! WTF!?!?!?!?!? They can't turn until their left arrow light comes on, and when that light comes on is not really dependent on traffic coming from down the street. There could be not a car in sight coming from that way, but if their light is still red, they can't go anywhere. So what the hell good does it do for them to creep up? Where does it get them? All they're doing is blocking my view so that I have to creep up even further to see past them!


Situation 3

There is another intersection in a residential neighborhood that I run into on the way to work if I'm taking a particular detour because traffic on the freeway is bad. It's a bit of an odd intersection because the streets don't all come together neatly, like in a plus sign that's normal. Instead, it looks more like this:




It's almost a regular four-way stop, except that the street with the A and B cars is slightly curved, and the C and D cars are technically on the same street, but the two parts of the street are slightly off from each other. I always come to the intersection from the D position, and I need to turn left, past the A position. Let's say a car at position B goes straight, and then a car at position C goes forward so they're driving past me. If there was a second car at position B, they now go forward without having given me the chance to go, even though I've waited past both cars that got there before or at the same time as me, but now this second "B" car is going before me even though I got to the intersection before it. Similarly, if there are just 2 cars at the C position, the first car will go forward to drive past me, but before I can make my turn, the second car at the C position has already started going, driving past me as well. Because the two halves of the street are off-set the way they are, I cannot even move forward a little until a car from B or C completely passes me, because otherwise, our cars would hit. But in the time it takes that car to completely pass me, the next car at B or C has had time to stop and then apparently the driver decides that the stop sign just means that as long as you've actually stopped, you can then go, regardless of who else might be at the other stop signs or what else might be going on. The streets aren't off-set enough that a car in the second place of any of the other positions can't see me there, and there's really no way they can't plainly see that I can't begin to move until the car is past me, so it's not like I'm just sitting at the intersection for no reason not taking my turn. When people have not been allowing me my turn, I've taken to honking my horn at them, and most of the time, they either don't even look at me or appear completely confused as to why I'm irritated at them, because after all, they did stop at the stop sign!


Situation 4

I had occasion to be at a business, and my total came to $5.00, so I handed the cashier a $20 bill. The cashier told me that he only had $1 bills so would need to give me 15 $1 bills and wanted to know if that was ok. Ummm, do I have a choice? What if I say no? Is he going to magically find $5 bills or a $10 bill? Is he going to refuse to give me any change whatsoever? Is he going to give me change in all quarters instead? Is he going to refuse to sell me what I wanted to buy? I've been at cashiers before where for whatever reason, they're running low on change, and if I bring out a $20 bill, they might ask if I have anything smaller because otherwise, I'm getting change in all $1 bills. If I was just trying to break my $20, I would fish around for something smaller. On occasion, I've really had nothing but a $20 so couldn't do anything about it. In this case, I might have been able to scrape together $5 between a couple of $1 bills and lots of loose change. It was pretty early in the morning, so it seemed odd to me that he didn't have any $5 or $10 bills at all, but maybe someone just didn't provide correctly for him. I can understand if he just said, hey, sorry, I only have $1 bills, so I'll have to give you 15 of them in change, but I think it was the asking me if that was ok that struck me as being weird since whether or not I was ok with that was going to have no bearing on the outcome.

Fred Kavli Theatre at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza - venue review

I have previously talked about my fascination with the Broadway musical "Mamma Mia". The running joke has now been that we have to see the show in as many different venues as possible, but we're running out of places locally. I think we've been everywhere in Los Angeles and Orange County where it could possibly play, and we've even gone down to San Diego, so when we found out that the touring company would be coming to Thousand Oaks, we decided that was next on the list.

The show was performed at the Fred Kavli Theatre at the Thousand Oaks Civic Arts Plaza. I hadn't known what the theatre seating looked like, so I was surprised upon entering the theatre to see that it wasn't very big. It wasn't as deep as many of the theatres I'm used to but was rather more shallow, like the theatres we'd been to in New York, so that even if you're towards the back of the theatre (which we were - row Q near the control booth), you still had a good view. The theatre does have a mezzanine and a balcony, both of which started further back than I expected.

