Sideways, by Rex Pickett

Sideways by Rex Pickett

My rating: 4 of 5 stars


Excellent buddy novel on which the film was based. An easy, fun read that makes you just want to jump in the car and go on a wine-tasting roadtrip.



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Lionel Richie @ Acer Arena (Tue, March 22)

I may not fit the target demographic very well, but I very much enjoyed this show. Richie gave a consummate performance, belting out all the hits and working the crowd with an easy going familiarity that showed he's been this for a long time. I particularly appreciated some of the funkier numbers from his days with The Commodores. The big guns, "Dancing On The Ceiling" and "All Night Long" came out right at the end, and during the latter he let Guy Sebastian (who had provided the enthusiastic but basically pretty limited opening act) onstage to share singing duties and attempt to imitate his dancing moves.

This was my first show at Acer Arena in Sydney's Homebush Olympic Park. I have to say I was very impressed with the ease of getting to and from the venue, and with the layout of the stadium itself. Sadly, this is probably the first time I can remember having such a feeling about an aspect of Sydney infrastructure...

For Whom The Bell Tolls, by Ernest Hemingway

For Whom the Bell Tolls by Ernest Hemingway

My rating: 3 of 5 stars


you can see why it's considered a classic, but i found the 500 or so pages of Hemingway's dour, spartan prose to be a little tough going.



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Ken Burns' Unforgivable Blackness: The Rise and Fall of Jack Johnson (2004)

Watched this the other week in preparation for the Jack DeJohnette show. It was another lengthy Burns effort, in much the same vein as the "Jazz" series. Indeed, so similar was the feel (same narrator, some of the same "talking heads", similar themes of race in early 20th century America -- even a Jazzy soundtrack by Wynton Marsalis), that it would have taken a while to realize it wasn't another episode of the Jazz series.

Jack DeJohnette: Tribute to Jack Johnson @ Sydney Opera House (March 6, 2011)

Caught this interesting show at the Opera House last Sunday. The fairly novel premise was to screen the 1970 documentary film "Jack Johnson" with a jazz band playing a live soundtrack in the spirit of the original soundtrack by Miles Davis (which was released as the album "A Tribute To Jack Johnson"). Sort of a tribute to both Jack and Miles.

The band featured a line-up of top-notch jazz musicians, led by veteran jazz drummer Jack DeJohnette -- who played with Davis back in the day. On guitar duties was jazz/funk/fusion monster David "The Fuze" Fiuczynski playing his signature "Fuzeblaster" 12/7-string double neck guitar.

It was an energetic, enjoyable show: the band grooved and every musician seemed totally on top of his game. The documentary, in black & white and heavily dated in every sense of the word, may otherwise have been fairly tedious, but it was given a new lease of life by the live music. After the documentary ended, the band came out for an encore consisting of a lengthy jazz-fusion workout which ended proceedings with a flourish.

There was little in the way of dialog from the musicians, and thankfully we were spared any of the tedious self-indulgent MCing that has accompanied previous shows I've attended at the SHO. Slightly surprisiingly, the only explicit reference to Miles was when his face was projected from the screen during the encore.

Barbarians at the Gate (1993)

No, don't adjust your browsers/inboxes: this is not an erroneous double posting! This time I refer to the HBO telemovie based on the book which I recently read.

As you'd expect from a movie which wasn't even aspiring to a cinematic release, the cast is not quite A-list: we have James Garner hamming it up as affable the affable RJR Nabisco Ross Johnson, Jonathon Pryce (whom you might remember as the IRA leader from Ronin -- "oh we'll get the case, won't we Gregor") as private equity maven Henry Kravis, and a bunch of other faces to which I can't put a name to but whom I have seen in countless (usually minor) roles over the years. Hilariously, a young Dean Norris (later to become Hank Schrader from Breaking Bad) puts in a brief appearance as a hapless RJR lab rat working on the doomed Premier smokeless cigarette project.

I won't sugar coat this one: it's every bit the slow, mediocre, by-the-numbers telemovie you'd expect it to be. Don't watch it unless (a) you've just read the book and are curious, (b) you can't/don't like to read and want a synopsised version of the story, or (c) you're a hopeless insomniac and have reached the stage where you feel that desperate times call for desperate measures.