Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire

My catch up with the 2010 Oscar winners begins this week with Precious: Based on the Novel Push by Sapphire. My first question is why such a long name? My second question is how did Gabourey Sidibe not win for best actress? People who did win Oscars include Mo'Nique for Best Performance by an Actress in a Supporting Role and Geoffrey Fletcher for Best Writing, Screenplay Based on Material Previously Produced or Published.

Now back to Gabourey Sidibe, she plays Precious, a very overweight fourteen year-old girl who is about to have her second baby. Her mother lives on public assistance and is the worst stereotype of a welfare mother you could ever imagine. Her father is gone, but not before impregnating Precious twice. This causes her mother a lot of jealousy (not the appropriate emotion you say?) which she manifests as physical abuse towards Precious. Precious' only chance at a life is an alternative school, taught by the Ms. Rain, played to perfection by Paula Patton, and the friends she makes there.

This is a very dark and gritty movie, filled with early comic relief in the form of dream sequences of Precious imagining herself as a movie or pop star. This element is a welcome break that helps you ease into the ugliness that is Precious' life. Director Lee Daniels is no stranger to challenging movies, this is the same guy who brought us Monsters Ball. He is a very interesting person and you should search out his interview on the Daily Show with John Stewart, well worth a look. Finally as if you need another reason to see this movie, you have to check out Mariah Carey as Precious' social worker, almost makes you forget Glitter ever happened.

Basketball Round Up

The highlight of this week's basketball tournament was my sister Fiona, and her two boys, Duncan and Colin, sitting at half court for both Baylor games, so I got to see them on TV every time the teams ran the court. At one point I sent her a text and they all waved to us in Portland. I took a picture of them off the TV and posted it above.

The rest of the news was not as good, sadly, as Baylor lost to Duke in an exciting Elite Eight game on Sunday. This was the first time Baylor has been to the Elite Eight since the 1940's, back when there were only eight teams in the NCAA Tournament. It was a disappointment as I felt Duke got some favorable calls that helped them win the game, but still a great season for the Bears building on their NIT runner-up experience last year.

The most exciting game of the weekend was Xavier vs. Kansas State. It went to two overtimes with long, buzzer-beating three point shots tying up the game in regulation and in the first overtime. K-State went on to win, then was involved in the strangest game of the weekend. West Virgina missed all their two point shots in the first half, but made 10 three pointers to keep the game close. W Va got hot in the second half and put away a tired looking K-State team.

So, we have only one number one seed left, the hated Dukies. I am not sure I like W Va, Butler or Michigan State any better, so as far as I am concerned I am not pulling for anyone to win, only for Duke to loose.

One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest by Ken Kesey

Did you love the movie One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest? Me too, but one night when I was a youngster I was watching an interview with Ken Kesey and the interviewer asked him, how he liked the movie version of his book. He said the director had invited him to the set to see it, but he told him, "I would rather watch the Hell's Angels rape my daughter." So, I am guessing Kesey was not a fan. It's a shame because this is one of those cases where the movie does live up to the greatness of the book.

If you haven't read the book do yourself a favor and check it out. Kesey is one of the American greats and unfortunately left us way too early.

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Nemesis by Jo Nesbø

So I read two of these Jo Nesbø books back to back and I open the Oregonian on Sunday and find out that Norwegian crime novels are the new, in thing. Just like me to be trendy. Turns out there are eight Harry Hole detective novels and The Devil's Star, which originally came out in 2005, has just been released in the US. Coincidentally, Jo Nesbø will be reading from his new book on Thursday night at Powell's book store in Portland.

So back to Nemesis, I have to say I thought Nemesis was better that Redbreast. It was easier to read and follow, but just as thrilling. It still needed a pretty big closing explanation, but it came together better at the end. The story begins with a man walking into a bank and putting a gun to a cashier's head. He tells her to count to twenty-five. When he doesn't get his money in time, she is executed. Our hero (or anti-hero) detective Harry Hole is on the case. While Harry's girlfriend is away in Russia, an old flame gets in touch. He goes to dinner at her house and wakes up at home with no memory of the past evening. The same morning the girl is found shot dead in her bed. Harry begins to receive threatening e-mails. Is someone trying to frame him for this unexplained death? Meanwhile the bank robberies continue with no clues. Trying to solve two cases at once and continuing his battle with a racist, neo-Nazi cop keeps this story moving along at a fast clip.

