From DC to Florida - A hippie odyssey :)

Hello DC Blogworld!!

The Kleiner and I have taken off on an epic winter road trip....... we are going by way of Richmond, Savannah and Palm Coast to/from Miami via Charleston back to DC. 

We will offer MANY reviews from this trip - highlights of which inlcude singalong 'Its A Wonderful Life' at the historic Richmond Byrd Theater, the High Tides and Snack Jack in Flagler Beach, Florida, Clary's in Savannah, the Golden Lion of Flagler Beach, mayhaps even a review of Palm Coast's own European Village (or better, the Palm Coast Linear Park that leads through the glades to the village....) in due time.

For now, we're ensconced in North Florida, which actually offers many many awesome restaurants, cafes (Flagler Beach Coffee Beanery?) and nature spots (sitting on the beach @ at Daytona Beach).....

On Wednesday, we are off to M-I-A-M-I!! (and this is where you say, wait, they have not explained the reasoning for calling it a hippie odyssey, for now it looks like an extremely long road trip)......... to catch PHISH on NYE ;)

An Education

An Education (Scherfig, 2009) - ***1/2

From an era when candy from strangers was readily accepted.

Direct, breezly, and possessed of a remarkable economy of movement and speech, An Education, based on Lynn Barber's same-titled memoir, can easily deceive a viewer into thinking it’s a simple film. But far from it; this latest entry into the English-speaking West’s growing obsession with the tail of the post-WWII era, picking the scabs of repression and enforced order that would soon erupt into cultural and economic fissures that continue to hiss and steam (Mad Men, Revolutionary Road, A Serious Man, to name just a handful), is a dense and difficult fable that, like A Serious Man, portrays a lot of events that, on the surface, leave very little actually changed. But like A Serious Man’s oncoming storm, what we’re seeing is the last desperate attempts to preserve a social order that is collapsing under its own weight.

Behold, man's greatest Erector set.

Jenny (Carey Mulligan, fantastic) is a cello-playing spiretly young middle-class English student who loves to share her fluency and feels stifled by her father’s monomaniacal desire for her to attend Oxford; when charming older Jew David (Peter Saarsgard, ibid) leverages a ride home into what is at first a sweet seduction, Jenny leaps at the opportunity to be treated like a woman. That the relationship won’t end happily isn’t a surprise; what is surprising is how little is made of Jenny’s virginity, and how easily her father (Alfred Molina) acquiesces to an alternate route to securing his daughter stability and wealth, treating his daughter less like a precious flower to protect than an investment property to leverage.


Fine, but I want that reliever with the funky delivery and two players to be named later.

As Brendon Bouzard insightfully notes, An Education achieves the lamentably rare feat of “incorporat[ing] an incredible amount of stylistic goo-gaws, but…in service of the narrative.” With fascinating near-cameos from Emma Thompson as the curiously vile headmistress and Olivia Williams refracting her role from Rushmore, the film is most remarkable at its inability to avoid judgment or punishment, either in plot or style. The real question the film asks is in its very last line of voice-over, one that knifes its seemingly unearned conclusion, and one that asks just what a person’s soul is worth when society considers the rest of them a commodity.

Maintenance & MSG

Hi, everybody, it's the Kleiner. This is just notice of a few things:

1. I'm back! Whoo! Expect a big run of pent-up reviews, starting with Mary & Max directly below.
2. On the sidebar, you'll notice that we've begun compilation of all our reviews. We hope that once it's really up-and-running it will represent a full index of all the things on which we have opined. Cool!
3. Here's something I saw this morning at 5th & I NW walking to the metro that I thought was funny:

Yum!

Mary & Max

Mary & Max (Elliot, 2009) - ***

If the long, hard, and often fruitless struggle to make even the faintest meaningful connection with another human being doesn’t sound like the basis for an adorable claymation film, you merely lack Adam Elliot’s vivid, sometimes wild, imagination. Elliot, an Australian animator best known for the Oscar-winning short Harvie Krumpet (2004), does some pretty amazing stuff with Mary & Max, an uneven but ultimately rewarding telling of the allegedly-true story of a bizarre pen-pal relationship between a lonely Australian girl and an Aspie from New York.

Billy Idol, eat your heart out.

