Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle (unrated edition)
from my DVD collection
11.17.10

True story: when I was in high school, I took a special art course at Cooper Union one summer. One of the assignments they gave us was, if I recall correctly, to make a sculpture out of found objects. So what did I do? I made a small cube out of White Castle hamburger boxes. Still have it, too.

Personally, I always preferred the Castle's chicken sandwiches. I used to go to the Castle near my house all the time for them, but one day they took them off the menu and I can't find them anywhere around here anymore. It's no big deal, but it is kinda disappointing. And the only fast food burger I'll touch these days is Five Guys.

I'm gonna sound like a total killjoy, I know, but it's true: ever since reading Fast Food Nation, I've tried to reduce the amount of fast food I eat. (Eliminating it altogether is not quite an option yet.) Vija lent me the book years ago, and I've never regretted reading it. Don't get me wrong; I've never been one of those people who stuff their faces with McDonald's every day. The most I would do is once a week - and again, my preference would be for the chicken sandwiches.

Giving up McDonald's was easier than I thought - although in recent years, I've shifted over to Wendy's and Popeye's. When I was living in Columbus, I ate at Wendy's a bit more than usual. Maybe that was because Wendy's originated in Columbus.

Actually, the Midwest has some decent fast food places - some we don't have back east, some we do. Jimmy John's is a sandwich shop like Subway, although I'd also go there for the chocolate chip cookies. Charley's is a better sandwich shop; they make fresh cut fries and have lemonade. The OSU location is where it originated. The first time I ate Five Guys was in Columbus. The one near OSU opened up while I was there and they stay open super late. My absolute favorite, though, was Raising Cane's. They serve chicken fingers, along with fries and a slice of French toast and it's all delicious. I ate there all the time and I wish there were one here in New York so badly!

These days, I try to be a little more health conscious whenever I eat fast food. I've cut back on Wendy's and Popeye's, but whenever I do eat there, I make an effort to take long walks immediately afterward to use all those calories. I also eat at places like Cosi and especially Panera Bread for less junky options. I am deeply in passionate love with Panera. The first time I ate there was in Columbus, and I was so happy to find when I came back that New York has it too. It's a nice place to sit and relax, too, whether with a computer or not.

In addition, I've greatly reduced the amount of soda I drink. I used to drink Pepsi all the time; now I almost never touch it. If I do drink soda, it's always in the smallest cans possible, but otherwise it's lemonade and tea (sometimes iced, sometimes not) and juice and punch all the way. Ginger ale too. It's just as easy to live without soda as with it.

Harold and Kumar Go To White Castle was a pleasant surprise. I didn't think it would be quite so good, but it is. It's funny because I've seen John Cho and Kal Penn in more serious roles prior to this. Cho, of course, is the new Sulu, and I first saw Penn in The Namesake, a wonderful adaptation of the Jhumpa Lahiri novel, in which he did a fine job. So it was a bit odd for me to see them do comedy, even though this movie put them both on the map. (By the way, is it my imagination, or does Penn's skin look lighter on that poster than it actually is?)

This is another DVD formerly from Sue's collection. Inside it there are unused coupons for White Castle, which makes me wonder whether this whole movie was intended to be one big commercial. I mean, this could've just as easily been a made-up burger joint. Filmmakers like Quentin Tarantino and Kevin Smith create original brands specifically for their movies with no loss of credibility - the very opposite, if anything. But maybe the director needed the extra cash such a blatant product placement could provide. Regardless, I can't say it bothers me that much.

Fair Game (2010)

Fair Game (2010)
seen @ Kew Gardens Cinemas, Kew Gardens, Queens, NY
11.16.10

I've written about former President George W. Bush and the undeclared war he dragged America into before. I remember a cold February day in 2003 when I was one of millions worldwide who protested against the impending war. Here in New York we were gathered in the vicinity of the United Nations, although the crowd was so huge I ended up closer to 59th Street, next to the Queensborough Bridge. I wrote about the experience afterwards (I had an online comics column at the time) and I got into a huge debate with one of my readers. He was arguing that Sadaam Hussein absolutely needed to be removed from power in Iraq, which I didn't challenge, but my point was that it was still quite questionable whether Hussein actually had weapons of mass destruction or not, and what the hell did he have to do with the events of September 11, anyway? My reader wasn't willing to concede that point. Fortunately, other readers did, and they chimed in.

