Burrata de Puglia
Last week we had a wonderful gastronomic adventure at Osteria Mozza in Los Angeles on Melrose Avenue (West Hollywood). We selected this restaurant on a friend’s recommendation (see Mia’s food blog, “Dubu Diaries”) and we definitely were not disappointed. We would place this restaurant in the top 20 we have been to around the world!
We started with three antipasti, after receiving a complementary amuse bouche (what is the equivalent in Italian?): delicious little spirals of mozzarella packed with basil leaves, sundried tomato and olives drizzled with...
“The Sessions”, “NoBody’s Perfect”, and “The Intouchables”: Twisted Bodies, Open Minds
Recently, we have seen a series of engaging movies portraying handicapped people without pity. These three deal with body image in the nearly unexplored territory of the disabled: “The Sessions”, “NoBody’s Perfect” and “The Intouchables”. All three are surprisingly gentle yet fearless journeys into the human needs of sexuality and respect.
“The Sessions”, nominated for multiple Academy Awards, reveals the often unacknowledged and ignored subject of human sexuality for the disabled. Based upon a true story, the severely handicapped Mark...
“The Following” Redux–Not Going There Again
In February I reviewed and recommended “The Following”, a Fox television drama series starring Kevin Bacon and James Purefoy. There have been a total of nine episodes so far, but this past week’s episode has made me recant my earlier review. How disappointed I am in this series!
The story is focused on two main characters: an FBI agent, Ryan Hardy (Kevin Bacon) and a brutal serial killer Joe Carroll (James Purefoy) who has a cult following of wannabe killers, mostly young outliers trying to find a place to belong. But the last episode has overstepped the boundaries for...
“Silver Linings Playbook”–Behind Every Cloud
The best comedies go for truths, not laughs. And, although “Silver Linings Playbook” is billed as a comedy, it is more a romance between two young adults with bipolar disorder whose families and friends have to deal with the turmoil that mental illness creates.
David O. Russell, the director of this blockbuster multiple Academy Award winner, wrote the screenplay partly as an acknowledgement of his son’s bipolar disorder and as a message about this form of mental illness. Russell has delivered two sympathetic characters to raise our awareness. In this way, “Silver Linings...
“Parade’s End”–An Historian’s Downton Abbey?”
The five-part BBC/HBO miniseries “Parade’s End” premiered on HBO last week (February 26) and is also available on video-on-demand. The playwright Tom Stoppard has adapted Ford Madox Ford’s monumental 900 page, four-novel series “Parade’s End” for television: the intellectual’s Edwardian-era alternative to “Downton Abbey.” Both series take place in the same time period, beginning with the decade before the First World War. But the view of the British class system, the end of the Empire, and the attitude towards the war could not be more...
“Water Marks”–What Lies Beneath the Surface
“Water Marks”, the current exhibition at Pacific Grove Art Center (PGAC), features approximately 50 Monterey Bay area printmakers who have created etchings, woodcuts, screenprints, monotypes and mixed media prints focusing on the theme of water surrounding our beautiful Monterey peninsula. The Monterey Peninsula College (MPC) Printmakers is an association of artists who are passionate about printmaking in all its variety of forms and techniques.
This exhibit is analogous to a “watermark” in that the artwork requires more than a casual viewing. Printmaking can be...