Going Out

By Kyle Wright

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

The Revere Hotel Boston Common celebrated its grand opening on April 18 with an over-the-top fashion spectacle that involved models scaling 24 stories in Ted Baker’s latest collection (accented by safety harnesses). Attendees got a peek at what $27 million in renovations will buy, but they didn’t get to see Emerald, the glowing, Oz-themed lounge that’s landed (via tornado?) in the spot that was once the Theatre Cafe. No detail has been overlooked in the 6,000-square-foot space, from a state-of-the-art sound system to custom stemware embedded with green gems.

Dorothy references are incorporated in a way that avoids blatant gimmicks. You won’t find a yellow brick floor or munchkin-only staff, but there’s a twinkling aluminum sculpture inspired by her Kansas twister and an extensive use of color-changing lights on everything from the onyx bar to the back wall (one can assume the default color is green). Modular seating can be tailored for different-sized groups, and the back room, with floor to ceiling windows, can be closed off for private parties.

Most “lounges” in Boston transition into clubs as the night progresses, but Emerald aims to cater to folks looking to linger over cocktails and share fork-free fare, like fish tacos, coconut-tempura shrimp or charcuterie. Dancing isn’t obligatory. “We want people to come in at 4:30 for a drink after work, and feel comfortable enough to stay until 11,” says general manager Aggelos Panagopoulos.

Bar manager Teodora Bakardzhieva is the resident good witch, mixing potions like the refreshing Boston Shandy or a blueberry-spiked vodka mojito. “A hotel has such a diverse, international clientele,” she says. “We tried to build a list that embraces Boston’s personality for people from all over.” No doubt, locals, travelers and tin men will leave well-lubricated.

Emerald Lounge
Revere Hotel Boston Common | 200 Stuart St., Boston | 617-482-1800 | reverehotel.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

Skipping the simmering stage of developing trends, Viet-Cajun cuisine has bubbled up in Boston.

Originating with Vietnamese seafood retailers in Louisiana and spreading throughout the South, the Asian-influenced boil has arrived in Dorchester, thanks to Tuan and Long Le’s Brother's Crawfish. “I spent a lot of time in Houston where my cousin owns a little joint like this,” says Tuan Le, 31. “I worked with him for half a year, and I picked up on the ingredients.”

The ingredients for the boil include a traditional Cajun mix, along with celery, oranges and pineapple juice. The freshwater crustaceans are then tossed in your pick of one of four flavors, the top-seller being the garlic-and-butter blend named “oriental express.”

Opened March 19, Brother’s can go through as much as 300 lbs. ($9.95, per) of crawfish a day, and

as neighbors learn the technique of snapping backs and sucking the fatty viscera from heads, they’ve developed their own styles. “I’ve had people order one pound and take an hour to eat the whole thing, just savoring everything,” Tuan Le describes. “And I’ve had people just go straight for the tail or straight for the head. Either way, everyone enjoys it.”

As growing curiosity draws locals, Southerners come for a taste of the familiar. There’s ribs ($7.99) and barbecue chicken ($6.99), but Yankees can compete in those departments. Quality crawfish needs a stamp of approval from those who know, like, say, an entire party of LSU alumni. Reports Long Le, “They’re used to the real deal, and they were very satisfied.”

Brother's Crawfish | 272 Adams St., Dorchester | 617-265-1100 | brotherscrawfish.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

The Ward Eight ($10) is Boston’s best original cocktail, and you’ve probably never heard of it.

For decades it was difficult to find one that tasted any good. Invented at Locke-Ober circa 1898, the drink celebrated Martin Lomasney’s election to the legislature. (A confident camp, Lomasney’s supporters supposedly toasted “the Czar of Ward Eight” the day before the polls opened.) It was a winning blend of rye whiskey, simple syrup, fresh lemon juice, orange juice and house-made grenadine, but when commercial mixes and syrups became the norm, the Ward Eight turned into a cloying, sticky presentation.

Which makes it the perfect cocktail to be reintroduced by Hugh Reynolds, who was brought to Temple Bar to institute an artisanal approach to booze. Essentially a dressed-up whiskey sour, the Ward Eight is approachable for an audience accustomed to casual affairs. “When I first got here people were asking for Redheaded Sluts or Jäger-bombs,” he says. “So I thought starting with Negronis or Tridents or Aviations might be a little off-putting.”

Reynolds found that with fresh, in-house ingredients he could create a fuller spectrum in a previously one-note drink. “The grenadine and the juice provide a nice window to feature the flavors of the rye,” he explains. “The citric acid hides the burn, and the grenadine [also] provides a low note for it all to rest on.”

Boston is a leader in the classic cocktail movement. It only makes sense that we should resurrect one of the drinks that put us on the map.

Temple Bar | 1688 Mass. Ave., Cambridge | 617-547-5055 | templebarcambridge.com

Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

Down on Washington Street, where criminals were hanged by the city gates in the 1600s, the Gallows fits all the trappings of recent trends. The farm-to-table menu. The reclaimed-wood and Edison-bulb decor. The vintage cocktails at the bar. Then owner Rebecca Roth breaks out the Boone’s Farm, and assumptions are laid to rest.

“We don’t think it’s interesting anymore,” says Roth of dining’s latest fashions. The Gallows’ nonchalant spirit is more attuned to Roth’s unapologetic love for iceberg lettuce and her affinity for 11 oz. “puppy” beers. Here’s a woman who went to pick up a griddle, a cooler and a fryolator— and came back with a soft-serve machine. “’Cause how cool would it be to sit at the bar with a puppy beer and a cone of ice cream?”

Roth, partner/chef Seth Morrison and GM Seth Yaffe all met at Tremont Street’s now-defunct Perdix. “It seemed natural to come back to the South End,” she explains, “so we ended up making the bar we wanted to hang out in.”

The food they want to eat includes a flat patty burger ($9) and a bananas Foster Fluffernutter brûlée ($6). Pâtés, terrines and charcuterie exhibit the house-made zeitgeist, while a selection of poutines toys with the prevailing attitudes. Fresh curds and gravy top traditional ($9), veggie ($11) and foie gras ($18) versions, while “out-of-control” ($14) specials have a stoner slant. Think Reuben-style, or a steak bomb poutine with Cheez Whiz.

“We wanted to create a place where people would feel comfortable, regardless of who they are,” Roth adds. “Hospitality doesn’t have to equal formality, and a lot people confuse that.”

Admirably trying to dodge the labels affixed to new restaurants, she swats away “gastropub” and “modern tavern.” “We consider ourselves a local,” she says. Just don’t refer to it as a great place to hang.  

The Gallows | 1395 Washington St., Boston | 617-424-0200 | thegallowsboston.com

Photo Credit: Photographer Name

By Sean Burns

He never should’ve jumped on that couch.

Tom Cruise had a great run at the top of the box-office charts. For almost 20 years he was America’s purest superstar. Of all the medium-talent hunks to head the A-List, Cruise was the savviest, teaming himself from the outset with brilliant filmmakers like Martin Scorsese, Stanley Kubrick, Steven Spielberg and Paul Thomas Anderson. Cruise even enlisted the likes of Brian DePalma and Michael Mann to direct his summer popcorn junk. Like the best movie stars, he has a very narrow range, but he never missed the sweet-spot of his limited abilities. Say what you will about Cruise pictures, they always had class.

Then one day he fired his publicist, catapulted off Oprah’s sofa and revealed himself as a nutso who spoke scary nonsense. This alienated his die-hard fan base to the point where even my mom doesn’t like Jerry Maguire anymore, because “Tom was rude to Matt Lauer.” (If you want to remain appealing to women of a certain age, never mess with Matt Lauer. He’s off-limits.)

After the Oprah incident—and a long and ugly publicity tour that led to a falling-out with both his patron Sumner Redstone at Paramount Pictures and his quasi-godfather Spielberg in the wake of the War of the Worlds fiasco—Cruise isn’t getting a crack at top directors anymore. That’s a shame, as he no longer has the chance to play flesh-and-blood characters, and now each movie turns into a meditative exercise on the legend and strange star aura that is Tom Cruise.

With just a few leaked YouTube videos, we’ve all seen Cruise go from Maverick the super-cool fighter pilot to a religious zealot more terrifying than Mel Gibson. He’s primed to inherit Michael Jackson’s throne once the inevitable tell-alls come rumbling off the presses. But you’ve got to give the crafty Cruise some credit: He understands his staggering PR nightmare and has been adjusting his career trajectory accordingly.

The comeback began with a heavily made-up, uncredited cameo in Ben Stiller’s Tropic Thunder. Of course, Cruise was out everywhere taking credit for it, positioning the role as a wicked parody of his new nemesis, Redstone, which sort of defeated the point of being heavily made-up and uncredited. It might’ve even worked, had Stiller not brought Cruise back several times to repeatedly indulge in the “white-guy-incongruously-dancing-to-black-music” gag, which is a lame, tired joke.

And now comes Knight and Day, which I don’t have much to say about except that it made me sad. In case you missed the desperate publicity blitz, Cruise stars as some sort of semi-cracked, rogue super-spy who falls into mayhem with Cameron Diaz’s ditzy blonde civilian, and, allegedly, hilarious hijinks ensue.

They’re not that hilarious. In fact, at a late-night screening, everybody watching the movie with me fell asleep for a brief spell, as if we were taking turns. The only cogent criticism came from the cinema’s janitor, who, while emptying trash, sadly lamented: “Cameron Diaz looks awfully old now. Do you remember when she was hot? Have you seen The Mask?”

The gag here is that Cruise might be the one CIA agent who can save the world. Or he might be a deranged madman. What’s a girl like Diaz to do when a gun-toting assassin keeps leading her into shoot-’em-ups at badly photographed Boston locations, maniacally assuring her that “Everything’s gonna be OK”? They’re chasing some sort of super-battery, which doesn’t really matter, as the real pursuit here is the faded stars working overtime for your affection.

Slick dude that he is, Cruise has already refocused his career around the idea that America privately considers him to be a pants-peeing lunatic. So he tried to play that to his advantage by starring in a broad, boring romantic comedy that’s bogged down at every turn with noisy, annoying action sequences and a plot that doesn’t seem to matter even to its participants.

Cruise desperately wants you to believe that he’s in on the joke. But Knight and Day’s tragic opening-weekend returns argue otherwise. The last superstar who was as popular and beloved as Tom Cruise was Burt Reynolds. When they fall, they fall hard.

Knight and Day 

Starring Tom Cruise, Cameron Diaz, Peter Sarsgaard, Viola Davis and Paul Dano. Written by Patrick O’Neill. Directed by James Mangold. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Photo Credit: Michael Piazza

By Andrew Rimas

Not all vampire books are limp parables about high-school dating. Some of them, like Justin Cronin’s best seller The Passage, are bleak epics about the annihilation of humankind, owing more to Cormac McCarthy than to Jane Austen. A Boston native and Harvard graduate, Cronin, 47, hatched the idea for his sci-fi, bio-vamp thriller when his daughter told him his previous, literary novels (one of which won a PEN/Hemingway award) were boring. “‘You should write about a girl who saves the world,’ she told me,” Cronin recalls. “I said, ‘Fine, but you’ll have to help.’” What began as a parenting exercise—a game called “Let’s Write a Novel”—evolved into a multimillion-dollar book deal. Ridley Scott’s name is attached to the movie rights. It is, in all senses, a fairy-tale ending. 

Photo Credit: : Raphael Mazzucco

By Paul Robicheau

The breakup of a marriage usually leads to private rumination. But for Sarah McLachlan, it led to Laws of Illusion, her first album in seven years, and to the revival of Lilith, the all-female fest she’s bringing to national amphi-theaters this summer.

The Canadian singer/songwriter has built a Grammy-winning career by sharing personal insights in melancholy, ethereal songs. But drawing on her 2008 separation from drummer-husband Ashwin Sood, she mines raw experience in new tracks such as “Awakenings” (capped by the line “I’m not going to lose myself again”) and “Forgiveness,” to which she replies, “You’re asking too much.”

“Songwriting is very cathartic for me, and it’s very much of a process of sorting through my emotions, not that I ever discover any great answers,” McLachlan, 42, says from Vancouver Island before she goes surfing. “I went through a pretty crazy, tumultuous time the last couple of years and came out stronger for it.”

She adds, “What I choose to reveal on my records is something I’m very comfortable with. I want to connect with people on a really human, visceral, emotional level.… You know, it’s a selfish act at first for me to write these songs, but it’s such a joy to be able to put them out there to the world and have other people I don’t even know connect with them.”

McLachlan should get plenty of empathy during the 35 dates on her first Lilith tour since 1999, featuring a large, rotating cast that includes Kelly Clarkson, Tegan and Sara, Cat Power and the usually stage-shy Carly Simon at the Comcast Center on July 30.

