CapeCodToday Blog Chowder

Woods Hole Film Festival

The Woods Hole Film Festival (http://www.woodsholefilmfestival.org/)  is starting today, and while I will go and see some movies to review, I have already seen two of them last year at - well, another film festival that I've already written about perhaps too much.  But, if you'd like to take a ride to Falmouth I can recommend them both.

TOP OF THE WORLD (today at 8:30 pm and Monday, Aug. 1 at 7 pm) is a plotless piece of stunning cinamatography.  The Himalayan Mountains are beautiful, the Tibetan monks are gregarious and interesting, and the piece is a good film in the travelogue genre.  Three Stars, mainly for the images.

If you only see one film, PLAGUES AND PLEASURES ON THE SALTON SEA is your best bet.  The sniffy write-up by the Woods Hole folks doesn't do the fim justice.  California's Salton Sea was created when a 1905 engineering accident sent millions of gallons of river water into a salty desert, and the Salton 'Sea' became a premiere retirement destination in the 1950's, and some luxury homes and fast boats are still there.  It is threatened byLos Angeles' frenzied demand for fresh water, and the lake dwellers plead in vain that their beautiful village not be sacrificed.   The filmmakers go all around the Bombay Beach area, from the retirees who sunk their last nickel into the homes, to the trailer dwellers, to the artists, to the kids growing up in a dwindling area.  It has a lot to say to Cape Cod - while our sea may not be drying up, our opportunites for young people are, and the movie is an excellent cautionary tale.  Four Stars

So, maybe I'll see you at Woods Hole!

The mating sounds of dinosaurs

Former Cape Cod Times siblings sold again

The Lawrence, MA Eagle-Tribune and its group of North Shore dailies and weeklies  were sold yesterday to an Alabama media giant for an undisclosed amount.  The Eagle-Tribune wasn't so reticent in 2002 when it disclosed its $70 million purchase of the Salem News, the Gloucester Daily Times, and the Daily News of Newburyport from the Ottaway Newspaper division of Dow Jones & Co., owners of our own local daily newspaper.

As the Boston Globe reported today:

"Ending more than a century of family ownership, Eagle-Tribune Publishing Co., whose newspapers serve 55 communities in northeastern Massachusetts and southern New Hampshire, will sell the chain to a company backed by an Alabama pension fund."

The sale would mark the passing of another family-owned Massachusetts newspaper company as the industry faces intense challenges from sluggish advertising revenue and declining circulation.

The Alabama company, Community Newspaper Holdings Inc., (Ediror's note; not to be confused with our own Community Newspaper Co. which operates several Cape Cod weeklies and which is owned by The Boston Herald) went on a buying spree shortly after its 1997 launch, though this is its first foray into New England." 

 The Eagle-Tribune sale ends over a century of ownership in the same local family and marks simply another chapter in the implosion of the newspaper industry.  In the last 15 years, several family-controlled Massachusetts newspapers have changed hands, including the Enterprise in Brockton, the  Patriot Ledger in Quincy, MPG Communications in Plymouth, and the Boston Globe, which was purchased by The New York Times Co.

While our own daily is also a part of one of America's largest media giants, the Dow Jones Co., its prospects to remain as independent as it is today probably rely on its continued very high profitability of well over 30%, far better than its parent.  From a financial standpoint it would make more sense for Ottaway Newspapers to sell Dow Jones than vice versa.

But you should pay little attention to the media babble surrounding these newspaper conglomerations - it's just the mating sounds of dinosaurs.  

Is Anyone Safe Anywhere?

Which is more lethal? Mad Cows? Flu-ridden birds? Mercuriated (my own word) fish? Biting spiders? Venomous snakes? Lions and tigers and bears (oh my), or PEOPLE?

Are WE the most dangerous creatures on earth? I have to admit that lately I'm overwhelmed by thoughts of genetically altered "prion-ized" (my word too) beef ....caused by feeding cows to other cows....along with my regular, normal, everyday, run of the mill fears of, "Out of Control Terrorism" and pandemic diseases. I think we really need to get a handle on some things...before we go from merely dangerous to completely extinct! The above things actually rely on, and work off each other: Lack of food can cause war and disease; Disease can affect food and people and cause war; War can cause food shortages which can cause disease, etc., etc., etc.

And whether AT war, or preparing for it, we are always trying out the guns. Old guns... New guns. ..shooting...bombing. Practice makes perfect. And it will always take a toll... So, it is no surprise that, once more, the chemical EDB has been found in the cranberry bogs along the Coonamessett River, right here on the Cape.