If you are a fan of the detective genre, jump into the Norwegian pool and enjoy Jo Nesbø.

Big Star fades away

Have you ever heard of the band called Big Star? Unless you were alive in the 70's or really love the TV show That 70's Show chances are you have not. Sadly the man who started the band, Alex Chilton died last week at 59 of a heart attack. I'll be honest and say I didn't know of these guys when I was a kid. I had heard of Chilton, because he was the lead singer of the Box Tops and at 16 had a number one hit with "The Letter," believe me if you heard it you'd know it, it's a stable of oldies radio.

After he left the Box Tops, Chilton started Big Star which turned out to be the most ironic name for a band ever as they were critical darlings but never sold any records. Even more ironic, the first record was called #1 Record. Their second record, Radio City, was better than the fist and again got amazing reviews, but because of record company issues never got any distribution. After a third record they broke up and Chilton became a producer for such seminal punk bands as the Cramps.

Although Big Star was hugely influenced by the British Invasion bands like the Beatles and the Kinks, they ended up being very influential themselves. In the 1980s and 90s bands such as REM and The Replacements admitted to being hugely influenced by Big Star who were crowned "The Fathers of Power Pop" by Rolling Stone magazine. Rolling Stone also includes all three of their studio records in their 500 greatest records of all time. In 1998 their song "In the Streets" was re-recorded by Cheap Trick as the theme for That 70's Show (they changed some of the words).

Do yourself a favor and buy Big Star's first two records, they are bundled on one CD and remastered by Rino Records.

Basketball Round Up

From number one to one and done. The Longhorns season ended just like the second half of the season played out, the Horns could not make free throws to close out a close game. They ended up getting into the NCAA tournament as a number eight seed against Wake Forest. The game was very close for a while, with the Horns making a great play to force the game to overtime. Texas twice rallied from double-digit deficits, then blew an eight-point lead as they missed foul shots and Wake made a 17 footer with 1.3 seconds left to win the game. It is a shame that senior Damion James went out on a sour note, he is a great player and has been a huge asset at UT, we will miss him.

The rest of the tournament weekend was super exciting with some amazing finishes. The biggest shocker has to be that the number one overall seed Kansas is out in the second round with a loss to Northern Iowa (UNI), I don't think anyone saw that coming. That means Baylor and KState are the only (all powerful) Big 12 teams left in the tournament. Isn't it always that way? A conference gets all the hype, this year it was the Big 12 and the Big East, then the teams fade and a conference that was supposed to suck, i.e., the Pac 10, has teams overachieve as Washington did against Marquette and UNM.

So we have a number 11 seed, Washington, a number nine seed, UNI, a number 10 seed Saint Mary's (who has a student enrollment of 3900) and for the first time in 30 years Cornell, a number 12 seed, in the sweet 16. That is an amazing amount of upsets after a tame year last year. I love underdogs, unless they are playing my team, so I hope Saint Mary's luck does not continue against Baylor, but go Cornell.

The Shipping News by Annie Proulx

Annie Proulx is one of America's best living writers. I prefer her short stories, namely the three editions of Wyoming Stories which are a must read. These are amazing stories of stark living on the harsh plain that is the true American west. I remember reading a couple of these stories a night and each having it's own interesting twist, when all of a sudden there was one that went to a whole new level. This story was eventually turned into the successful movie Brokeback Mountain. It was a shocker and really stuck in your mind.

Quoyle, the main character in The Shipping News, is quite the opposite. He is a very forgettable sad sack, with a terrible life and a equally bad family. But the novel is much more than Quoyle's story: it is a moving evocation of a place and people buffeted by nature and change. Like Wyoming, Killick-Claw, a Newfoundland harbor town, is a harsh place. Unlike Brokeback Mountain, The Shipping News, did not make a great movie. It was too dark and slow for my taste, but the book is much more involving and will hopefully get you started on reading all Proulx's books.

The Smith Family visits

My brother Stephen, his wife Amy and their two boys Gregor (8) and Logan (6) came to visit us as part of their spring break trip. They started out in Vancouver, BC where they had a great time in Stanley Park and got to see the Olympic flame (the Paralympics are still on) and then made their way down to Seattle before taking the train down to see us in Portland. We had a great time, mixing hiking and eating. On Thursday we hiked up to the top of Mt. Tabor and then went to Sin Ju for some great sushi. As you can see from the first picture, Logan is a big fan of rice and he likes to wear it on his shirt almost as much as he likes to eat it.

