St. Louis Eats and Drinks With Joe and Ann Pollack

Up In The Air

Apologies are in order: This review was written for posting on Dec. 11, the day the movie opened. Somewhere along the way, a glitch appeared in cyberspace and the review remained in the files. It's three weeks since the opening, but opinions remain intact.

 

Despite all the hoop-la and hi-de-ho that have surrounded it, "Up in the Air," which opens here today, is a good movie. But in my opinion, it is definitely not a great movie, despite the high praise it has received and all the Oscar buzz it seems to have created. Good entertainment, fine performances from George Clooney and Vera Farmiga, many laughs, but a lightweight in terms of serious drama or great comedy, and a story that runs out of gas before the end is reached.

 

And maybe its good humor, light-heartedness and laughs are a reason for its success, given the large number of depressing films that will surround us this holiday season and into the Academy Award race. "Precious," "The Messenger" and "The Hurt Locker," just to name a few, are excellent films, but their subject matter is painful, not entertaining. Perhaps in a scary economy and with high unemployment, "Up in the Air" provides the opportunity to look at someone worse off than we are, with the glee that replaces the horror when someone else takes the bullet we were afraid was aimed at us.

 

Clooney portrays Ryan Bingham, a creation of the modern corporate structure. Executives don't want to fire people, they want to hire people to fire people, and someone who lives for perks like first-class airline seats, upgraded hotel rooms and fancy rental cars is the perfect person to do the dirty work. Bingham boasts he's on the road more than 300 nights a year, and he wears his six figures' worth of frequent flier miles as if they were a security blanket.

 

And then he meets Farmiga, as Alex Goran, who has a similar successful job, a similar supercilious attitude and a similar sexual success rate, whether she's sending a loyal employee off to a rocking chair or bedding someone she considers her equal, like Bingham.

 

The interplay between Clooney and Farmiga is the high spot of the movie; she is as callous as he. They play off one another in admirable style, and to Clooney's credit, he stands back and is comfortable whenever she is the dominant character in a scene. And speaking of characters, Anna Kendrick is excellent as a fellow-firing line sharpshooter who becomes a threat to the whiz kid himself.

 

Jason Reitman directs admirably, but the screenplay that he and Sheldon Turner wrote, based on Walter Kirn's novel, flattens out toward the end, when Clooney and Farmiga attend a wedding of Clooney's younger sister, and it limps badly to the final credits.

 

A lot of it was shot in St. Louis, with scenes at Lambert Field, where there were so few passengers they didn't get in the way, and around town at sites like the Bevo Mill, the Hilton Hotel at the ballpark and others that bring cries of, "Look, it's. . . ."

 

A good movie; just not a great one.

 

"Up in the Air"  at multiple locations

-Joe

New York, 2009

There's nothing quite like New York during the holidays--especially if a visitor avoids a blizzard, as we did. And even in a blizzard, Joe is quick to point out, Manhattan building superintendents shovel sidewalks faster than you'd think. Still, there's serious slush; if you go during the winter, plan on waterproof boots. We like to be there in December, when the lights are gorgeous, and every time we visit, they are more dazzling. And this time, even for a former Brooklyn kid and his New York-loving wife, it seemed as though the natives' mood is lighter, more jocular, friendlier and altogether happier than we've ever seen it.

Not surprisingly, we ate. We ate near where we were staying, we ate in the Theater District, we rode the subway downtown and walked uptown, we took buses across town.

For the most part, we did quite well. A report:

In the midtown Theater District, next to Shubert Alley, is a recent outpost of Junior's, a venerable Brooklyn restaurant particularly known for its cheesecake. Their first branch was in the Grand Concourse of Grand Central Station, where we'd grabbed a quick bite several years ago and were, to put it politely, extremely disappointed. But circumstances this particular day called for Food Right Now, and there we were. Warm welcome, extremely efficient staff, and at 2 p.m. on a non-matinee day (matinee days are otherwise known as Wednesday and Saturday), the crowd was as much locals as it was tourists. Our advice is to treat this place as though it was a traditional New York delicatessen. Sure, there's barbecue and seafood, but we figure those are there as a courtesy to the unknowing visitor. When we go to a seafood restaurant in New Orleans, we don't order corned beef; there's no sense in going to this sort of restaurant and ordering ribs.

