Director Gus Van Sant has taken a break from his often inaccessible forays into (almost) experimental film to make Milk, a very typical Hollywood biopic about Harvey Milk, the nation’s first openly gay man to win major elected office and then assassinated shortly thereafter. I don’t use ‘typical’ pejoratively, rather as an observation of how Van Sant’s film follows most of the conventions of the genre and as a contrast to his other recent work. Van Sant also directed Good Will Hunting – a formulaic Hollywood film that I love.
What makes Milk a great film is how Van Sant’s and screenwriter Dustin Lance Black’s treatment of the subject matter is so understated. They don’t build Milk up as a messiah – a martyr to the cause of gay rights – instead focusing on him as a man who sees a need for changes in San Francisco and chooses to take action. The soundtrack of period pop music and the skilled editing of Elliot Graham bring a fresh energy to the genre. The production design by Bill Groom and cinematography by Harris Savides give the film an appropriate period looking, using lots of drab earth tones rather than the bright colors often associated with the 70s. Read more »
Scene: Ben Thomas (played with unending weepiness by Will Smith), despondent, in close-up makes a 911 call to report his own impending suicide.
Cut to: Ben swimming in the blue Pacific. His voiceover, in pressing sadness, informs us, “In seven days God created the world. And in seven seconds I shattered mine.” Yet I recall God created the world in six days and rested on the seventh. And what about those seven seconds? No explanation is ever offered.
Cut to: Ben making a phone call to the customer service center of a mail-order meat company. The employee handling his call is Ezra Turner (Woody Harrelson), a blind man without an angry bone in his body, as evidenced by his unwillingness to strike back when Ben released a tirade of insults over the phone. This will prove to be Ben’s test of Ezra to discover if he is worthy. Worthy of what is the mystery that unravels over the course of 118 difficult minutes. Read more »
A rare photo of Clint Eastwood not scowling.
The last few years have brought Clint Eastwood a great deal of critical success as a director. He’s recently had a four film streak beginning with
Mystic River in 2003 that have brought three Best Picture Oscar nods, including a winner in
Million Dollar Baby, and renewed praise for the aging movie star. This year Eastwood has given us another two films, each of which has the scent of awards season contenders, but ultimately fail to deliver on the promise of greatness that we may have unfairly come to expect from him.
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We have a special guest reviewer today for 10 Cane Rum. Rachel Godfrey has sat beside me tasting all the other alcohols reviewed for AmericanMadness and since she is a die-hard mojito drinker, I figured she would be the go to person for a review of 10 Cane Rum.
RG:
I enjoy good food, but as my husband will tell you that when left to my own devices, I can feed myself for an entire weekend with a jar of peanut butter and whatever I find in the pantry. (If need be, I will nuke a hotdog or two for a better balanced meal.)
I’m pretty much the same way about alcohol. College years where I happily drank whatever was handed to me because it was free still have a lingering effect. Now that I am paying for drinks, I at least have a preference—mojitos have become my summer go-to drink, despite the fact that I always get a scowl from the bartender because of the extra work involved. But when he would ask while muddling away if I had a brand preference for my rum, I generally shrugged and said whatever. In my mind, outside of my closet, brand names mean very little.
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That seemed like an obvious way to go with titling the post since we’re talking about a revolution: Revolution Tea that is… Okay, I know, that was bad, I’ll try and cut down on the cheese factor. Moving right along.
This isn’t my first time writing about tea. I am, what I would consider, a pretty big tea fan. Sitting at my desk at work I go through about 4 cups of tea a day. You might think it is my body craving caffeine that I could get from one or two cups of coffee, but for one I don’t drink coffee; never have, I just think it is bitter. And another point, a lot of the tea I drink is either low in caffeine or herbal, without caffeine. In fact, for the longest time I avoided black teas. Like coffee I thought they were just too bitter and didn’t really have enough flavor to back up all the bitterness.
During the past week and a half I have been trying out some new teas I discovered. Revolution Tea is a small tea company (well, in comparison to say Lipton or Celestial Seasonings at least) located in Arizona. They are producing full-leaf tea in high quality infuser bags instead of your typical ground-up tea in a paper bags. Their packaging is all simple and clean, with a modern feel and design. They have your typical boxes with the tea stored inside a plastic box inside to keep out moisture, travel tins with 6 tea bags, tea tins for larger bags (for brewing pots of tea) and single serving packages; small cardboard boxes with their unique infuser tea bag inside.
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