On Friday, we went to see Multnomah Falls and hiked about half way up to the top before we had to head back. It was a great hike, but we promised the kids we would go see the movie The Diary of a Wimpy Kid. This is not a movie I would ordinarilly see, but Gregor had read all the books and was very excited about it. The illustrations for this book are great so it is hard to bring the characters to life, but it was well cast with goofy parents, a mean older brother and a very dorky best friend. As I was watching this movie, I realized that no person should review a kid's movie without having a kid present. You are much more acutely aware what is appropriate for the age group. I would say this movie was fun and very appropriate for the 6-12 age group.

After the movie we went over to the Oregon Humane Society to see Barbara and all the cute animals they had for adoption. We met a very loving chihuahua named Dr. Quinn Medicine Woman, who was promptly adopted that afternoon. We capped the evening off with a couple of pizzas at Nostrana. Unfortunately everyone left Saturday morning and we had a quite weekend.

Saving the World

We have officially launched the website that will save the world! I have talked a little before about the campaign we have been working on called Four Years. Go. and we now officially have the website and the video we made on the world wide web. You can go there and find out lots of different ways you can get involved in saving the world. As time goes on we hope to get more organizations involved and at the end of 2014, we hope to have millions of people working for change, whether it's the environment, human rights or social justice.

The Redbreast by Jo Nesbo

The Readbreast moves between the last days of WWII on the Eastern front and modern day Oslo, which at times can be a little confusing. Norwegian author Jo Nesbø spins a complex tale of murder, revenge and betrayal. Harry Hole, a recovering alcoholic detective starts the story tracking Sverre Olsen, a vicious neo-Nazi who escaped prosecution on a technicality. The pursuit of Olsen intertwines with the prevention of an assassination. The tricky part is that many of the characters were in WWII, as Norwegians fighting for Hitler on the Eastern front. The two story lines finally collide, when Hole has to stop a man hell-bent on carrying out the deadly plan he hatched half a century ago in the trenches. The book moves along at a great clip, and it can sometimes be hard to remember who is who as we alternate between 1944 and 1998. The tension builds nicely and the conclusion is very satisfying even though it takes quite a bit of explanation.

Food Inc.

Food Inc. is a great movie if you are new to the food wars. It sums up nicely the majority of the issues food advocates have with fast food, industrial farms and the food industry. If you have read a lot about this area, it is doubtful you will learn anything new, but that's not to take anything away from this film. I thought I knew a lot about how ridiculous some of the factory farm techniques were, but even I learned about a new low. When you feed cows corn they create e-coli in their bellies. Cows are supposed to eat grass. You can undo this problem very easily, it would seem, by feeding cows grass for the last 10 days before you slaughter them. This reduces e-coli by 80%. Seems like this would be any easy fix, but no, the large meat producers decide it is better to run the beef through an ammonia wash instead. These are the kinds of amazing things that will continue to astound and sadden you as you watch Food Inc.

Love in a Time of Cholera by Gabriel Garcia Marquez

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel Garcia Marquez is one of the most beautiful books ever written. It launched Marquez to fame and started a boom in Latin American writing. That said, my favorite Marquez book is Love in a Time of Cholera.

This is the story of Fermina Daza, a beautiful young woman who is being desperately pursued by Florentino Ariza, however, Fermina rejects his love as naive and decides to marry a prominent doctor. Over the years the doctor is a steadfast professional pursuing the cure of cholera. Unfortunately for Fermina, he is not as great a husband as he is a doctor, having at least two affairs during the marriage. As the years pass Florentino bides his time and ultimately in their old age, when the doctor passes, true love finally triumphs.

This may be one of the most beautiful love stories ever written. Marquez is an amazing writer, and I wish I could read Spanish, so I could read this book in it's original form. I am sure the romance language only makes it even more amazing.

Let's go bloody curling!

Last Friday afternoon, we went curling with our Nike Golf clients at the Lloyd Center Mall. My grandparents were both very good curlers back in Scotland, but I had never actually thrown a rock on ice before. It looks pretty easy when you watch it on the Olympics, but it is actually pretty hard. The rock moves a lot faster than you think and it is hard to gauge the right speed to get it to land in the house (the circles). The sweeping is also much more important than you think. You can easily make the rock slide an extra 10 feet or so if you sweep really hard, and sweeping hard can leave you out of breath and sweating.