“We basically had the same mandate as last time, to ask all the artists from different genres of music that we liked,” she says of the tour, which includes Mary J. Blige, Erykah Badu and Sugarland in other cities. “The first year ’round, we were dubbed the ‘white-chick folk fest,’ which was extremely frustrating.… So I’m very excited about the lineup this year.”

McLachlan says she loved the “sense of community” that Lilith spawned in the ’90s. “It was incredibly inspiring to be part of that sisterhood,” she recalls, “and I think it was beneficial for us as artists, and the audience as well. We all got to be part of something that was kind of bigger than ourselves.”

The original Lilith was also huge at the box office during its 1997-1999 run, raising $10 million for social causes, in addition to surprising promoters who doubted whether an all-female bill could sell many tickets. “That was an old fallacy,” McLachlan says, “and we blew that apart and definitely helped to let the industry know that women were, in fact, a powerhouse.”

Of course, few acts are showing much drawing power this summer, and Lilith is facing its share of slow sales and “praying to the weather gods,” she says. “We’re going into a very tough climate, and I don’t think we necessarily knew that was going to happen going in. I don’t know if we would’ve reacted differently. We’re just trying to make the best of the situation.”

When she and her Lilith partners decided in 2008 to revive the tour, McLachlan also didn’t expect to record a CD about marital heartbreak. Yet Laws of Illusion also spins upbeat tunes like “Loving You Is Easy,” where she cries “I’m alive, I’m on fire,” like a freed spirit. “It’s really liberating to sing a line like that, because that’s kind of how I felt,” she says. “It’s just nice to be back in the world and feeling good about myself.”

Expect only a few new songs at Lilith, however. “I’m headlining a festival, which means I’m playing at the very end of a very long day,” she says. “People don’t want to hear new material. They want to hear the songs they know and love.”

One of those tunes is “Angel,” the aching ballad that McLachlan wrote after the fatal overdose of Smashing Pumpkins keyboardist Jonathan Melvoin. A centerpiece of her multi-platinum 1997 album Surfacing, it remains a favorite of hers as well. “I feel like that song really connects with a lot of people,” she says, “so singing it and being part of that energy is powerful.”

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

Seems Twitter is for everything these days, even breakfast and lunch. Devotees of Clover Food trucks, located in Kendall and Dewey  squares, follow owner Ayr Muir’s updates and blog with hungry enthusiasm. Chef Rolando Robledo serves a rotating menu of local vegetarian fare, including a sweet potato sandwich ($5) and rosemary fries ($3). “The truck is a test vehicle to try and figure out what people want to eat,” says Muir, who plans to open healthy fast food restaurants. “We’ve developed a really great community.”                         

Photo Credit: Glenn Wilson

By Sean Burns

British bad-boy comedian Russell Brand made his American breakthrough in 2008’s Forgetting Sarah Marshall. As rock star Aldous Snow, Brand mined narcissism for massive laughs and added a surprising streak of kindness to a character that, in lesser hands, might’ve been a cardboard scoundrel. But let’s face it: A little of this guy goes a long way. If Hannibal Lecter couldn’t carry his own movie, what hope is there for Aldous Snow?

Nicholas Stoller’s Get Him to the Greek isn’t technically a sequel to Forgetting Sarah Marshall. Jonah Hill plays a different character this time around, and Snow’s backstory has been significantly rewritten. As for poor Sarah Marshall, she’s forgotten, literally. Watching one of her TV commercials, Aldous can only vaguely remember having sex with her. The biggest departure, however, is one of tone. You won’t find the previous picture’s gentle, inclusive spirit here. Get Him to the Greek is defiantly unpleasant, aggressive and gross. It’s amusing at times, but an icky aftertaste lingers.

Hill costars as schlubby record company staffer Aaron Green, who spends his days absorbing insults from his tyrannical boss (a monstrously funny Diddy) and his tedious nights at home with his perpetually exhausted girlfriend (Elisabeth Moss). She’s just decided that they’re moving to Seattle without consulting him. But before Green can even argue he gets the assignment of his dreams: babysitting his idol, Aldous Snow, on a road trip from London to L.A. for a comeback concert at the Greek Theatre.

Snow’s legend has been tarnished as of late. His latest single, “African Child,” was blasted by critics as “the worst thing to happen to Africa since apartheid.” Greek opens with the title-track’s video, a scathing send-up of celebrity do-gooderism that’s bound to make Bono cringe. Snow’s wife dumped him for Lars Ulrich, and he’s fallen off the wagon in spectacular fashion. Getting him to gigs on time ain’t as easy as it used to be.

So the admiring young Green finds himself in a drug-addled, sexually deviant remix of the great 1982 comedy My Favorite Year. The film is a ramshackle collection of increasingly outré set-pieces revolving around booze, vomit, narcotics and ladies of questionable moral standards. Most scenes seem to feature an object shoved into Green’s rectum, proving once again that anal penetration is comedy’s new kick in the balls. (I sat through Greek and MacGruber back-to-back, and haven’t seen so much rear-entry since the Crisco scene in Cruising.)

As the hapless company man, Hill tones down his trademark bluster and finds a nice passive-aggressive groove. Brand once again brings the smarm, but predictably enough, Snow isn’t as fun in a leading role. Giving the character daddy issues isn’t enough to make us pity this poor millionaire. And like most comedies from the Judd Apatow factory, Get Him to the Greek reverts to third-act sentimentality, complete with pat speeches extolling the values of sobriety and monogamy.

I’m usually a sucker for Apatow’s formula, but I wasn’t buying it here. As if determined to smash all the boundaries pushed by The Hangover last year, Greek spends too much time trying to exceed the limits. There’s something smug about the film’s commitment to vulgarity. It even plays Snow’s heroin habit for cheap giggles, which is rather queasy since Brand has publicly struggled with his own addictions.

This nightmare of depravity predictably culminates in Las Vegas, the vilest city in America. Presenting a place where dreams go to die and all women are dim receptacles, Stoller stages a genuinely transgressive sequence in which his entire cast freaks out on a potentially lethal combo of smack, meth and skanks. The lovely actress Carla Gallo, who you might remember as “Period Girl” in Superbad, continues her streak of onscreen sexual humiliations with a few surprises unfit for print. Diddy’s volcanic, heroically profane meltdown makes the segment something special to behold. But the outrageous setup makes it that much harder for the film to double back to “family values” piety.

Maybe it’s just because Moss can’t shake her Peggy Olson Mad Men vibe, but I’m still not exactly sure how a finale of Snow performing cunnilingus on her as Green watches is supposed to salvage their dysfunctional relationship. It’s yet another one of Get Him to the Greek’s I-can’t-believe-they-went-there moments that leave you wondering why, in fact, they chose to go there in the first place.

Get Him to the Greek (2 Stars)

Starring Russell Brand, Jonah Hill, Sean Combs, Elisabeth Moss, Rose Byrne, Carla Gallo and Lars Ulrich. Written and directed by Nicholas Stoller. Based on characters created by Jason Segel.

Photo Credit: Erica Henderson

By Paul Robicheau

AC Newman conceived of the New Pornographers as a cool name before he hardly had any bandmates back in 1997. “In the beginning,” Newman says, “it was like The Wizard of Oz, just collecting friends as you went along the yellow brick road.”

Fellow singer/songwriter Dan Bejar from the group Destroyer and keyboardist Blaine Thurier were first aboard. Then alt-country siren Neko Case joined at the dawn of her solo career. “It wasn’t like, ‘Oh my God, I nabbed this secret-weapon star for our band,’” Newman says. “It was, ‘My friend Neko’s into it, too.’”

The Vancouver-bred outfit has since established an eight-piece core, completed by guitarist Todd Fancey, bassist John Collins, drummer Kurt Dahle and singer/keyboardist Kathryn Calder. Most of the members have other projects and now live in scattered locales.

“What keeps us together is that we’re apart so much,” 42-year-old Newman says from his current home in Woodstock, N.Y. “We’re not really a full-time band.”

In turn, schedule conflicts with Case and Bejar have made it difficult to get the full lineup on the road. The group didn’t even play live without Case until Newman’s niece Calder joined for 2005’s Twin Cinema—and a promoter booked a show with the knowledge that Case couldn’t make it. “We were shocked that the reaction was really good,” Newman says. “It was like, ‘Wow, we played without Neko and nobody pelted us with tomatoes!’”

That’s not an issue this spring because the complete octet (Case and Bejar included) has committed to a North American jaunt that hits House of Blues on June 18, supporting the aptly titled new album Together. With the addition of touring cellist/saxophonist Ben Kalb, Newman adds, “We’re as close as we’ve ever been to getting onstage and playing our records just like they are.”

That’s no easy feat given the cinematic breadth of the New Pornographers’ evolved power-pop, which nods to everything from the British invasion to new wave, from folk to prog-rock.

“The idea was to take a lot of old rock ’n’ roll tricks and co-opt them,” says Newman, who plays a range of instruments, as does counterpoint Bejar. “Especially on the first one or two records, I was consciously singing ‘Oh yeah’ and ‘C’mon’ and ‘Uh, huh,’ and not because I was moved by the spirit.”

In turn, the new CD moves from the ELO-meets-XTC “Crash Years” (iced with whistling) to Bejar’s “Silver Jenny Dollar,” which opens like Richard Thompson crossed with the Who. “I can’t help but be influenced by the music I love,” Newman says, listing both Black Sabbath and Abba in the Together blueprint. “When people say, ‘I hear a lot of Beach Boys in your music,’ I say, ‘I love the Beach Boys. I suppose there’d be some in there.’”

Asked to single out a formative influence on his band, however, he cites the Dutch group Shocking Blue, not for its 1969 hit “Venus,” but for obscure tunes like “Mighty Joe” and “Out of Sight, Out of Mind.” “Those were real templates for our sound,” says Newman, who devised a similar female/male vocal dynamic.

One thing he never did was write a song specifically for Case to sing—until the new “My Shepherd,” which was inspired by the true story of a woman who took back her boyfriend after he served a prison term for blinding her with acid. “I wanted it to be this love-gone-wrong song, like an old Dionne Warwick or Dusty Springfield song,” he says, “but to make the lyrics very dark.”

More often, the New Pornographers blur the edges between lead and harmony vocals in sprawling arrangements that aren’t sealed until the studio. “A lot of it is just winging it as we go,” he says. “I always wanted it to be a strange mix of people.

“I like it when sometimes the verses are like a Rube Goldberg machine,” Newman explains. “There’s a bunch of things going off in different directions. Then you all come together in unison.”

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Elizabeth Bomze

When mapping out their new wine shop, TJ and Hadley Douglas used their marriage as a model. TJ, an industry expert, can pick apart a bottle grape by grape, while Hadley enjoys a good California red or something bubbly without the usual intimidation factor. The Urban Grape—which opens June 11 in Chestnut Hill—combines their two approaches into a user-friendly space. Wines are organized by weight (i.e. medium-bodied reds), and a high-tech tasting system allows customers to try samples. Feel free to ask questions; no snobbery allowed. 

The Urban Grape | 7 Boylston St., Chestnut Hill | 617-232-4831 | theurbangrape.com

Photo Credit: Kristen Leigh Conklin

By Elizabeth Bomze

Bent over baby bok choy, Krishana Collins wields a sharp knife and severs several of the tulip-like brassica at the roots. “I think they’re beautiful,” says Collins, clopping along the rows of her rented West Tisbury plot, Bluebird Farm, in knee-high Wellies. When the 35-year-old returned to the Vineyard to try her hand at flower farming—the culmination of a childhood spent arranging bouquets for fun—she never anticipated that this veggie branch of the business would flourish. Now her Chinese cabbage, arugula, baby Swiss chard and peppery microgreens show up in local fine-dining restaurants and shops. They also keep good company with lush bunches of zinnias, dahlias, blue cornflowers and lilies at her West Tisbury farmers’ market booth.  

By Elizabeth Bomze

Chris Cochran and his partners had the business model down, serving summery fare like fish tacos at Surfside and Jetties in Washington, D.C. All they needed was the beach. Enter their newest venture on Nantucket’s west end. The just-renovated Millie’s offers a flip-flop friendly alternative to the surplus of white-tablecloth establishments. There’s Baja-style cuisine from chef David Scribner—try the Atlantic scallops with house-made salsa—island suds from Cisco Brewers and sunset views from three directions.   

Millie's | 326 Madaket Road, Nantucket | 508-228-5100 | georgetownevents.com

Photo Credit: Courtesy of the Summer House

By Nick Altschuller

Prepare to have your minds blown: Todd English’s empire is expanding.