Once again (as in the 1990’s), Ocean Spray will not be buying their cranberries from that area. Never mind the economic effects on the growers, but think about the harmful effects this will have on fish and wildlife (and always, ultimately us). The source of the EDB chemical plume? The Massachusetts Military Reservation in Sandwich, who used this EDB beginning in the 1950’s and 60’s in their artillery practice and bombings (which used to shake my house here in Rapp City every weekend until the mid 90’s when the base was finally ordered to stop).

Geez...just look at poor Noman's Island (off the coast of Martha’s Vineyard). It has been uninhabitable by humans for so long, that most people do not even know it is there anymore. Only ghosts and migrating birds call it home now. However, on a much brighter note for humanity, here are some good things:  

The Coonamessett Inn in Falmouth will be hosting a “Star Studded” evening of entertainment, Monday Night Aug. 1st. The event is a fundraiser for the Audible Local  Ledger, a local cable TV show with volunteers who read the daily newspaper to the sight impaired.

This wonderful night will start with piano music and cocktails from 5:30-6:30, followed by Big Band music and professional guest performers and singers from all over the Cape and Islands from 7:30 until.... Call the Inn (508) 548-2300 on 331 Gifford St. and Jones Road, Falouth for more information. Also bravo to the people from the 13th annual Housing With Love Walk, who trekked over sixty miles from P’town to Woods Hole, raising $20,000 for the homeless.

Now this is humanity at its best! Okay, now before I take my leave this week, let me offer a little something to chew on: Are you aware that South Carolina is entertaining the idea of once more seceding from the Union? This is true! It seems some scary people in their state legislature are proposing the secession so that the state can follow Christian Law (instead of United States law). Well folks... about all I can think to say about that is: “OY VEY.”

The bad news is no news

Your News Junky Fix? The bean counters are watering your booze

Although the effect on Cape Cod's media isn't obvious to the casual observer, the "bottom-lining" which is running rampant in America's news organizations is noticed by those here to peek behind the curtain. With each passing press run there is less locally written news in America's newspapers and more "filler" from national wire services, mostly the same news we all heard or read the day before on CNN or the internet.

The region's preeminent media writer, Mark Jurkowitz, on right, who appears regularly on the WGBH Friday program "Best The Press", and who recently moved to Boston Phoenix after years at The Globe, writes knowingly about the problem for anyone keeping up with this blog here.

As Mark points out this week with several quotable examples, the "bean counters" are rapidly destroying America's national press in its insane quest for 30% and more profits.

It's now been ten days since CC Times Editor Cliff Schechtman announced his departure, and there is still no replacement named.

At the same time the Business Page Editor Ethan Zindler has decamped for Washington DC, the fourth or fifth reporter to leave in the last six months.   WB

How can people swim in that thing?

The other night the S/O and I did a bit of beachcombing over at Mayflower Beach in Dennis.  The tide was waaaaaaaaaaaay out and there were lots of people frolicking about.   Most seemed like out-of-towners an easy deduction made from tender dulcet New Jersey tones, among others.   It was nice to see families having fun.  A spirited game of wiffle ball in which a sand rake served as third base.  A family portrait by a sand castle which involved a fervent discussion over whether the structure was a sand castle or a sand sculpture.   Did I mention they were all wearing family reunion t-shirts? Even the newborn. 

There was also swimming and skim-boarding and what not.  I begrudgingly took off my sneakers and socks and we headed towards the ocean's edge.  See, I'm not much of a beach person.  Or a sun person for that matter. The beach at night is nice--especially during a full moon.  We were at Mayflower right before the sunset, which would have been brilliant had it not hidden behind a bank of thick, dark clouds.  

So to the ocean's edge.  The water was chilly at first touch, but as we waded through it (only calf-high we were still in shorts and jeans), it became more comfortable.  I was searching for a shell as a nice memento of the quiet, relaxing evening.   Instead, I happened upon a hermit crab that scared the be-jesus out of me.  All claws groping for fresh pale meat.  Eww.  Now, I'm sure you can see, I am not outdoorsy.  I don't like the bugs and dirt and everything else that creeps and crawls out there.  I grew up on a lake and as a kid, my brother and I would walk along the shore overturning large rocks in search of crayfish.  As a kid, it was something to do--we didn't have the cable channels we have now.  And I didn't like those crayfish any better.

 As we ventured along, I spotted more hermit crabs  which made me jumpy.  As I glared at one I noticed a tiny, near-invisible creature fly past the crab.  It looked like a little itty-bitty lobster.  Great, more claws.  Ick.  I was out of that water in a heart beat.  Okay, I was still in one piece, but, really, ick. 

