Andy Gavin's Blog, page 167
May 20, 2012
Game of Thrones – Episode 18
Title: Game of Thrones
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Watched: Episode 18 – May 20, 2012
Title: The Prince of Winterfell
Summary: A little rushed
ANY CHARACTER HERE
Last week’s episode ended with Brienne drawing her blade, but this begins at Winterfell with the titular Price of Winterfell, Theon, killing all the ravens to stop word of his treachery. His sister arrives and presses him to return home so as not to die. Somehow this scene felt stilted, her rapid shift from haughty to concerned a bit forced.
Then in the far north Ygritte and her men deliver Jon to the Lord of Bones and his plastic skull helmet. Qorin is there too, captive as well, Jon’s fault. Bones wants to gut him, but Ygritte repays her debt by convincing him not.
Robb walks across some pretty Irish countryside talking to his girlfriend the nurse. I still don’t love their chemistry, even though they talk about Ned. Then Robb learns of the Kingslayer’s escape. New viewers will undoubtedly be confused, because he escaped and was recaptured last week.
Some minor clarity (for those who haven’t read the books) is offered when Robb returns and confronts Cat. She tries to explain. Karstark is furious, but I wasn’t really feeling his acting. Robb arrests her.
Really, Cat sent Brienne off to haul Jaime back to Cersei and trade for the girls. And we see this now, but the show’s need for brevity has trimmed it to the bone. Still, Jaime is great fun teasing Brienne and it’s fun to watch him muscled around by this enormous girl.
Arya is doing table duty again when she learns that Tywin is about to ride and she is to be left behind with the Mountain. She runs off past some grisly hung men and finds Hot Pie and Gendry, but she’s looking for her pet assassin. Presumably she has finally decided to use her third death to rid the land of Tywin. In the book, this has a real feeling of urgency. Their efforts here to make Tywin more human dilute that.
Back to Jon. Qorin hints that Jon should try to infiltrate the wildlings and starts to taunt him. This extremely brief, and also likely to be lost on new veiwers, but it’s an important bit of info.
Tyrion and Bronn have an amusing chat and Vary’s shows up again. Oh, how I missed him. They discuss the difficult task of defending the city.
Sam and the Crows, still on the Fist of the First Men, are digging latrines and find an ancient cache of obsidian blades. What could those mean?
Arya finds Jaquen too late. But, always too clever for her own good, she forces him to help her escape by naming his own name. He reluctantly agrees.
Tyrion and Cersei are eating lamprey pie (again a nod to the books). Last weeks moment of fraternal love is long gone, for Cersei announces that she holds Shae and is holding her as ransom against Joff’s security. Ty plays it cool, even when she’s brought in and revealed to be Ros (good riddance).
Robb talks to Bolton to put pressure on the Bastard retaking Winterfell. Then his girl comes in. He’s stressed, and as usual doesn’t really play much of the king with her. Contrast him with the insufferable Joff! This time around their chemistry is much better as she tells a story of her brother’s near death. There seems to be a sibling theme going on in this episode because we have this story, Theon’s sister’s about him as a baby, and the rivalry between Ty and Cersei. Robb throws his Frey engagement to the wind and plays some serious doctor with the nurse.
Arya, Hot Pie, and Gendry sneak through the gate Jaquen has prepared. All the guards have been viciously murdered and propped up. Jaq has quite a talent.
Stannis and Davos sale toward King’s Landing. They talk of Davos’ rescue of Storm’s End. His whole Onion Knight story is being spooled out in tiny doses. I wonder if the non-readers will get it.
Joff is playing at being a proper soldier. One just loves to hate him, from his manner to his ridiculous girly man posturing. I can’t wait for… Anyway, Tyrion and Vary’s have another great talk. I do love V. Ty unveils his desire to stay hand (and alive) while V lets slip the threat of Dany and her dragons.
Speaking of, a brief scene where Jorah and Dany discuss what to do. He councils safety, she won’t leave her dragons.
In Winterfell, Maester Luwin sees Asha and tracks her down into the crypt to put our minds at ease.
Overall, this episode had some great scenes but felt a bit rushed and disjointed. So much is going on here that the writers had to trim aggressively to get it all in before next week’s Battle of Blackwater. They’ve done the best they can, but I wonder if noobs (non-readers) will really make perfect sense of it.
See my review of A Dance With Dragons.
