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The Aviator

The Aviator is a glossy, standard bio-pic with good performances and scenery all around, saved by Cate Blanchet's superb incarnation as Katherine Hepburn. Martin Scorsese and Leonardo DiCaprio's take on the Howard Hughes story puts the billionaire's obsessions over technology and film at center stage, and adds some peeks into

Sideways

Decent buddy-pic that, though overly earnest, earns respect for its emotional shadings. Sideways tells of the weeklong bachelor walkabout of two college buddies, both of whom have fallen into mid-life mediocrity. They travel to California wine country (not Napa, but Monterey), find new relationships (serious and casual), and, as these

Spirit Of America

Consider donating to proivide library books for Iraqi children.

Winner Takes All

Million Dollar Baby is another latter-Eastwood triumph, though not quite the "best picture" quality that some reviews might have you think. The story is essentially an expertly presented but standard young-boxer/grizzled-trainer movie. Of that genre, Rocky was one of the first to have our hero not actually win the

Late Finish

The renovation was completed about September 5th. Since then, there's been a lot of furniture searching and general household upgrades. Then, finally, a Wine Tasting (pics of that later). Here are a couple shots of the current state. More inside.... .h3 { color: #222; } .thumbnails img { height: 80px; border: 4px solid

Balcony Scene

Speaking of the Middle East (and of biopics), I attended the play Golda's Balcony, the life and times of Golda Meir. Fascinating, overwrought, well-done. This one-woman show stars Tovah Feldshuh as the Russian-born (oops, Ukrainian-born), Milwaukee-raised, eager socialist and Zionist, then Prime Minister of Israel. The production is heavy on

Ray

I recall the first time the trailer for Ray played -- seems like the entire audience held its breath, hoping that the film would live up to our apparent collective respect for Ray Charles. You can breath again, the film is very good. But, (and I know I've been doing

Averagable

Pixar has one of the longest winning streaks going of any film studio. The Incredibles continues that streak, but mostly via sheer momentum. As others have pointed out, this is a rather stale formula, a postmodern comic book of the sort mined by TV's The Tick, and even the dreadful

Apologies...hard drive failure

Sorry about the absence. My hard drive failed and needed a complete reinstall. The important application data I had saved to CD, but I never made a system backup and, after the renovation, I had mislaid my system disks. However, the whole refit was pretty simple -- I had the

Gardening Time

Indie film Garden State has gotten good reviews for good reason. But that reason is really just to put us on notice to watch first-time director Zach Braff's next movie, hopefully better than this. Braff certainly has a ear for dialog, characters, and the ability to let both have room