Lost In Translation

The Day Food Lab

A recent walk about in Koenji led to my discovery of The Day Food Lab, which is essentially an Italian fusion restaurant that has five craft beers on tap and over 20 craft gins on hand. It also has a cool minimalist space for the dining room. My kind of place, the food was inventive and delicious and I love craft beer and gin. They have a lunch menu with things like pulled pork sandwiches or Philly Cheese steak sandwicsh, so I'll be back for lunch sometime.

Charcuterie meat plate with pork, salami, and chicken with pickled vegetables.

German Elephant Gin and tonic.

Takenoko (bamboo shoots) and scallops with a variety of vegetables.

Guinea fowl stuffed ravioli.

Hokkaido raised beefsteak with a paprika based sauce.

Chocolate cake for dessert.

Blood On The Moon

I recently saw and appreciated Robert Wise's The Set-Up (1949 also starring Robert Mitchum). So It's no surprise that his western noir Blood On The Moon (1948) was equally well-made and entertaining. Robert Mitchum plays Jim Garry a gun for hire who switches sides when he can't stomach the nefarious tactics of his old friend Tate Rilling (Robert Preston). Mitchum is Mitchum, cool as a cucumber when under fire and eventually saves the day. Wise does a great job with cinematographer Nicholas Musuraca of using the monument valley background for atmosphere as well as using the dark noirish lighting.

Thai Ryori Izakaya

There's a new Thai food izakaya next to Koenji station in the basement along with a yakitori joint, a kushiage place, and a Hakata ramen shop. I had gaopao tsukne and packuchi (corriander) tsukne and gaopao (basil chicken with an egg). I'll definitely be back to this place and the others.

Paterson

Jim Jarmusch may be the ultimate hipster director, but his films generally hit the mark for me thematically and culturally. So the same year that he releases an entertaining Iggy & the Stooges documentary (Gimme Danger) we also get a finely crafted feature film about the poetry of life-Paterson (2016). In Jarmusch's latest, Adam Driver plays a poetry writing bus driver named "Paterson" in Paterson, New Jersey hometown of of the great modern poet William Carlos Williams and the great beat poet Allen Ginsberg-among other celebrities. He lives with his eccentrically artistic girlfriend, Laura (Golshifteh Farahani) and her English bulldog, Baxter. It is an episodic story in the week of this couple that celebrates the small beautiful moments in life as Paterson captured some of these moments in poetry. Since it is episodic, Paterson encounters a number of quirky characters at work and at his local bar that he frequents while walking Baxter each evening. This is the anti-big budget-Marvel film, there is no bombast, Jarmusch goes small to capture the little details of existence and how they can provide joy, comfort and awe. As usual, it has beautiful cinematography capturing the charms of Paterson, NJ.

Ashes And Diamonds

Andrej Wadja's Ashes And Diamonds (1958) is one of those seminal European movies that I have been meaning to see for some time, and an essay in Writer's At The Movies by Deborah Eisenberg was just the thing to get me to see it. It is based on a novel about postwar Poland, but Wadja creates a myriad of cinematic touches that make it a powerful, and compelling piece of art. There a political thriller as the main story with a botched assassination attempt that needs to be corrected. That's not to mention a romance subplot between a world-weary bar maid, Christine (Eva Krzyzewski) and the James Dean-esque younger assassin, Maciek (Zbigniew Cybulski). The cinematography is top notch. There is some excellent framing and had some great set pieces like the one above (that is perhaps a little too obvious in the connection between the characters and Christ). I should like to see other subsequent Wadja films to see where he goes from here.

The Neon Demon

Danish director Nicolas Winding Refn is a polarizing force in film, it seems that you either you love his films or hate them. I liked Bronson and Drive, but I can't say that I liked Only God Knows or his latest The Neon Demon (2016). They both had the same problem of being visually and aesthetically interesting, yet boring at the same time. Was it the plot or characters that were boring? Perhaps both. I found this film deeply flawed and not so entertaining or interesting.

First They Killed My Father

Loung Ung's harrowing biography about her family's experience under the rule of the Khmer Rouge in First They Killed My Father (2000) is a powerful and moving story. I have read several books about Cambodia such as Sideshow: Kissenger, Nixon & the Destruction of Cambodia, but those abstract description of a nation torn apart do not penetrate the way a personal narrative does. Ung's heartbreaking story of how she lost her parents and two siblings in the dark years of the Khmer Rouge take over are heart breaking. Her family along with many thousands of other s suffered greatly and as many as 2 million lost their lives in the crazy social experiment. Cambodia still suffers today from the slaughter of the elite class and corruption that still plagues the country. I often had to take breaks from the story and read something else to distance myself from the heartbreak. essential reading for anyone who wants to understand the effects of the Khmer Rouge revolution. It is a powerful and affecting story.

Writers At The Movies: Part One

I've been reading a book of essay, Writers At The Movies (2000) edited by Jim Shepard, and if there a movie I haven't seen I will watch it before reading the essay. So the firs tone I hadn't seen was Samuel Beckett's Quadrat I and II (1981). It is a very obscure, abstract piece. I guess it doesn't surprise me that it comes from the mind of Beckett and Anne Carson's essay is hardly illuminating on the meaning of the short 24 minute film.

The second film that I hadn't seen was Buster Keaton's Sherlock Junior (1924), an entertaining silent film from one of the greatest comedians of film. It isn't surprising that post modern writer Robert Coover chose to write about this film. Keaton uses several postmodern or experimental cinematic techniques-for example, the last section of the film the protagonist (Keaton) in a dream enters into a film and solves a crime in the film. This idea was recreated by Woody Allen in The Purple Rose of Cairo.

Next up was Fredrick Wiseman's documentary, Titcut Follies (1967), disturbing portrait of the Massachusetts Correctional Institution Bridgewater. which was written about by Stephen Dobyns. It not so much the inmates who are frightening-although some of them are no doubt troubled, but rather the doctors, guards, and staff are the truly frightening people. Their inhumane treatment of the inmates is uncomfortable to watch. I have seen Wiseman's recent documentary At Berkeley and this was his first and think it is quite striking-the story behind the film is also quite interesting. Dobyns had interviewed Wiseman and talked about how the film was held from release for two years by the public authorities saying that it was a violation of the inmates rights. So far this was one of the most interesting essays in the collection.

HyperNormalisation

Adam Curtis' (Bitter Lake) new documentary Hyper Normalizastion (2016) is another comprehensive analysis of current world affairs. He doe an excellent job of explaining how America and Syria have influenced events in the middle east that have led to the provocative battle of radical Islam vs. the West. One of his major theories shows that governments shape public opinion by Shifting attitudes when they are no longer politically viable to their interests-case in point Qaddafi's role swinging from dangerous rouge tyrant to world statesman as well as  Assad transforming from state enemy to ally. Some of his other theories come off as half-baked, but they are all provocative and are used to try and explain where we are at this moment in time. His films are always worthwhile in the fact that you walk away thinking about his the validity of his assertions.

Bar Benfiddich

I had read about Bar Benfiddich in a couple of magazines and since it is located in Shinjuku I stopped by to check it out. And it lives up to the hype he has a variety of infused alcohols and ingredients for original cocktails. I judge a bar by standards and I he delivered on the Old Fashioned-pictured above and the Negroni. It is not cheap, but I only rarely visit high end cocktail bars-good to know there's a reliable one nearby.