What I Watched

The Next Iron Chef: Super Chefs

This time it's different. In past Next Iron Chefs, the show has been structured with two competitions, the first one, producing a winner that would have an advantage to the next competition where someone would be eliminated. In this Super Chef version, there was a drawing of straws (actually in this case, matches) for the advantage, then an competition, then the two lowest scores (or in this case, the team of two) had a cook-off against the other.

I'm not sure what I think yet. It's a bit disconcerting to go to the cook-off at the end and to hear the other contestants cheering their competitors on. In the past, partiuclarly last year, this has been a show of flinging elbows, of hurt feelings, of ruthless ambition. Perhaps that will still come later. But these are the most qualified contestants that they've ever brought together for this show. It says a lot for the franchise that they would be willing to compete for this prize. I guess my question for the future would be: How would you top it? Should you try?

Back to this season for a moment. My favorite is still Anne Burrell. Since Cat Cora has apparently is no longer on Iron Chef, the franchise badly needs a woman representative. (And why no explanation about Cora's exit? Is it just simply that she got tired of it, too busy? That would be what I think, but I don't know.) And Burrell has the history and the tradition, as she was Batali's sous chef on this show for many years. It just feels like the right choice to me.

However, there are many other candidates and I might change my mind as the season goes on, although I doubt it. So far Chef Guarnaschelli is the one standing out as the chef who has a hard time dealing with stressful situations. Get Chef Irvine in a competition where he has to build his own fire, and he just commandeers as much kindling as he can. Chef Guarnaschelli was just a few degrees north of a meltdown. It will be interesting to see how that plays out. She's an established personality on the network, an acclaimed chef. How personally interesting will she let herself be in this show?

Arrested Development

I know. I'm way late to the party. In my defense, I did try to watch this show earlier. It was probably five years ago now when there was a month where I was so ill that all I did was sleep and try to watch television. I say "try," because it felt to me the way it does when I have a cold. All of a sudden coffee just sounds like a terrible idea. It just doesn't taste good to me until I am better.

So I tried to watch "Arrested Development" and I didn't like it. It didn't seem funny. I didn't feel attached to any of the characters. I gave up on it and decided it was just something that didn't suit me.

So about a month ago, on a whim, I decided to try the show again. It is available through Netflix streaming. It is highly recommended by Keith Olbermann and Tim Goodman. This time I was immediately hooked.

I think what makes the show for me is the balance between the practical and the irrational. Michael Bluth (Jason Bateman) and George Michael (Michael Cera) are the father and son team that generally represent the people more firmly grounded than anyone else in their family. Their collective weakness is their fundamental belief in loyalty to the family, despite all that has happened. They provide the anchor to the craziness of the characters around them who become endearing through their absurdity. You have Henry Winkler, whose name always seems to demand at least a thought of the Fonz, playing a compromised attorney, David Cross who at this point aspires to be a member of the Blue Man Group (I have just started Season 2), Portia de Rossi who I now wish worked more often as she really is quite good, Will Arnett whose attempts to be a magician seem to automatically make me laugh, and Jessica Walters who revels in being a nightmare of a mother. It's one of those shows where I will watch one and then want to watch at least another. It's a treat in life.

Red State

Tihs film was one of those unforgettable movies where early on, I asked Mike if he wanted to continue watching it. It was a movie that surpised me. I thought that it was going to be political satire. Then I read the Netflix description and they used the word "supernatural." So then I imagined there would be some kind of otherworldly  horror element to the story. The movie was often horrifying, but it was so because of its depiction of humanity. True evil resides in this film. There are extremely violent moments. There are moments of torture, times where people are simply dispatched—"sacrificed" seems too thoughtful a word here—for the sake of ideology or to cover up bureaucratic blunders. It was extremely disturbing. It went against traditional stories. Right when you thought you were on comfortable plot terrain in this film, the rug would be pulled out from under you again.

This is a movie that I wouldn't have to see again, but I am glad that I saw it once. I thought some of the performances were memorable. Michael Parks is both charismatic and crazy as the evangelical leader. John Goodman is an ATF agent who wants to have a heart. It is a movie that I will never forget.

