Category: Reviews (Page 7 of 9)

There were plenty of tickets left, Howard Jones would make an unlikely sell-out event in Vegas I think. $25 for a seat in the center rear. (When we saw the G3 tour at the House of Blues, we payed more than that for a standing position down stairs.)  Doors open at 7:00, HoJo expected on stage at 9:00. It was 5:30. We had plenty time to wander around, decide where we were going to have dinner, eat, then wander around some more.

The Mandalay Bay is one of the newer casinos, with an Indonesian theme, and is actually quite pleasant, particularly on a Saturday night. Lots of interesting people walking around. (And I’m not just talking about the painted-on dresses, although it has to be noted there were a few of those.)

After eating at the buffet, we wandered out into the casino. The sea of slots is broken up by islands of bars and lounges, with live bands. In one, we stopped, sat, and enjoyed drinks while listening to a very talented jazz/pickup band. The bass player kept looking in my direction. He might have been hitting on me, but I choose to believe that he was admiring my Spock’s Beard T-shirt. He could play bass a damned sight better than me, is for sure.

Howard Jones has gone loud and techno, and based his set mostly on his first album, which is a shame, because he’s written some good stuff over the years, including the anthem to mediocrity, No One Is To Blame. I did get to hear Things Can Only Get Better, and a nice rendition of Hide and Seek. The only downer was that the woman sitting next to me managed to knock her drink into my lap.

We left at the end of the evening with ringing ears and a full belly.

Yesterday we experienced a session of “Star Wars Episode II – Attack Of The Clones” in a theater offering the magic of Digital Projection (complete with DLP logo).

An alternative title for this post might be, “You’re not in Guatamala now, Dr Ropata”. (for the curious, here.)

Warning: If you don’t want to know “secrets” of the plot, do not read on.

Thoughts on the movie:

OK, I’m a fan of Star Wars since my Dad took me and my best buddy Paul to see the first one in 1977. I was 12. Now I’m 36 and yet I – along with my geek brethren – somehow still expect the same thrill and excitement? Rationally, we know it can’t happen, but three years ago, we clutched a kernel of irrational hope and anticipation, only to have it cruelly crushed to dust by Episode I (which went on to thrill and excite 12 year old geeks everywhere).

OK, Ep.1 wasn’t that evil. But it didn’t have the same magic, and there was much that my adult mind found objectionable. And yet now, in 2002, almost paradoxically the disappointments of Episode I have fanned the fires of anticipation for Episode II, such that I found myself in a queue of geeks saying things like, “It’s got to be good. He will have learned from his mistakes. He will have listened to the fans…” etc.  Inevitably, I felt we were setting ourselves up for disappointment once again.

At this point, we entered the theater and after bemoaning the fact that we seem to be doomed to sitting behind someone eating Taco Bell or the obligatory screaming baby or cellphone, some comments about the actual digital projection experience should be noted, but I’ve saved these for later. For now, on with the review:

Possibly the biggest problem with Ep.2 is that its basic plot is identical to that of Ep.1. Don’t believe me? Try this:

The film is about Senator Palpatine’s quest to control the Galactic Senate by his manufacture of an apparent threat to the Republic (a “phantom menace” if you will). Oh, and the Jedi have to protect Senator Amidala and end up on Tatooine, among other places.

It could describe either movie.

So what sets Ep.2 apart? Well, first, there’s the great computer generated (CG) sets. So much CG, in fact, that parts of it looked a lot like the Final Fantasy movie, which was entirely CG and did remarkably at the box office (it tanked.) Lesson not learned: Special Effects alone do not guarantee box office success.

What does guarantee success is heritage: Ep.2 is a STAR WARS movie. It’s not going to lose money. But given that heritage, it ought to more enjoyable, I think. Little things would have helped: some snappy dialog; a secret revealed, something like that.

Lucas can not write dialogue, and some of the storyline was just embarassing. If he had just given his one paragraph plot synopsis to a decent writer and let them do what they do best… it would *have* to have yielded a better screenplay. But no… we get a predictable, turgid mess. With lots of eye candy.

There was a minimal presence of Jar Jar, the irritating CG character from Ep.I, thank goodness, but unfortunately the whoopee cushion moments were still there, only this time featuring the embarassing antics of: C3PO and R2-D2! They’re so funny. Yuk yuk.

Anakin’s mother provides a pivotal character development moment, which began promisingly, yet I think it was an opportunity wasted. We could have obtained real insight, we might have learned some real secret (like, who was Anakin’s father? I’m not buying the virgin birth story from Ep.1). No, it was just, “Argh you savages have killed my mother, I must now turn evil and kill you all.”