Fine, this might not come as the most unexpected news. The English brand has already reached Vongerichtian proportions, and after opening Figs at 29 Fair last year at the Summer House on Nantucket, the chef will now take over the retreat’s other two restaurants. But perhaps it’s time to get off your heritage high horse, foodies.

“Todd has been a family friend for 30 years,” says Summer House GM Christopher Karlson, whose folks own the property. “My parents had an apartment building in Charlestown next to the original Olives.… I think Todd has always had a special place in his heart for Nantucket. It was kind of a perfect marriage.”

The changes include bringing a hipper element to the Summer House’s Beachside Bistro. Sundays will feature poolside parties, where vacationers can enjoy bottle service and fruit de mer platters on couches and lounges. It’s a taste of East Hampton on eastern Nantucket.

Above the bluff, the quintessential island experience will be preserved at the Summer House Restaurant, as will old favorites like the crab cake with mint crème fraîche ($17). Displaying the subtle transformation, the New England flavor in other dishes will skew more Mediterranean; last summer’s halibut en croute is now branzino with baby squash ratatouille and pistou ($36).

“He’s spent more time with us this summer than he has at any of his other places,” Karlson says, reassuring those who may feel English has spread himself too thin. “He likes it here. He can be with his family. Here, no one has their hooks in him.”

With so many restaurants, anyone would need a vacation.  

The Summer House | Sconset, Nantucket | 508-257-9976 | thesummerhouse.com

By Sean Burns

Leading with his swagger and dimpled chin, Michael Douglas carries himself like Hollywood royalty, yet always carefully signals chasms of inadequacy lurking just beneath the posturing. It’s hard to think of another leading man who so convincingly gravitates toward frailty, his characters constantly undone by lust, greed or threatened-white-guy privilege. Douglas is a much better, braver actor than he gets credit for.

Sadly, we haven’t seen much of him over the past decade, save for
bit parts in crap comedies like You, Me and Dupree or Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

Mainstream movies have shifted away from the adult complexities and concerns that made even his trashiest thrillers worth watching. His brand of abrasive, flawed antiheroes are now found mostly on television. (I’m still surprised the guy doesn’t have his own series on Showtime or FX).

But there are always indies, and Solitary Man has been almost too neatly designed as the Ultimate Michael Douglas Experience. Culling together elements of the star’s most iconic roles, it’s a somewhat contrived, if ultimately irresistible, one-man show of arrogance, entitlement and vulnerability. The film wouldn’t work with anybody else.

Douglas stars as Ben Kalmen, a former auto-dealership mogul who seems to have dedicated the past six years of his life to self-destructing in the tawdriest way imaginable. Solitary Man skips the actual flameout in order to focus on the flickering embers. When we catch up with Kalmen, he’s lazily taking the long way around his downward spiral, still living beyond his means and chasing younger women, only gradually realizing that he’s run out of money and time.

His business destroyed by extralegal shenanigans, Kalmen’s now scraping for a second lunge at the brass ring via the influence of his brittle, moneyed Manhattanite girlfriend (Mary-Louise Parker). But this being a Michael Douglas movie, he can’t resist torpedoing his future by falling into the sack with the wrong woman at the wrong time. A visit to Boston University with Parker’s man-eating teenage daughter goes ickily where you wish it wouldn’t, and his already tenuous existence quickly falls apart.

Kalmen’s finger-jabbing, car-salesman strut is an amusingly down-market take on Wall Street’s Gordon Gekko. The boozy, college-town hijinks recall Douglas’ last great role, as addled Professor Grady Tripp in Curtis Hanson’s sublime Wonder Boys. Of course, the circumstances of Kalmen’s horndog decline call to mind nearly every movie from Douglas’ heyday in the late ’80s through the mid-’90s, when he got into trouble because he couldn’t keep it in his pants. Casting his frequent costar Danny DeVito as Kalmen’s oldest friend almost makes Solitary Man feel like an episode of This Is Your Life, but the two have such a relaxed, enjoyable rapport together that it’s tough to complain.

Douglas throws himself into the character, daring the lousy cinematography to show his age and reveling in deplorable behavior. After shamelessly bumming money from his adult daughter (Jenna Fischer) and regaling her with tales of his sordid sex life, he then seduces one of her friends and casually insults the sad, divorced soccer-mom until she flees his apartment. It’s the most painful pillow talk since John Cassavetes’ Husbands, and Douglas courageously carries it off without a concern about being liked by the audience. In fact, you’ll probably hate him, but you’ll feel for this mean old coot because his desperation is so palpable.

Some folks, especially as they’re getting older and facing their mortality, just can’t help but wreck everything around them. Take Kalmen’s friendship with a young college student (played by Jesse Eisenberg in his default wimpy stammer mode). The kid looks to him as a mentor, so naturally it’s only a matter of time before Kalmen gets hammered and makes a pass at the poor guy’s girlfriend. It’s all just a way of marking his territory, asserting his macho dominance as he feels it slipping away.

The film’s almost-fatal flaw is to eventually supply a concrete explanation for the self-destructive streak. Solitary Man’s last reel collapses into pat, Psychology 101 silliness, wrapping a fascinating midlife crisis up with a tidy bow. The final moments are easy and neat, the exact opposite of Douglas’ jagged, fearless performance.

Solitary Man 

Starring Michael Douglas, Jenna Fischer, Jesse Eisenberg, Imogen Poots, Mary-Louise Parker, Susan Sarandon and Danny DeVito. Written by Brian Koppelman. Directed by Koppelman and David Levien. At Boston Common and Kendall Square.

By Paul Robicheau

The Dead Weather carries no dead weight. Beyond being Jack White’s most recent project, the band could even qualify as a supergroup. While the White Stripes frontman takes a back seat at the drums rather than play much guitar, Alison Mosshart of the Kills dominates the lead vocals. Guitarist/keyboardist Dean Fertita from Queens of the Stone Age and bassist Jack Lawrence, who also plays with White in the Raconteurs, flesh it out.

But the Dead Weather clearly wasn’t assembled with résumés in mind—and, in turn, it has quickly eclipsed them. “It didn’t feel manufactured in any way,” Fertita says from his home in Detroit, the garage-rock stomping ground that he shared with White in the ’90s. “It still had that similar feeling that I would’ve had 15 years ago when I was playing with friends here.”

As such, the Dead Weather came together on a lark. After White caught bronchitis and slipped a disc in his neck toward the end of a 2008 Raconteurs tour with the Kills, he drafted Mosshart to take over his vocal parts. White soon invited Mosshart, Lawrence and Fertita (the Raconteurs’ touring keyboardist, then hanging at White’s Nashville home) into his studio to record a 7-inch.

Their chemistry measured up to much more: The Dead Weather has recorded two albums in less than a year and hits House of Blues on July 14. “There was enough there to spark the whole thing and get us interested in seeing what else we had,” Fertita says of their initial sessions at the Nashville studio of White’s Third Man Records. “I don’t think any one of us had the thought we’d be here a year later with a second record and still touring.”

The new Sea of Cowards suggests that this band is too much damn fun to stop. The album builds on the gothic-blues bones of the group’s 2009 debut Horehound, blasting beyond the raw minimalism of the White Stripes with a darker, thicker attack. “It’s a bit more explosive,” Fertita says. “We had a year of touring together, getting to know each other as a band.”

The focal point is Mosshart, who stalks the stage and takes the lion’s share of the lead vocals, seething and caterwauling in tandem with White at the drum kit. “I’m Mad” is custom-made for the punk-reared Mosshart to inhabit, while the two singers collide in “Hustle and Cuss” and “Die by the Drop.”

“I love that element of this band, what it brings, especially in a live setting,” Fertita says. “It’s so antagonistic, and having the male and female aspect of it as well is interesting to watch, even while we’re playing.”

In the studio, White plays the occasional guitar (including an incendiary solo in the new “Gasoline”) or keyboard, but it’s Fertita who carries that department. Besides his heavy guitar riffs, Fertita injects slabs of organ and synthesizer that tilt the Dead Weather in a prog-rock direction, suggesting a sleazy mix of early Pink Floyd, Deep Purple and Nine Inch Nails.

“One of the things that’s so interesting to me is where we end up,” says Fertita, former singer/guitarist for Detroit power-pop band the Waxwings. “Though I’ve been primarily a keyboard player in bands the last five years, it still feels really new to me. And writing from different perspectives is always a goal.”

All four members cowrite in varying combinations, fueled by the spontaneity of sessions that burn fast and bright at Third Man. “We go with whoever has the idea at the moment,” Fertita says. “It’s almost like having conversations.… If there were these defined roles, I don’t think it would be as exciting.”

The musicians also plan to return to their other projects. Right after the Dead Weather tour, Fertita rejoins Queens of the Stone Age for a short European tour before that group sets out to make another record. But don’t expect the Dead Weather to dissipate.

“We still have a lot we can do and say as a band,” he says. “Hopefully we can coordinate everybody’s schedules enough that we can squeeze out a few days and get another record done.”

That’s all the Dead Weather needs to conjure the perfect storm.

Photo CreditHeather McGrath

By Andrew Rimas

As the most accomplished 24-year-old to ever don a tiara, Miss Massachusetts 2010 Loren Rabinowitz is best known to the world as a champion figure skater, a member of both the U.S. national and world teams from 1999–2006. “In high school I was out of the country so much, so it was wonderful to be entrenched in Harvard life,” says the two-time state piano champion. Furthermore, “I’ve always been fascinated by biomechanics,” which explains why she graduated in May with an honors degree in English and premed. Between pageant duties she’s applying to medical school  and hoping to publish a book of poems she wrote while working at Mount Auburn Hospital, where she continues to volunteer. The explanation for all this: “My mom was smart. She kept us very active.”                   

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

Noche, a new restaurant on Appleton Street, immediately impresses—not with service or cuisine, but with carpentry. The reserved, country-club decor of Icarus has been wholly revamped into a venue designed for glitz. With a white bar, radiant lighting and reflective surfaces, and resembling what manager Geoffrey Arvanitis calls a “laid back, subterranean speakeasy,” it lures evening crowds down to the basement with a promise of something brighter.

There’s an element of glam, which is seen in a cocktail menu that, bucking trends, looks not to the 18- but the 1990s. Arvanitis says, “There’s a movement in the industry toward classic cocktails, and we wanted to open with something different.” The drinks are on the sprightlier side, with some far-reaching curiosities—the Peanut Butter Cup ($12)—balanced with options like the Flower Blossom ($11), featuring a hibiscus blossom encased in bubbles, a little flash in a glass aiming to lure eyes and elbows to the bar.

Noche’s opening signature cocktail, the South End ($11), combines Stoli O, Chambord, strawberry juice, lime juice, mint and soda. It’s light and fruity, but with enough sour punch to keep the flavor assertive. It’s a great patio drink on a hot summer day, or with seared tiger shrimp ($12) at 1:30 am, as Noche’s kitchen stays open late. Either way, with the neighborhood nod, Arvanitis hopes the restaurant shows that “we’re part of the community, and we’re here for the long haul.”   

Noche | 3 Appleton St., Boston | 617-482-0117 | noche-boston.com

Photo Credit: Merie Weismiller Wallace SMPSP

By Sean Burns

Take a moment and ask yourself, have wacky hair and false teeth ever made a performer more amusing, or are they just the affectations of actors trying too hard?

I’m already quite certain that Concord’s own Steve Carell is extremely funny. There’s probably no other actor who could’ve played The 40-Year-Old Virgin, and even though The Office ran out of storylines more than a year ago, his Michael Scott remains an extraordinary creation. (Heck, Carell even had his moments in this spring’s Date Night, and that movie was terrible.) He has a way with defiant obliviousness, finding a stubborn nobility in denying his cringe-worthy failures.

Of all the comedians working in film right now, Carell is the last one who needs a goofy Caesar-cut of badly dyed henna-hair, nerd glasses and prosthetic buck teeth. But so it goes with Dinner for Schmucks, a vulgarized, overwrought riff on French writer/director Francis Veber’s stage and screen smash, The Dinner Game. If you need a precise summation of the differences in approach between the original and the American remake, just consider the title change.

Paul Rudd stars as Tim Wagner, an up-and-coming financial analyst who, after impressing his haughty boss (Bruce Greenwood, oozing sleaze), is invited to a dinner party with the executive class. The only catch is, he’s required to bring an idiot that all these rich jerks can mock during the meal. Initially repulsed, the opportunistic Wagner suddenly sees a promotion in his future after accidentally hitting Steve Carell’s loudmouth grotesque with his car.

A lonely, cuckolded taxidermist who makes elaborate dioramas out of dead mice, Carell’s Barry is an aching plea for attention in a Members Only jacket. This character doesn’t seem to come from anywhere near the planet Earth, and director Jay Roach has encouraged the actor to push his sniveling affectations so far over the top that his ridiculous hair and teeth are more than gilding the lily.