Why? Because one sip of the matzoh ball soup will convince anyone that this is a real New York experience. The soup itself is rich and flavorful and hot enough, the matzoh ball the perfect point between a floater and a sinker. An excellent version of the classic. A chopped liver sandwich on an onion roll came as two small rolls, almost slider size, with huge scoops of the chopped liver, moist rather than gluey, nicely oniony. For the half sandwich, offered on the menu with a bowl of soup, after much deliberation, we chose smoked tongue. Folks who go for lean meat should think about it as a delicatessen possibility, and Junior's version was excellent, moist and tender, thinly sliced and as lean as a tenderloin.

Yes, there are egg creams, the legendary drinks that contain neither egg nor cream. Chocolate syrup, preferably Fox's U-Bet brand, a splash of milk, and then seltzer, stirred to make something much like the liquid in a chocolate ice cream soda. And in an uncharacteristic fit of good behavior, our cheesecake was the sugar-free variety, but nevertheless wonderfully tasty. Many of the New York-style cheesecakes are very dense and dry, but not this guy. Creamy, and light without actually being fluffy, it satisfied.

You can do a great deal worse in this neighborhood.

Junior's

1515 Broadway (West 45th St.), New York

212-302-2000

www.juniorscheesecake.com

Breakfast, lunch and dinner daily

Credit cards: Yes

Smoking: No

Wheelchair access: Fair

Sandwiches and Entrees: $7-$23

 

Very much not a tourist-type place is Barney Greengrass, technically also a delicatessen, but nearly everyone comes here for smoked fish. If the almost ancient interior with its strange New Orleans wallpaper isn't fashionable, no one cares. (Careful viewers may recall seeing it in movies and several episodes of “Law & Order”) The crowds waiting outside on weekend mornings are clearly locals and former locals making a pilgrimage to the self-styled Sturgeon King, now past the century mark. We seldom visit New York without a breakfast-or-brunch stop here.

Warning: Servings are immense; an appetizer usually suffices unless you're planning on sharing. But on the other hand, the menu offers temptations for almost everyone. Running well into three figures are caviar presentations, but but there's also that strange item sometimes found on deli menus, small cans of tuna and salmon. We stay away from both those extremes. On this visit, we had only one kind of smoked fish, whitefish, the only smoked item to properly rival the house's legendary sturgeon. Some cream cheese, some onion, a few black olives, a bagel and a toasted Bialy alongside. A Bialy is a peculiarly New York bakery item, a little like a bagel, a little like an onion roll, not really either, named for Bialystok, a town in Poland where it originated. Whether it's the skill of the baker or the quality of the water (claimed by some), Bialys are not worth eating in the many American restaurants Joe has tried.

For the rest of the meal, we sampled a couple of new things, both of which were great. For those who like sushi restaurants' offerings of broiled mackerel or salmon jaws, head directly to the broiled jaws and "wings" of Nova Scotia salmon, rich and oily and impossible to eat with any delicacy at all. For lovers of big fish flavor, they're a joy. And after listening—okay, eavesdropping—on several folks while we waited our turn on the sidewalk outside the store, in the rain but under an awning that only leaked a litttle, we tried the Greengrass blintzes, The crepes were tender and fried to a crisp, packed full with parcels of sweetened white farmers' cheese, it was a fine contrast of tastes and textures, some of the best blintzes we've found in New York.

There's usually a family member behind the cash register, dealing with customers buying at the retail counter. The casually dressed employees deal with the weekend crowds better than the cops in Times Square on New Years' Eve.

Barney Greengrass

541 Amsterdam Ave. (West 86th St.)

212-724-4707

www.barneygreengrass.com

Breakfast, lunch and early dinner (closes 6 p.m.) Tues.-Sun.

Credit cards: Yes

Smoking: No

Wheelchair access: Poor

Sandwiches and Entrees:$5-$400

Another return visit was to the Neue Galerie's restaurants. The elegant Cafe Sabarsky spoke of a 45- minute wait, so we went downstairs to the Cafe Fledermaus, not nearly so handsome but with the same excellent menu. The goulash soup was named one of the city's 50 best by New York magazine last month, and we'll vouch for that. The elegant russet-colored dish is full of subtle, lovely flavors, with a note of real paprika and just a wee bit of caraway--exactly the thing for a cold day. Bratwurst with sauerkraut, roasted potatoes and mustard was fun, and so was the warm spiced wine. But it was the desserts and the coffee that really came up to the standard set by the gulaschsuppe, to give it its proper spelling. Real Viennese coffee-house style choices like an einspanner, a double espresso with whipped cream, are available, and the exquisite desserts, most of which arrive mit schlag, or with whipped cream, demand attention. We've tried several over the years, liked them all, including this visit's rehrucken, a chocolate almond cake in a special pan, along with the housemade orange jam.