The characters were all very flat and one-dimensional, more so than the lush three-dimensional computer generated landscapes. Ewan McGregor is an exception, and he almost manages to channel the swashbucking heros of the past except he cannot escape the net of corny dialog like “Patience, my young padawan!”. Christopher Lee, playing the evil (or is he?) bad guy, could make the corniest dialog sound good, and indeed he does.

In the Jango Fett/Temuera Morrison combo, Lucas had a character (and importantly, an actor) capable of filling the charisma void left by the absence of a Han Solo/Harrison Ford in this prequel trilogy. I say “had” because although Tem’s scenes are wonderful, there aren’t enough of them, and Fett senior gets killed off far too quickly for my tastes. (I’m not saying this because he’s a New Zealander; I’m saying it because he’s a dam’ good actor.)

CGI FX are great. Yoda is undoubtedly the star of this film. If Frank Oz doesn’t get a best supporting actor nomination, then there ain’t no justice in the world (and we know there isn’t, so I’m not holding my breath. Neither is Yoda).

Thoughts on Digital Projection:

Those green MPAA ratings slides never looked so good.

What’s good about digital projection: Crisp images, no scratches or blemishes on the “film”, no “cigarette burn” marks to indicate change of reel, a very stable image.

What’s not so good: You can see “jaggies” on high-contrast text like subtitles (I guess the resolution isn’t quite there yet); a tendancy towards intense, oversaturated colors; and possibly soundtrack synching problems (although this might be due to post-production dialog replacement, or “looping”).

GO SEE THIS FILM if:

• you like stories about the class system in Britain;
• “Upstairs Downstairs” was a favorite;
• you like Charlie Chan films;
• you like Robert Altman films;
• You have a thing for Helen Mirren or Charles Dance. Or Maggie Smith. Or Michael Gambon. Or…
• If you like great screenplays.

I’m not saying it’s everyone’s cup of tea (an apt metaphor) but if you score even one point in the above list, I think you’re going to love it. And even if you score a zero, I still think there is a very good chance you’ll like it a lot.

Seriously: It’s an Oscar contender and Best Screenplay or Director seems the most likely, only because with a ensemble cast like the one Gosford Park has, it’d be very difficult to find an outstanding performance, because they are all great.

Yesterday they were predicting a snowstorm – 1-3 inches of snow. This never happens.

And as it turned out, it didn’t. We saw the snowstorm building in the West, and indeed, some residents of the highlands actually saw snow in the air, but no snow fell on the ground.

Last night we went out to see “A Beautiful Mind” which gets 8/10 from me. An enjoyable movie that, to me at least, misfired at one or two points. Think of it as a fictional tale “based on a true story” rather than a strictly autobiographic account.

This morning it was very cold, and the surrounding mountains had snow on them.

It’s been a week since we saw this film for the second time – and on reflection I’m now ready to give it my rating: 8.5 out of 10.

I really wanted to give this a 10/10 but realistically it wasn’t going to happen. I’m a big fan of the books, but I’ll give Peter Jackson all the artistic licence he needs to convert the epic into a three film screenplay.

When rating the first installment of the trilogy alone, I had to subtract half a point for the following irks (most annoying first):

• Changing the ending so that everyone in the Fellowship knows that Frodo and Sam have left for Mordor alone. There’s no excuse for this – it is an important plot point (I think) that Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli believed that all four Hobbits have been kidnapped by the Uruk-Hai;
• Miscasting Hugo Weaving as Elrond. PJ should have realised that every geek in the theatre would hear him say, “Welcome to Rivendell, MISTer ANDerson… I mean Baggins”. OK, so if you haven’t seen The Matrix then you won’t understand this, but what geek hasn’t? Ever other character casting decision so far was brilliant, but Agent Smith as Elrond? It just doesn’t work for me, and I suspect I’m not alone.
• In the book, Frodo does NOT solve the Moria Gate password – Gandalf figures it out himself. Also, the watcher in the lake is disturbed by Boromir’s throwing stones, not Pippin and Merry. The two Hobbits are used almost exclusively as comic relief throughout the film, and it is really not necessary. Humans, Elves, and Dwarves are not devoid of careless and thoughtless moments. PJ didn’t have to force these characters into two dimensions as much as he did, in my opinion.

Still a terrific film, though. We may yet see it in the theater again for a third time. It rocks – best movie of 2001 without argument.