The tumultuousness of that period between 9/11 and the start of the Iraq war cannot be understated. Suddenly it was more important than ever to be seen as a loyal patriot, but "patriotism" clearly meant different things to different people. I know it was hard at times for me to hold on to my convictions, but the more I saw and read, the more I believed this impending war was a bad idea and that people needed to say something about it...

...which makes what happened to Valerie Plame and Joe Wilson so hard to believe. To be punished for speaking out against government policy doesn't sound like something that could happen in America... and yet it did. As I watched the movie Fair Game yesterday, I had to remind myself of that fact, because seeing it up on the big screen (and as it happens, I saw it on a very big screen) can fool you.

I remember feeling a great amount of trepidation before I wrote my column against the war. Did I have the right to bring up politics in a pop culture column? Could I say the things I needed to say in a halfway-intelligent manner? Was I ready to face possible disagreement? Or should I stick to complaining about the latest storyline in Amazing Spider-Man? In the end, I believed something like this was too important to ignore, and that I should trust myself to be able to speak articulately enough. I mostly stuck to describing the protest in Manhattan, describing everything I saw and heard and felt. It turned out to be enough.

My screening of Fair Game was at 6 PM, and there were about a half dozen people total in the theater, which I might not have noticed if it hadn't have been in the big auditorium at the Kew. I was distracted by the rumble of the Long Island Railroad, which I could feel shaking the seats. When I saw The Kids Are All Right in this same auditorium, I didn't notice the train, but maybe more trains were running because it was rush hour. It's the first time I've ever noticed it at the Kew, and I hope I won't have to deal with it too much, because the rattle of the trains was as bad as it is at the Angelika, if not worse!

Naomi Watts looks a lot like Nicole Kidman.

Highlights from the Governors Awards

...one of the charms of the Governors Awards is that it’s not televised, and that nobody’s trying to rush the winners offstage. If Francis Coppola wants to ramble and admit that he hadn’t prepared a speech to accept the Irving G. Thalberg Memorial Award, that’s okay.

If the Academy opts to use count ‘em, seven different members of the Board of Governors to speak glowingly of the absent Godard before running Jon Bloom's sly film package saluting the director, nobody’s going to tune out.

If Tony Bennett decides before the show that he wants to not only perform “Watch What Happens” for his friend Wallach, but also to add a second song, “Maybe This Time” from “Cabaret” – well, who’s going to turn down the chance to hear another Tony Bennett song?

Related:
- Jean-Luc Godard still doesn't care about the Oscars, or Hollywood. (The Big Picture)

Also:
- Biutiful director Alejandro Gonzalez Inarritu, along with producer Guillermo del Toro and members of the crew, speak very frankly about their film and the difficulty of making and distributing quality films. (Thompson on Hollywood)
- The Best Picture Oscar race may come down to two films: The Social Network or The King's Speech. (Scott Feinberg)
- A home video distributor that redacts films of "questionable" moral content is being taken to court by Hollywood. (THR)
- Separate interviews with Get Low stars Robert Duvall and Sissy Spacek. (The Odds, Awards Daily)
- Who knew Marilyn Monroe could cook? (NYTimes)
- In appreciation of movie stunts and the people who make them. (Salon)
- Did you know the shortest Oscar-nominated performance is only two and a half minutes long? (StinkyLulu via In Contention)

Broadcast News

Broadcast News
from my DVD collection
11.14.10

I've been on television, though it's nothing worth bragging about. Both times were during my high school years; once as part of a promo for our local PBS affiliate, the other as an interviewee for an MTV News segment about Saturday Night Live. Both excited me at the time, but looking back on them now, I can see my excitement was far out of proportion to their importance. Some of my high school friends may remember, but no one else does.