I decided to  look up hermit crabs in the Audubon book.  As I flipped through the photos it got me thinking.  What other creepy, slimy, fangy things are in that ocean.  It's not the sharks I worry it about, it's all the prehistoric looking, egg-laying, slimy things that may or may not bump into me if I ever decided to take a full-fledged plunge.

 How can people swim in that thing?  I'm sticking to the pool.

Score: Barnstable Fat Cats, 14, Hyannis Plain Folk, 1.

Private appraisals last year had the 125-acre links at $8.7 million, and the 109-acre BARLACO water company property at $9.2 million. Evidently councilors weren’t listening last July when the golf club's attorney orated it was they who approached the town to see if it had an interest in buying the property, because John Klimm’s story to state investigators was the deal was a “taking”.

His NO-BID lease/purchase and sale contract, executed one month prior to Council action, would violate the state’s Uniform Procurement Act, had it been characterized anything other than eminent domain.

The fat-cat golf club owners got $9.75 million in cash, and will retain all golf revenues until January 1, 2007, prospectively banking a $4 million profit by not incurring debt, property tax, liability, major maintenance, etc. costs.

Hyannis water users got $1 million to offset $40 million principal, interest, and capital improvement debt for their Cummaquid parcel.

Box score, Barnstable Fat Cats, 14, Hyannis Plain Folk, 1.

Dickens novel of societal resurrection and transformation better chronicles events in 21st Century Barnstable, than Victorian France, and John Klimm's malfeasance may have eluded the Inspector General, but not the electorate.

As to the Anonymous comment the links was one of the best things ever done, he is probably one of the 600 members of the town's other golf course, who get to play unlimited golf each year at the bargain rate of $600, and is now a simultaneous member of TWO GOLF CLUBS at the single price.

Only in Barnstable are the best interests of 34,000 registered voters be deemed a minority to 600 others. Come join our fight for Open Government.

The Artful Table Serves Ambrosia

We've dined at the Artful Table three times this year, and we're torn between recommending this hidden jewel of a restaurant and just keeping it a secret.

It's more than just a restaurant. Located on Route 6A at the Kingsway development in Yarmouthport, it is one of the few truly fine dining experiences on Cape Cod.

The Artful Table has survived a couple of owners since it opened at this location 3 years ago. Then, the founders of the Artful Hand in Truro, opened a trendier version of the original in the clubhouse of the Kingsway Golf Club. This year the Table is run by chef Bob Hickey and his wife, very hands on, and it shows.

Originally envisioned as the dining option of the member community of mostly retired couples, the Table today relies on the general public to dine there too. It has however, not been successful in attracting many outsiders to venture in. Their loss, our gain.

Food
On our most recent visit we tried the seafood again. The salmon was grilled to perfection. Its natural flavor was seared in and cooked through. The diced cucumber accompanying it was a curious choice but went well with the asian rice. All together, this good food is good for you too. Any dietician or cardiologist would approve.

We also tried the baked scallops. A favorite of locals for a hunderd years, they got this dish right with just the right amount of butter and cracker topping to please even the most skeptical scallop lover. The green beans that came with, were fresh and crisp, and the rice again worked well.

The clam chowder with native clams was succulent as an appetizer. On other occassions we sampled the coconut battered fried shrimp, awesome, and chinese potstickers, wicked good.

Also on previous visits we ordered the roasted chicken, baked scrod, sirloin steak, and pasta. All were prepared well, served hot and in good portions.

Dessert this time was a real treat, homemade grapenut custard, and handmade tiramissou. Both were extraordinary, like eating ambrosia with a spoon, in giant helpings.

Wine & Cocktails
The Table has a very interesting selection of "martini" concoctions. But no gin here. The wine list is varied and appealing, making it easy to select a bottle. Many good Californians to choose from. Skip the Europeans. Wine, by the glass is expensive, but by the bottle, fairly priced.

Service
On each occasion we dined without a reservation. The main dining room, set precisely for dinner with white tablecloths, full service of china, silverware and glassware, can be a bit intimidating to the casual diner. Not to worry, this is still Cape Cod.

The white shirted, full length black apron-clad waiters (waitresses) cut an imposing figure, but underneath their austere appearance are the sweetest young servers on the Cape. Their youth is disguised well by their training, and their exhuberance makes up for any inexperience. Their desire to please the diner was truly refreshing. The service was, to say the least, outstanding.

Atmosphere
A combination of bar and restaurant allows one to dine casually in the former, or formally in the latter. But on most evenings the clientel are older foursomes or lately, grandparents, parents and grandkids. Nice to see multigenerational tables in public.