Film of the month is K-PAX. This is not a great movie, in that I would not say to someone, “K-PAX is a *great* movie. You have to see it or you will regret it in years to come.”  It is a good movie in that it stars Kevin Spacey whom I think has yet to give a performance that is not above average, and to a lesser degree I think the same could be said of Jeff Bridges. But the real reason I liked K-PAX is that it does not lead the audience to a clear-cut resolution, but rather allows you to decide what the outcome really was. You might not leave the theater arguing vehemently about what the movie means, but if you’re like me, you will leave with a smile on your face and a willing conversational partner in the passenger seat on the drive home. You’ll probably talk about the movie.

Last month YES embarked on another North American tour. This time they actually have a new album on the way, and are touring with an orchestra. (Argh, is this shades of the doomed ELP tour of ’77? They basically went bankrupt after a few shows and continued touring without the orchestra to try to make up the loss.)

Being a total fanatic, I had purchased tickets online about two months ago in order to get excellent seats (second row), indicating that the tickets should be mailed to me. The web site informed me that I should receive them at least 2 days prior to the event. Well, you guessed it – the tickets never showed up. I rang the ticket office phone number (after searching for it on the tickets.com web site in vain for about an hour) and spoke to a human, who said, “We can convert the tickets to “will call” which means that you pick them up from the tickets.com table at the venue, you just have to show them your credit card and give your name, they’ll have the tickets for you. If the tickets do show up in the mail in the next day or so, they won’t be any good to you, so you can either call and cancel the “will call” in order to use the tickets, or just discard them if you retain the “will call” arrangement.”

Sounds simple enough…. On the day of the event, the tickets still hadn’t arrived, so with credit card and printed out email confirmation of ticket purchase in hand, we drove through to South Vegas/Henderson to the Sunset Station Hotel & Casino, where the concert was being held in the outdoor amphitheater next door.

(Pretty much every venue of interest is attached to a casino in Vegas. There are some exceptions.)

Sunset Station Casino turns out to be quite nice, as casinos in Vegas go. It has some quite beautiful stained glass ceiling work in it, and a reasonably pleasant range of cafes and restaurants. The original plan was to meet up with other Yes-fans at the buffet, but when we walked in it was 5:30 pm and the queue was already way too long to warrant the wait. The show was due to start at 8:00 pm, and we had to be at the ticket table thing at least an hour before that. We wouldn’t have any time to eat once we’d got through the queue. So, plan B: Find somewhere else to eat, because we were starving.

We elected to eat at a Mexican-style place called, I think, Guadalajara. It had a nice help-yourself Salsa bar, and the food was mid-priced, so we didn’t feel ripped off. It was not busy at all at that time, quite the opposite of the buffet. The food was actually really nice, and in fact I think I would go back there if the opportunity arose. I had a margarita and felt very mellow.

After a very enjoyable meal, we left the restaurant and made our way towards the amphitheater entrance. Sure enough, there was a table set up outside with a sign that read, “tickets.com will call”. We get in the line clutching our particulars. Many other people are in the line with printed-out emails from Tickets.com, which makes me feel a bit happier about showing up to a venue without actual physical tickets. When we get to the table, the woman sitting behind it asks for our name, and rummages through her index card box of will-call tickets. Nope, we’re not there. “Sorry, Next in line please.”

“Uh, hang on. We’ve paid for our tickets – good ones, I might add – and here is an email from tickets.com confirming the purchase and even giving details of the seat numbers!” We check the index box, which has tickets miss-filed in almost every letter of the alphabet – no joy, though, our tickets are not there.

“Well, your tickets aren’t here. Please step back and we’ll deal with you in a minute.”

Colin unstraps the Uzi from his shoulder and sprays the room with bullets, shouting incoherently…

“What’s the problem, can I help?” says a different official looking woman, popping Colin’s fantasy like a cat thrown into a bag of balloons.

“Well, you see, we bought tickets online but they didn’t arrive by mail and we rang and converted them to will call and they said to come here but now they’re saying that they don’t have them…”

“Let’s see what we can do to fix this,” she says. “Perhaps the tickets are at the ticket office next to Registration,” she chirps, and ushers us out of the will-call queue and along the corridor towards the hotel registration desk.

It turns out that there is a special booth at the registration desk called “tickets.com”. Unfortunately it’s manned by a drone who apparently didn’t bring his brain with him when he came to work this morning. “No, we don’t have any tickets here,” he muttered.

“Could you perhaps look in the computer?” we suggest. “There must be some record of our conversation with the phone people”.

“No, can’t look in the computer from here,” he said, gesturing to the computer terminal on his desk.

“Well, take a look at this email and see if there isn’t someone you can call or something, because we’ve paid for good seats and we don’t see what the problem is,” we responded.