Roach is an erratic director on his best day. He’s helmed a couple of very special comedies (the original Austin Powers, Meet the Parents) as well as some of the most joyless, desultory spectacles of recent years (the Austin Powers sequels, Meet the Fockers). The mice gag is already exhausted during the opening credits, but in Dinner for Schmucks there is no dead horse that cannot be beaten.

Paul Rudd could be the next Jack Lemmon if given the right role, but you’d never be able to tell from this film. Stuck playing the Ben Stiller role as an increasingly embarrassed yuppie jerkwad, he just sits on the sidelines and cringes while Carell accidentally ruins his life by stumbling through contrived encounters with his clingy ex-girlfriend (towering comedienne Lucy Punch) and a horny, egotistical artist played by Flight of the Conchord’s Jemaine Clement.

Poor newcomer Stephanie Szostzak is stranded as Rudd’s wet blanket fiancée, as she’s required to deliver the movie’s thankless lectures on morality while lacking the acting chops to deliver a simple sentence. Lovely girl, but she sounds like a drunken baby.

Every performance is hideously over-scaled, and Roach’s unfortunate tendency to keep the camera within six inches of everyone’s face underlines the performers’ strain. There’s a pleading quality to Dinner for Schmucks that’s the antithesis of funny, because watching talented people overreach in cramped, pore-exposing close-ups inspires more pity than giggles.

Dinner for Schmucks scores a couple of laughs in its late stretches, eventually including the title scene that Veber’s original never got around to. A free-for-all freakshow, it’s undeniably fun to watch smarmy financial honchos collapse under pressure.

Alas, the sequence is also notable for neutering comic genius Zach Galifianakis with a silly costume. First Carell has false teeth, and now Galifianakis is wearing a cape? Why is Roach so hell-bent on turning such talented people into prop comics?

Dinner for Schmucks 

Starring Steve Carell, Paul Rudd, Stephanie Szostak, Jemaine Clement, Zach Galifianakis and Bruce Greenwood. Screenplay by David Guion and Michael Handelman. Based on the play by Francis Veber. Directed by Jay Roach. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

By Paul Robicheau

Hit singles can prove a mixed blessing for a new band. Consider MGMT, whose 2008 debut Oracular Spectacular became an electro-pop monster thanks to “Kids” and “Time to Pretend,” beat-baked tunes iced with Ben Goldwasser’s catchy-doodle-synth lines.

The group revved up massive crowds from Glastonbury to Bonnaroo and opened for Paul McCartney at Fenway Park—an ironic twist given that “Time to Pretend” poked fun at rock-star

excess. And when Phish narrowed a list of classic albums to perform as a “musical costume” last Halloween, Oracular Spectacular made the final eight, the most recent contender since Radiohead’s Kid A.

But there was a hitch. MGMT’s hits weren’t truly representative of that CD—or of Goldwasser and Andrew VanWyngarden, who started the group as a duo while tripping through college at Wesleyan.

“The bigger songs were the result of messing around with computers and sampling that we weren’t that familiar with,” says Goldwasser, 27. “We didn’t listen to electronic music at all.”

Instead, they were steeped in psychedelic music from the ’60s and ’70s as well as underground post-punk. And when they added three bandmates to tour behind Oracular Spectacular, space-rock ambitions took flight, leading to MGMT’s new CD Congratulations.

The synthetic confections that had put MGMT on the map were supplanted by dreamy experimentations more akin to Hawkwind, T. Rex and the early days of Pink Floyd and the Grateful Dead. And the band’s casual fans responded with more confusion than kudos.

“Maybe we chose a harder path, but I think in the end, it will work out better for us,” Goldwasser says from a San Diego tour stop. “It’s easy for someone to say, ‘If only they’d made anything that sounded like “Kids” and put it on this album.’ At the same time, if we’d written a shittier version of ‘Kids,’ would that have helped our career and made people like it more?”

Coproduced by Peter “Sonic Boom” Kember from Spacemen 3, Congratulations still has its accessible slices, including two upbeat shout-outs to other influences: “Song for Dan Treacy” (leader of the English band Television Personalities) and the gloriously shambolic romp “Brian Eno,” for the ex-Roxy Music sound painter and producer for Talking Heads and U2. “He fit a lot of things into his music that you would never think would go together,” Goldwasser says, “and he makes it work.”

In turn, “Flash Delirium” casually splices heavenly harmonies, a halted flute solo and closing hardcore rush. And the pastoral suite “Siberian Breaks” morphs in style and volume. “People say it’s some sort of super-experimental prog-rock,” he says. “It’s not that weird. It uses a lot of conventional pop-song ideas. We just think it’s a pretty song and it happens to be 12 minutes long.”

The new material also made a surprisingly easy transition to the stage, compared to songs from Oracular Spectacular. “We recorded the first album just me and Andrew,” the keyboardist says, “and had to figure out how to perform songs that we never intended to play with a five-piece band.” This time, he and singer/guitarist VanWyngarden developed the songs in the studio with guitarist James Richardson, bassist Matt Asti and drummer Will Berman.

Goldwasser says he particularly enjoys playing the CD’s surf-inspired opener “It’s Working” live. “It’s pretty hard to play all those parts and sing four-part harmony at the same time,” he says. “It took a while to feel more confident.”

The same goes for MGMT’s concerts overall. “We’ve been playing really well lately,” says Goldwasser, whose group hits Bank of America Pavilion Aug. 10 and Holyoke’s Mountain Park the next night. “It’s not so much of a spectacular stage show or anything like that. But we do have some cool visual projections going on. And in general, if people come to our show looking for a real mind-blowing psychedelic experience, hopefully they’ll get it.”

As long as they’re not expecting an electro-pop party.

MGMT plays Bank of America Pavilion Aug. 10.

By Paul Robicheau

Photo Credit: Chapman Baehler

Stone Temple Pilots are back with a big bang, baby, seemingly true-to-form in more ways than one.

On a positive note—with its artful mash of post-grunge hard rock, glam-pop, psychedelia and country—the San Diego band’s eponymous new CD doesn’t sound like a group that spent half the past decade on the shelf.

“There was just something that undeniably happens when the four of us get into a room to make some music,” guitarist Dean DeLeo says from his Malibu home. “I don’t know that [the band] ever stopped. We just had to take a break from it.”

Of course, there was ample reason for the hiatus. Singer Scott Weiland’s documented drug and alcohol abuse led to jail time and cancelled tours as well as inner-band tensions. In turn, Velvet Revolver, his subsequent group with outcasts from Guns N’ Roses, cited his “erratic onstage behavior” in giving Weiland the boot.

So where does that leave Stone Temple Pilots as the band roars through a tour slated to hit Bank of America Pavilion on Sept. 1?

A March concert filmed in Chicago and making the rounds on cable shows a fully engaged and charismatic STP, ripping through new tracks “Behind the Lines” and the Southern-flavored “Hickory Dichotomy,” as well as ’90s hits like “Interstate Love Song,” “Plush” and “Vasoline.” Yet reports from other cities have been mixed. Bloggers in Milwaukee, Washington, D.C., and Milan have reported that Weiland appeared wasted and out of focus, and forgot lyrics.

DeLeo opts to sidestep the issue. “I always want to be the best that I can be, and I want the band to be the best it can be,” he says. The guitarist offers that Milan was a hot, packed room on the last night of the European tour and that “Scott had us all cracking up,” as he tried to pass off the band as Italian. That wasn’t so hard with DeLeo and his bassist brother Robert, but Weiland added vowels to his and drummer Eric Kretz’s last names.

As for the upcoming Boston show, New Jersey native DeLeo adds, “To get into the Northeast, the most rabid, crazed fans on the planet, it’s the absolute best.… This is a reciprocal party we’re having, man. It’s your party. We’re just out there working for you. If you make us feel good, we’re gonna let it all hang out.”

DeLeo says Weiland even nixed the guitarist’s proposal that STP hire a utility player to provide keyboards, extra guitar and vocal layers in concert. “I would like to venture off into other material that is more ‘studio-friendly,’ and Scott’s completely against it,” DeLeo says. “He’s just like, ‘No, it’s not us, man. I just want the four of us up there making a racket.’ I’m like, ‘OK man, I respect that. I dig it.’”

Indeed, STP fills the bill as a classic four-piece rock band that thrives on big riffs. “I can always go back to Zeppelin, man, the way God meant it to be: guitar, bass and drums, and a singer,” DeLeo says, noting how Led Zeppelin’s Jimmy Page “had so much going on at the guitar end of things, it was always interesting to see what line he was going to grab [live]. There’s something challenging about that, and there’s also something very stripped down and honest about it.”

DeLeo’s influences range from classic rock to Brazilian music, which fueled two recent B-sides, “Samba Nova” and “About a Fool.” “It just goes back to what we were fed as babies,” the 44-year-old guitarist says, noting he and Robert would hear the Brazilian greats João Gilberto and Antonio Carlos Jobim played around the house. “I had the luxury of growing up in the ’60s and ’70s, and what we called popular music and what people are calling R&B now, give me a break. It’s a pile of shit today.”

The DeLeo brothers produced the new album, working in both Kretz’s custom-made studio and Robert’s just-finished one. Weiland, meanwhile, recorded vocals at his own studio with producer Don Was, who served as liaison to the sessions.

“Scott insisted back to [STP’s 1992 debut] Core, ‘I don’t want anybody around when I’m doing vocals,’” says DeLeo, who adds that he feels quite similarly as a guitarist when it comes to “trying to let my freak flag fly” with other musicians in the room.

STP has a proven process and chemistry, and they roll with it.

Stone Temple Pilots play Bank of America Pavilion on Sept. 1.

Photo Credit: Kerry Hayes

BY SEAN BURNS

I’m too old for this.

Michael Cera stars and does his Michael Cera thing, which was amusing until he started doing it in every movie. He whimpers lines as the title character, a 20-something loser with no job and no aspirations, playing bass in a lame garage band. Pilgrim is one of the most worthless characters we’ve seen in film this year, devoid of any life or higher ambition. He’s still reeling from a breakup we’re told happened “455 days ago,” at which point he stopped getting haircuts and started feeling sorry for himself.

But then one night he meets Ramona Flowers (Mary Elizabeth Winstead), who we know is the girl of Pilgrim’s dreams because we’ve seen him having dreams about her. At no point in the film do these two have anything resembling a meaningful conversation, and the most we learn about Ramona is that she changes her hair color on a weekly basis. She regards the world with a bratty, off-putting sneer, but it doesn’t matter because she’s just the prize at the end of this video game.

And what a game it is, perhaps the most repetitive of the summer. See, in this movie’s vaguely defined winterscape, Ramona has a “League of Evil Exes,” so if Pilgrim truly wishes to date her, he must first defeat all seven ex-boyfriends (actually six, as there’s an ex-girlfriend, too) in relentlessly protracted, CGI fisticuffs with chintzy Atari sound effects.

Based on the comic book by Bryan O’Malley, Scott Pilgrim vs. the World has an intriguing hook. Fighting Ramona’s exes is a nifty metaphor to express the uphill battles in any relationship, as initially you’re always competing with the memories of those who came before. Alas, director Edgar Wright has little interest in exploring this fertile idea. He’s really not interested in anything other than fawning over his target audience with obscure references and endorsing a worldview that can best be described as limited.

Pilgrim is a heel and a bore. Besides Carrie Bradshaw and Bella from Twilight, I’m hard-pressed to think of a protagonist so solipsistic and unappealing. The butt of most gags is Ellen Wong’s Knives Chau, an endearing girl who, as far as I can tell, commits the mortal sin of liking Pilgrim and supporting his creative endeavors. But he’s busy cheating on her, so obviously she needs to be mocked, humiliated and even beaten as the movie drags to its end.

Weighed down by the need to dispose of seven separate antagonists in numbingly familiar settings, the movie has time for little else. Wright’s major feature debut, Shaun of the Dead, nimbly restaged a Nick Hornby relationship drama in the midst of a zombie apocalypse, but his cop-movie follow-up, Hot Fuzz, eventually became the same overlong stunt spectacular it was parodying.

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World is troubling because it pretends to embrace the main character’s underdog status, despite most of the movie consisting of him kicking ass and demonstrating a physical prowess that seems incongruous coming from wispy Michael Cera. Wright also tricks out every shot with comic-book nonsense—unable to convey so much as a ringing phone without the word “RING!!!” blasting outward from the receiver.

It’s Juno for adolescent boys, reminding a teenage audience at each turn that they’re better than everybody else. Of course Scott Pilgrim already has a legion of devoted fans, the whole moral of the movie being that it’s OK to be a socially awkward, couch-surfing loser who has nothing to offer the world. There’s no coming-of-age here, just an endorsement of something sad.