You can read what we wrote about upstairs, along with some photos, here . And they still serve breakfast, a nicely eccentric touch; the menu is on the museum's website.

Cafe Fledermaus and Cafe Sabarsky

Neue Galerie

1048 Fifth Ave. (East 86th St.), New York

212-628-6200

 www.neuegalerie.com

Breakfast & Lunch Wed.-Mon, Dinner Thurs.-Sun.

Credit cards: Yes

Smoking: No

Wheelchair access: Fair to Good

Sandwiches and Entrees: $12-$28

Drifting toward the opposite end of the budget spectrum from Barney Greengrass, but equally casual is Nyonya. On the edge of Chinatown, which keeps creeping north into Little Italy, it's moved across the street but kept its large, relatively inexpensive cash-only menu, and its youngish clientele. The kitchen turns out dishes from Malaysia and its many influences, and there are almost too many options, especially for the adventurous eater. No reservations for a party of fewer than six, by the way, so there's the possibility of a wait.

Still, around 7 on a weeknight before Christmas, we were seated immediately. The new dining room is larger than it looks from the street and even veers toward elegance. While we've heard stories of service glonks (a glonk, of course, is larger than a glitch), our experience was speedy and pleasant. It was obvious that we were doing a lot of people-watching, and no one made us feel rushed.

We began with one of Nyonya's most popular appetizers, roti canai. Roti, a thin Indian bread described here as a crispy pancake, arrived with a dipping sauce of chicken curry, with far more full-flavored, tasty, slightly spicy sauce than chicken; using the roti to pick up chicken pieces was impossible until real utensils arrived. Our other appetizer was a baby oyster omelet, something Joe pounced on without any hesitation. Puffy and crisp on the outside, flavored with what we think were some garlic chives inside, the oysters were fresh, not canned, and came alongside some sweet chili sauce that was rather superfluous.

For a main course, a special that night was a seafood soup with a ruddy, thick liquid showing a considerable amount of fire—the server did ask about our heat tolerance—shrimp, mussels and scallops and a fried shrimp cake atop some noodles in mid-bowl. (Similar soups are available on the regular menu.) Nasi Lemak, a rice and curried chicken dish arrived in a small bowl atop a plate that held two other bowls of vegetables, one the chili anchovy promised on the menu, along with some onion, the other some mixed and very spicy vegetables. Also riding shotgun were a few slices of cucumber and half a boiled egg  and a generous serving of rice. While the chicken was nice, a good combo of sweet-hot-salty, it was the rice that blew us away. Perfectly cooked, yes, but wonderfully flavored with coconut, just a hint of cloves and screw pine or pandanus leaves. Absolutely addictive.

If you've ever wondered how much fresh coconuts are appreciated where they're a native fruit, dessert can be a whole coconut, carved up a little, cut in half and served with a spoon to dig out both the soft jelly-like flesh, and the firmer meat as well.

A couple of notes on the menu: Yes, it really is large, and has some startling items on it like “dried curry fish head” and “sting ray wrapped with banana leaf.” Other items, rather than giving details, merely add “Please ask server before you order!” Many of the choices in the vegetarian section are not actually minus animal protein, while chicken broth rice is described as meatless. Beef is listed in the poultry section, and proving that Malaysia really is a multicultural society, there are several pork entrees. Lots of seafood—we're hoping that next visit we can find something that approximates the chili crab we ate in Singapore.