The building is out of architectural digest while the dining room, overlooking the golf course, is esthetically pleasing. Relatively small, it has an intimate feel, especially at sunset. The restaurant is immaculate, as are the surrounding clubhouse grounds.

Once again we ventured out for a fine dining experience on Cape Cod and this newest version of The Artful Table did not disappoint. The food was excellent, the service impecable, the atmosphere delightful, and the location serene. As close as you will get to perfection on Cape Cod.
We give The Artful Table   (3 out of 3) the highest rating, to go with $$$ (3 out of 3) as it was a bit expensive. But you too will get carried away somewhere between the cocktails and dessert.

The Times loses another wind farm reporter

Word around the campfire is that Ethan Zindler, business reporter at the Cape Cod Times and the paper's lead reporter on wind farm coverage, is heading to the D.C. area to cover the banking industry for a trade publication while his wife will be working at Johns Hopkins.

Ethan was a kewl dude with legs in the MTV world and one of the most cyber-hip journalists on Cape Cod. 

The windy kiss of death? 

That makes three Times reporters (and one editor) who covered the Cape Wind farm project leaving in the past half year.

 As my blogmate Spyro quoth presciently many moons ago, "the problem with the Cape Cod Times is that they can't keep their reporters or get rid of their editors."     WB

Festival Notes - Day 2, 3 and 4...

(Note: our film critic is at the Maine Film Festival reviewing the movies you'll see this winter. See the previous post below for details.)

Day Two 

EDVARD MUNCH is best known for his masterpiece painting, ‘The Shriek".  What could have driven an artist to paint such an affecting picture?

By the time I left the film, I wanted a drink.  The film is  overwhelming, relentless and factual; at the end of it, you feel an almost physical drain.

The best thing about it is that it not a documentary, as we think if it, but rather actors portraying a life.  Geir Westby, who pays Munch, bears an uncanny resemblance to the painter, based on the various self portraits that are shown.  Better still, he exudes the bleary, nihilistic attitude so common among the intelligentsia at the dawn of the 20^th century.  Smoking, tubercular, drinking absinthe, and deriving no pleasure from the sexual liberation of the era, his Munch is the personification of the world weary philosopher and artistic degenerate.

 Director Peter Watkins makes effective use of repeated scenes and images; not so much flashbacks as the way an image might flit through your mind when a remembrance is triggered.  “Death, sickness and loneliness were the three fairies at my cradle”, Munch once wrote, and from his rigid, bleak childhood, to the bohemians of Kristiana (and what a revelation that will be to those who think that drug abuse, sexual politics and nihilistic philosophy all began in the 1960’s!), to his unending censure at the hands of art critics, the public and other artists, the movie shows how Munch used every artistic medium to convey the black and rotten despair within.  It also shows his commitment to art, and his great, misunderstood talent.  The movie may sound depressing, but it is not.  It is, instead, a window into the creation of modern, impressionistic art and the people who created a new way of seeing the world.  Four Stars.

 THE BEAUTY ACADEMY OF KABUL is the story of a particularly American form of advocacy work – economic missionaries.  In the 1970’s, Afghanistan was a modernized, Western-looking county.  After the Mujahadeen ousted the Soviet occupiers, they then turned their attention to subduing the populace.  As one Afghan woman said, in 20 years, they dragged us back one hundred – perhaps more.  Yet, even during the Taliban occupation, women continued to dye their hair and get permanents in the underground, and hid them under their burkhas.  After the Taliban forces were defeated, Afghan refugees from the regime and western women arrive to open a beauty school, which must hold a lottery among all the eager applicants. 

The western women seem oblivious to the cultural chaos they bring with them, from driving about the city with no decent scarves of their red hair, to ordering men to do electrical work a different way (that they are right makes it worse) to asking a translator if the women are so fearful of their husbands because of ‘verbal abuse’ (instead of the stoning and beating they are subject to.).  The Afghan women are eager to learn new techniques, and cut hair and learn massage with abandon, each of them knowing that every day could be the last before the school is firebombed by the lurking, sneering, affronted young men with the Kalashnikovs outside.

This is a hopeful story that follows the first class through its training and in some instances, into their homes, where they must still live as good and subservient Muslim wives (who can now make more money than their husbands).  It is also a cautionary tale about how western values cannot be quickly imposed on ancient cultures, and gives a real window into Muslim insurgency.  The power under the veil cannot be denied, but it may be deferred.  Four stars.

