A Side Benefit of Travel

Brewers 8, Cubs 5

One of the great things about traveling for business is getting to spend the off-hours getting to know the city you're in. Chicago is quickly becoming one of my favorite cities, for many reasons I won't go into here. But when I am on the road, it's nice to try and enrich myself by meeting people, trying new restaurants, and seeing places I might normally not get to see.

Tonight after work my destination was Wrigley Field. Although I am not a Cubs fan, the ballpark is one of the nation's oldest, built in 1914 at a cost of $250,000. The 27-foot high scoreboard (which is 85 feet off the ground) was built in 1937, and, yes, the stats are still changed by hand. The park was packed, despite eight consecutive losses at home, and the fans here on Chicago's North side are die hard.

I enjoyed the game very much, even though I was in the company of a couple of natives from Chicago's South Side (read: White Sox fans). My friend Bill O. swallowed his pride and attended the game with me, marking not only my first ever Cubs game at Wrigley Field, but his also. This was not Bill's first trip to Wrigley, however; he attended Chicago Bears games at Wrigley prior to their move to Soldier Field in 1971.

Trivia: The 1906 Cubs had 116 wins that season, a record tied in 2001 by my beloved Seattle Mariners.

Complaining About the Heat

My good friend and fellow blogger Rick posted something about how hot it's been in Columbia, South Carolina, and made mention of the fact that he cranked up the A/C in his car and his home, his glass of cola "filled appropriately with ice."

(How would one fill a coke glass inappropriately?)

The National Weather Service has issued this bulletin for Western Washington state:

THE HOTTEST WEATHER SO FAR THIS YEAR IS EXPECTED OVER WESTERN WASHINGTON SUNDAY AND MONDAY....STRONG HIGH PRESSURE ALOFT COMBINED WITH LOW LEVEL OFFSHORE FLOW WILL RESULT IN RECORD OR NEAR RECORD TEMPERATURES AT A NUMBER OF PLACES ON SUNDAY AND AGAIN MONDAY. ALSO...STAGNANT CONDITIONS ARE ALSO EXPECTED TO DEVELOP EARLY NEXT WEEK AND THIS COULD LEAD TO A BUILD UP OF POLLUTION IN THE ATMOSPHERE.

My glass too will be appropriately filled with ice tomorrow, but I, like most others in the Puget Sound region, have no air conditioning in my home.

So Rick, thanks for gripe. I raise my iced cold Diet Coke to you and add my voice to yours as we complain about the heat. Oh - if you get the chance, could you email some extra cold air from your air vent? When it arrives I will open the file and cool the downstairs living room.

Got Milk? Check the Expiration Date

In planning my attendance at this year's Seattle International Film Festival, I chose, as always, to include several independent films among the movies I scheduled to attend. Film festivals such as SIFF are to a great degree about independent film, and many indies would never find an audience without the fests. I chose to screen a few indies based on how well they had been received at other festivals. I based my decision to see one indie purely on its premise, which I found both peculiar and amusing.

Shot on location in Seattle, Expiration Date is the story of Charlie Silvercloud. As he approaches his 25th birthday, he is burdened by the fact that all of the other men in his family died on their 25th birthdays, each punching out in a comically tragic incident involving a milk truck. But it is on the verge of his demise, as Charlie prepares for his own funeral, that he learns what it means to truly live.

Executing such a premise can be a dangerous thing for a filmmaker. But director Rick Stevenson fashions the nutty concept into a black comedy that is both funny and tender, a thing that works thanks in no small part to excellent casting. Robert A. Guthrie delivers a restrained comic performance as Silvercloud, and Dee Wallace Stone adds both heart and comedy as Silvercloud's mother, who desperately wants a grandchild before her son's fatal appointment with a milk truck.

Milkmen from Smith Brother's Farms provided milk to the entire audience at our June 17th screening. I had chocolate, which was cold, smooth, creamy and delicious! Expiration Date may very well be the most memorable experience for me at this year's Seattle Film Festival, and ranks as one of the few films I saw at the festival this year that I would be eager to soon see again.

Monster House

Gil Kenan described himself as lucky when his film school short ended up in the hands of Robert Zemickis (Back to the Future, Forrest Gump). Zemickis and Steven Spielberg had been kicking around an idea to make a movie about a monster house, and tapped the film school grad to direct his first picture.