Generally, I thought it was a very nice theatre. One downside that we didn't encounter because of the row we were in but people in almost all of the other rows would have is that like the Orange County Performing Arts Center, it's just one big section, with aisles only on the end seats, so if your seat is anywhere in the middle, you have to step past a whole lot of people to get to and from your seat.

All in all, I was very satisfied with our visit, and though because of the distance, it's not somewhere we'd go to on a regular basis, I could certainly see going again if they had a show I wanted to see badly enough.

The Civic Arts Center is conveniently located in that there are a number of places nearby to have dinner before or after a show, with the added benefit that you can comfortably walk between the restaurant and the venue.


As for the show itself, we did enjoy it, but it was probably my least favorite cast overall. According to the playbill, many were newcomers to the show, and I wasn't necessarily happy with how some of them performed. In particular, the actress who played the lead of Donna didn't really quite have the voice to pull it off. There are a few songs where Donna has to hit and carry a number of fairly strong notes, and on many of those points, the actress pitched it differently so she didn't have to. In particular, on "The Winner Takes It All", she didn't carry the song like she should have, only hitting the longer, stronger notes on the last verse rather than throughout the entire song. She also made some interpretation choices in the character that I didn't care for. "Sophie" was a very good singer, but she also had some characterizations that I didn't like. "Sam" was quite good overall and had a great voice for his solos and duets. "Tanya" was a bit more non-descript than I'm used to, and "Rosie" bothered me for reasons I can't really explain. "Harry" was good, though a quite different type than I'm used to for that character, but he did have a few blocking changes that I liked. I really enjoyed "Bill", who brought more humour to the role than I've seen from previous actors.


BTW, the "Mamma Mia" count is now at an even dozen: the Shubert Theatre (formerly in Los Angeles), The Ahmanson (in Los Angeles), Mandalay Bay (in Las Vegas), the Pantages Theatre (in Los Angeles), Orange County Performing Arts Center, the Pasadena Playhouse, the Long Beach Civic Auditorium, the Cadillac Winter Garden (in New York), Orange County Performing Arts Center again, the San Diego Civic Theatre, Mandalay Bay (in Las Vegas) again and the Fred Kavli Theatre at the Civic Arts Plaza in Thousand Oaks.

The show will be at the McCallum Theatre in Palm Desert in March of 2009, so we may be going to that to add yet another venue to our list. We were at that theatre earlier this year to see Mandy Patinkin and Patti Lupone in concert together, and I liked the venue quite a bit.

Cafe Provencal - restaurant review

We had plans to be in Thousand Oaks on a Saturday evening, so the husband was looking for a place nearby for us to have dinner and happened upon Cafe Provencal. The menu looked good, so we decided to give it a try.

The restaurant is a tiny little place in a mini-mall next to The Lakes mall which is next to the Civic Arts Plaza. The seating area is about the size of a boutique, with two additional tables outside the front door with a view of the plentiful parking for that mini-mall. We arrived a bit early for our reservation and were seated promptly.

The decor of the restaurant was fairly interesting. They had white-linen-covered tables, and the waiters were dressed as you might expect in a fancier restaurant, but they also had a piece of paper taped to a wall at the back of the restaurant that advertised their Monday wine specials. A sort of billowing canopy covered the ceiling, softening the lights, but there was also a disco ball (yes, that kind) in the middle of the ceiling. There was a vase with a flower on the table, and there was a candle as well, but I was surprised and amused to see that it was one of the electric kind made to look and flicker like a real candle. I understand the appeal of flameless candles, and I have one myself, but I did find it odd in a nice restaurant like that. Oh, and yes, they had salt and pepper on the table, but at last they were the tiny cute kind.

After we had perused the menu for a while, the server came by to take our order. I decided to start with the escargots (cooked in garlic, butter and parsley). I've never actually had escargot before, though I've had their relatives, so I was interested in trying it, especially in a French restaurant. From what I understand, what most people object to is its texture, which I knew wouldn't be a problem for me. The husband decided to start with the sweetbreads, something we've both liked since the first time we tried it several years ago. As an entree, I decided on the poached salmon with leek, fennel carrot, anis, clam, mussel and shrimp, and the husband decided to try the bison with a bourbon sauce. I had thought about trying the bison, but I've tried new meats (elk, for instance) at new restaurants, and while they haven't been bad experiences, I haven't been completely enamoured, so I've decided that if I'm going to try a new meat, I'm going to stick to doing so at restaurants that I know well. The entrees each came with soup of the day or house salad, and we both decided to upgrade to the onion soup.