If you liked this post, follow me at:
Check out my fantasy novel, The Darkening Dream
or all my Game of Thrones posts or
Season 1 reviews: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
Season 2 reviews: [11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17, 18]
May 19, 2012
Primer – Thinking Time Travel
Title: Primer
Director/Stars: (Director)
Genre: Time Travel
Watched: May 7, 2012
Summary: Brilliant and confusing
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This is very much a thinking man’s thriller. It’s a slightly Momento-esque time travel film supposedly filmed for a mere $7,000! I’m skeptical that it was actually that cheap, but it certainly was cheap. Even so, it rarely suffers for it.
The film is very short at 77 minutes and the first half elapses before we see any actual time travel. We follow a group of engineers speaking a nearly incomprehensible technobabble. Even as an ultimate techie (M.I.T. grad degree in EECS) I could not follow most of it — the writers did not intend us to — but it’s actually fairly reasonable. I had more problem with all the engineers wearing shirt and tie even during leisure hours. In any case, they accidentally invent a peculiar kind of time machine. It allows very limited (and fairly awkward) backward travel.
If you want to try and understand it, which isn’t easy, read this page.
The second half is a dizzying series of overlapping events as the two main protagonists loop and reloop across a few sleepless days. Understanding the exact sequence would undoubtedly require numerous viewings. The creator spares little effort to make such complex matters easily digestible.
As someone who has recently (last year) created his own time travel scheme, for my novel Untimed, I appreciate this complete, well thought out, and fully coherent scheme. This is old school hard sci-fi of sorts, and it’s refreshing in this era of marketing driven watered down drivel to have to puzzle something out.
May 17, 2012
Ink – At the Cutting Edge
Restaurant: Ink
Location: 8360 Melrose Ave. Ste 107. Los Angeles, CA 90069. (323) 651-5866
Date: May 5, 2012
Cuisine: ?Modern?
Rating: Very tasty, hard to pigeonhole
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I’ve wanted to go to chef Michael Voltaggio’s Ink since I first heard of it last fall. One glance at a few photos of the food told me it was the kind of place I like. But the midtown location and the difficulty of getting reviews — not to mention my busy dining schedule and broken arm — delayed maters considerably. But then Foodie Club member Ryan’s birthday rolled around…
The location is that of the former Hamusaku east (a decent high end sushi place I used to eat at all the time in Westwood). Even planning a week ahead, we had to take a 9:45pm reservation (on a Thursday) and wait nearly half an hour to sit.
The bar.
The cocktail menu. Like most modern LA joints Ink employs some serious mixology. Being a wine nut and pseudo-pro sommelier (I recently got my Italian specialization, working on Burgundy) I’m not really that knowledgeable about cocktails.
Still, I tried this: “Tequila. jalapeno, passion fruit, agave, lime.” It was good, spicy, and somewhat of an attack on the palette.
And this “Scotch. toasted coconut, ginger, lime, cardamon.”
The space is sleek, cold, and very loud. It even still has a sushi bar.
They had both a tasting and ala carte menu. We ordered from both, supplementing the tasting meal with… well pretty much a whole extra meal.
I brought this Brunello to from my cellar to start. “The 2004 Brunello di Montalcino is a fresh, vibrant offering bursting with dark cherries, violets, underbrush, minerals and sweet toasted oak on a medium-bodied frame. The wine reveals terrific balance in an energetic, focused style, with firm yet ripe tannins. The finish is long, clean and refreshing. This is a gorgeous effort from Loacker. Anticipated maturity: 2011-2019.”
“crab, charred avocado, whipped fish sauce, mushroom chicharron.” While these dishes were hard to split four ways, they sure did taste good. Like Red Medicine (which has a similar presentation), it’s a little hard to get all the flavors in the mouth at once. I liked the sweetness of the crab with the avocado and the fish sauce. The chicharron made me think a little too much of pork rinds.
“carrots, coconut ice, cardamom soil, pea tendril mojo.” This was a surprising and amazing dish. The vegies are what they are, but that white dusty stuff is basically nitro-frozen Tom Yum Goong! It melted in the mouth and really made all the produce spectacular.
“spaghetti, giant squid, squash, hazelnut pesto.” The noodles under there are actually made from squid. This was tasty too, with a bit of an uni type vibe without any uni. The pesto itself made the dish.
“beef tartare, hearts of palm, sea bean chimichurri, horseradish, rye.” I was a little disappointed in this dish. It sounded great, and there was nothing off, but the beef itself didn’t really pop the way it does with truly great steak tartare.
“foie gras, waffle, smoked maple, hot sauce.” But this was wonderful. I love foie in this kind of mouse-like texture profile. It went amazingly with the smoked maple.
Here is the tasting menu for tonight. This had to be done for the whole table and the portions, while individually smaller, resulted in considerably more per dish per person.