Meanwhile, I told you kids to get off my lawn!

Scott Pilgrim vs. the World 

Starring Michael Cera, Mary Elizabeth Winstead, Kieran Culkin, Chris Evans, Anna Kendrick, Brandon Routh and Jason Schwartzman. Based on the comics by Bryan Lee O’Malley. Screenplay by Michael Bacall and Edgar Wright. Directed by Edgar Wright. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Elizabeth Bomze

As American palates ripened to the taste of Greek yogurt, Sophia Georgoulopoulos saw an opportunity. The Kalamata native, who follows her grandmother’s recipe, scalds milk from Vermont sheep and goats (not cows), mixes in active cultures and lets it rest for the better part of 12 hours. The ultra-thick yogurt easily holds a spoon—you’d never guess it’s low-fat—and boasts an almost cheesy tang. Grab a quart ($6) from her Belmont market. And to beat the heat, a bowl of her tart fro-yo.

Sophia’s Greek Pantry | 265 Belmont St., Belmont | sophiasgreekpantry.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Amanda Knorr

Chemical peels bring many things to mind, none of them particularly pleasant. Leave it to Bliss to turn a scary-sounding service into a luxurious experience. With the spa about to open, I decided to check out the “Bright Stuff Facial,” which targets hyperpigmentation and helps to diminish dark spots. The tingly treatment begins with a five-minute peel containing Vitamin C powder, salicylic and glycolic acids, and a sanitizing booster. Next, a refreshingly cool collagen mask is applied to repair and rejuvenate the skin. An optional light therapy (at no extra cost or discomfort) kills lurking bacteria waiting to surface. As everything works its magic, a hand, neck and foot massage makes you forget you were there for a facial in the first place. After my hour was up, I had a smooth glow that improved as the week went on.

The Bright Stuff Facial, $175 at Bliss | W Boston, 100 Stuart St., Boston | 877-862-5477 | blissworld.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

BY NICK ALTSCHULLER

Like the new Louis Boston downstairs, the cocktail menu at Sam’s feels cleaner and more restrained than you might expect. There are creative selections and some novel brands used in intriguing combinations: whiskey and plum wine, Chartreuse and ginger beer. But at the top of the list sit two highballs, and here’s where the decorum decelerates. The Narcissist ($12) is the brainchild of Brooklynite Jon Parsons, while Bostonian Jon Rogers created Pandora’s Box ($12).

“We have a poking-each-other-in-the-ribs competition,” Rogers says about this contest between local and outsider, good versus evil. “How about law versus chaos?” Parsons asks.

His Narcissist was born during a lazy Sunday at Williamsburg’s Sweet Ups, when boredom led Parsons to carve his name into the preserved Asian-pear garnishes. Starting with a classic Polish combination of Zubrówka (bison-grass vodka) and apple juice, he adds simple syrup and passion-fruit liqueur. This slices through the tartness with a sustained note of sweetness.

Rogers’ Pandora’s Box ($12) cuts to the chase. Mixing gin, açaí liqueur, and grapefruit and lemon juices, his drink starts with an acid punch before a clean, agave-nectar finish—sweet without the sticky.

In hefty rocks glasses, both cocktails feel like something James Coburn would down at a patio party before he punched you in the mouth. Asked for her preference—with Rogers standing nearby—bartender Jess Li opts for Pandora’s Box. “I’m a gin person though,” she clarifies. “Until it makes me angry.” Best bet: Enjoy ’em both.

Sam’s | 60 Northern Ave., Boston | 617-295-0191 | samsatlouis.com

Photo Credit: Katie Noble

By Andrew Rimas

In Paris, Don Carney and John Ross, owners of Patch NYC, were inspired by the little storefronts serving as retail annexes to artists’ studios. “It’s the opposite of Newbury Street, more of an artistic space,” says Carney, 42, of the new boutique under their South End studio. “It’s unexpected and very small, kind of a step back in time.” They stock both one-of-a-kind pieces and costume jewelry, as well as original drawings, scarves and candles. “Hopefully, it’ll be a treasure to someone.”   

Photo Credit: Adrien Broom

By Paul Robicheau

Today’s festivals have diversified and grown up—and so have Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, who should expand their fan base at September’s Life Is Good Festival. “I love the sentiment and the optimism behind it,” the robust singer says of the two-day event sponsored by that local apparel company at Canton’s Prowse Farm, where her band joins Ben Harper, Dr. Dog and Ziggy Marley on Sept. 11. “It fits into our personality as people in a band.”

That personality has changed since Potter and the Nocturnals cut their teeth playing earthy rock ’n’ roll at jam-band festivals. They shared a Bonnaroo lineup with Bruce Springsteen and Nine Inch Nails last year, and that gig proved a turning point. Her label Hollywood Records (home to the Jonas Brothers and Miley Cyrus) shelved a T-Bone Burnett–produced solo disc with Potter to hasten a separate Nocturnals session after executives saw a video of her newly reshuffled group rocking Bonnaroo.

“There’s a time to change, and there’s a place to grow, and that’s what is happening in music right now,” Potter says. “Everyone has seen beyond just the image of ‘This is indie music’ or ‘This is jam music.’ All those lines are being blurred, and it’s time to be ready and embrace it.”

She’s clearly talking about her own situation. “I wanted to grow into something that has evolution and elasticity,” the 27-year-old frontwoman says. “People think the label told me to dye my hair blonde and dress in spangle outfits.… There are all these conspiracy theories, but it’s completely and solely my fault!”

Indeed, the girl who once blew out of Vermont like a hippie chick with a hurricane voice looks glamorous in coiffed hair, miniskirt and high heels on the cover of Grace Potter & the Nocturnals, the group’s first CD with new bassist Catherine Popper (Ryan Adams’ Cardinals) and rhythm guitarist Benny Yurco.

“The hippie chick from Vermont thing was not necessarily the real me,” Potter says. “There was definitely a feeling of not wanting to look like ‘little miss hot stuff’ when you’re walking around in Vermont. But deep down, if you’re looking at pictures of me as a kid, you could see that I wanted to play dress-up.”

Beyond image, her quintet sounds more polished and commercial on its eponymous new album, produced by Mark Batson (Jay-Z, Dave Matthews Band), who cowrote six songs. Potter grunts and howls like a female Lenny Kravitz on the hard-riffing, funk-edged opener “Paris (Ooh La La),” a far cry from the Bonnie Raitt or Janis Joplin vibe of her original gospel/blues-rooted quartet.

“This is not a humble, rootsy record. This is a ballsy, sparkly record with lots of attitude and sexuality,” Potter declares. “The inspiration behind the record came from tapping into that place that I came from, that I never had shared before, my mom and I screaming our faces off to the Pointer Sisters and the Nylons.”

She remains close to her parents—and still lives on their rural Waitsfield compound with drummer Matt Burr, with whom she launched the Nocturnals in 2003 after they watched the Band’s seminal concert film The Last Waltz during college.

“I’m treating it like an Italian family where the kids never leave,” Potter says, taking a break from gutting her parents’ bathroom with her sister. “Our upbringing as kids was just constant creation. My dad wouldn’t let us watch a movie unless we had a project in front of us, a painting or doodling. There was always something to build.”

As a child, Potter was the quiet kid in glasses, alone at her piano. “I was a little dopey,” says the singer, who still wears glasses offstage—at least until she recently lost them on tour. “I’ve just been going without them, which is almost impossible ’cause I’m literally, legally blind.… So it’s been really interesting. I had to change the settings on my phone!”

It doesn’t sound like the Potter who prowls the stage when she’s not banging her Hammond B-3 organ, challenging every soul on a personal basis. “I kinda broke through all that shy shit, and I’m glad I got over it,” she says. “I’m definitely a performer at heart.

Grace Potter & the Nocturnals play the Life Is Good Festival on Sept. 11

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

Multiplicity is a great way to defy convention. It keeps people from pinning you down.
“We’re not saying we’re a tavern. We’re not saying we’re a gastropub. There [are] no rules here,” says Back Bay Social Club chef Tim Raines. “I’m trying to embrace that and have fun.”

The 26-year-old’s menu stretches from breakfast to late-night, seven days a week, and with the profusion of options, BBSC both validates predictions and provides some surprises. You would expect to find a “locally foraged” mushroom and goat-cheese tart ($12), but you wouldn’t think of Boylston as the place to grab a fried-egg sandwich on the way to the office ($8-$11). There are daily specials, and, surprise, Monday’s is chicken and waffles ($14), but Friday’s is a fish fry (market price), which feels more backwoods then Back Bay.

As for drinks, there’s Tom Mastricola, whose work history includes the opening of No. 9 Park’s illustrious bar program. At brunch, he’d be pleased to pour you a maple-bacon Bloody Mary ($11), but be sure to ask him about the house-made coffee liqueur for the White Russians ($12). Of course, there are craft cocktails, but Mastricola has tackled an atypical era, highlighting creations from the late ’60s and early ’70s, like the brandy and white crème de menthe Stinger ($12) or a prosecco-ed variation on the Harvey Wallbanger ($12).

At BBSC, all the buzzwords are present, they’re just part of a larger body of work. “There was no intention to say, ‘This is local; this is native,’” Raines explains. “We just tried to make it the best.”  

Back Bay Social Club | 867 Boylston St., Boston | 617-247-3200 | backbaysocialclub.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

A different kind of bubbly is gaining attention at the bar, as commitment to craft has found an unexpected application. Non-alcoholic, no less.

Once overlooked by the evangelists of local and homemade, sodas are now getting the scratch treatment. “We do everything in-house, as much as we can,” East by Northeast chef/owner Phillip Tang says. “To go out and buy cans of Coke or Sprite just seemed wrong.”

By steeping natural ingredients in simple syrup, Tang makes the base for flavors like ginger and mint oolong (all $5). Cilantro-lime soda is an herbal, effervescent pick-me-up, and a refreshing alternative to summer’s muddled or blended depressants.

Tang was inspired by a lemon-thyme soda he tried at Jean-Georges Vongerichten’s Perry St. in Manhattan. “Jean-Georges started playing around with the idea of fresh herbs in sodas at his namesake restaurant in the Trump Tower, and they’re served at his locations around the world now,” Chris Damskey explains. The Market chef de cuisine helps create flavors like sour orange, cherry-yuzu and ginger ($4), which requires two pounds of the root for one quart of syrup. “These aren’t things you can just go down to the corner and buy.”

Other establishments dabbling in fizz include Woodward and Myers + Chang, with flavors like passion spice, lychee and vanilla, and aloe and yuzu (all $5). Of course, while noble on their own, they can also serve as a superior mixer, like in Towne Stove and Spirits’ Baja Breeze ($10-$12) with Asian citrus soda, or Tang’s cilantro lime with Hendrick’s gin ($9).

“House-made is a big word right now,” he says. “When people see it, it kind of elevates their experience.”

Photo Credit: Lionsgate

By Sean Burns

Some kind of meathead masterpiece, Sylvester Stallone’s The Expendables is cinematic junk food of the highest order. It’s an unapologetically old-school, men-on-a-mission movie that’s so retro you’ll feel like you should be watching it on a beat-up VHS tape. Both shameless and weirdly sincere in its dunderheadedness, the movie is a relic from a crasser, ruder era before irony seeped into popular entertainment and ruined everything.

At 64, Stallone isn’t going gently into that good night. Nor is he following the example of Clint Eastwood and allowing age and experience to reshape his worldview. Stallone’s panicked response to his advancing decrepitude, most recently evidenced by his Rocky and Rambo reincarnations, is to simply ignore the clock and pretend the past two decades never happened. The Expendables wants to party like it’s 1986, when musclemen ruled the multiplexes, women existed only to be rescued, and there wasn’t a problem that couldn’t be solved with a machine gun. It’s a recipe that could spell disaster, but the movie ends up playing like gangbusters. Stuff blows up real good.

Stallone stars as the leader of a ragtag gang of aging mercenaries. Between prostate exams and bad plastic-surgery sessions, they hang out at a tattoo parlor/motorcycle shop owned by Mickey Rourke, where the guys drink, smoke, complain about broads and throw knives at the wall. All the steroids and testosterone almost stain the screen.

The boys are first seen taking out a boat full of Somali pirates in such quick and dirty fashion that it’s impossible not to giggle at all the flying viscera and badass posturing. As a director, Stallone didn’t seem to have a handle on the last Rambo picture’s absurd gore quotient, but here he’s figured out how to quickly cut away from the bloodshed so that it scores laughs instead of nausea.

The first time Dolph Lundgren blasts somebody’s upper torso across the room with a megapowered shotgun, it feels like a declaration of principles. In contrast to modern, youth-oriented action movies, here’s a bunch of grizzled old bastards who curse a lot and kill tons of people with high-caliber weapons. In other words, if you want something breezy, Scott Pilgrim is playing down the hall, girly-man.