We were brought bread, but instead of it being in a basket, it was actually wrapped in what would have otherwise looked like a square potholder tied a bit closed. I'd never seen that before, so I thought it was interesting. We were also brought olive tapenade with little crostini, and the tapenade was delicious.

Our appetizers were brought shortly thereafter. My escargots was brought in a plate (similiar to the one pictured here, but it didn't have the long handle) with little compartments for each one, and the butter was still bubbling hot on the plate. With the garlic flavoring, there wasn't much other flavor to the escargot itself. I enjoyed the dish, but it's probably not something I would order again because it wasn't that interesting to me. The husband's serving of sweetbreads was more generously portioned than he had expected, but he did enjoy it. I had a taste of some of it, and it had really good flavor and was very tender.

After we were done with our appetizers, we were then brought our onion soups, coincidentally enough in the same kind of earthenware crocks that we'd had minestrone soup in the night before at another restaurant. The broth and onions were very flavorful, and the soup was also plentiful in cheese.

After having some bread and some tapenade and the appetizer and soup, I wasn't very hungry by the time my salmon arrived. I realized then that I should have foregone the appetizer and had the house salad instead of the filling onion soup - I think I'm just not used to soup or salad being included in nicer restaurants like that. I liked the salmon ok, but I think I prefer salmon to be somewhat crispy instead of being poached. I also had not realized until I had a taste of the salmon that I had actually had salmon the night before for dinner. I enjoyed the various seafoods in the dish, so knowing they wouldn't really keep, I finished those and had a bit of the salmon and then decided to just take the rest with me. The husband had also run into the same problem - though he enjoyed the bison, and it was cooked perfectly at medium, he wasn't able to finish his entree and took the rest to go as well.

To go on a slight tangent, it had been a very hot afternoon, so we had been looking forward to cooling off a bit during dinner. That turned out not to work very well. The longer we sat in the restaurant, the warmer we got, which of course wasn't helped by the hot appetizers and onion soup that we had. At one point, the overhead lights were turned off, making the restaurant fairly dark and causing all the patrons to wonder what was happening. A man (who we later deduced was the proprietor) asked over a loudspeaker if we had all noticed how warm it had gotten. We all said yes. He said he could think of only two solutions - either turn the lights off or we all take our clothes off, which elicited a lot of laughter. He then announced that two people at separate tables were celebrating graduations and then a sort of disco multi-light was turned on for a while. Eventually, that was turned off and the regular lights turned back on. I'm not sure if the air conditioning wasn't working or at least wasn't working well enough to combat the heat outside, but I at least give the staff credit for continually keeping people's water glasses filled.

Even though we weren't able to finish our entrees, a nice cool glass of sorbet sounded good, so we shared that for dessert. It was mostly lemon with a small scoop of raspberry on top, both of which I enjoyed. The husband is not a fan of raspberry, so he just had some of the lemon.

We had finished our dessert, which was mostly gone, and then we sat and waited. And waited. And waited. The large party at the tables next to us left, and we sat and watched as our server helped to clear the table and completely re-set it. All the while, we sat there, obviously done with our dinner. Luckily, we had time to spare before needing to be at our show for the night, so the 20 minute wait while all that happened didn't make us late, but I was fairly annoyed at having to wait while he did all that work with the adjacent tables before offering us our check. I'm not saying he ignored us on purpose - but given that we were at the next table, it wouldn't have been that hard for him to notice us just sitting there for that long, our dessert finished. And it wasn't like there were people waiting for those tables, but even if there were, it wouldn't have taken 30 seconds to at least give us our checks before he finished helping with the tables. I also noted that a nearby party had their table crumbed before dessert, but we didn't - even though we had the same server. The server was polite, so I'm not sure what the deal was with the lapses at the end of our meal, but he finally brought our check, and we were able to settle out and leave.