Mary Daisy Dinkle (Toni Collette) and Max Jerry Horowitz (Philip Seymour Hoffman) are friendless; Mary for the more conventional reasons of being awkward, pudgy, and oddly-birthmarked; Max because, to paraphrase the omnipresent narrator (Barry Humphries, dry in the classically British manner), he has trouble negotiating an unstructured and undesignated world. Reaching each other through serendipity and connecting instantly through chocolate, the Noblets, and a mutual intutition that each can relieve the other’s lonliness, a lifelong friendship begins.

New York, I love you, but you don't fit into my exceedingly limited way of engaging the world around me.

Elliot tales his tale with a surplus of gusto – a suburban Australia drenched in earth tones and filled with big-eyed animals and deeply-weird humanity stands in stark contrast to a grey-on-grey Manhattan bursting with noise and nearly-visible odors. The characters are brilliantly distinctive, the animation painstaking, and the story compelling. But the film is not without its flaws, some grievous – it’s mostly told as a recitation, almost entirely blanketed by voice-over from either the narrators or letters exchanged between the protagonists. It occasionally drones, and leaves you begging for these characters to actually interact, or even act, without feeling dictated to. And while the music is often used exceedingly well – especially Penguin Café Orchestra’s “Perpetuum Mobile,” – when it’s not, most notably in a scene near the conclusion set to Pink Martini’s version of “Que Sera,” it threatens to throw us out of the film altogether.

In spite of its flaws and limitations, Mary & Max is well-worth seeing, especially at a breezy 80 minutes. It’s mostly compelling, always inventive, and crafted with delicacy, care, and a weird but ineffable love for its creations. Veering between adorable and wicked with manic abandon, Mary & Max is an unusual, unique, but ultimately rewarding film.


Seen at the AFI Silver as part of the Washington Jewish Film Festival.

Watch the trailer:

The Passenger - The Joy of the Unknown

The Kleiner and I had been craving extra-decent cocktails for a couple weeks now and after not actually finding them in New York (the West Village, our destination to bar hop has apparently gentrified into a land where plain rail drinks like cranberry and vodka seem to be the choices), decided to skip right to the top and try out the new 'The Passenger' bar a few blocks away from the Sixth and I synagogue on 7th Street about a block south of the Mt. Vernon Square metro station.

The row of shops by the metro has long had many empty store fronts - so - the Passenger is a welcome sight on this row that should be filled with businesses.  The bar itself has a dark ambiance, almost like a warehouse, with only a few booth like tables and a long bar.  It is dim, and the side wall is lined with evening photography that plays with light and design. There were a variety of patrons ranging from couples, to groups of friends, to people reading books and working on their laptops at the bar.

The food menu is short, you have your choice of a few different paninis or hot dogs (more to come) and some interesting bar muchies like salted spanish almonds.  As we were arriving just after work, the Kleiner had a panini with roasted vegetables including asparagus and mushrooms with route 11 salt and vinegar chips and I had a 'slaw dog', meaning beef hot dog with coleslaw and bbq sauce and sweet potato chips.  A simple dinner, but a very savory and tasty one to my surprise!

Now, what you are probably (or should be waiting for), the cocktails!  They do not have a cocktail list, rather you tell the waiter or waitress or bartender (ess?) what kind of base liqour you'd like and an idea of how you'd like it to go, e.g. spicy, nutty, lemony, bitter or sweet and they whip you up a cocktail.  I had a almond/vanilla spice flavored vodka drink, a spiced rum drink [almost tasted like curry] while the Kleiner had a whiskey based drink (heavy on the whiskey) and a suberp lemon martini (strong, without a strong alcohol taste and a clean yummy lemon finish.  All of the cocktails were $8 which we thought was a great price point.  The wine list has been described elsewhere as diverse and the beer list had a quirky selection too - but - given out cocktail cravings we didn't pay much attention.  Next time perhaps??

**note -- it was not so crowded at 6.30 on Monday night, but some reviews I've seen mention that it can get crowded already!  Congrats!

Angelica Kitchen - Delicious, Creative, Vegan Fare in the East Village

The Kleiner and I, in search of a delicious and unique vegetarian meal, visited the Angelica Kitchen in Manhattan's East Village for dinner last Wednesday before Thanksgiving.   The Angelica Kitchen didn't call itself 'Vegan' officially, however, the menu was completely devoid of any product derived from an animal.  Washington, DC does not seem to have too many exclusively vegetarian restaurants, the main ones that I know about are Vegetate (which to our dismay is closing and looking for a new space) and Soul right by Howard University.  There are a lot of vegetarian options in the cities restaurants, but not straight up pick anything you want on the menu vegetarian joints.  In fact, I liked it so much that I invited them to open one in DC, but, I'm not sure they want to trek so far south -- a shame!