I don't know why I chose to see the film Monster House, from Sony's Columbia Pictures, which will be released everywhere July 21st. I typically take my five-year-old daughter to see the animated films when they arrive at our local cineplex, and I could have chosen to see a new documentary or indie flick instead. Perhaps it gave me an opportunity to screen the film for inappropriate content before taking my child, or perhaps I just liked the title. Whatever the reason, I was glad to be apart of the first U.S. audience to see this film, which stars Steve Buscemi, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Jon Heder, Fred Willard, Kathleen Turner and a trio of terrific child actors.

The film was not animated traditionally; instead, the filmmakers spent 34 days shooting the film with live actors using motion capture technology. This is the same technology that brought King Kong and The Lord of the Rings' Gollum to life. The result is an animated style that is fluid and provides the characters with a resonance that rings true.

I found the film very imaginative and entertaining, and enjoyed it immensely. The characters are compelling and ring true. There are a number of very scary moments, and it features an on-screen animated death that is darkly comic. In my opinion, the film is better suited for the older kids.

There is a scene in the film where the monster house, played by Kathleen Turner, uproots itself and goes on a rampage through the neighborhood. Kenan said he was actually able to convince Turner to perform the scene as the house. If you see the film, remember that scene was created by one of Hollywood's most beautiful actresses flailing about and pulling herself around a tiny neighborhood set by her hands. Perhaps that footage will show up as an extra on the DVD.

Notes on a Couple of Movies

This past week I attended a session of "Talking Pictures," a program in which well-known creative-types introduce a favorite film and lead a post-screening discussion. Artist Dale Chihuly introduced one of his favorite films in an archival presentation of Lonely are the Brave. This 1962 film about a cowboy whose world is has been encroached upon by modern society was a delightful discovery. It stars Kirk Douglas, Walter Matthau, and Gena Rowlands, and is Douglas's personal career favorite.

The following night was set aside for the French film, OSS 117: Nest of Spies. Although few on this side of the pond know much about the exploits of the Bond-esque Hubert Bonisseur de la Bath, the character has been thrilling and amusing audiences in France since 1956 in both print and on film. In this comedy/adventure set in 1955, Hubert is assigned a mission to Cairo to protect the Suez Canal and to restore peace to the Middle East. The production is fist rate, well-produced and very funny. It plays like an odd combination of espionage thriller, satire and farce.

A Dose of Film Noir

I spent Sunday getting a dose of film noir at the Seattle Film Festival, screening a couple of rarely seen archival presentations at the Egyptian Theater. They were presented by Eddie Muller of the Film Noir Foundation, a non-profit group dedicated to the preservation and restoration of this most American motion picture genre.

Muller pointed out that there are a number of movies which are in danger of vanishing or have disappeared altogether. Period negatives and prints from our film heritage have been misplaced or in some cases are simply disintegrating. Muller introduced two films that his organization has helped bring back from the brink of oblivion.

The first was a film that has not been screened in more than fifty years, the 1950 thriller The Man Who Cheated Himself starring Lee J. Cobb and Jane Wyatt. Shot on location in San Francisco, this dark tale of a cop who protects his mistress after she murders her husband was taut and well received by our Seattle audience.

The Window, released in 1949, stars Disney regular Bobby Driscoll as the boy who cried wolf. In this case, the nine-year-old teller of tall tales cannot convince his parents or the police that he witnessed a murder through a window outside his New York apartment. The film received the Edgar Award for best picture, 1950, and was nominated for a Writer's Guild Award for best American drama. The screenplay was based on a short story by Cornell Woolrich. Coincidentally, Woolrich wrote a similarly themed story that became Alfred Hitchcock's Rear Window.

The Film Festival Adventure Continues

I continue to attend screenings at the ongoing Seattle International Film Festival, and the experience this year has been quite wonderful. There have been a couple of delightful cinematic surprises these past two weeks which I am not allowed to commit to print, a few enjoyable shorts, as well as the occasional unavoidable dud (among them, the overrated The Puffy Chair).

There was one oddly uncomfortable moment during the screening of an independent film where I was seated on the second row. Many of the films' directors, writers, and stars attend the screenings, particularly those films premiering at the festival. Prior to this one screening, the SIFF host introduced the director to the audience, who happened to be seated next to me. As one who appreciates film, particularly independent film, it was difficult for me to fully enjoy the screening knowing the director of the picture was at my elbow. Questions kept circling in my mind: What if I yawn? What if I laugh at the wrong place? What if, heaven forbid, I doze? It is rather late, after all.