Nyonya

199 Grand St., New York

212-334-3669

http://www.penangusa.com/location_nyonya_grand.html

Lunch and Dinner daily

Credit cards: No

Wheelchair access: Fair

Smoking: No

Entrees: $6-$18

And almost by accident, we ended up at another Malaysian restaurant, but a very different one, a few nights later. We'd eaten at Fatty Crab downtown when we were in New York a couple of winters back, and had been extremely impressed. Since then, the restaurant's success has led to a larger branch on the Upper West Side, which we discovered while strolling down Broadway. Happy memories flooded back and we changed plans. The uptown location makes a considerable effort to be cutting-edge hip, but happily, the food quality matched our memories. In addition, the uptown outpost, unlike its smaller downtown sibling, takes reservations.

The room is dark, and the music cranks up to rather annoying levels, but the young servers are knowledgeable and eager to help. The bar is serious about cocktails, and that menu deserves attention, too. Beer varieties are intriguing, too, there are 10 wines by the glass, and if that's not enough, watermelon juice and fresh coconut water are also served.

Jalan Alor chicken wings are named for a formerly raffish neighborhood of Kuala Lumpur that's now apparently a foodie paradise. Grilled with garlic, ginger, soy and sesame, they're sticky and delicious, hefty joints of succulent meat. The steamed buns are puffy little wraps with a pork filling laid atop them, a spicy sauce between bun and meat, and another one, with sweetness and more heat, into which they're dipped. Killer bites, absolutely killer. The green mango salad was nice, clean-tasting and fresh, a wonderful crunchy contrast to the other dishes. One of the Crab's signatures is the watermelon pickle and crispy pork, pickled red flesh of watermelon and fair-sized dice of pork belly cooked until crisp. The pickling is light and doesn't overwhelm the piggy flavors. Good, but not as tasty as we recall it being.

Still no desserts, although the chef's mom is a chocolatier and there's an offer of a delicious chocolate-chili-almond bar instead of the mochi rice candy square  that arrives with the check. (Mochi is free; chocolate bar is not.) It was interesting to note that despite the, uh, deeply contemporary feel of this place, it's surprisingly kid-friendly, even to the point of including a children's menu. Nice to see, and a pleasure to watch two young gents dining near us who obviously had been here before and were knocking back dumplings as if they'd been doing it since they cut their baby teeth.

Fatty Crab

2170 Broadway (West 77 th St.), New York

212-496-2722

 www.fattycrab.com

Lunch Mon.-Fri., Dinner Mon.-Sat., “Supper Sundays” 12 noon-10 p.m. (that's what the website says)

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Good

Smoking: No

Sandwiches and Entrees: $12-$25

 

This Week's Wine, December 28, 2009

End of another year?

Break out the bubbly to celebrate survival!

And how about something new and slightly different. . . . and inexpensive, too.

Our latest discovery is a sparkling wine whose French producers claim it precedes Champagne by more than a century. As we all know, in France the only wine that can be described as Champagne must come solely from the region in the northeast part of the country. Anything produced anywhere else must be labeled "sparkling wine." Producers from other nations are not bound by French law.

The newcomer for the upcoming New Year's Eve is called Blanquette de Limoux, by Saint-Hilaire, and it's a brisk, nicely fruity, light-hearted sparkler that tastes good and teaches lessons in history, geography and linguistics at the same time. It's priced at less than $15 a bottle, and is fine for toasting, or to accompany a meal.

We first tasted it at Monarch, where Matt McGuire, recommending it highly, was serving it by the glass. A few weeks later, we were at Overlook Farm in Clarksville, Mo., and chef Tim Grandinetti was pouring it as an aperitif.

The story of the wine is fascinating, even if it may have improved through the centuries by some judicious editing.

Limoux is a small community in the Languedoc-Roussillon district of Southwestern France, adjacent to the Pyrenees Mountains, which separate France from Spain. According to Beau Davis, a blogger at a site called basicjuice.com, Benedictine monks were making wine at their Limoux monastery in the early days of the 16th century, using the Mauzac grapes that they grew. They called it Blanquette de Limoux, with Limoux the site and Blanquette the Occitan word for white. Occitan? We'll get to that later.

Limoux, in the foothills of the Pyrenees, is cooler than many of its neighbors in southwestern France. The monks harvested and pressed the grapes, stored them in wooden casks. The wine began to ferment and the process stopped as the weather changed. In spring, warmer weather started the process again, and the carbon dioxide gas produced during the second fermentation, gradually and escaped, unnoticed, through the wood. In the 1530s, however, the monks began using glass bottles, from which the gas could not escape. And when a monk uncorked a bottle, he discovered that carbonation had arrived and what came out of the bottle was very different from what had gone in.