TV news was part of my life, if only because television in general was such a huge part of my life. I'm just old enough to remember Walter Kronkite. The Iranian hostages, the assassination attempt on President Reagan, the destruction of the Challenger - these are some of my earliest TV news memories, and even if I didn't always understand their greater implications, I grasped their significance.

Mostly, though, I got my news from the newspaper, especially as I got older. My father would pick up all the local papers, not just one. He believed you could learn something from all of them (even from a rag like the New York Post). I gravitated to the sports and comics, to the near exclusion of everything else. In fact, I still have the New York Daily News editions from when the Mets won both the pennant and the World Series in 1986. I've been told that they'd probably be valuable enough to sell online. Maybe - though I'd hate to have to give them up.

Television has gotten less and less important to me as I've gotten older. I recognize that there are a lot of genuinely good programs out there. For example, I'll never forget how utterly addicted I became to 24 when I first saw it on DVD during my video store years. But I guess I'm no longer as willing to put in the effort it takes to follow a show these days. Maybe I prefer episodic material instead of having it serialized. I'm not sure. As for news, I get it online now, so yeah, I guess I'm also to blame for the demise of newspapers. Sorry.

Broadcast News is one in a group of DVDs that was generously donated to me recently by Sue. She and John have a pretty big collection and she was looking to unload some of them, and who am I to turn down free DVDs?

I'd forgotten how great Holly Hunter is in this movie. I wasn't sure if I'd be able to watch it yesterday because I had gotten little sleep this weekend. I was out all day Saturday with Andrea and didn't get back until much later than I'd expected. We were way up in the Bronx, near Westchester, so I had a longer ride home than usual, especially on a Saturday night. Yesterday I was in the city, but I couldn't even sit and read my Nick Hornby book without dozing off. Fortunately by the time I got home I was awake enough to sit through the movie.

Saturday Set List: This is my only escape from it all

Soundtrack of the week: O Brother Where Art Thou?

I never thought I could get excited about bluegrass music until I saw this Coen Brothers movie and heard this soundtrack. Exquisite music from start to finish, and all of it integrated into the film itself quite well. This song might be my favorite.

Ralph Stanley, "O Death"

Song-about-movies of the week: "Robert DeNiro's Waiting"

Bananarama. Yeah, I was totally into them back in the 80s. I liked the Bangles and the Go-Gos more, but I dug them too.

Song-that-would-make-a-good-movie of the week: "Scenes From an Italian Restaurant"

A group of friends from the same New York neighborhood share stories over dinner about Brenda and Eddie, a couple from the old days who somehow got married even though no one could ever imagine either of them settling down. Though each of them have their own individual memories of the two, a narrative slowly forms, chronicling their lives from high school until the present. Though Brenda and Eddie would be more or less the stars of the movie, it would play as an ensemble, with a wide variety of character actors. The director would be Edward Burns, a New Yorker who could get the feel of old friendships and neighborhood lives. I would want to set it in the Bronx instead of Manhattan, though.

Contact

Contact
first seen in New York, NY
1997

In college I took an astronomy class. I was required to take at least one science-related humanities course, and I put it off as long as possible. Senior year came, and I couldn't put it off any longer, so I took the one science class I had any interest in at all. I believed it would sustain my interest; after all, a childhood full of outer space sci-fi tales in movies, comics and books naturally sparked a curiosity about what's Out There. My slightly flawed logic concluded that I'd have an affinity for learning about astronomy as a result. Maybe that was so at the time...

... but I needed a much better teacher. I had this Greek guy whose English was questionable at best. From day one I knew this was gonna present a huge obstacle. He himself wasn't a bad person, as teachers go, but it really was difficult to understand him half of the time. It wasn't long before I regularly sat in the back of the room, zoning out most of the time when I wasn't haphazardly taking what few notes I could. I knew I had to pass this class somehow, though, so I struggled to pay attention.

In his defense (because I don't wanna come down hard on the guy), he knew his English wasn't the best, which is probably why he put on videos on a regular basis for us to watch. They were public television programs about outer space, hosted by a scientist named Carl Sagan.