“We still have some V.I.P. pass tickets left”, said the woman official merrily, “so let’s just do that instead of messing around with the computer,” and we walked off back to the will-call desk.

“Here you go,” she said, and thrust a pair of tickets marked “VIP ADM GEN”  into my hand.

We walked through the corridor, grumbling about how these had better be as good as our original seats. The “general admission” think didn’t sound too good, but the “VIP” part made up for that.

As it turned out, the “general admission” meant that we could sit anywhere we liked in the section reserved for VIPs. Not in the second row, but about 10 rows back in the middle, and what’s more, a roped-off section in front of us so that we got a perfect view, not obscured by anyone sitting 5 rows in front of us.  In front of that was another 5 rows where “friends of the band” were sitting.

The show was great. Steve Howe is a guitar god, etc etc. (Insert fanboy raving here.) The orchestra was pretty good, considering that apparently they only got their musical score earlier that day at the sound check!

Yesterday Lisa reminded me that the “G3 Tour” was playing that evening at the House Of Blues at the Mandalay Bay. For those of you who don’t know, G3 is a sometimes annual event arranged by axemeister Joe Satriani. “G3” stands for “3 guitarists” and it is usual Joe S, Steve Vai (yet another uber-fretist) and a special guest. This year it was John Petrucci (from the group Dream Theater).

I’d forgotten about this! I had plans to take my guitar down to Mars Music and play with some effect units anyway, so I suggested that I go out pick up some tickets to G3 – if there were any left. Indeed there was. Heh.

After an hour or so at Mars Music I decided that the red, butt-shaped POD 2.0 from Line6 had to come home with me.

After I arrived home and dropped off my guitar and new box of tricks, we closed up the house and drove out to the Mandalay Bay to see if we had time for a quick dinner before the doors opened at the House Of Blues. We enjoyed strolling around the restaurants inside the casino, finally settling on appetisers at China Grill.

The show was great. We officially had general admission floor tickets, but the inside of the HOB is more like a club/bar. Upstairs there were seats, but we couldn’t go up there without a more expensive ticket. We found a place to stand at the rail of a kind of balcony, and watched the show from there. Each guitarist had about 40 minutes with their own band – usually just bass and drums, but occasional other musicians. Mike Keneally, Billy Sheehan, Stu Hamm, Virgil Donati, Mike Portnoy to name just a few you might be familiar with. What a line-up.

John Patrucci was on first. He’s the youngest of the three, he would probably be proud to cite both Joe and Steve as major influences. He played several instruments in the same vein as Liquid Tension Experiment. Summary: Has the Chops but lacking in soul or personality musically. The Guitar Student.

Steve Vai was next. Flamboyant and outrageous as ever, flanked by Mike Keneally (guitar nerd extraordinaire and able to match Vai note for note – should he care to do so) and Billy Sheehan (bass legend) plus another no-name guitarist (who mostly played acoustic and electric sitar accompaniment), Vai took us through a raging set of some of his famous instrumentals, plus some new material I haven’t heard before. Wild, experimental, evil. The Voodoo Wizard.

Last up was Joe Satriani. Joe actually tutored Vai in guitar when they were at school together. Shaven head, Oakley shades, and black zoot suit. Joe ripped through some classic numbers from his back catalog. balls to the wall, high-octane guitar instrumentals, accompanied on rhythm-bass(!?) by the legend-in-his-own-lunchtime, under-rated but over-talented Stuart Hamm. Stratosperic, high-velocity. The Spaceman.

Even though it is Friday night, and therefore everyone is probably out for the evening, we drive down to the Regal cinema complex called Village Square to see _The Dish_, an Australian film starring Sam Neill and directed by Rob Sitch of _Frontline_ fame. This film is about the events that occur at the Parkes Radio Telescope during the Apollo 11 moon shot. It is wonderful film, see it if you can.

We are frustrated somewhat by the fact that this cinema complex is the only one that has one of its screens devoted to smaller, less popular or independent films. We should be grateful for this, I guess. But still, it’s a nuisance because if we aren’t quick to make the time to see a film we want to see there, by next week it is showing something else and we’ve missed out.

15 Minutes is a very good movie. We saw it this evening, and we were pleasently surprised, because this was one of those rare times when a movie surpases our expectations. Few cliches, interesting and sympathetic characters, and an unexpected plot – not as in “surprise plot twist” unexpected, but as in “I have no idea where they’re going with this, but I’m really interested in finding out.”

Recommended.

When we got home we saw that the fax from the house inspector had come through, and we checked it over ready for things to look out for during our house walk-through next week.