Day Three 

MAKE IT FUNKY! is the best kind of music movie. It tells the story of New Orleans jazz, the origin of the beats and syncopation, the term ‘Second Line’ music, tracing both its roots and looking forward to a new generation of performers. The musical cast is amazing – the entire Neville Family, Earl Palmer (the most recorded drummer in history),’Wolfman’ Washington, brilliant pianist and composer Allen Toussaint, Bonnie Raitt and Keith Richards (who sings the Fats Domino song 'I'm Ready, Willing and Able to Rock and Roll All Night Long - ummmmm, maybe...).   Not just a film of a concert, which it is, but an exploration of a uniquely American musical genre – New Orleans jazz. Four Stars.

BREAKING NEWS – The week isn’t over yet, but this may well be the best move I see. Director Johnnie To assembles a cast of cops and robbers in modern Hong Kong.  After a routine traffic stop explodes in violence, a Hong Kong policeman is filmed by a news crew that happens to be nearby raising his hands and begging the robbers for his life. Intrepid Inspector Cheung (Nick Cheung) then begins his dogged pursuit to ‘nail them’.  The robbers escape in a stolen police van, and police headquarters goes into public relations overdrive under the guidance of the implacable Rebecca Fong (Kelly Chen as the next Madame Chaing K’ai Chek). The robbers, led by Yuen (Richie Ren), are tracked to an apartment building and the standoff begins. After Miss Fong releases ‘enhanced’ videotape to the media swarm outside showing the stalwart police shooting in the halls, trapping the robbers and escorting the apartment residents to safety, Yuen retaliates by emailing pictures from his camera phone to the media, showing the police being trapped by the robbers in an explosion and failing to capture them. The media war, using every electronic gadget imaginable from cell phones to walkie talkies to disposable chips to web cams, begins in earnest as the bullets fly as incessantly as the camera lenses click. Breaking News is like a Stephan Segal film, except that it is witty, genuinely funny, offers good cooking tips, and is startlingly intense. An amazing adventure rating .  Five Stars.

Day Four

Sometimes, accidents happen at film festivals. The film I wanted to see was sold out, I had already seen one other film, and another was at another venue with not enough time to get there, so I went to see the only one left – MOUTH TO MOUTH. I would never have chosen this film, but it was a happy accident.

Sherri (Ellen Paige, in an exceptional performance) is a disaffected Goth teenaged girl in London. One day, a charismatic boy named Tiger (August Diehl, looking like a young Jude Law) gives her a pamphlet to come join SPARK – Street People Armed with Radical Knowledge. SPARK is made up of teens and twenties who live on the streets, some homeless by choice others by chance or drug addiction. The band centers around Harry (Eric Thal) a thirty-something leader, who instills in them the importance of keeping off drugs, caring for each other and learning to scavenge food and basic necessities. The group travels in two beat-up vans, acquiring more followers, as they head to their ultimate destination, a disused winery in Portugal where they will spend the winter.

The group starts out seeming scruffy but honest, but gradually, the control Harry exerts, even over Sherry's mother who comes looking for her, becomes corrupt and fatal. This a story of idealism exploited, intelligence manipulated, and character triumphing. Four Stars.

CREAM’S FAREWELL CONCERT should have a subtitle – Squandered Opportunity. Filmed in 1969, this is no Last Waltz. A BBC-type narrator, Patrick Boyle, unctuously proclaims,” These might not be the best musicians in the world, but with the Beatles, they are the ones reaching the most people.” What a way to describe Ginger Baker, Jack Bruce and Eric Clapton! The cinematographer and director, Tony Palmer, should be taken out into an alley for a quick bullet to the head. For much of the film, he creates ‘hip’ images by shaking the camera to make the person seem to vibrate (remember?) He superimposes lava lamp looking amoebas and bubbles over the group, so you feel like you’re watching the movie through the windshield of a car going through a carwash. BBC Boyle proclaims, "This may be the art of the future”. No, it was the art of 1968, and not even all that year. He briefly interviews each member. Boyle is slightly interested in Burns, as he actually went to college and has musical training who thinks that Bach is the ultimate bass player. Clapton is described as a 23 year old former stained glass window designer, who politely demonstrates how pickups work on his guitar, showing his amazing fingering and virtuosity, which Boyle ignores as he condescendingly asks, “And what does THAT knob do?” Ginger Baker, painfully shy, tries to cope with this posh questioning, but only plays his drums more and more.

What a movie this could have been! I enjoyed this film more with my eyes closed, which is never a good sign. The only reason to watch this Two Star film at all is the spectacular music – Clapton’s artistry and resonance on Sunshine of Your Love and In a White Room, and an astonishing 15 minute drum solo by Baker at the Albert Hall. But I would just get out the records and play them very loud.

Day Five

 To come...

Festival Notes - Day #1