The wisp of a plot finds Stallone and company dispatched to overthrow a tinhorn dictator in a small Latin American country. Thanks to the pernicious influence of a rogue CIA agent (Eric Roberts, so dastardly he should be twirling a mustache), this once vibrant island paradise has become a tyrannical cocaine factory, which means there are plenty of shoddy buildings for our heroes to blow up. And boy, do they.

Stallone is clearly unconcerned with the demands of his so-called story, instead smartly structuring The Expendables so that it boasts at least one giddily ridiculous action sequence per reel, culminating in the last 40 minutes, which is just a balls-to-the-wall killing spree. The movie is more about camaraderie, with a bunch of aging blowhards trading quips and enunciating with their neck muscles. Yet it remains entertaining because it’s so light on its feet.

Sly dials down his usual tormented angst, opting instead for bemused grimaces and mostly playing straight man to Jason Statham’s quick-tempered sidekick. Stallone isn’t much of an actor, but he’s always been great at reacting, taking the craziness in stride with his droopy, hangdog charisma.

Statham is the only one in the crew granted a life outside of the mission. (Woman trouble… figures.) Jet Li, Terry Crews and Randy Couture are each assigned exactly one character trait, while Dolph Lundgren gets a big wet kiss of a role as the gang’s unhinged turncoat. The sight gag of the massive Ivan Drago fighting the miniature Li is consistently hilarious, with the lumbering Swede bonking his head on ceilings and crossbeams every time his quicksilver opponent scurries for cover.

For a world-renowned egotist, Stallone is a surprisingly gracious host at this party. Everybody has his turn to shine in refreshingly unadorned fisticuffs, and the auteur even allows himself to get pummeled by “Stone Cold” Steve Austin. (“I just got my ass kicked,” Sly mumbles afterward.) In one early scene, he absorbs heaps of verbal abuse from Bruce Willis and a certain California governor, which, if you grew up watching action flicks in the ’80s, is kind of like watching Mount Rushmore come to life and curse a blue streak.

Sly even passes off the pivotal tear-jerking monologue to Mickey Rourke, which almost throws the whole movie out of whack, as you see what a genuinely great actor can do with even this hackneyed material.

Make no mistake, The Expendables isn’t very good. But it’s defiantly anachronistic and succeeds at being exactly what it wants to be. I haven’t had this much fun at the movies all summer.

The Expendables 

Starring Sylvester Stallone, Jason Statham, Jet Li, Dolph Lundgren, Terry Crews, Randy Couture and Mickey Rourke. Written by Dave Callaham and Stallone. Directed by Stallone. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Photo Credit: Jessica Miglio

By Sean Burns

In the cesspool of modern romantic comedy, littered as it is with grim, misogynistic vehicles for the unappealing likes of Jennifer Aniston, Kate Hudson and Katherine Heigl, a flawed but ultimately adequate film like Going the Distance feels like a masterwork. A so-called “chick flick” that doesn’t hate women and won’t make you want to gouge your eyes out? Stop the presses!

Borrowing more from Judd Apatow’s sentimental gross-outs than, say, 27 Dresses, Going the Distance stars an irresistible Drew Barrymore as the oldest intern in the history of newspapers, desperately trying to restart a career after wasting too many years with all the wrong guys. “My time line is off,” she explains more than once, which might be the filmmakers’ attempt to justify a 35-year-old still living like a college student with a fondness for bong-rips, blackout benders and one-night stands.

They need not have bothered, since Barrymore is simply adorable. The more she cusses, drinks and stuffs her face with buffalo wings, the more appealing she becomes. Freed from the prissy confines of most rom-com leads, she’s a potty-mouthed hard-partier who isn’t afraid to admit that she enjoys sex. It’s impossible to imagine uptight Us Weekly drones like Aniston or Heigl indulging in the kind of giddy, stoned lasciviousness that Barrymore gets away with here. She carries the movie on lusty giggles and F-bombs.

The catch is, a mere six weeks before heading back to Stanford to finally finish that whole education thing, Barrymore falls for Justin Long’s slacker layabout. I’ve never been a big fan of the ubiquitous Mac pitchman. He’s got a clean, audience-friendly veneer that always makes it seem like he’s selling toothpaste. To its credit, Going the Distance tries to rough up Long’s polish, casting him as a caddish record-company up-and-comer with raunchy roommates and a lazy streak a mile long.

Once Barrymore heads back to California, Geoff LaTulippe’s screenplay digs into just how rotten long-distance relationships can be. Even with modern technology giving us Skype and unlimited calling plans, it’s still a confusing half-romance that all the weekend visits and awkward stabs at phone sex can’t quite normalize. Without the day-to-day aspects of regular couple-dom, Barrymore and Long struggle to hold things together and eke out their career paths in an unforgiving job market.

In the wish-fulfillment fantasia of romantic comedy, it’s refreshing to see a movie acknowledge that full-time gigs in the newspaper and record industries are a little hard to come by. Going the Distance will never be mistaken for gritty realism, but in a genre where money is normally never an object, it’s also refreshing to see folks in crappy apartments and seedy bars, unable to afford the luxury that such tales often demand. (On their big night out, Long takes Barrymore to a restaurant with “cloth napkins!”)

In keeping with the Apatow school of comedy, Long has a couple of wacky roommates serving as a Greek chorus. SNL’s Jason Sudeikis wears a Burt Reynolds moustache and spends most of his time hunting for cougars, while It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia’s Charlie Day gets a Galifianakis-esque breakout role, dispensing wisdom and filth in his incongruously high-pitched voice. Day even gets away with playing an entire semi-dramatic scene while seated on the toilet. He’s passed his big-screen audition.

Christina Applegate plays Barrymore’s hectoring, harridan sister. The role is a throwaway (the kind of thing Apatow would write for wife Leslie Mann if they were fighting that day), and yet she still finds a couple of unexpected contours. It’s always clear that her never-ending blurring of profanity comes from somewhere genuinely caring, and she sells the script’s most dramatic interaction with subtle aplomb. We need to see more of her in movies.

The traditional rom-com formula eventually takes over, and Going the Distance finds a solution to the geographical dilemma that doesn’t quite ring true. And I’m still not sure I can buy Justin Long in a role more suited for Seth Rogen, but at least he’s trying to scuff up his image and play some scenes that are hardly flattering.

But in the end it’s Barrymore’s movie. Making dumb decisions and blundering her way into hard-won happiness, it’s frankly impossible not to root for this gal. She handles the movie’s filthiest material with grace, even selling an unprintable oral-sex monologue with effervescent delight.

After belatedly catching up with Barrymore’s rousing, poignant directorial debut Whip It, I’m starting to think she can do anything.

Going the Distance ½

Starring Drew Barrymore, Justin Long, Charlie Day, Christina Applegate, Jason Sudeikis, Jim Gaffigan and Ron Livingston. Written by Geoff LaTulippe. Directed by Nanette Burstein. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

By Paul Robicheau

Bob Nastanovich is off-track. For the past decade, he has kept busy in the horse-racing industry as a thoroughbred owner and statistician. Now he’s globe-trotting again with Pavement, the seminal ’90s indie-rock band that beat the odds for a reunion.

“It wasn’t too frequently discussed,” Nastanovich says of the reunion idea, speaking from a Chicago airport terminal before heading for shows in Japan. “When people [in the band] would talk to each other over the last 10 or so years, it’s been brought up as sort of a hopeful possibility.”

The least-hopeful holdout was Pavement guiding force Stephen Malkmus, who dissolved the group in 1999 and moved on to his current band the Jicks and parenthood. But with urging from his booking agent, Malkmus put aside the time to get Pavement back on the road and contacted other members.

Nastanovich, guitarist Scott “Spiral Stairs” Kannberg, bassist Mark Ibold (now a member of Sonic Youth) and drummer Steve West have pursued other musical projects, but all embraced the plan. “The most refreshing aspect to this year is that I didn’t spend that much time over the last 10 years listening to Pavement, so I’ve really enjoyed hearing the music again,” says Nastanovich, who provides percussion, keyboard and backup vocals. “The main reason that it’s been easy is that I like the songs so much.”

He’s not the only one, although Pavement generated more critical acclaim than record sales. The group peaked commercially in 1994 with Crooked Rain, Crooked Rain, sporting the MTV hit “Cut Your Hair.” The album joined Pavement’s 1992 rough-cut masterpiece Slanted and Enchanted on Rolling Stone magazine’s 2003 list of the 500 greatest albums of all time, and both earned expanded-reissue treatment along with 1997’s underrated gem Brighten the Corners.

The constant was Pavement’s casual but influential collision of styles (bridging lo-fi garage rock, post-punk and prog-rock) and Malkmus’ abstract, laconic verse, which was often as musical as his serpentine guitar lines. “He was a little more adventurous than the rest of us,” says Nastanovich, citing his ex–University of Virginia classmate’s interest in the Swell Maps and Captain Beefheart. “We were all pretty straightforward punk and grunge.”

After post-college travels to the Middle East, Malkmus returned to his hometown of Stockton, Calif., and launched Pavement with high-school friend Kannberg and drummer Gary Young, who lost his welcome with erratic behavior.

“In the first few years, my role was basically to prop [Gary] up, and when he was impossible to prop up, I was essentially just there to keep time,” Nastanovich says. “When he quit, I really didn’t know what I was going to do.” But in addition to finding a groove with new drummer and old friend West, he adopted a new role— “helping Stephen’s voice out by taking more of his harsher singing parts so he doesn’t shred his vocal cords.” What about his own? “I can shred my vocal cords no problem, ’cause I can’t sing anyway,” says Nastanovich, whose exhortations supposedly inspired the “Woo-hoo!” in Blur’s Pavement-influenced “Song 2.”

“What I represent in the band is someone who’s very happy to be there, and people look at me [and say], ‘Hey, if that guy’s in a band, why can’t I be?’” he says. “I enjoy the live audience, and I like to have fun with them and allow the more musical elements of Pavement to concentrate on what they’re doing.”

Much like new retrospective CD Quarantine the Past, Pavement’s current tour features a broad sampling of songs from throughout the band’s history. “Audiences are overwhelmingly acceptive,” Nastanovich says, “[There’s] a lot of knowledge of the lyrics, a lot better knowledge than I have, and a lot of singing along.”

The one thing missing are new songs. Nastanovich says he doesn’t expect them to develop, although he hopes that in coming years, “We’d pop up here and there for the occasional concert.

“Pavement isn’t the kind of band that discusses anything until we have to,” he adds, noting they’re trying to mix up the set lists more by the time the group hits Agganis Arena on Sept. 18.

“Pavement’s always been very casual in terms of rehearsing,” Nastanovich says. “Stephen plays these songs differently just about every single time, which keeps us all on our toes. So the live songs have always been in a state of flux.”

Pavement plays Agganis Arena on Sept. 18.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

There are elements that give Foundry on Elm a workshop aesthetic. Chicken-wire glass. An oak bar, built by a local millworker. But the inspiration behind the name isn’t so rugged.

“In a foundry, raw material came in, went through a process and came out a finished product,” co-owner David Flanagan says. “This is an acknowledgment of the original craft worker.”

But rather than punch-clock dining or a menu that beats you over the head with sanctimony, Flanagan, with partner Ken Kelly (Precinct, the Independent), has developed a casual place influenced by the Dublin native’s time in Paris. “I used to eat in brasseries five days a week,” he explains. “I loved that it had such a wide variety.”

The pair hopes to fill the near 200-person space with brasserie standards like a raw bar, coq au vin ($16) and steak frites ($19). Executive chef Sam Putnam, over from the Ashmont Grill, will also prepare smokehouse bratwurst sandwiches ($8), bacon, sweet corn and arugula flatbreads ($10), and other comfort foods made to leaven the French feel with tavern touches.

Opening this month, Foundry is the first of the team’s three-phase incursion into Davis Square. In late 2010, a “pre-Prohibition” saloon will operate two doors down—the label carefully chosen, the hidden doors and passwords of preening modern speakeasies left behind. Taking over Jimmy Tingle’s Off Broadway, a neighborhood club for music and comedy will debut in the spring.

For a team paying tribute to the craftsman, there’s plenty of work ahead.