When Thomas Jefferson was ambassador to France, in the early 19th century, he stocked up on French wine, and reportedly liked it so much that it was the only sparkling wine in his cellar.

Today's Blanquette de Limoux must be 90 percent of the Mauzac grape, with Chardonnay or Chenin Blanc for the remainder. The sparkling wine I have shows a little Chardonnay in the finish. The wine is crisp, with a touch of apple in the aroma and on the palate, too. The bubble is small and even, and it has excellent flavor and it quite dry, though not as dry as some versions of Champagne.

I bought my Saint Hilaire Blanquette de Limoux at the Wine Merchant, but I'm certain that other wine shops will have it or can get it for you.

And that brings us to Occitan, the home language for Blanquette. Occitan is a form of Provencal, a dialect spoken in Limoux and other towns in Languedoc and a descendant of the vulgar, or common, Latin spoken by the Caesarean legions that occupied southwestern France for centuries. It also is close to the Catalan language spoken across the Pyrenees in southeastern Spain. Languedoc, the name of the region, comes from langue d'oc, which denoted a language using oc for yes, from the Latin hoc, in contrast to French, the langue d'oil, which used oil, or the modern oui, for yes. (This information is courtesy of Google.)

Anyway, a happy, prosperous and healthy New Year to everyone out there, and whether the history of language or of sparkling wine is important -- or even interesting -- we send all the very best from our house to your house.

-Joe and Ann

 

Nine

Movies are made to be a lot of things. They can be quiet, introspective, thoughtful stories that deal in relationships and philosophy, tense tales of murder and mystery, struggles over life and property on a wild frontier. One of the things they do best is to serve as a setting for a spectacle, big and splashy, full of color and excitement, sometimes rather messy but always bringing entertainment to the filmmaker's world, and to ours.

"Nine" is a great spectacle; I found it exciting, musically and choreographically delicious, filled with beautiful people in showing off their talent. It's a fascinating contrast with another of this holiday season's big movies, "Avatar," also a spectacle but with so much emphasis on "Look at me, I'm a spectacle!" that it's all about special effects and without any interest in such important elements as story or acting.

"Nine" is a cinematic version of the play of the same name; both pay tribute to a 1963 movie, "8 1/2," written by Federico Fellini and with Marcello Mastroianni as the libidinous genius, Guido Contini, surrounded by beautiful women like Claudia Cardinale and Anouk Aimee. Twenty years later, Maury Yeston and Arthur Kopit turned it into a Broadway musical with Raul Julia, Karen Akers, Anita Morris and Liliane Montevecchi. Twenty years after that, it was revived with a cast led by Antonio Banderas, Mary Stuart Masterson, Jane Krakowski and Chita Rivera. And now, another movie, directed and choreographed by Rob Marshall, with a screenplay by Michael Tolkin and Anthony Minghella.

Daniel Day-Lewis, a consummate actor with Oscars for "My Left Foot" and "There Will Be Blood," is the power-hungry Guido, his lusts different in target but not in intensity from those of the oil wildcatter, Daniel Plainview. Watching him in a very different role, realizing the range that he can show, is a fascinating experience.

He portrays a film director, with all the ego that goes with the territory, and he's surrounded by women. As in all the earlier versions, they are beautiful and love him deeply, but they want to take as well as give. Five of them have won Academy Awards, led by the ageless beauty (she's 75), Sophia Loren, who won in 1960, before most of the rest of the cast was born. She's his mother, with all the conflicts that role can bring. Other Oscar winners include Marion Cotillard, his long-suffering and most put-upon wife, Luisa; Penelope Cruz as his mistress, Carla. Nicole Kidman is a Nordic ice princess; and Judi Dench is his costume designer and confidant, with whom he shares all his problems. Other women in the mix are Kate Hudson as a reporter for Vogue trying to interview Guido, and Stacy Ferguson, better known as Fergie, as Saraghina, the leading prostitute in the town where he grew up.

Day-Lewis' interaction with this septet is well done; the actor almost inhabits a different character for each relationship, and the women are excellent, too, with Dench hitting a high spot with her song, "Folies Bergere."

Marshall's choreography is splendid, exciting, but his direction is often on the sloppy side, as if he thought that singing and dancing would be enough. Unfortunately, they aren't.