I'd never heard of Sagan before, and while I wish I could say that listening to him pontificate about the stars sparked a fire within me, that wouldn't be entirely true. Watching him was better than deciphering the teacher's Greek/English mish-mash... and it did raise my interest to a degree. In the end, though, most of my initial enthusiasm for the class in general waned. I could not begin to tell you how I passed, but somehow I did - by the skin of my teeth, too... but I never completely forgot those videos and the man in them who made the wonders of the universe sound both mysterious and exciting.

Three years later, a movie came out based on a book this Sagan guy wrote called Contact, about communication with extraterrestrials. I saw it, and liked it a lot. I liked it so much that it made me seek out the book itself. The movie made some significant changes - for instance, Jodie Foster's character in the book is actually one of five people who eventually get to meet the aliens. Also, there's no romance with Matthew McConaughey's character, whose not quite as central to the story. Otherwise, the book reminded me why I was interested in outer space to begin with.

In recent years my interest in space, and science in general, has incrementally picked up. Writers like Richard Dawkins have helped me re-examine the world and man's place in it, though it's still very much a struggle to understand sometimes. I do think, however, that scientific progress is crucial to our survival as a species.

Do I think there's life Out There? A lifetime of immersion in sci-fi has conditioned me to think no other way, though if we're ever gonna find it, I think we need to take the first step. Space colonization still sounds like the stuff of pulp novels, but I think we're gonna need to do it before long. There's too many people on this poor little planet, after all. Listening for alien signals is all well and good, but placing too much hope on them finding us isn't productive in the long run. Let's go out there and find them instead. Maybe it'll help bring everyone on this pale blue dot together.

Soul Food

Soul Food
first seen in Queens, New York
1997

If you were to ask her, my mother would probably tell you that I was a much less discriminating eater when I was a child. And that's probably true. My mother was never the type to cook big huge meals on a regular basis. Our meals were what they were. Sometimes we all ate together, but most times we didn't. The kitchen in our old apartment was small; it was the first room you'd step into as you entered and it doubled as the dining room. It was the hub which connected to the two bedrooms, the bathroom and the living room. The east windows looked out onto the neighbor's front yard and driveway. Often times I would play on the kitchen floor. My mother still has our old hardwood kitchen table, all these years later, although a leg is finally beginning to weaken.

I don't recall having any unusual favorite foods as a child. I took my peanut butter sandwiches with the crusts off, like most kids. I liked toast a lot. My mother was always able to get it just the right shade of golden brown before applying the jelly. Same thing goes for corn bread. When you're eight years old, things like that make all the difference in the world. I couldn't get enough of spaghetti or Rice-a-Roni. Corn was, and is, my vegetable of choice.

Sometimes I'd watch my mother cook things like chicken and fish; other times she'd try to teach me. Pancakes were always fun to make. Mixing the batter was a bit of a chore, but pouring it onto the griddle was the best part. Hamburgers proved easier than I thought they'd be, as were grilled cheese sandwiches. In junior high I took a home ec class for one semester and we learned how to cook things like biscuits. I considered it a crowning achievement at the time. (Do they still have home economics classes these days? I doubt it.)

The food in Soul Food is an important, if not the important, tie that binds the family in the film together, in good times and bad. The health factor is not ignored - indeed, Irma P. Hall's matriarch character has diabetes, and her daughters implore her to take better care of herself - but it's little different than other traditional foods in other Western cultures, handed down through the generations. There's a small element of foodie porn at play; the camera lovingly lingers on the platters at times, but that's to be expected, I think.

Soul Food is an overlooked gem. The characters have their flaws, men and women both, yet remain recognizably human. The story doesn't feel melodramatic, and the themes are universal. I know I don't normally intend these posts as reviews, but this film came out in a year of outstanding movies overall and isn't as well-remembered as it should be, I think (although it did lead to a cable TV series). I feel the need, therefore, to say that it's a movie anyone can appreciate and it is worth your time checking out.

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Related:
Soul Food Junkies