The key is to get a good push out of the hack (the starting area) so you can slide along and release the rock. If you try to push it as you are sliding, you can easily fall or get it going too hard. It's also hard to tell if the rock is going too fast or too slow which dictates how hard you sweep.

The rules are pretty simple, you have four players per team. You get eight rocks per team. You alternate players with each person throwing two rocks. If you are not throwing, you sweep or captain. The captain shows you where to aim and how hard to throw. If he is good, he can also tell which way the rock is turning on the ice and get you to "curl" it in correctly. Basically, you are trying to get as many of your rocks in the house as possible. The team that has the rock closest to the middle wins a point. You can win a point for every rock you have closer to the middle than the other team. In the first end we played, we got four points because we had four rocks in the house and the other team had none. In the second game, we had three rocks in the house, but only one was closer to the middle than the other team so, we only got one point,

The last rule you have to remember is not to touch the rock when you are sweeping, this is called burning the rock, and takes it out of play. When you are sweeping you want to get right in front of the rock and brush as hard as possible with really short strokes as the rock only glides on a small surface. Another common beginner mistake, letting the rock get past you and trying to run after it. You will slip and fall. Also, don't try to pick up the rock, it weighs 42 pounds and is much easier to slide.

A Serious Man

I love the Coen Brothers. Raising Arizona, O Brother, Where art Thou?, Fargo, Barton Fink, No Country for Old Men, and The Big Lebowski are all in my list of must see films. So what do you do when things start to go south? You forgive them one time (for Burn After Reading) and you feel certain the next movie will be great. But what if it's not? What if that movie sucks? And what if the movie you think is terrible, gets nominated for best picture at the Academy Award? All I can think is that it was really hard to get to 10 nominees.

A Serious Man is the story of a man who has everything going wrong all at the same time. It is set in the late 60's in generic town on the US Canada border. Larry Gopnik (Michael Stuhlbarg) is a professor of physics about to get tenure, but nothing is going right for him. His wife wants a divorce, his daughter ignores him, his son is a pot head, his freeloading brother is sleeping on his couch and he is in serious debt. Very loosely based on the biblical character Job, Gopnik is besieged. The problem is that you don't care. He is not a likable character, nor is anyone else in this movie. It is a frustrating movie with a terrible ending. If you can tell me why people like this movie, I would love to hear it.

Coen Brothers, you are on notice. I won't be running out to the theater to see the next one.

Jesse rocks the Couv

Last Sunday, we went out to Bantam & Grouse cafe in Vancouver to see Jesse perform. He played for three hours (I can't believe he knows that many songs) and was great. It is a nice little cafe in Shorty's Nursery, so you can get lunch, buy some plants and hear some great music all in one place. Check him out each Sunday, from 12-3 PM.

2010 Academy Awards

Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are two of the funniest people on TV, but they stunk it up tonight. The opening of the Academy Awards was not very funny, or edgy, unless ignoring George Clooney is edgy. We got off to a good start with the awards as Christoph Waltz won best supporting actor for his role in Inglorious Basterds. This was one of the toughest categories this year and I think the best man won in a great line up. The next award for best animated film was a no brainer I guess as Up has won every award so far this year, and was even nominated for best film, but I still held out hope for Coraline. Oh well, it's still pretty cool to be animated (and nominated).

The John Hughes tribute was a interesting, what a mix of characters they had on stage. Molly Ringwald and Allie Sheedie have not aged well, but Matthew Broderick still looks like Feris Bueller. I guess I can say I grew up on Hughes films, as I knew everyone they showed.

The winner for best short film, Logorama looks like a very cool must see, but how can you ever see it? Where do these movies play?

Finally Jeff Bridges got the Academy Award he deserved for The Big Lebowski, even though Crazy Heart is an amazing film too. His singing was great and T Bone Burnett, was deserving of his Oscar for the original score. There is a great interview with Burnett on Fresh Air about making this film, well worth listening to. I can't say that Sandra Bullock was the best actress this year, compared to Gabourey Sidibe from Push, but there you go. If you stick around long enough, good things happen. I also am not sure The Hurt Locker is the best film this year, but it is kind of cool to see a movie that made $12 million beat out a movie that made $2 billion. In true Hollywood style, Katherine Bigalow became the first woman to win best director, a story that was too good for the Academy to pass up.