The atmosphere of the Angelica Kitchen was perfect in my eyes - softly lit, orangey, little wooden private tables and large windows looking at the city.  On this night friends and couples could be found chatting intimately and enjoying heaping plates of freshly prepared veggies.

The Angelica Kitchen featured a very comprehensive menu with lots of unique options of different vegetable fritters, tofu formulations, pastes made of curried cashews, dragon bowls and veggie filled sushi.  We opted to try the curried cashew paste with raw vegetables that left us with a punchy, spicy taste in our mouths.  I had a dish with roasted red squash, green salad with mustardy dressing and balsamic marinated tofu with mushroom ragout. YUM!  Hows that for creative vegan?  The Kleiner had a vegetarian Rueben that could be described not as a fake Rueben but what a rueben would be if was not meant to be composed of corned beef.  We skipped desert preparing for Thanksgiving day, but the menu had a variety of vegan deserts that tempted us greatly. 

To note, it is Bring Your Own Bottle - so grab one if you want to imbibe and enjoy the creative fare!  

Electronic Fairy Princess Imogen Heap at the Historic Sixth and I Synagogue

The Kleiner and I just saw Imogen Heap play at the historical Sixth and I synagogue on Monday evening immediately upon returning from their long hiatus playing on and around Long Island for Thanksgiving.

Aside from the nightmarish traffic (in the future, will only take the Pennsylvania Amish Country adventure route to New York), the trip was fantastic and included a visit to the Angelica Kitchen (a delicious East Village vegan restaurant), Bryant Park and its Christmas Market (oh, the beautiful ice rink and double oh, for the modernized European market complete with chocolate of the Israeli Max Brenner chocolate shop served by 'the bald man' [or one of the owners] himself, lots of pizza and the Sweet Lilly spa.  We also saw 'An Education' which may or may not be reviewed later by the Kleiner.

First of all, concerts at Sixth and I are great, as we have discovered.  The space is gorgeous - there is a beautiful sephardi painted dome and mezzanine and main temple seating.  Everyone piles into the synagogue benches and those who want to get really close to the artist press themselves against the 'bima.'  Imogen Heap herself, is a magical fairy princess of electronic music.  She started the evening by personally introducing her openers (and members of her 'band).  Each time she came out, her hair became wilder and wilder until it was one big frizz mess piled on her head and secured with a few different bows.  She wore a short satin skirt - almost like a tutu and white ballet flats.

I absolutely love her music and her joint project Frou Frou, so I was extremely excited for this show and even more excited that it was at Sixth and I.  It is amazing to see how she puts together the music live.  Her set included numerous computers, synthesizers, microphones and toys that she uses to generate the sounds that get sequenced into her music.  Some of the insturments truly were just her voice make a few chirps or heavy breathing.  Her openers, who also comprised most of her 'band' also do the same thing, bringing even more computers and mics to the stage.  Truly amazing.

The set was heavy on her newest album, Ellipse and inlcuded a few much loved favorites such as 'Just for Now' and 'Hide and Seek' from Speak for Yourself.  Other songs played were 'Bad Body Double' which was a lot better live than on the album - the upbeat bits include almost hip hoppishly strong beats which generate great energy, an audience favorite, Swoon, Last Train Home, Aha! (which almost had hints of Klezmer) and Litte Bird. During Aha!, she brought up a local cellist who competed via her website to add the cello live. The last encore,the heart breaking - 'The Moment I Said It,' was chilling, near to the point of tears.

Overall, the show was fantastic, but, one aspect was confusing.  She seemed to play many slow songs, despite the fact that her discography includes so many fantastic upbeat songs that fill a space so well.  I can imagine they are extremely difficult to build up the sounds for now that I can see the complicated rig needed to generate the richer songs, but, the pay-off for the audience is worth it.  On the other hand, most of the lyrics to her songs are not only sad, but emotionally jarring, bringing you with her on emotional highs of falling in love and the lowest lows watching yourself lose your spouse, or the way 'clothes feel like second hand throwaways' when your ex falls in love with someone new' or the pain and confusion of watching your parents divorce.  Perhaps a live show that only includes the upbeat songs would be a dishonest representation of the artist.... 



I would 100% see Imogen Heap again, but hope the next time will be at the Black Cat or another venue where the audience can dance ;)