The restaurant has apparently been there for about 11 years, and they seem to have gotten many rave reviews, and while I generally enjoyed my meal there, the few lapses in service and particularly the problems with regard to the temperature make it unlikely that I'd return if I were in the area, given the plethora of other restaurants available.

Wall-E would *never* do this

I've only seen Asimo once, at a demo in Innoventions in Disneyland. (BTW, that's almost the only reason to go into Innoventions, IMO.) It was pretty cool, and I'd actually like to see it again. Our demo went well, but apparently, that's not always the case when demos are being done elsewhere.


Down Goes Asimo
It looks like this Asimo had a bit too much to drink before he took the stage for this exhibition. When they get it back on its feet they should make it walk a straight line and do the alphabet backwards.


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"Speed Racer" - non-spoiler movie review

There are times when I look at the box office results for a movie, and I don't understand or don't agree when a film fails to capture an audience. "Charlie Bartlett" is a good example of this - great little film, but to date, the domestic box office gross is just under $4 million. This film should be right up there with the likes of "Ferris Bueller's Day Off". But for some reason, it just didn't find an audience.

And then other times, the box office is the perfect manifestation of a film. "Speed Racer" was released a little over a week ago, and the big-budget mega-movie with the full power of Warner Bros.' marketing team and money has so far managed a domestic gross of ... slightly over $30 million. Its opening weekend gross was a whopping $18.5 million, down from the $20 million that Warner Bros. had purposely over-estimated for the weekend, putting the film third behind fellow new release "What Happens in Vegas", which came in second that same weekend with a gross of $20.1 million. Well, it was Mother's Day weekend, and people didn't want to go to the movies. Ummm, that might be an excuse except that "Iron Man" raked in another $51.1 million in its second week of release that same non-movie-going weekend.

Having finally seen the film this past weekend, I completely understand why the public stayed away in droves.

The story wasn't bad - except for a few bits, it was actually decently thought out and interesting. (One part I hated is towards the end of the film when Speed is remembering some of the things that various people have said to him, all of which prove to be the inspiration to do his best. Having the audio playing of the other people while you show his face soaking it in is fine. But we really didn't need to actually *see* those scenes again. Yeah, umm, some of those were scenes that we just saw a few minutes ago. Was the repeat of the scenes for the benefit of those with really short attention spans? Because otherwise, it was entirely a "beat you over the head with a really big hammer to get the point across" moment.) The acting wasn't bad - as a matter of fact, Susan Sarandon gave a wonderful performance as Speed Racer's mother, and she had a couple of really stand-out scenes. The special effects weren't bad - I'm presuming the forty million effects houses (including ILM) did exactly what they were contracted to do, and you can see their handiwork in just about every second of the film.

Now, I am familiar with the original television show - I remember watching it in the afternoon all the time, though I can't tell you that I remember much about it now. I remember the car, and I remember it could jump and do cool stuff. Can't tell you a thing about what the story was or anything else about the show. Given that I haven't seen the show in many, many, many, and I mean *LOTS* of years, it's possible that I wouldn't enjoy the show now. Maybe it had something to do with my being a kid when I watched it. Maybe it had something to do with it being animated, so I would allow for more things from an animated product than I do a live-action one. Maybe it has to do with the fact that with technology and special effects being what they are now, I think it was entirely possible to pull off all the cool action sequences and still have it look great, instead of having it be a mishmash and cartoony. Whatever the reason, there were many aspects of the film which really bugged me, though I'm told they're true to the television show. I guess having a monkey in the family in an animated show when I was a kid was one thing, but I could not get over it in the film. (And yeah, gotta throw in that obligatory poop joke for those with an IQ of 4.) And the little brother was just entirely too annoying, too "posing" and campy and obvious.