To Giancarlo Esposito

(If you haven't watched Breaking Bad, there are spoilers.)

The first time I saw Giancarlo Esposito, I didn't like him. It was on Homicide: Life On the Streets, and he represented the New Guard to me. The show had changed; it had become slicker. They had women detectives, but none were as tough as Melissa Leo, and no one, I thought, could fill the shoes of Andre Braugher. Giancarlo came in and I didn't give him much of a chance.

But I loved him immediately on Breaking Bad. I loved him because he was so quiet, because he seemed to see so much and chose his words so carefully. I loved that he was a businessman, a man known as a civic person, a man who seemed to be able to assess people and situations so well. As time went on, we saw more of his ruthless nature, that beyond the quiet, there was a part that would exact revenge, that went to the bottom line pitilessly and cut ties and took the lives of people who had become liabilities.

In this series Esposito developed someone so memorable, so evil, so meticulous, someone who seemed invincible, but ended up being only human. Someone who was both so quiet and so flamboyant, who, when he died, walked out of a room, and I thought, "Can nothing kill this man?" and then there was the reveal, the Grand Guignol face, so operatic, so disrespectful, a death that hearkened horribly back to the title of the episode, "Face Off," a death of a character that demanded the name of the final episode, because that was how important this character was to this series.

In this season, we saw his brutality, his willingness to slit someone's throat to make a public declaration, his tragedy, how he witnessed the murder of his partner beside him at a business meeting, his power, haivng his own private clinic, doctors and nurses, and stocks of blood for himself and his associates, and always to the end, the care he took with himself in his actions to present himself in a certain way. I will never forget Gus. I can't wait to see what Giancarlo Esposito does next.

"Restaurant Impossible" in Santa Cruz

Twitter can sometimes really be your friend. I follow a lot of Food Network people. So when Robert Irvine posted about being in Santa Cruz at  Hoffman's for Restaurant Impossible, we knew we wanted to see it.

So first we called the restaurant to see if there were any reservations available. No dice. We decided we'd go down anyway just to see what we could see.

The thing that first made me happy was that we saw Tom almost immediately. Tom is the builder of the  Restaurant Impossible design team. The way it's portrayed in the show, Tom is the guy who always stays up all night. He's one of the people that Robert generally yells at on the morning of the big day, because the team is usually behind schedule. Seeing him in at person, he looked happy at work. He didn't look tired or frazzled. He looked confident and focused.

We had two Robert moments. One was shortly after we arrived. The door to the restaurant opened and we could hear Robert's voice yelling. Then later Robert came out and spoke to the crowd. He said there would be a delay. His arms didn't look as Popeye big as they looked on television. When he was going back into the restaurant, someone yelled, "I love you, Robert!" and he replied, "I love you,baby," and then he was gone, back to his mission. It was kind of cool.

An Unmarried Woman

I watched this movie last night, because a) it was free On Demand, b) I was curious to see if it held up at all, and c) I have always loved Jill Clayburgh. She is one of my favorite actresses.

There were things about the movie that I found just great. Jill Clayburgh is lovely in that seventies sort of way, where actors did not look perfect. They did not look surgically enhanced.  They were genuinely a pleasure to behold as they had uniqueness and individuality. They had flaws. They had teeth that had not been whitened and straightened. They looked real.

There were things that didn't held up. One moment was a particularly important scene right after Erica (Jill Clayburgh) has found out that her husband, Saul (Michael Murphy), has been unfaithful. She is walking in Manhattan. There is the most wretched saxophone stylings in full throttle, and Erica throws up in the street. It was one of those times where I could almost see the scene translate itself immediately to a Mad movie satire, and I could imagine all of the cynical dialogue balloons.

But then you have the great Michael Murphy willing to play a character without any sense of center with complete dedication.  You have Alan Bates who is the romantic alternative and he plays it well. And this movie gives Erica the opportunity to have a reverie, where she imagines herself as a great ballerina. It felt very different to me than the stock moment in so many rom coms now where women will break into some choreographed moves to a pop tune for no apparent reason. This scene meant something. It was a precious moment. It spoke volumes about the character. It made me miss Jill Clayburgh even more.

