Lost In Translation

The Flying Goat

The Flying Goat is a great new pizza and beer joint across from the Downriver Grill on NW BLVD in Spokane. I took my parents there for lunch the other day. It has a wide selection of Gourmet pizzas and a big micro brew selection minutes from my parents house.

Best TV Of 2010

I think there's too much good TV these days and I don't have enough time to watch all the good shows, but these are the ones I thought were the best of 2010:

1. Breaking Bad-I think this was one of the best seasons of TV ever. This show just keeps     getting better.

2. Mad Men-another great year, but probably not the best. Matthew Weiner doesn't     disappoint.

3. The Pacific-I think it was better than Band of Brothers-I was inspired to read the     biographies of the three main characters the series was based on. Great production values.

4. Community-this show is really hitting its stride in this season.

5. Justified-FX's new series based on a character, Rayland Givens, from Elmore Leonard     short stories and novels. Timothy Olyphant looks good in a hat as we know from     Deadwood. Again I was compelled to search out the source material. Great ensemble     acting with lots of interesting guest stars.

6. Friday Night Lights-saw parts of season 4 and 5 in the calendar year, but it has good     writing and excellent lead actors.

7. 30 Rock-still dependable comedy in its 5th season.

8.True Blood-this is something of a guilty pleasure-it can be hit-or-miss, but there's always     a lot of sex and violence.

9.Dexter-made interesting by the always reliable Michael C. Hall.

10. (Open: I'm thinking about starting to watch a new series like Boardwalk Empire or     Treme, but haven't started yet)

 

 

Centurion

Centurion was quiet a surprise I thought it would be a mindless action film. It is a superbly filmed B movie classic-mindless action film. It's got some interesting action graphics and lots of blood spatter and epic scenery shots of the vast wilderness. Not a real thinking man's film-more on par with Machete! or 300. However, it is very entertaining.

Pho Hanoi

New Vietnamese place on my Monday lunch route-I'll be back for more healthy delicious pho-here the beef pho with a fried spring roll, salad, and dessert.

The Philadelphia Story

I've been trying to fill in some of my film viewing gaps and screwball comedies of the 40s is one area i need to explore. So following His Girl Friday I watched The Philadelphia Story (1940)with Katherine Hepburn, Cary Grant, and Jimmy Stewart. It shares some of the qualities of the former film with the beautiful but fast talking independent woman-in both cases recently divorced having her new nuptials interfered upon by the jilted husband who is still in love with her. I also found this film almost equally entertaining and understandably a classic.

The Big Short

Michael Lewis really has a gift for creating a compelling narrative and I was worried that I wouldn't be able to follow his story of the sub prime debacle in The Big Short. I have to admit there's still a lot I couldn't understand about the markets he describes, but he does manage to convey some great profiles of unusual people and create a compelling narrative that shows how Wall Street once again veered out of control and recklessly created havoc. I wonder if this book will suffer the same fate as his previous book on the financial markets, Liar's Poker, which instead of being a cautionary tale for the youth of America to steer clear of Wall Street-it has become a how to manual for the materialistic and misguided. Probably the biggest impression I walked away with after reading this book is that investment bankers rate even lower than lawyers as useless parasite sucking life out of society while contributing precious little to it. That and the lack of oversight and governmental control in the markets is no less than shocking. More of those firms should have died spectacular deaths but they were bailed out by the government. Screw those single women and kids but save those investment bankers and reckless financial institutions? Sometimes the older you get the less you understand the world.

An Obsession

Shinji Ayoama's 2005 film An Obsession is a film that was inspired and partly based on Akira Kuroswa's post war masterpiece Stray Dog. Essentially there are more differences than similarities, but the main plot of the film was borrowed from Kurosawa's-a criminal takes a gun from a cop and commits murder with it. Aoyama's film is contemporary and probably more philosophical, but it also mirrors the doppelganger theme of the Kurosawa original where the protagonist and villain are similar. In Ayoama's film the similar way of thinking about life and the world is more pronounced-Kurosawa tries to show that the men have had similar life experiences and have chosen different ways of dealing with their hardships and Japan's defeat in WWII. This is a comparison that I am planning on exploring in more depth ina an academic article sometime next year. Aoyam's film has some interesting issues and themes, but it is more of an art film since he has stripped away the hard-boiled genre elements  from the original like the mentor subordinate cop buddy story and the police procedural and post war black market montages. Since I have written about Kurosawa's masterpiece twice before i was intrigued to see what Aoayama has done with the story, but it bares a pale comparison, however there's enough to merit a closer inspection.

More Udon

Spicy udon and mini tendon (tempura rice bowl) set.

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance

The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance (1962) was referenced in an episode of Mad Men previously, so I was intrigued to see what it was about. I also recently read an internet post discussing the best westerns of all-time, and this film was mentioned often. I readily admit that westerns are a genre that I don't know a lot about. John Ford in particular always gets high praise from contemporary directors and is known as a modern master of the medium. I do know that he is excellent at using on location sets and this film has a fairly compelling storyline. My biggest complaints are stock characters like the cowardly, hedonist Sheriff and stereotypical Mexicans with their sombreros and ponchos. I think John Wayne's performance is regarded as one of his best and Jimmy Stewart also puts in a fine performance. I think I liked it more than The Searchers and Rio Bravo. I still have some more seminal Ford films to see, most notably Stagecoach.

Bonenkai: Ghenghis Han

Ghenghis Han is located in Shin Okubo and was a good time. Food, drink, costumes, and Mongolian wrestling-more on that later. The shop manager livens things up with songs and makes the customers drink vodka from a horn. Here we have Hisako, Kenyan Dan, me, and Meiji colleagues Maggie and Robert.

Mike and Jon in traditional gear. 

The whole gang.

 

The set menu had lots of meat-and it was all you can drink.

Carve your own chicken.

A random Japanese guy from another group with a couple of girls from their party pose with Tony and Kevin (far right) after the Mongolian wrestling matches. Tony beat Kevin and drew with the other guy.