In the end, while I appreciated the work of the filmmaker, the movie left me feeling a little underwhelmed. But I managed not to doze while sitting next to the director whose movie was being screened for a large audience for the first time.

Of Mice and Squirrels

At one point in history it seemed that the mouse ruled the animated world. The king of all animated cartoon characters is, of course, Mickey Mouse. Other classic mouse characters include Jerry (of "Tom and" fame), Mighty Mouse, Speedy Gonzalez, Pikachu, Danger Mouse, Stuart Little, Pinky and the Brain, Hanna-Barbera's Mush Mouse and Motormouse, and Itchy from The Simpsons.

Mice were animated in memorable shorts such as the Warner Brothers "The Honeymousers" cartoon, and in full-length animated films like The Rescuers, An American Tale, The Great Mouse Detective and Dumbo.

But today, for my money, the best animated characters going are squirrels.

Yes, I said squirrels. Consider:

Twitchy the squirrel in Hoodwinked (my favorite animated film since The Incredibles, which had no squirrels) had the biggest laughs in that film. Same goes for the squirrel called Scrat in the recent Ice Age 2.

Did anyone bother to see The Wild? Aside from the fact that Disney managed to shamelessly rip off Dreamworks' Madagascar, the only good thing I can say about that utter waste of 90 minutes is this: the movie had a squirrel named Benny (voiced by Jim Belushi) and he was funny. I think I smiled once during that movie, and that was at something Benny said.

Steve Carell is providing the voice of Hammy the Squirrel for the newly released Dreamworks Animation feature Over the Hedge. Again, I thought the squirrel had the best moments, even though I did not like the film.

Squirrels are doing well in cartoons these days. The late Rocky (of "and Bullwinkle" fame) would be proud.

A Prairie Film Companion

Yesterday I had planned three screenings at the Seattle Film Festival.

The first, winner of awards all over the world and well-received at Cannes (it also cleaned up every major honor at the Transylvania Film Festival), was the Romanian film The Death of Mr. Lazarescu. It's a dark tale about a sick man who is unable to get the medical care he needs. What begins as a darkly comic film as Mr. Lazarescu shuffles about drinking and complaining to his neighbors about the pains in this stomach and head, plummets into a nightmarish race in an ambulance from hospital to hospital in order to get medical treatment before he dies. I liked the first half of this film, and wanted to like it all, but I found it overlong and ultimately just too bleak.

We were late to our second film of the day, the documentary The Giant Buddahs, and ended up watching X-Men 3 instead, a film I thought suffered without previous X-Men director Bryan Singer at the helm.

Since the mid-1980's, I have been fond of Garrison Keillor's public radio program "A Prairie Home Companion." Its folksy, homespun sensibility has always brought me pleasure. Blending folk and gospel music, live radio drama, and old-fashioned storytelling centered in the fictional town of Lake Wobegon, Minnesota, Keillor practices an art lost to radio programming today.

My love of his radio show and books generated an interest in seeing the musical comedy A Prairie Home Companion, directed by the American auteur Robert Altman (Nashville, M*A*S*H, Gosford Park among many others). Keillor wrote the script at Altman's request about a businessman (Tommy Lee Jones) who buys Keillor's radio station with plans to turn the theater into a parking lot. The film is in real time, taking place over the course of the final performance of the "Companion" radio show, with most of the action taking place back stage as a mysterious interloper played by Virginia Madsen enters the WTL theater during the performance. Kevin Kline is at the height of his comic powers as Guy Noir, the detective and WTL security expert who is "hot" on Madsen's tail. Altman's film is intimately staged and shot, masterfully directed, genuinely moving at times and truly funny at others. The cast, which includes Meryl Streep, Woody Harrelson, Lily Tomlin, John C. Reilly and Lindsay Lohan, are perfect in their roles as performers on GK's radio show.

A Prairie Home Companion opens June 9.

SIFF Comes to Town

The 2006 Seattle International Film Festival kicked off yesterday and will showcase more than 270 feature films from all over the world at twelve venues in Seattle. I lament I have neither the time nor the funds to see them all, but I'll do what I can. During the next four weeks, I plan to attend many films -- a premiere or two, mainstream films, independent films, foreign films and a documentary.

Attending a film festival is an exciting and unique way of experiencing a movie. While attending a screening at a film festival one is among an audience who is there because they love movies. They appreciate the art form and the power of motion pictures to thrill us, move us, educate us, and bring us together.