Boca is one of my new favorite wines, a total insider’s wine from Northern Piedmonte. 70% Nebbiolo, 20% Vespolina and 10% Uva Rara. It shimmers on the palate with layers of fruit, mineral, and herbs.
“east coast halibut, caesar tempura, melon, espelette.” The individual components of this dish were great, but the whole thing didn’t mesh fully. The tempura is actually balls of caesar dressing, and they were great. The melon was fantastic and good with the fish, but it overwhelmed and him the subtle halibut.
“morels, egg yolk gnocchi, mushroom hay, sorrel.” This was a great mushroom dish and paired perfectly with the Boca’s earthy tones. The gnocchi had an interesting texture, like circus peanuts.
“black bass, fava bean guacamole, puffed corn tortilla.” Mostly, this was just fish. Good fish, but not as exciting as some of the other dishes.
Glee star Matthew Morrison across the way.
“milk-fed veal, asparagus, curds and whey of buttermilk.” Pretty tasty.
“poutine, chickpea fries, yogurt curds, lamb neck gravy.” This was amazing, but ridiculously rich. Again with the circus peanut texture, but I was digging it.
“lamb shoulder, lamb’s quarters, tongue, vadouvan, yogurt.” Also very good, and very rich. We probably over ordered, but we still managed to kill it. The fact that the vegetables are tempura fried perhaps threw us over the edge.
“yuzu curd. rhubarb, matcha, jasmine, chamomile.” This was the weakest dessert, but it was still wonderful.
“apple, caramel, burnt wood ice cream.” This one was amazing. Unexpected interplay of textures and flavors.
“chocolate, ice cream, spiced tofu, sesame cake.” Also excellent. Notice the similarity
“greek yogurt, strawberry, japanese peach, coconut.” This also was great. Like strawberries and cream with a wonderful granite. Or maybe like a perfected Hawaiian shave ice?
Coffee made table-side.
Overall, Ink was pretty spectacular. Not every dish worked, but it’s very modern and experimental in a good way. The interplay of textures and flavors — not to mention the “dust and ball” style plating — reminds me of Red Medicine when it first opened (before the even more experimental Elfin period). Despite the very similar look, the flavors at Ink remain much more grounded in American modern and a sort of gastro-pub sensibility. Still, the textural experimentation alone puts it at a very high level. Roberto Cortez has a similar kind of modern too, although his preps are more sophisticated and his palette more subtle and balanced – but that’s beyond restaurant food.
With this kind of uniqueness, it’s no wonder Ink is doing well. It also seems Voltaggio mixes up the menu frequently, so I’ll be back soon — provided I can score a convenient reservation.
For more LA dining reviews click here.
May 16, 2012
New Last of Us Trailer
The Last of Us, Naughty Dog’s new game in development, has a cool new trailer. Check it out!
May 15, 2012
From Sketch to Final
Dave Phillips, the awesome artist I commissioned to illustrate my time travel novel, Untimed, has been quietly cranking away. A couple of weeks ago he finished the rough versions of all twenty-one images. I thought I’d use this post as an opportunity not only to show off his brilliant work, but to shed some light on the process. The images on the left are the roughs, and on the right the finals.
We use the roughs to establish composition and for me to check that all the details are consistent with the novel. I give him feedback and he then spends the time to polish the image up. Neither of these images required any major changes, but it’s fun to see both how well the rough makes an impression, and how much more detailed the final is.
To get a close up look at this, click one of the images and it will bring up a Smugmug lightbox. You can then use the arrow keys to flip back and forth between the images, including between the rough and the final to see the differences.
This particular image, released previously, shows the mysterious Tick-Tock gloating over a dying Ben Franklin — oops!
And this new one occurs 80 years later across the English channel. Ever wonder if you’d like yourself? Time travelers can find out first hand. Or, perhaps, meeting yourself will destroy the very fabric of the spacetime continuum!
May 13, 2012
Game of Thrones – Episode 17
Title: Game of Thrones
Genre: Historical Fantasy
Watched: Episode 17 – May 13, 2012
Title: A Man Without Honor
Summary: Just before the storm
ANY CHARACTER HERE
The title of the episode refers to the return of Jaime Lannister, who after a five episode absence, is back with a vengeance. This is the section of the story, in the middle end, where things move very rapidly. There are themes of trust and themes of captivity, but none jumped out at me as totally dominant.
We open with Theon waking to the missing boys. With the killing of Roderick he’s turned down a dark road and becoming increasingly comfortable with the shadows. Case in point, he beats the crap out of one of his men in frustration.
We briefly see Bran, Osha, Hodor and the wolves (yay wolves). They pass a farm and note that they used to play with the farmer boys. This tiny remark sets up something big, but it will probably be lost on the first time audience.