Foundry on Elm | 255 Elm St., Somerville | foundryonelm.com

Photo Credit: Ingrid Hertfelder

By Andrew Rimas

Celebrating its 10th year, the Berklee Jazz Festival returns to its musical roots with a New Orleans theme. In addition to the expected free events and marquee club shows, a Big Easy–style marching band raises the roofs of the brownstones on Columbus Avenue, and a free concert on Sept. 25 features the likes of Al Kooper and the Funky Faculty, as well as Jonathan Batiste (pictured).  Other top, ticketed acts include Paula Cole, the Bad Plus and Terence Blanchard. The festival runs Sept. 15–25.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Amanda Knorr

Even with big-name spas coming to town, local fave G2O remains unstoppable. After two years of construction, owner Joyce Hampers debuts its new home this month. What was once two historic brownstones is now a five-story facility, boasting all the essential amenities (massage, acupuncture, facials, manicures, pedicures, etc.), plus exclusives like brine-inhalation therapy, sunless tanning, a nap pod and a steam-ice fog room. Each floor has a theme, including a relaxing penthouse suite overlooking Newbury Street, complete with a hot tub and patio. My favorite is the salon floor, featuring separate wash, cut and color stations, with a table to plug in your laptop and enjoy free Wi-Fi while you process. Shampoos and conditioners aren’t the only environmentally friendly items—the entire building’s structure earns its green cred with geothermal heating and cooling, well water, LED lights and more. Leave here looking good, and feeling good about yourself.

G2O Spa & Salon | 278 Newbury St., Boston | 617-262-2220 | g2ospasalon.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Elizabeth Bomze

A few years after deviled eggs hatched a comeback, this two-bite bar snack has migrated onto local menus. Right at home with the lamb haggis, tomato bridie and other Scottish plates at the Haven in JP, the dish comes hard-boiled, packed in coarse-ground sausage, crisped in hot oil and split down the center to reveal a velvety yolk. The whole
package might have breakfast-like appeal if not for the dollop of heady mustard (a mixture of Dijon and grainy) and well-dressed mesclun greens on the side.                 

Scotch Egg $6

The Haven | 2 Perkins St., Jamaica Plain | 617-524-2836 | thehavenjp.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

As Ms. Capulet pondered, “What’s in a name?” Not too much, she figures out. In Brookline, the Abbey is named for a theater in general manager Damian Dowling’s native Ireland. It’s also just one out of many options that stuck. However, as co-owner/executive chef Josh Sherman notes, “The restaurant business is very theatrical. There’s always some drama going on.”

In this case, it’s the story of two protégés striking out on their own—about 400 feet from where they started. Sherman cooked at the Washington Square Tavern for more than five years. Dowling tended bar there for eight. With their new place, the two are careful to set themselves apart. “We’re not trying to be like the Tavern. We’re not trying to be a beer bar like the Publick House across the street,” says Sherman, who’s a neighborhood fixture and apparently still popular with his competition. “All those people have been really helpful lending a hand.”

The restaurant holds a 12-stool bar serving a lineup of house cocktails, while the 25 seats include a row of four by the pass, affording curious diners a direct, unedited view of Sherman in action. (“I’ll have to watch myself,” he confesses.)  His menu stands in that ever-confounding ether of local, modern, traditional, upscale-pub-comfort grub. “If I had to put a label on it, I’d say American bistro, but I don’t even know what that means,” he concedes, refreshingly. Suffice to say, there will be small plates—like deviled bacon and eggs ($4)—accompanying dishes like charred Caesar salad ($8) and roasted cod with potato and scallion pancakes ($19.50).

As it opens this week, pop into the Abbey, if only to follow their former boss’ example in telling them to break a leg. “He said, ‘I didn’t think you guys would work for me forever, and I wish you all the best,’” Sherman recounts. “Which is good, ’cause he’s close.”

The Abbey | 1657 Beacon St., Brookline | 617-730-8040 | abbeyrestaurant.com

By Sean Burns

Is it live, or is it memorex? So asked a Don Draper–worthy ad campaign in the 1980s, one that remains stuck in the heads of people who grew up with cassette tapes and other antiquated technologies. The slogan was a play on authenticity. But alas, after the dawn of reality TV and the increasingly slippery slope of documentary filmmaking ethics, our problem in the 21st century is that we’re always wondering if what we’re watching is, in fact, real.

Counterfeit mockumentary tactics broke big in the horror genre back in 1999 with The Blair Witch Project. Films like Fourth Kind, Quarantine, Paranormal Activity and The Last Exorcism have been cashing in on that “found-footage” gimmick ever since. Meanwhile, so-called documentaries have been getting even phonier, adopting reality-show editing techniques and fudging facts to the point where even Michael Moore may soon call foul.

Nanette Burstein’s 2008 Sundance smash (and subsequent box-office bomb) American Teen was so transparently scripted and brazenly manipulated, it made Jersey Shore look like The Sorrow and the Pity. And just recently, Joaquin Phoenix filmed himself having a hilariously fake nervous breakdown. Where’s the line, anymore?

And what to make of Catfish? Yet another Sundance sensation that purports to be a stranger-than-fiction true story, the movie doesn’t ever quite feel like it’s playing on the level. Produced by Hollywood’s most unremarkable lackey, Brett Ratner, is this all some sort of Borat-style performance piece? And if so, why isn’t it more interesting?

I must tread lightly here to avoid spoilers. A deeply average and annoyingly overemotive young man named Nev Schulman works as a freelance photographer in New York City. One day he’s contacted by eight-year-old Abby Pierce, an art prodigy living in Michigan who enjoys painting portraits of his photos.

Faster than you can say My Kid Could Paint That (calling to mind Amir Bar-Lev’s documentary from a couple years back) Nev becomes a mentor to Abby, then finds himself smitten with her entire family via Facebook. We’re supposed to buy that Nev falls head over heels for Abby’s 19-year-old virgin half-sister, Megan, sight unseen. They talk all the time online, but for only brief moments on the actual telephone.

He never speaks to Abby at all.

Megan claims to have written a song about her beloved Nev, but a brief jaunt around the Internet tells him this tune was already available, years ago, on the One Tree Hill soundtrack. You might wonder why he never bothers to Google Abby, the young art genius, who at eight years of age purportedly has her own gallery and a long roster of wealthy patrons. Funny how net-savvy Nev never looks into any of this stuff. And then comes the eventual twist I’m not supposed to reveal.

Most of Catfish feels fake, as if Schulman and his coconspirators stumbled into a weird story and retroactively overcompensated by shooting bogus footage to make themselves look like suckers for the first hour. It’s impossible to imagine these sly 20-something guys, glued to their iPhones with digital cameras at the ready, being taken in by such a grand, easily disprovable hoax.

Of course they weren’t. Nev’s sexting with Megan is the most revealing cop-out I’ve ever seen. He can’t commit to anything, knowing the deal from the start, and spends the rest of the time trying to cover his own ass in order to still seem appealing on camera.

So what are we left with? The final 30 minutes of Catfish are indeed deeply sad, and the film becomes improbably moving in spite of its smarmy protagonist. There’s a devastating story to be told here, with deep reservoirs of heartbreak that remain untroubled by the central figure’s jerky nonchalance.

Prankster street-artist Banksy’s Exit Through the Gift Shop still ranks as the best so-called documentary I’ve seen in some time, and there’s been way too much ink spilled trying to figure out if that movie is the real deal. But whether it’s a hoax or not is immaterial, as the movie’s barbed message comes through loud and clear regardless. In fact, I think the film actually works better if he faked it.

Catfish has no such subversive point of view. This isn’t live; this is a cheap reproduction.

Catfish 

Starring Nev Schulman, Rel Schulman and Megan Faccio. Directed by Henry Joost and Ariel Schulman. At Kendall Square Cinema.

Photo Credit: Montuno Productions/Sandrine Lee

By Paul Robicheau

When you’re touted as one of jazz’s brightest new stars, there’s little time for laundry. In a recent week, Esperanza Spalding went from playing with jazz royalty in a Herbie Hancock birthday concert to dates in Japan, then a return to New York to hit the studio for Joe Lovano’s next record before a late-day interview.

“It’s like dancing for many choreographers,” the bassist/singer says of her full plate, while folding laundry in her apartment. “But it’s all related. It’s all music. It’s based on community and collaboration. That’s the only way that it works, and the only way that it grows. When I go out and bust my booty for someone else’s project, it affects my projects—and visa versa. It’s better if it’s all mixed up.”

Spalding, 25, embraces that mix on her own CDs, as well. Her new Chamber Music Society tightens the focus with a string trio that caresses her Latin-inflected arrangements and effervescent vocal flights. “I ask the string players to improvise, not [through] soloing, but as an ensemble the way a rhythm section would comp to a singer,” says Spalding, who plays Sanders Theatre on Oct. 2, with strings in addition to pianist Leo Genovese, drummer Terri Lyne Carrington, and vocalists Gretchen Parlato and Leala Cyr.

The disc proves a graceful, more sophisticated follow-up to her 2008 outing Esperanza, which blended Brazilian samba and funky fusions with Spalding’s alternating vocalese and lyrics sung in English, Spanish and Portuguese. That highly accessible CD spent 70 weeks on Billboard’s contemporary jazz chart, sold more than 100,000 copies, and earned such high-profile fans as Letterman, Oprah and Obama. She performed three times for the president, including at the Nobel Peace Prize ceremonies at Obama’s request.

The multi-ethnic Spalding, who graduated from Berklee in three years and became one of the college’s youngest-ever faculty members at age 20, acknowledges that her age, look and personality have boosted her career beyond her talents.

“Someone could be standing there saying the most profound shit in the world, but if they don’t look right, chances are no one is going to hear what they say,” she says. “Nothing I’m saying or playing is that profound, but it is good music, I’m a good musician, and it comes from my heart.… Artistically, that doesn’t make you unique from everyone else out there hustling to make great music. But I have the right look, and I’m different, so people pay attention to me.”

The real difference comes, Spalding says, when people listen to the album. “They hear that there’s really something going on there and stay interested,” she says. “Joe Lovano doesn’t give a shit what I look like. He wants me to play bass because I play bass really well.”

In turn, while Spalding owes much of her appeal to her airy, soaring voice, her initial musical grounding was instrumental—and largely classical. Raised in a low-income household by a single mother in Portland, Ore., Spalding was drawn to music at age 4 when she saw Yo-Yo Ma play cello on Mister Rogers’ Neighborhood. Her mother enrolled her in a free community band program. No cellos were available, so she set course on violin.

In her teens, as a youth-orchestra concertmaster who was exposed to jazz at a private-arts high school, Spalding put her hands on an acoustic bass and didn’t look back. “What turned me on to jazz was the bass itself, the sound,” she says. “Someone explained to me the concept of the walking bass line and that all this music was just improvised within these set structures, and that’s what got me.”

Spalding, who also joined a Portland indie-rock band in her late teens, plans another stretch this spring. She’ll follow Chamber Music Society with Radio Music Society, a CD that’ll sonically come closer to pop music with horns, grooves and electric bass.

“It seems really stupid to me that [jazz] isn’t on the radio,” she says. “Even kindergarteners, when given the chance to get into the music in a simple way, they get it and enjoy the spontaneity.”

One little girl got it, and took it from Portland to Boston to the White House.

Esperanza Spalding plays Sanders Theatre  on Oct. 2.

Photo Credit: Kristen Teig

By Andrew Rimas

Not many deluxe hotels welcome infestations, much less invite a resident swarm. The InterContinental Boston, however, has built a rooftop apiary, whose 40,000 residents produce honey for the treatments at the hotel’s spa and for dishes at its brasserie, Miel. Sous chef Cyrille Couet, who’s been collecting the first harvest, says, “Aside from the dessert part of the menu, honey marries very well with lemon in acidity.” As for stings, Couet claims, “Bees aren’t aggressive. I have the gear, but I barely wear it anymore.”

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

Deuxave sits at the intersection of Mass. and Comm. avenues: Deux-Ave, get it? Owners Brian Piccini and Christopher Coombs have been working on the space for two years. A chic design proves they’re prepared for the Back Bay scene. After years of running Dbar in Dorchester, the more congested parking situation is another story.

“Brian, I think you’re getting a ticket,” one hustling waiter warns.

Seems an officer has a problem with Piccini’s car being stationed in the valet spot. “I know. It’s my restaurant,” he retorts. Must feel pretty good.

The busy street scene is a selling point. Piccini explains, “We have customers saying, ‘It feels very New York, with the cabs flying by, and the people and the traffic. Don’t ever close your blinds.’”

In contrast to the views and the interior’s restrained elegance, chef Combs’ food feels indulgent, both in flavor and description. A listing for Persian-spiced Long Island duck breast ($28) begins with “cast-iron roasted” and ends 19 words later with “sherry-Pommery mustard sauce and natural jus.” (“He’d write a book if he could,” Piccini says.) Throughout the menu, local ingredients are prepared with his French techniques. The ticker-tape reports of duck confit ($14) and seared diver scallops ($28) are dotted with terms like “aigre-doux,” “crépenette” and “en cocotte.”

“Going to Dorchester formed who I am as a chef, to take high-end cuisine and make it affordable,” Coombs says. “This is a tremendous middle ground.”          