It is also a thrill for the movie buff to connect with the people who make the films screened at the film festival -- the writers, directors and actors who bring stories and ideas to celluloid.

I have many fond memories of festivals past. One particularly memorable event was a forum with the late actor Richard Harris, who spoke about his craft and his career. It amused my wife and me that Harris smoked discreetly on stage whenever the lights were dimmed to show clips from his body of work. My wife's favorite movie is Camelot, and she was thrilled to meet Harris, who autographed the cover of her double-CD soundtrack of the film. It also amused us that he wore dark canvas sneakers with his tan suit.

The Tarrantino Tutorial several years ago was an interesting diversion as well. The writer/director/actor has not only a passion for but an an impressive collection of B-movie westerns and teen "juvenile deliquent" films from the 1950's, a few of which he shared with his class. The point of the tutorial was to illustrate the fact that many B-movies, which are no longer seen and are mostly forgotten, contained some superior filmmaking, and should remain an important part of American film history.

Last year I learned that Paul Reiser is shorter than he looks on TV.

Although I was in Chicago when the festival opened, I return to Seattle later today. Saturday is shaping up to be a full day of film-going.

Chicago

I love Chicago - what a great town!

I am staying this week on Ontario right off Michigan Avenue, where much of the action is, and when I arrived (after a three hour flight delay) I sought out a quaint spot for a bite. Some of the best restaurants in the world are here in this town, but there are just some types of restaurants that one needs a dining companion to truly enjoy.

Instead, I found an Irish pub that looked "local" enough for my taste (I try to avoid the chains when traveling -- why not partake of local color?) and thought I would give it a whirl. There's an Irish place in Seattle's Post Alley I enjoy lunching at. I like the Irish food, and am always pleased to be greeted by a hostess with an Irish brogue.

So I settled into my table at this little Irish pub and ordered the fish and chips. And although my meal was fine, the Irish color I was looking for was lacking somewhat due to the thick Hispanic accent of my waiter.

All in all my trip this week is going well. I look forward to getting home Friday night and seeing my family.

Fire Safety

My daughter and I were speaking with one of our local firefighters recently, at a safety demonstration that was part of a Healthy Kids Day sponsored by the YMCA.

Afterward, I asked her what she can do to prevent fires in the home. She replied with three safety tips:

- Don’t light candles
- Don’t let bad guys with fire into the house
- Don’t bring bombs into the house

I cannot argue her logic.

American Idol Sits Around

American Idol is a benefit to society (humanity?) because it "encourages people to sit around and watch TV together." That's what Today Show host Katie said to Idol's Paula Abdul on Friday morning. Paula was talking about how American Idol (a show I do not watch, by the way, though I will miss Elliott the underdog despite the fact that it was his time to go -- loosen up, Elliott!) has saved marriages and kept kids out of military school.

Is this television program really the elixir to cure society's ills? Perhaps I would have reacted more positively to the idea had Katie not used the term "sit around." Perhaps if the show were to encourage people to get out and get more exercise, or to encourage people to become more involved in their communities, or to encourage people to...well, do something besides sit around and watch TV?

I don't know about you, but with Katharine and Taylor down to the final show, I am overcome with the urge to sit around and watch TV together with someone. Doggone it, Katie!

A Gathering of Friends

I had the privilege of spending the evening with some old friends last Friday night in South Carolina. We enjoyed pizza, fellowship, and some old student movies.

It had been a long time since Rickwell, Carlos, Jelly, Frog and I were all together.*

Two friends who were not in attendance (and who have been out of touch) were Critter and Homer, pictured at left in a scene from Burglar Alarm.**

To echo the sentiments of those gathered there, it's comforting to know that friendships established many years ago have weathered time and distance, and reuniting after so many years is like picking things up after only so many days.

"A friend may well be reckoned the masterpiece of Nature." - Emerson

*My personal nicknames for these fine men are Larry, Dave, Jells and Fran, though it has been many years since the nickname Larry has been used. In fact, forget I mentioned the name "Larry." I no longer go that terrible place.

** Ditto Crap-Sack and H-Boy.

Flirting with Disaster

My daughter and I returned a short while ago from a week's vacation in South Carolina.

On the flight from Dulles my daughter kept singing, "We're goin' down, down, down into a burnin' ring of fire" with a Southern twang that is not her own. I have no idea where she learned the song; we have never listened to Johnny Cash at home.