And yet, watching beauty and talent sing and dance is enough to make "Nine" an enjoyable experience.

At multiple locations.

-Joe

The Young Victoria

 Victoria, Princess of Kent, was born in 1819. She became Queen Victoria in 1837, married Albert three years later and gave her name not only to a roster of English royalty but also to a half-century, a style of living and many other things,

"The Young Victoria," a modest entertainment, stars Emily Blunt and Rupert Friend as Victoria and Albert, but true to its title, we see the wedding, but little afterward, and to be frank, Victoria was not the same person in later life. Blunt and Friend are quite good, and he shows his love for the woman who will be his superior throughout his life. He will be a guest in his own house for his entire life.

Victoria, a grand-daughter of King George III, was in the midst of royal intrigue from the time she knew the meaning of the word. Sir John Conway (an excellent Mark Strong) was a protector who helped prepare her, and Lord Melbourne (a wonderful Paul Bettany) was another key player, along with Jim Broadbent. Victoria's first cousin, King Leopold of Belgium (Thomas Kretschmann), was a key matchmaker for the German prince and the English queen, though it's obvious they were deeply in love. Miranda Richardson, as her mother, the Duchess of Kent, also is a delight in support.

But while we may know a little about the activities of Queen Victoria, the film, pleasantly written by Julian Fellowes and nicely directed by Jean-Marc Vallee, does't show enough about Victoria. Of course, most of what she did came after her ascent of the throne and the untimely death of Albert, but we need to know more about the Queen.

Opens today on multiple screens.

-Joe

Amigos Cantina

 

Kirkwood, with its nice old houses and a bustling downtown populated largely by locally owned businesses, is especially appealing at this time of year, when it feels like one of those New England suburbs that decorate the front of a Christmas card. One expects to see a parcel-loaded Barbara Stanwyck bump into S.Z. (Cuddles) Sakall and nearly take a tumble into a snow bank.

However, we'd hope that Barbara would have taken time to stop and catch her breath and a margarita at Amigos Cantina, and then have a nice lunch. We did just that recently, and were exceedingly happy with what we got. It will be worth further exploration to find out about how the Amigos handle things like crab cakes and the tamales advertised in the window. Service was affable and unrushed, and though lunch hour made the dining room increasingly busy, meals arrived with proper timing, led by excellent margaritas, made with top-shelf ingredients; even better, there was none of the icky artificial lime that flavored the green lollipops of our childhood.

 The Monday lunch special is a chile relleno, lightly battered and quickly fried. Gooey cheese, a relatively mild chile, and a little textural contrast from the batter: What else could you ask for on a gray day? The tomato rice that came alongside was fluffy rather than soggy, but took second place to the beans. There's a choice of black beans or pinto beans, which is nice, and made even better by the fact that the beans are not refried, just cooked gently until the natural juices thicken. The black beans were excellent, full of flavor, tender but not exploding. We generally prefer them to pintos, but in this case, the pintos won out, displaying a wonderful smokiness and a little heat, taking them far beyond most of their family.

 Tacos are offered in three styles, “Americana,” offering beef, pork or chicken in crispy or soft corn or soft (wheat) flour; “traditional Mexican,” providing a greater variety of fillings,including mild or spicy fish with Napa cabbage, fajita steak with sauteed onions and peppers, pork with roasted peppers and marinated chicken; or “taco puffs.” Unable to resist the name, we ordered them and received two flour shells that had been deep fried until they were as crisp as a sopapilla, and then topped with the same ingredients as the "Americana." We chose chicken and pork, which were accompanied by satisfactory guacamole, sour cream and a salsa verde that was nicely tart and tangy, with mild-to-medium level of spice. The chicken was shredded and lightly seasoned, properly moist but not outstanding, especially as compared to the pork, which was chopped into small chunks, tender, very juicy and just made for this dish --- which was, we admit, tricky to eat gracefully, as shatteringly crisp as the tortillas were. Still, a dribble of the salsa verde and all was forgiven.