Up All Night

Up All Night is my new favorite sitcom. Reagan (Christina Applegate) and Chris (Will Arnett) are married with a baby. Chris is a stay-at-home dad, and Reagan works as a producer on Ava!, a television show starring her best friend (Maya Rudolph).

It's one of those shows where I couldn't care less about the story line. What is fun for me is watching these actors. They are all wondeful comic actors with expressive faces and a willingness to look silly at every opportunity. It's a boomer humor with jokes about wearing Huey Lewis T-shirts ironically or vetting your Facebook page to see if it's appropriately cool. Again, irony is the only way that you can vouch for liking soup on FB. It's a charming, smart show.

The Wire, Revisited

The first time I watched The Wire, I was very ill. It was one of those times where I wanted to lie on the couch and let stories wash over me. Right before I had gotten sick, I had gone to the neighborhood video store and had rented the entire first season of The Wire for five dollars. I was full of self-congratulation about my incredible foresight to have an entire season of this highly recommended show to watch, but then when I settled down to watch it, I discovered that I didn't like it.

It was hard to follow. It just didn't click with me. But I kept watching it, because I had nothing else at hand, and I was so sick, it was just easier to lie back and watch one episode after another and then it was like all the pieces fell in place and I loved this show.

So a while back, I started rewatching the show with Mike. To my surprise, it is still hard to follow. I'm curious to see if Season 1 is denser than the other seasons, or whether the other seasons are as complex, as obtuse. I didn't care now, because I love the series, but you really have to have your analytical self in high gear to keep track of all of the events in the episodes.

For those of you who haven't seen The Wire yet, kindly skip this paragraph. Rewatching Season 1, I realized that I had remembered some things differently. In my memory, Omar was much more present in this season. I thought Wallace had died much earlier. In my mind, Wallace's death was when I was completely won over by The Wire, but that was late in the game,  the second to last episode in Season 1. When I first saw the show, I wasn't as affected by DeAngelo. The first time I saw it, I saw Stringer and Avon as interesting and kind of glamorous. This time it's hard to focus on their quirky sides. Particularly Stringer Bell. This time I'm much more aware of his ruthless nature.

It is one of those shows where characters seem to own names. No one else in TV can be Omar now. No one else can be Wallace. It's a show that's well worth any mental gymnastics that you may have to do in the beginning. It's characters worth following.

Catching Hell

As a baseball fan, you think about catching a ball. I never caught a ball. One came to me. It was a Dodger/Giants game. It was hit by the pitcher, Mark Gardner. A couple of guys fought over it, missed it, and it rolled over and nudged my foot, and I quietly stowed it. When the guys looked around to see what had happened, I lifted the ball high and smiled. We all chose to celebrate the moment.

Catching Hell, an ESPN Sports film, is a documentary that is specifically about Steve Bartman and his attempt to catch a ball at a baseball game. In the bigger picture, it's about curses. It revisits the story of Bill Buckner. It even talks about scapegoats from a Biblical perspective. It's a very thoughtful film.

The director, Alex Gibney, interviews a number of people including Bill Buckner, who has a personal understanding of the Bartman situation, Steve Lyons, who was one of the television broadcasters for that game, Bob Costas, who was down in the Red Sox clubhouse in 1986 where they had the champagne ready before they failed to clinch, Moises Alou, who played a big role in the Bartman situation by being so angry and blaming the fan, Scott Turow, a lifelong Cubs fan, the security guard who ultimately had to protect Bartman, and several fans who sat by Bartman who had also tried to catch that ball.

It is a film full of revelations, some of which is hard to watch. It is hard to see a crowd turn on a person. It is hard to see the mood turn dangerous. It is hard to see someone blamed for an instinct natural to a ballgame. It is fascinating to see how people's minds work, the collective consciousness where the guy with the headset in the stands is more at fault than their team's shortstp who booted a play later in the inning.

This is one of those films that is chock full of details. It's one that will keep you thinking. It's a really smart film, and I think even people who aren't that interested in baseball could really enjoy it, as it is more about perception and responsibility and what winning really means.