I think the thing that annoyed me the most about the film, though, was that the filmmakers (and really, I blame the directors - both of them) decided to go for style over substance. Hey, wouldn't it be cool if we did exaggerated primary colors and made everything specifically look fake so that you can point out all the special effects layered shots? Sorry, it didn't work for me AT ALL. And what makes me most angry about that is that I could have really gotten into the movie, really gotten invested in the characters and the story they were telling, but every time they pulled a stylistic move, it just ripped me out of the story, and to me, it really destroyed the performances being given by the actors. As I mentioned, Susan Sarandon comes off pretty well because her important scenes are done straight without the "look what I can do with the camera and editing and CGI" crap. Matthew Fox as mysterious Racer X has a few of those moments as well. I can't really tell you how I feel about Emile Hirsch as Speed. His performance was so chopped up that I can't give an opinion on it. I've not seen the other things he's done, so maybe he'll be in something that I'll see sometime where I can actually tell what kind of performance he put in. I generally liked Christina Ricci in this film, though there were a couple of tiny bits that I thought were entirely too cutesy.


About the only thing I couldn't decide was whether I was more annoyed at the movie or at the stupid woman sitting in the front section who had decided to bring her two small children to this film, including a little boy who was hyper and wanted to talk and scream and laugh and run around in the theatre. And he did. And what did supermom do? Shush him loudly. (Yeah, that helps.) And watch him run around in front of the first row of seats, laughing. Both of the kids were both too old to be sleeping through the movie and too young to be sitting patiently and quietly through the movie. This is not a children's movie where you expect a lot of little kids in the theatre, being restless and making noise. I don't care if you can't find a babysitter. Then you don't get to see this film in the theatre. Your kids don't belong here, so NEITHER DO YOU. Take your rude selfish self out of the theatre and take the kids with you. Nice that you're so frickin' important that you figure it's ok to ruin other people's movie-going experience if that's what works best for you.

Maybe I should have hired ILM to rotoscope her and the kids out of the theatre.

Villa Italia Ristorante - restaurant review

When people ask us about our favorite Italian restaurant, we tell them it's a little hole-in-the-wall in the Target mini-mall in Duarte. And then they stare at us like we've each grown two heads. But those who have been to this place will attest to the fact that it is indeed a fabulous Italian restaurant, an oasis that you don't expect.

We happened upon this fabulous place in a most peculiar way. We'd been driving by some years ago when the husband saw the sign. He has some inexplicable fixation on "ristorantes", so he wanted to try it some time. Time went by, and we never got around to going, but finally one day about a year later, he decided he really wanted to go. It turns out that the wait ended up being a good thing. We found out that when he had first seen the sign, it had been owned by another party, and in the interim, it had been sold and was now owned by an Italian couple, Rosetta and Bernardo. They'd only been open for a short time under the new management, and we immediately fell in love with the place. Rosetta is the main greeter/hostess, and there are usually one or two waiters. Bernardo does the books for the restaurant, and at the time the restaurant opened, their son was the executive chef, though I don't know if he still is, so it was a real family operation.

The restaurant is charmingly decorated, with painted "windows" that look outside, and the tables are draped in linen with a candle and a small flower in a vase on the table. The dishware and glassware are what you might expect in a fancier place, and the little touch of using doilies under various things really adds to the ambience. It really is unexpected to find a gem like this in a mini-mall. They do have a few outside tables, but since the view looks out on the parking lot, we've never sat out there, though there are flowerbox dividers separating the little seating area.

They have an excellent homemade minestrone soup which I usually get as a starter. We've also had the antipasto platter appetizer once, and it's plentiful enough for two with a good selection of different items.

There are a couple of pastas that I generally get and like. One of my favorites is the Mammamia - chicken with sundried tomatoes, mushrooms, bell peppers and black olives with a white wine garlic sauce. It's got really good flavor, and unlike some places that advertise sundried tomatoes and actually just give you regular chopped tomatoes, they use the real thing. The bolognese (old Italian-feast meat sauce) and the del nonno (a meat sauce with homemade meatballs) are both quite good, and I really enjoy the allo-scoglio (pasta with clams, mussels, shrimp, calamari and garlic) when I'm in the mood for seafood. I've tried their arrabbiata (spicy tomato sauce with garlic and black olives), but it's sweeter and not as spicy as I normally like.

They offer pizza as well, and I've never gotten around to trying it, though I keep saying I want to. One of these days!

On this particular night, I had been perusing the pizza menu when our waiter came up to tell us the specials of the day. They were offering a salmon with capers and artichokes with a little bit of pasta and vegetables, and that sounded so good that I was sold and put off pizza for yet another day. One of the other specials was osso bucco on risotto, and the husband ended up ordering that.