Amigos Cantina

120 W. Jefferson Ave., Kirkwood

314-821-0877

www.amigoskirkwood.com

Lunch & Dinner daily

Credit cards: Yes

Wheelchair access: Fair

Smoking: No

Entrees: $9-$14 

 

St. Louis Critics Choices

 

There must be something about the end of the year that makes people -- grown-up people -- get into a list-making mode. Perhaps it's a behavior left over from childhood, when lists were made for Santa Claus. But people who write, whether for newspapers, the electronic media or the internet, are busy making lists. Political writers, sports writers, satirists, op-ed columnists, entertainment writers all do it.

As a general rule, I don't. When I was writing about film and theater for the Post-Dispatch, I resisted doing so. Most of the time, I didn't compile a 10-best list. When my boss won a battle of wills, I did. I'm not going to do it this year, but as a member of the St. Louis Film Critics, a group of 37 people who define themselves as such, I'm going to share our winners with a vast group of readers.

With one caveat. . . .

Our group voted "Up in the Air" as Best Picture. I didn't agree, voting for "Hurt Locker." But I wonder how many of our membership would have made the same choice if the George Clooney film had shot no scenes in St. Louis but had filmed them in Phoenix or Denver or Kansas City or Little Rock.

The other winners. I agreed with some selections, disagreed with some. But here they are:

Best Actor--George Clooney, "Up in the Air"

Best Actress--Carey Mulligan, "An Education"

Best Supporting Actor--Christoph Waltz, "Inglorious Basterds"

Best Supporting Actress--Mo'Nique, "Precious"

Best Director--Kathryn Bigelow, "The Hurt Locker"

Best Screenplay--Scott Neustadter anjd Michael H. Weber, "(500) Days of Summer"

Best Cinematography--Dion Beebe, "Nine"

Best Music--"Nine"

Best Visual Effects--"Avatar"

Best Foreign Language Film--"Red Cliff"

Best Documentary--"Capitalism: A Love Story"

Best Comedy--"The Hangover"

Best Animated Film--"Up"

Most Original, Innovative or Creative Film--"Avatar"

Favorite Scene--"Up," for its opening marriage montage.

And one more thing (or two, since I decided two were equally awful)--My nomination and vote for Worst Movie of the Year, "Avatar" and "2012"

And on to another year in darkened rooms.

-Joe

An O. Henry Christmas

 

William Sidney Porter, generally known as O. Henry before the candy bar was created, may have been this country's finest short-story writer. He wrote in the early days of the last century for dozens of magazines. Two of his best-known tales have been adapted, with music, and put together as "An O. Henry Christmas," in its final weekend at Avalon Theatre Company's Crestwood Court performance space.

The difficulty with the play (or plays), adapted by Peter Ekstrom, who added the music and lyrics, is that O. Henry's genius lay in his rare talent to tell a story and get out, usually with a charming twist. In trying to expand a short story into even half of a play, Ekstrom wraps the nugget of the story in so much extraneous matter and so many songs that the tiny gem of O. Henry's genius is lost.

"The Gift of the Magi," a loving, sentimental tale, serves as the first act, but with only two people and no chance to expand the action, Leah Berry, as Della, and Stephen Rich, as Jim, become extremely repetitious, especially with Ekstrom inserting nine songs and a reprise of one. The composer does it for comic effect in "Your Hair Is Gone!" but the comedy runs out of gas in a few minutes. Berry offers a pleasing voice and a nice sense of presence, but Rich is less vital.

"The Last Leaf," a tale of keeping hope alive and the power of positive thinking, involves Berry and Rich again, plus Jennifer M. Theby and Jerry Vogel. Ekstrom expands things, including a sub-plot, and Vogel is effective in an over-the-top portrayal of a gin-soaked German painter. Theby and Berry are artists starving in a Greenwich Village garret; Rich is a doctor who also serves as a narrator. He's more secure, and Vogel is always strong, but he'd be more effective with a little less gin. The relationship between the women is unclear, but neither is memorable. Larry Mabrey's direction seemed to slip out of focus from time to time; Kevin Kurth's musical direction was fine.

An Avalon Theatre Company production at Crestwood Court today and tomorrow.

-Joe

Avatar

 

We have only a fortnight before 2009 comes to an end, and it took us all this time for a truly execrable movie, the worst of the year, to hit local screens. But "Avatar" opens today as the latest piece of too-long, too-dull, too-violent claptrap to come from the imagination of James Cameron, and it wins by a wide margin. I had given worst-movie honors (or whatever they're called) to "2012," another end-of-civilization fiasco, but "Avatar" takes the cake, including platter and knife.

