fred's adventures in trashy movies continue ... bedknobs and broomsticks: watched in honor of angela lansbury's recent 80th birthday. angela's quite lovable here, and overall the movie is enjoyable, although not particularly memorable. the castle of cagliostro (rupan sansei: kariosutoro no shiro): great james bond-type adventure movie, w/ a distinctly miyazaki feel. very enjoyable. evita: i enjoyed re-watching this. i think this musical is one of ALW's best, and the production values are high. good adaptation, cinematography, and direction, and solid acting from madonna and banderas. much better than the average movie musical. the phantom of the opera: echhh. this movie makes me strongly forget i ever liked any part of this show. terrible acting and adaptation and mediocre singing. primary colors: rented mostly to see emma thompson, who was uninteresting here. travolta's pretty good, as is "newcomer" adriane lester, but the story was fairly boring and way too long. psycho: good (esp. the first half) and a classic w/ good acting, but def. not worth the #25 best movie of all time slot on imdb. spider-man: the new animated series: i remember hearing about this when it came out, but i've just now gotten around to watching disk 1. mtv put out this series (which only lasted 1 season) to sort of follow spidey in the time between the first and 2nd movies. as a result pretty much all of the episodes are standalone adventures against a new baddie. they were gearing it more towards teens than kids and recruited some interesting voices: neil patrick harris as spidey (who is distractingly recognizable), lisa loeb as mary jane (she actually does really well -- when's the last time she put out an album?), and ian ziering who i vaguely remember as being a bad guy on 90210. they also got rob zombie, eve, and virginia madsen in on it. the animation was the big point of contention for a lot of people, as it's prob. one of the first series to almost completely rely on CGI. as you'd expect, generally the people movement looks stiff and video game-y, but you get used to it, and the fight scenes and web-slinging action are pretty good. all in all not a bad way to spend an evening or two if you really liked the movies. ukigusa (floating weeds): not my favorite ozu movie so far, but good acting and his usual great cinematography and atmosphere. wallace & gromit in the curse of the were-rabbit: hurrah! W&G's movie debut is a great success. nick park's humour and inventiveness are still going strong. just points up how unintelligent other animated films are.

FUCK. i just deleted this wicked long post about prune and compass. i'm too annoyed to write the whole thing again. the short version is: prune for brunch was very good. compass was great. that's all you need to know. okay, i'll add a bit more: apparently compass (UWS, 208 w 70th st) has had a pretty tempestuous history since it opened in 2002. less than a year and a half ago the new york times wrote a scathing review of the restaurant, then under the reign of katy sparks. but in august, under john fraser, the times gave them a very positive review, with particularly enthusiastic raves for the avocado parfait. i agree that the parfait was the part of the meal that made you want to stand up and applaud (the tiny strawberries did indeed have a faint-inducing delectability, although i disagree w/ the reviewer's assement of the peanut butter crust: we found it to be almost brutally abrasive and domineering next to the beautiful scandinavian-esque smoothness of the parfait). the service was quite excellent, the ingredients were fantastic (wonderfully earthy beets, baby romaine that had real substance), and in everything the food was nicely executed and memorable. definitely one of the best meals i've had in a while.

some restaurant comments: to start from the bottom, clio (back bay, corner of mass ave and comm ave), was, in a word, disappointing. overall andy and i agreed that it felt like it thought it was better than it really was. maybe it's changed a lot in the four years or so since winnie's been there, but it seemed they were more concerned w/ the visual appeal of their plating than the quality of the actual food, which surprisingly seemed to lean towards asian influences and fruit accents (the latter of which i'm rarely fond of). in particular, although andy enjoyed his mesclun salad (with a dressing that noticeably included soy sauce and perhaps sesame oil), my "beet salad" was rather play-foody. it consisted of a shallow bowlful of beets, somewhere between thickly pureed and finely chopped, with "aromatic accents" which were about seven spoonful-sized islands of garnishes, which included (as separate islands) avocado, capers, fennel, fresh wasabi, and others. attractively presented no doubt, but not much interesting otherwise. andy's "crispy" halibut was likewise disappointing, with a sweetness that quickly outstayed its welcome (as i'd expect sweetness in any entree to do). i skipped over the feta and olive ravioli (zzzzz zzzzz zzzzz) and instead tried the corn soup (with mushrooms but sans maine crab), which was nicely savory. outside of the plating, the sweet and sour green onion chutney was fairly forgettable as well; "jam" would've been a more accurate term, and if there was any "sour" flavor, it was undectectable. it came w/ roasted pumpkin that was rather too "al dente" for my taste, and what i assume was a yogurt-based sauce. the chestnuts were a nice autumnal, albeit non-integrated, distraction (although the spiny chestnut covering and equally inedible pumpkin stem were pointless garnishes), but the general feel of this dish was clunky and thrown together. andy's creme caramel likewise lacked depth. andy and i also agreed that the menu just seemed to include too many ingredients in each dish. maybe it's just our preference, but it seems more productive to concentrate on combining strong and subtle flavors rather than resorting to non-sequitur juxtapositions that aren't integrated. service was okay, although a bit prissy. phew. this is getting long. i'll post the rest later.

this list of indian restaurants in the US provides a handy "to do" list and some entertaining statistics. according to this list, the top 5 states w/ indian restaurants are: 1) CA 2) MA 3) NY 4) NJ 5) FL. somewhat surprising, no?

andy and i finally got around to going to new york this past weekend. we were in and out pretty quickly, but managed to cram in some good stuff. here's the rundown: Metropolitan Museum of Art: The Perfect Medium: Photography and the Occult this exhibit (through dec 31) is a catalogue of photographs (most from 1860 to 1950), of attempts to capture supernatural occurrences, inc. spirits, levitation, and auras. highly entertaining examples of photography by the commercially enterprising for less-than-innocent means, these early examples of photoshop-esque manipulation form a nice visit to a not-so-distant time. Cooper-Hewitt: Extreme Textiles: Designing for High Performance (through oct. 30) i agree w/ jeff on this one: much duller than i thought it could be. the information is definitely fascinating, and some of the accompanying film footage is just mind-boggling (inc. one that shows a guy soaring through open air w/ nothing but a flying suit w/ wings, and another w/ a man running w/ a prosthetic foot modelled after a cheetah's), but the exhibit was sorely lacking in terms of visual interest. in most cases the design was entirely based on practical w/ absolutely no aesthetic considerations, which seemed out of place in a design museum. in both the met exhibit and this case, the material seemed only obliquely relevant as art, and in the former much more appropriate for a children's or general history museum, and the latter for a science museum. is this a new trend to attract a wider, perhaps more "family", museum-going audience? i hope not ... openhousenewyork: grace church knew about the openhousenewyork events, but wasn't planning on seeing anything in particular. openhousenewyork "celebrates New York City's architecture and inspires civic pride through an annual program of public access to significant buildings and sites in all five boroughs." happened to come across grace church in greenwich village, "one of the first Gothic Revival structures in the city", and stayed for part of a nice tour. a nice series for the city. light in the piazza (at lincoln center's vivian beaumont theater). everyone seems overly eager to proclaim guettel's merit (grandson of richard rodgers), but the material isn't nearly as ambitious as people want to suggest it is, and the production and performances do nothing to help gloss over the flaws. still, as one of the few "serious" musicals in recent years, people looking for something more sophisticated than -wicked- will just have to take what we can get as we continue to wait for a real success.