Instead of just ordinary bread for the table, they offer a complimentary bruschetta with tomato and basil, which also has wonderful garlic flavor.

The minestrone soup was as good as usual, but we noticed that since our last visit, the soup was no longer being served in a regular bowl, but rather, in a brown crock of sorts, very cute.

I loved my salmon, and the flavor of the capers and artichokes with the salmon was perfect. The husband really enjoyed the osso bucco as well, which was a very generous serving.

We did not have dessert on this evening, but they have a couple of desserts that are delicious. The tiramisu is homemade and amazing. They have a sort of toffee ice cream thing (yeah, I know, I suck at the description) that is just incredible. The first time they offered it on the menu, we loved it and asked how they had come up with it. Turns out that on Rosetta's recent trip back to Italy, she'd picked it up there and brought it back, along with the cute little shovel spoons that they have for you to enjoy the dish.

The service is always good, pleasant, friendly and helpful, and our water glasses are always kept filled.

All of the tables are square tables - except one, to the side of the front of the restaurant. We have affectionately named that table the "Italian table" as the first few times we visited, there always seemed to be an Italian family sitting at that table, and Rosetta would be conversing with them in Italian. The first time we were there when the table was occupied *not* by an Italian family, we tried not to look at them askance! :) You will actually quite often hear Rosetta either on the phone or in person speaking to someone in Italian - it's almost like an Italian enclave in the middle of the San Gabriel Valley, so we've been really happy about discovering this little secret.

They tend to be generally busy, though not packed, and we've never had to wait for a table. It sounds weird at first to recommend this Italian restaurant given its location, but no one that we've referred there has ever been disappointed.

Here's their official website.

Villa Italia Ristorante
1028 Huntington Drive
Duarte, CA 91010
(626) 357-3938

"I am NOT a cuties man!"

As I've previously mentioned, we were in Las Vegas over Easter weekend, and we spent some time at the Hilton Hotel, which has a whole section themed to Star Trek, including a restaurant and a store. I always like to browse around the store to see what cool new merchandise they might have. And I sure found some. But instead of having anything to bring home, a picture is all I have.



(For those uninitiated, from left to right is an Andorian, Bajoran, Ferengi, Vulcan, Orion, Klingon, Borg, and a Cardassian. No Romulan, but it might have been difficult to differentiate between cuties versions of a Vulcan and a Romulan. And interesting that there's no human.)

They had t-shirts with this logo on it, and I absolutely love it. Disney has a whole line of merchandise using characters in the cuties form, and I love that line. So how cool is it to have cutie Trek characters, labeled with "a small universe" no less?

You know what would have been even cooler? IF THEY'D MADE THESE FRICKIN' T-SHIRTS IN ADULT SIZES AS WELL AND NOT JUST KIDS' SIZES!!!!!!! Apparently, they have more in common with Disney than I thought.

I love that the Cardassian is included, but my favorite is the Borg. Awww, cuties Borg! A few of the characters had their own individual t-shirts, and the Borg was one of them. I so wanted one. But even the large or extra-large (I forget which size it was) kids' shirt that I held up was so not going to fit me, and Thumper already has enough clothes to wear. (Some of you will understand what that means. The rest of you will just figure I'm being totally weird. Again.) If they'd made the t-shirts in adult sizes, I probably would have bought the Borg one and the entire cast one.

But, I went to Vegas, and all I got was that frickin' picture.

first Wall-E toys!

OK, I've never had three entries for one day before, but today, I can't help myself.

We were at the mall today running an errand and decided to wander into a couple of shops, one of which was KB Toys. We don't buy a lot of stuff from them, but we sometimes find some gems, and today, we hit our first Wall-E jackpot. I knew that merchandise was usually released a little before the film came out, but I hadn't expected to see any yet, though I know the Wall-E iDance is imminently supposed to be available in stores. (The cashier mentioned that they'd gotten the Wall-E merchandise in on Thursday.)

Well, what greeted us in the store but an eyeful of Wall-E toys! Yes, I got a lot of them, but no, I didn't get them all.