Overall a very disappointing show. I think the winners are all hugely deserving, but that was a lot of schlock we had to wade through to get to it.

All the Pretty Horses by Cormac McCarthy

It was a difficult decision which McCarthy book to choose for this list. I went back and forth between All the Pretty Horses and The Road. I choose All the Pretty Horses because it is one of the most beautiful, well written books I have ever read. It depicts the stark, hard cowboy life along the Texas Mexico boarder. It is a coming of age story and a love story. The main character John Grady is 17 when he leaves Texas with a friend and rides into Mexico, where they are quickly out of their depth. Grady gets caught up in a crime that he did mot instigate, and is brutally beaten in a Mexican prison. He learns a lot of difficult life lessons and has to grow up fast. Unfortunately for Grady, there are no easy answers and he is left a hardened man.

The Border Trilogy continues with Volume Two, The Crossing, and concludes with the third volume, Cities of the Plain.

Welcome to Hell!

Last year Wieden+Kennedy got the assignment to launch Dante's Inferno, a video game that EA did not seem to have high sales expectations for. Deciding that there are no small video game launches only small video games, the W+K team pulled out all the punches and turned this into one of the hottest selling games of the year. They started out with some amazing Internet videos and PR stunts, including sending body parts in a box to video game affectionados. The trailer is up on the official site, as well as some other cool game play, but you have to search around the web to find the really weird stuff. Of all the great work, the only weak link, was he TV spot we did for the Super Bowl. I know it reached a huge audience, but it ws the least in

To celebrate all this, W+K had a First Thursday art show at the agency to showcase the work. It was a great experience and it drew a big crowd. There were reporters, creative types and lots of goth gamers. It was very cool to see the agency celebrating this success.

The Winter Olympics

John Stewart jokingly called them the "bad Olympics" and I have to agree. The Winter Olympics pale in comparison to their summer compatriots. The opening ceremonies were way too PC, as Canada tried to represent all 500+ "first nations" tribes or Indians as we call them. Their dancing intro was a mess. What followed was some bad weather and a bunch of pretty boring events. The men's figure skating is now more of a costume show than a demonstration of skills. The luge event had to be revamped as someone died during a practice run. I always thought this looked like a dangerous sport, now we know it is deadly.

One of the few bright points was the gold medal hockey match (and to be clear I should say, the men's gold medal hockey match). Canada won an amazing game in overtime. It looked like Canada had it sewn up, but somehow the US scored with less than 30 seconds left in the third period to tie it up. Then in the overtime period, Sydney Crosby, the best hockey player of his generation, won it for Canada. Even though I was momentarily sad that the US lost, it was a great win for Canada on their home turf. I know they will hold it over us, but this is their sport and Crosby is so good they deserve it.

Before the closing ceremonies NBC broadcast two plus hours of a cross country skiing event; this was possibly the most boring sport I have ever seen on TV. I went to dinner and it was still on when I came home. The commentators kept trying to make it interesting by comparing it to the marathon, another boring TV sport. At least in the summer they cut away and show other stuff to keep the story going.

The good news is that it's over and the US won the only thing we really care about, the medal count.

Harry Carays Italian Steakhouse

I was in Chicago for a new business pitch and unfortunately we couldn't get downtown for a meal, so we had to look for something around the airport. Our driver recommended Harry Caray's Italian Steakhouse, in the Holiday Inn lobby. The restaurant is named for the late Hall of Fame baseball announcer, you know him as the "take me out to the ballgame..." guy. I have to say I was pretty worried when we pulled up to the Holiday Inn, but Harry Caray's was great. It's a great looking sports bar with good food. They have several beers on tap and you get home made potato chips when you roll in. There are lots of TVs to watch the games and the waiters are very friendly.

The menu is full of heavy Italian dishes. We had a large group and tried everything from the steaks to the pork chops to the salads to the best Chick Vesuvio in town, which I will say was pretty good. I am not sure what made it vesuvio, maybe it's the white wine sauce. They also had a great wedge salad with plenty of blue cheese dressing.

Over all I would have to say this was a very pleasant surprise. If you are stuck out in North Chicago or by the airport there are a lot of worse choices.

Harry Carays Italian Steakhouse

5700 South Cicero Avenue

Chicago, IL 60638

(773) 948-6300