At 2 hours and 42 minutes, it's also about an hour too long, but Cameron never has been known to rein in his ego. He obviously believes that every frame of film he shoots is its own little masterpiece.

The story?

A team of American metallurgists and miners, working for a huge corporation and with the Army, Air Force and Marines all providing security, is on the planet Pandora where a marvelous metal called unobtanium (the movie's funniest line) can be mined for some military purpose. The planet is home to fierce, strange-looking, violent beasts and birds, each an artist's dream and, more likely, adapted from sketches made in grade school. There also are human types, simple, two-legged, yellow-eyed, funny looking creatures who worship trees and plants. Obviously they are standing in the way of the militarists and businessmen who run the American government and should be exterminated. They're in the same class as the lilies of the field who toil not, nor do they spin.

Enter Jake Sully (Sam Worthington), a Marine confined to a wheelchair filling in on the space voyage for his late twin brother. He's been promised new legs that work better as part of his pay. Because Pandora and Earth are not compatible, the Americans go into a box that looks like a coffin and after a few minutes, they pop up like pieces of toasted bread, ready to go into action and looking a lot like the Pandorans, a few of whom could be called Pandorables.

Of course Jake meets a female Pandorable, Neytiri (Zoe Saldana), who also happens to be the king's daughter and handy to have around when the natives get restless. And yes, Virginia, the natives and their animals get very restless as the military weenies, almost indestructible in their fancy garb, fly around in fancy helicopters under the leadership of Col. Miles Quaritch (Stephen Lang), the most militaristic military man since the days of Dr. Strangelove (Peter Sellers) and his associates Buck Turgidson (George C. Scott), Jack Ripper (Sterling Hayden), Bat Guano (Keenan Wynn) and King Kong (Slim Pickens). Lang is a total and complete caricature, and there's little inkling that Cameron has a sense of humor. There are occasional moments, however of what Cameron sees as thigh-slapping levity. Sigourney Weaver provides some as a scientist, but she adds little to the story. More interesting is Michelle Rodriguez, a helicopter pilot who likes to crack wise.

Jake soon realizes that his fellow Marines are interested only in turning Pandora into killing fields, and he also discovers that he rather likes Neytiri and her mother as we build to the final battle when super-modern, futuristic tanks and planes are partially done in by bows and arrows, proving that the Pandorans are farther advanced, militarily, than the Sioux of Sitting Bull.

"Avatar" is a mindless hymn to death and violence, though Cameron cuts back a little when he shifts gears into 3-D that doesn't scare anyone and is mostly a waste of time and effort. It's a truly awful motion picture, but Cameron knows that one way to become a star director is to follow the motto that "nothing succeeds like excess."

Opening today at multiple theaters.

-Joe

Flame and Citron

 Throughout history, conquered nations have fought back against their oppressors. Guerrilla fighters, operating in small groups, have used murder, arson and other tactics -- criminal in times of peace -- to disrupt and harass the occupying forces. The Danes, like the French, the Dutch and others, put as much pressure as possible on the German Army, and a tense, first-rate story about one group and two individuals, "Flame and Citron," opens here today.

Ole Christian Madsen, director and co-writer with Lars K. Anderson, makes good use of newsreel clips to set his stage as German troops occupy Copenhagen, their jack-booted pace thundering through the streets. But many resistance groups fought them for the entire period of the occupation. One of them was sparked by our title characters, the red-headed Flame (Thure Lindhardt) and the dour, sardonic Citron (Mads Mikkelsen), whose preferred tactic was face-to-face assassination when it came to wreaking havoc among the Nazis, who were led by Christian Berkel, excellent as the SS commander.

Flame has a girl friend, the gorgeous Ketty (Stine Stengade) and Citron has a loyal wife, Bodil, who cannot handle the strain of his job. Madsen is light on analysis, but he puts things out there for the viewer to judge on his own.

The action occurs in the spring and summer of 1944, when the Allies are beginning to assert their strength, but in a small occupied state, like Denmark, the Germans still wield considerable strength. Madsen builds his story well, with considerable tension and conflict along the way, and both Lindhardt and Mikkelsen contribute superior acting.

Opens today at the Tivoli.

-Joe