Before long, the song had turned to, "We're goin' down, down, down in a burnin' ring of airplane" and I had to ask her to put a sock in it.

My wife picked us up from the airport and as I lounged on the sofa weary with jet lag, my daughter had asked my wife to help her with her writing.

My wife chose two words for my daughter to practice her penmanship on: Happy and Love.

"What word would you like to practice writing?" asked my wife.

"Corpse," replied my daughter, matter-of-factly.

I hope she's not working on my Father's Day card already.

Burglar Alarm

Twenty years after it was completed I remastered and re-edited a student film entitled The Burglar Alarm.

It was an interesting process for me to take work completed twenty years ago in high school and approach it fresh. It is also interesting that I found enough value in it to want to return to it so many years later.

The most important element in transforming a poorly edited student movie into something of a keepsake or memento was my good fortune at having my old collaborator Alan compose new music for the movie. I have been most pleased with the results.

Those of us who worked hard on the original as a class project will soon gather together to view the results.

Above: Co-Producers George and Steve are blacking out windows for day-for-night photography on The Burglar Alarm: December 30, 1985.

More What I am Watching

I enjoy watching movies and news more than anything else on television. Now that Arrested Development has been cancelled, there is nothing currently on network TV that I care anything about. (I unequivocally do not watch American Idol, though I thought Paris should have been axed two weeks ago, she was so annoying! And does Elliott stand a chance?)

Usually, when I stretch out in front of TV I flip hopelessly through the channels so rapidly that my wife is forced to leave the room in frustration.

(The exception is Good Eats on the Food Network. I stop clicking for that one. That nutty chef is from Georgia and and has the most interesting cooking show ever produced. But that one aside, there is not much on worth stopping my flipping for.)

How I miss Seinfeld and Frasier.

What I have become, well, addicted to, are reruns of Match Game on GSN. The game show ran on CBS during the 1970's.

What is it about that show that keeps me tuning in weekdays between 8 p.m. and 8:30 p.m. PDT whenever I am at home? (Or whenever American Idol isn't on, which I am not watching anyway.) Is it the show's wacky host, Gene Rayburn? The ever-cool, pre-Feud Richard Dawson? The flaming Charles Nelson Reilly, who is always cracking me up? And what about that nitwit Brett Somers? Who was she, anyway? I don't think I have ever seen her on anything except Match Game.

Is it because half the celebrity panel is three sheets to the wind and are often caught on camera wandering aimlessly around the set? You'd never see that on game shows today. Alex Trebec would saw their feet off.

No, I think it's the 70's hair and wardrobe that keeps me coming back to Match Game night after night after night. It just may inspire me to invest in a brown and orange plaid leisure suit.

My Daughter the Photographer

During our recent trip to the Seattle Space Needle I allowed my daughter to take seven or eight photographs of her choosing.
Above: I posed for this photograph on the exterior deck of the Needle.

Premium Essential Dress Pant, pleated, by Dockers, $70. Men's Dress Shirt with pointed collar by Bill Blass, $42. Cotton / Polyester / Nylon blend Pryor raincoat featuring a full-button front, covered placket and point collar by Ralph Lauren, $375.

From the Top of the Noodle

When my daughter was smaller she would refer to the Seattle Space Needle as the "Space Noodle." I thought about that a few weeks ago when a colleague of mine in another city said that he'd always wanted to get out to Seattle and see the the Space Pencil.

During the Winter my daughter began expressing an interest in my taking her to the top of the Needle, and I promised I would do so whenever it got warmer and clearer. The typical Seattle Winter day is overcast and rainy and not particularly conducive to viewing the horizon from 500 feet up. But the arrival of Spring Break -- and a little sunshine -- gave us the opportunity to plan our ascent.

The view of Seattle and Puget Sound from the top of the Space Needle is spectacular. It's particularly stunning on a clear day. I feel for those tourists who come to Seattle during the Rainy season only to find the views of the city and the sound marred by fog and rain.

The New Baby

My family welcomes this day young Lindsay Grace, born to my sister Kristi and her husband Robert.

I am an uncle today!

The baby weighed 10 pounds, 2 ounces.

I told my 5-year-old daughter, "I understand little Lindsay has your aunt's nose."

My daughter responded in disgust, "Why?!?"

"No," I said, "I mean, the baby's nose looks just like her mother's nose."

My daughter replied, with a candor endearing only in children, "It must be really big."