My favorite is the U-Repair Wall-E, an action figure that breaks apart into "20 highly detailed parts" that you can snap back together. He's also fully poseable, and he's the only one of the toys I've seen so far where his wrist turns left and right, instead of just having arm movements and rotation. He's also got working treads.

Then there's the Cube 'n Stack Wall-E (for some reason, Toys R Us calls this toy the "Wall-E Lift and Load"), where he can pop out compacted trash. The treads themselves don't work, but there are wheels underneath, and you can pop each of his arms into two different locations. He comes with two trash cubes, and you can make him "pop" one of the cubes out of his compartment. You can also make additional cubes yourself with play dough, and the panels imprint trash details on two sides.

There's also the Dance 'n Tap Wall-E with wacky action. When you pull the cord on his back, he dances and taps. What he really looks like he's doing is frenetically whacking himself on the head with the hubcap. The description on the provided link confuses me as some of the stuff it describes doesn't seem to be true. Pushing him forward just moves him forward - nothing else. And I've tried to open the front panel but the only way that would seem to work is if I break it. BTW, none of those extra points is indicated on the toy packaging.

It's not just Wall-E though. While he's already got me, I'm not as enamoured with Eve, but that might change after I've actually seen the movie. She doesn't have the automatically cute features that Wall-E does, so I have to get to know her better, but we did get Search and Protect Eve. You can press her head to change among her six eye expressions. That part is really funny. She has a button in the back that you can push to reveal her secret compartment in front, which fits both the plant-in-a-boot and light bulb that comes with her. Her arms also pull away from her body, and you can also replace one of her arms with a cannon blaster arm (which looks cool but doesn't actually do anything). Also included is a rock with a button you can push to simulate the rock exploding.

The packaging also indicates that there's a "Space Adventure Wall-E" where he's holding a fire extinguisher, but there's no indication of what that does, so I hope we'll find that sometime to have a look.

We saw the Clean 'n Go M-O, but he didn't seem as cool, so we didn't get that.

They also have three scenes from the movie, and I picked up one of them, called "Wall-E in Awe", which has Eve with a light bulb and Wall-E with the hubcap and his little Buy 'n Large mini-ice chest, which actually has the little bug crawling on it.

There are also individual action figures of the various characters. There's two of Wall-E, a regular one and a "factory new" version. They're pretty much the same except that factory new Wall-E is perfectly clean whereas regular Wall-E has been dirtied and banged up. They have decent posability factors, so they're cool. There are a few others in the collection (defibrillator-bot, vacuum-bot, beautician-bot, massage-bot and paint-bot) that I might be interested in once I see their figures and probably after I've seen the film.

This Wall-E is not one I've heard of before. We dropped by a Target last night, and they had no Wall-E merchandise yet. Really need to go to Toys R Us tomorrow.

Here's a page with a little more information about the toys I've talked about.

All of these toys are from ThinkWay Toys, and the weird thing is that there was nothing on their website about Wall-E at about 3:30 this afternoon, but when I got home tonight, there's this whole page up, which includes things I hadn't heard about. I am assuming that the U-Command Wall-E is the Ultimate Wall-E we've been hearing about. But oh my gosh, did you see Transforming Wall-E? We've been saying wouldn't it be cool if they had one that actually was a cube like Wall-E does when he's scared? And this is the most information I've seen about iDance Wall-E. He sounds so cute. The Electronic Truck Playset sounds cool too. This is going to be one seriously expensive movie!

BTW, in case you haven't already seen the video of walk-around Wall-E, check out a friend's post about that.

We have our tickets to see the movie already, opening night at the El Capitan Theatre!

"24" news - 2 hour special on November 23, 8-10pm

OK, so we still have quite some time to wait, but it's two months fewer than we thought!

Season 7 of "24" won't be broadcast until January 2009 because of the Writers Strike, but a two-hour stand-alone movie set and shot in South Africa will be broadcast on Sunday, November 23, 2008 from 8-10pm. The movie will be in real time just like the regular show, and the events of the movie take place a couple months before the events of season 7, which will take place in Washington, D.C.

Here's a story with more info.

What a nice pre-Thanksgiving treat!