Better to be cruel than weak
Then we cut to John dragging his prisoner Ygritte across the frozen waste. These are my favorite moments of the episode. Broken into three sections, Ygritte gives John a delightful hard time. About his bone and stones. About his people. About freedom. She tempts him with sex. She tempts him with freedom. And it’s all good fun to watch. We even get one iteration of her signature line from the books, “You know nothing, John Snow.”
Then we’re treated to a gorgeous view of Harrenhal and some cruel work at the hands of the Mountain. The place is huge and pretty cool looking. These big vistas do a decent job of making season two look bigger than season one. Tywin shows his mean side in setting the Mountain loose. In the books, he comes off much more evil as he surounds himself with scum of the earth like Hoat, the Mountain, and Lorch. Here, he has more restraint. He and Arya have some more inappropriate conversation. It’s a little weird, but the chemistry between these two fantastic actors makes it totally worthwhile.
Speaking of chemistry, Sansa bumps into the hound. This brief scene serves to reinforce their peculiar relationship too. Nod to the SanSan crowd that it is.
And then Dany and Xaro have a bit of a convo where he tries to get her to trust him. I never understood Xaro’s angle in the books, and I don’t here either.
All you have to do is die!
Another big view of Robb’s camp. These Robb scenes, being as they don’t exist in the book, are lacking the intensity of emotion GRRM is so good at. Here we see a junior Lannister returning the message from Cersei. We also learn Robb is off for a couple of days, and determined to take the “hot nurse” with him. Perfunctory really.
Riffing on the prisoner situation, Theon is at the farm looking for Bran and Rickon, and not having a great time of it. When he interrogates the farmer he announces his new motto, “better to be cruel than weak.” So he has chosen, and if one were to put it in classic medieval terms, at the cost of his immortal soul.
Jorah and Danny talk about trust. Xaro’s observation and subsequent revelation to her that he’s in love with her has shifted the dynamics of their relationship. Can she trust him? He’s got such blue eyes!
In the third John and Ygritte installment she really lays on the seduction thick and crude. The actress does a fine job with the character too. She runs again, and John finds himself in a bit of a turn around. These last two episodes have really brought the John arc back into the forefront like they are in the books. His movement was feeling a bit anemic for a while.
Sansa dreams of death and wakes to her first period. Shae tries to help her conceal this, but the hound stops by. So on to have a chat with Queen Cersei. The queen really is much more sympathetic and complex in the show than the books. In the novels, she more than Joff instigates a lot of the negative goings on. Here she’s just lost control of her son. In her own cruel way, she gives Sansa sincere advice, like “love no one but your children.”
Then the return of Ser Jaime. He’s in proper form talking to his cousin (or third cousin or whatever). He even tells a Ser Barriston story, because we know we haven’t seen the last of that fine actor. Alas, it’ll take more than captivity alone to make a nice guy of Jaime. He’s not to be trusted. And don’t get in his way.
Jorah is on the hunt for the dragons and goes to visit the new character: prophetess, metal mask fashionista, and masseuse. Cut to Dany meeting with the council of thirteen. The warlock admits to taking the dragons, Xaro gives a speech, and lots of people die. This is all pretty diferent than in the book and I can’t say that I fully understood what happened. Was Xaro in league with the warlocks? Seemed perhaps so, but I don’t see why.
Enjoying your first hunt, old man?
Jaime is recaptured and Cat is there to stop the troops from killing him. Barely. Karstark is pissed. This is a little different than the books where I think the Karstark boy was killed by Jaime in one of the battles, but essentially similar. Jaime is in fine and classic form with his quips though.
Cersei and Tyrion share an interesting scene. She admits she doesn’t control Joff and he actually offers her some solace. For a moment it looks like they might hug, but not. Again, there is more complexity to their relationship here than in the books. Some things gain, some things lose.
Cat interrogates Jaime in his pen. He’s really amusing as he tries again to draw her anger to a murderous boil. If he’s going to die, he wants to die in control. His comments to Brienne are especially hilarious. “Is that actually a woman?” and “Where did you find that beast?”
Finally, Theon is back at castle black. And things are black indeed. Let’s just say I was reminded of that bit in Star Wars (“A New Hope”) where Luke finds out what happened to his aunt and uncle. Pretty grisly.
All in all, a great episode, if not as quite as good as the one before it. All my favorite characters were represented. I don’t miss Stannis and Davos. Sure we only get one Arya scene and one Tryion scene, but things are really moving. I swear, when plotting these books, GRRM must draw out each thread and say continually to himself: “make them do well, make them suffer, make them do well, make them suffer!”
See my review of A Dance With Dragons.
If you liked this post, follow me at:
Check out my fantasy novel, The Darkening Dream
or all my Game of Thrones posts or
Season 1 reviews: [1, 2, 3, 4, 5, 6, 7, 8, 9, 10]
Season 2 reviews: [11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 17]
Maybe picking his nose with the blade wasn't such a good idea!
May 12, 2012
What is Diablo 3?
Only three days to go until D3-day, and in case you don’t know what that means, this little video from Blizzard does a nice job summarizing the game:
See you in Sanctuary!
My detailed impressions of the closed beta can be found here too.
Umami Burger at UMAMIcatessen
Restaurant: Umamicatessen
Location: 852 S. Broadway, Los Angeles, CA 90014. 213-413-UMAMI (8626). @umamiburger
Date: April 20, 2012
Cuisine: Gastro Burger
Rating: Top Burgers
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UMAMIcatessen is a rather peculiar concept (albeit one that works). Grafting Umami Burger, The Cure (high end deli) and P!GG (pork oriented charcuterie) together under one roof. Not to mention E&O donuts!
The triple menu. Click here for PDF.
Truffle cheese fries. Oh my!
Onion rings and sweet potato fries. These alone would be damn good.
But we have five sauces. Homemade ketchup (this one actually is better than Heinz) and four others. Spicy, mustard, etc. All were great.
Smushed potatoes. Dutch yellow creamers, double fried with some kind of aioli.
The cure bagel. Lox, creme fraiche, onions etc. A very (very) slightly lighter high end version of the classic.
Manly burger. Beer-cheddar cheese, smoked-salt onion strings, bacon lardons. Wow!
Shrimp Burger with Yuzu-Kosho. Wild shrimp patty with japanese spices.
Ahi Tuna Burger. Hand chopped ahi tuna, crushed avocado, gingered pickles, wasabi flake.
The greenbird. Shelton farms turkey, crushed avocado, green cheese, butter lettuce, sprouts, green goddess.
And after a “light” meal like that, donuts!
Carrot cake, rum raisin, cream cheese. Pretty much like what it sounds like, a carrot cake donut!
Tres leches, cajeta, ceylon cinnamon. Yep, tasted like tres leches.
Beignets, chicory, cafe brulot, burnt sugar. The carmel alone was to die for!
The concept here of glomming together a bunch of different high end comfort food joints is kind of interesting. Basically it works as the flavors are unified by fat, plus the execution is good. It’s casual, fun, modern (not in an avant garde way). Basically jammed with flavor, so what’s to complain about?
May 10, 2012
Dark Shadows – The Revival
Title: Dark Shadows
Genre: Horror
Watched: May, 2012
Summary: Old school gothic
ANY CHARACTER HERE
The upcoming remake reminded me that I wanted to rewatch the 1991 Dark Shadows revival. I saw some of it at release, but being a lover of all things vampire, felt it my duty to revisit. Now, that vampire-philia doesn’t extend so far as to actually watch all 2,231 episodes of the 1966 original, particularly when it’s black and white and shot live!
Anyway, back to the 1991 version. It has a certain production cheese. I think the photos to the right make that pretty clear. But the writing is actually good. This can not always be said of the acting (David Collins, I’m thinking of you!). Still, some of the leads are solid. Victoria Winters is cute, and Barnabus has an old school vibe. He even says yes instead of “yes.” Imagine the classic horror movie vampire voice as the italics. He has all that classic vampire goodness: No reflection, sunlight challenged, a fear of crosses and stakes. Fog machines follow him everywhere and when he gets excited, out come the red contacts and the pop in fangs.
This show has everything: vampires, dopplegangers, witches, ghosts, curses, familiars with low IQs, vampire-curing doctors, even time travel! And all that in just twelve episodes. There is a classic sensibility to all of it. Barnabus arrives (recently freed from his coffin) and poses as a long lost relative. What a coincidence, he looks just like his namesake from 200 years ago! And, the family tudor is the spitting image of his long dead love. I love a good Bram Stoker homage. I enjoyed that the writers actually plotted a real story with solid characters and a bit of complexity. There might be hammy moments, but the characters remained true to themselves.
Plus, the last four episodes are all set in 1790, which is always cool.
May 8, 2012
Diablo III: Wrath
Blizzard has released Wrath, an animated short by directory Peter Chung (Aeon Flux) depicting an ancient battle between the angels of Sanctuary and Diablo. Pretty cool.
Strangely though, I am reminded a bit of Ralph Bakshi’s bizarre The Lord of the Rings.