Deuxave | 371 Comm. Ave., Boston | 617-517-5915 | deuxave.com

Cityscope

Boston Brass
The Steppin' Out for Dimock gala is on Oct. 30 at the Westin Copley
Place.
steppinoutfordimock.org


Performing Arts

Taste of the Afterlife
O.N.C.E. in Hell is an interpretation of Dante's Divine Comedy
featuring a ten-course dinner served by costumed characters, at
Oberon on Oct. 24.
cluboberon.com


Music

Machine Age
Pop band Florence and the Machine are at the House of Blues on Oct. 31.
houseofblues.com


Movies

Coast Call
Rebecca Meyers presents her new film, Blue Mantle, at the ICA on Oct.
28.
icaboston.org


Books

Bloody Good
Douglas Starr discusses his nonfiction look at the birth of forensic
science at the French Cultural Center on Oct. 21.
frenchculturalcenter.org

Photo Credit: Frankie Batista

By Paul Robicheau

Mayer Hawthorne didn’t become a soul singer by design. “That was definitely never one of my plans,” says Hawthorne, a DJ, producer and multi-instrumentalist. “[Singing] was something I was really doing in my bedroom so that I could sample it for making hip-hop tracks. So being known as a singer is really crazy for me.”

The head of L.A.’s Stones Throw label, Chris “Peanut Butter Wolf” Manak also found it crazy to believe that this preppy nerd was the crooning creator of the Motown-fashioned demos on his desk.

In fact, Manak thought they might be reissues, says Hawthorne, 31. “When I was finally able to convince him that it was me and that they were really my songs, and I played everything and sang it all myself, he was like, ‘Holy crap, you have to do a whole album of this,’ which is something I never thought of doing.”

The result was A Strange Arrangement, a vintage-flavored 2009 release that won kudos from critics, as well as from Snoop Dogg, John Mayer and Justin Timberlake. Not bad for a lo-fi bedroom project where Hawthorne recorded his vocals through a set of headphones.

“When I first moved out to L.A., I was really scraping by,” the Michigan native says from his adopted base since 2005. “I just used whatever I had around and, fortunately for me, using cheap equipment worked out—and sort of added to the sound that I was looking for, which was that warmer, older sound.”

It was a sound he had absorbed as “a serious student of music,” listening to countless hours of classic soul from Motown to Curtis Mayfield (whose falsetto Hawthorne evokes on “The Ills”), as well as hip-hop from artists such as beatmaster J Dilla, who recorded for Stones Throw. “I’m the kind of guy who will throw on a Smokey Robinson tune or a J Dilla track and just sit there and try to pick it apart and figure out how they were able to get that sound,” he says. “What is it that makes it so magical?”

Growing up in Ann Arbor (on Hawthorne Ave.), Andrew Mayer Cohen was weaned on soul in the shadow of Motown. His musician father not only taught his son to play bass at age 6 but also brought him to work at a Detroit auto-parts store where they bonded over radio hits. “My parents used to buy me records,” Hawthorne says. “That was their favorite thing to get me, and my favorite thing to get. All I wanted to do was play records all day.”

He still finds the time to play records as a DJ, even spinning in Boston this past year. “I try to keep up my DJ game because a lot of people don’t even know that I DJ, which is wild,” says Hawthorne, who mixes hip-hop and soul with yacht rock, electro, house and ghetto-tech. “I’ve been DJing for so long, it’s second nature to me.… I’m able to blend any genre of music that I want.”

In turn, he’s recording his follow-up to A Strange Arrangement with plans to expand on both his production and inspiration. “It’s still going to be rooted in Motown and classic soul, but it’s got to move forward,” Hawthorne says, citing the Beatles, the Beach Boys and Steely Dan as influences on the CD, due next year. “I’m the type of guy who can’t do the same thing twice.”

But for now, he’s back on tour with the County, his band of Detroit friends that helps bring his bedroom-crafted songs to life onstage. “Everybody has learned so much,” the stylish, spectacled singer says of the group, which returns to the Paradise Rock Club on Oct. 19. “I’ve gotten a lot more comfortable as a frontman nowadays. I’m getting to the point where I can have a lot of fun with it, which is great, because that’s what it’s all about.”

What began as a lark has become something much bigger. “I get to say that I make music for a living,” Hawthorne says. “As long as I can continue to do that, I’ll be so happy.”

Mayer Hawthorne & the County play the Paradise Rock Club on Oct. 19.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Elizabeth Bomze

No matter how well you try to time it, the sticky buns at Flour always seem to sell out. Ensure your morning bliss with a copy of Joanne Chang’s long-awaited cookbook, which includes the recipe for that tasty treat. Chang also shares the secrets behind her beloved cookies, cakes, pastries, puddings and breads. A quick preview: The banana bread is enriched with two tablespoons of crème fraîche, and the sticky buns take almost three sticks of butter—not including the goo.                      

Flour: Spectacular Recipes from Boston’s Flour Bakery + Café $35
Available Oct. 13 at all major booksellers, Flour Bakery locations, and Myers + Chang.

By Sean Burns

“Why would I want to see a movie about Facebook?” my dad asked me.

That’s the question on the lips of many people not particularly interested in social networking. But then again, Citizen Kane wasn’t really about the newspaper industry; it simply used a media magnate as an entry point to a story more concerned with loneliness and megalomania. “The Facebook Movie,” as most folks have dubbed it, obviously aspires to be a millennial Kane, dropping allusions to Welles’ classic while also roping in The Great Gatsby and Faust for good measure. It’s an ostensibly simple story about friends who screwed each other over, and yet this film is shooting for the moon.

As far as pure, propulsive entertainment goes, The Social Network is a giddy rush of dizzying dialogue and cinematic curlicues. The unlikely pairing of florid, heart-on-his-sleeve West Wing writer Aaron Sorkin and clinical, profoundly dyspeptic Fight Club director David Fincher is unexpectedly revelatory. A 162-page script (Hollywood’s usual formula dictates a-page-a-minute) blurted out in just under two hours, the movie is a barrage of intoxicating, rapid-fire chatter. Fincher is more than up to the task of finding sly visual counterpoints, and, on first viewing, you’re often faced with the choice to either look or listen. The audio/visual virtuosity is almost overwhelming.

The story by now is legend. Nerdy outcast Mark Zuckerberg (fearlessly played by Jesse Eisenberg) gets dumped, drunk, then sets his campus on fire by hacking Harvard’s undergrad “facebook” site and creating a “which chick is hotter” online contest. One evening of spurned, sloshed petulance spawned a multi-billion-dollar business.

Legal issues abound. Questions still remain, as to who was where for what reason and when, particularly with regard to a pair of twins (both played by Armie Hammer, thanks to some digital trickery), who hired Zuckerberg to code their exclusive Harvard dating site. The Social Network zips back and forth from dorm rooms to deposition rooms, spinning the story into two separate timelines.

But the movie isn’t as concerned with legal ramifications or questions of authorship as it is with class differences and the idea of a level playing field in our technological age. It’s a revenge of the nerd. Hammer’s twins (amusingly dubbed “the Winklevi” by Zuckerberg) are the kind of handsome, moneyed bros some of us were unfortunate enough to meet in college. These dudes accept success as a birthright and expect everybody else to play by their rules.

Zuckerberg, with all his creepy, unblinking antisocial tendencies, stuffed a middle finger in the face of the Harvard old-boy hierarchy. He’s a heroically petulant outsider (his Jewish faith is only obliquely referenced, yet figures largely in the saga nonetheless), and it’s only when Justin Timberlake’s Sean Parker, cofounder of Napster, clings on like a leech, and seduces Zuckerberg with dance clubs and venture-capitalist millions, that the Faustian elements of the tale begin to take their toll.

Timberlake, by the way, is extraordinary. Lit from beneath for maximum Mephistophelian overtones, he’s the snake in the grass who’s able to sever Zuckerberg’s lifelong friendship with Facebook’s cofounder Eduardo Saverin (Andrew Garfield), introducing our antihero to a late-night world of hot girls and bad drugs that the university had always walled him from.

“Every creation myth needs a devil,” utters Rashida Jones’ lawyer during one of the movie’s more regrettable on-the-nose one-liners. Nobody will be surprised that Sorkin has a tendency to overwrite. But even clangers like that one are counterbalanced by the movie’s keen empathy for its characters. I understand Zuckerberg is less-than-pleased with this portrait, but having watched hours of interviews with the world’s youngest billionaire, I found him oddly sympathetic here.

The film’s last shot is a doozy. Sorkin might as well be saying: “I’m sorry, Mr. Kane. But Rosebud has still not accepted your friend request.”

A word to the wise: Be careful where you see The Social Network. Fincher and cinematographer Jeff Cronenweth shot the film on Red video cameras with extremely low light levels. But when I watched the picture at the AMC Boston Common, the theater screened this digital 2-D movie without changing out the 3-D lens, resulting in a severely dimmed image. Fincher, the technophile, would probably lose his temper at seeing his work rendered as murky soup. Filmgoers deserve better.

The Social Network 

Starring Jesse Eisenberg, Andrew Garfield, Armie Hammer, Max Minghella, Rooney Mara and Justin Timberlake. Written by Aaron Sorkin. Directed by David Fincher. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Phot Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

The corner of Northampton Street and Columbus Avenue was home to Bob’s Southern Bistro for 18 years. After owner Darryl Settles sold the spot in 2007, two restaurants came and went with such velocity that some have now deemed the location cursed. “People keep saying that,” Settles says. “They just had concepts that didn’t work.”

Settles has returned with Darryl’s Corner Bar & Kitchen, with a concept he simply calls “a neighborhood place.” He’s bringing back the catfish strips, the crab cakes—“’cause everyone keeps asking about them”—and cocktails like the Chicken Martini ($10), a slightly fruity, Hennessey-inflected drink Settles created as a tougher version of his usual apple martini.

Then there’s the margarita ($9), specifically a Cadillac margarita (tequila, Grand Marnier and sour) with Cointreau and prickly-pear syrup. “When we were putting the list together, we asked Darryl, ‘Are there any names you want to incorporate? Something special?’” bartender Chris Whitney recalls. “He chimed in, and it was deemed the  fort hill.” 

“People feel like this area has been taken from them,” says Settles, who once lived in the Fort Hill neighborhood of Roxbury, just a few blocks south. “I put the name on it to make them feel comfortable. I want to make sure that everyone knows everyone is welcome here.”

As service begins, Settles greets the day’s first customers as they  walk through the door. “Hi, I’m Darryl,” he says, and shows them to their table.      

Darryl’s Corner Bar & Kitchen | 604 Columbus Ave., Boston | 617-536-1100 | darrylscornerbarboston.com

Photo Credit: Matt Jacoby

By Paul Robicheau

Singer/songwriter Taylor Goldsmith fronts L.A. folk-rockers Dawes with missionary zeal. But when the band heads for the next town, he prefers a backseat in the van—with heavy ear muffs.

            “That’s one of my favorite reasons to go on the road,” Goldsmith says. “If anyone’s listening to music or talking in the front, I have six to eight hours of reading time.”

            His recent literary diet includes F. Scott Fitzgerald, Dostoevsky and Che Guevara, and he’ll even lift the occasional quote. “Every man ends up with the face that he deserves,” in his song “When You Call My Name,” comes from George Orwell. “I don’t feel weird taking it from a different art form,” Goldsmith says. “That can add a different dimension.”

            Dawes has entered another dimension since the group released its 2009 debut North Hills on Dave Matthew’s ATO label, earning stacks of glowing press to fuel those long van rides.

But Goldsmith, 25, and his brother/drummer Griffin, 19, grew up around music. Their father, Lenny, who joined Dawes for a song at this year’s Newport Folk Festival, served as lead singer for the funk group Tower of Power. And the boys named their band after grandfather Dawes Lafayette Goldsmith, a fiddle-playing country fan who tried to turn them on to Hank Williams and Bob Wills.

“Later on, once he passed, all that music became big influences of ours,” says Goldsmith, a former post-punk devotee. “Because we didn’t get to really share that with him at the time, [the name Dawes] was sort of our way of including him.”

As much as family influences, Goldsmith credits the California-centric sounds of the Flying Burrito Brothers, Jackson Browne, Joni Mitchell and the Grateful Dead for direction. The Goldsmith brothers, bassist Wylie Gerber and former pianist Tay Strathairn also drew inspiration from North Hills producer Jonathan Wilson, who invited the fledgling quartet to his Laurel Canyon studio for jams with such notables as Conor Oberst and the Black Crowes’ Chris Robinson.

“They were just friends and admirers of his who wanted to be around him and the environment that he cultivated,” Goldsmith says. “We were taken to school by those guys in a healthy, positive way. We appreciate that time there because it helped us realize what it takes to be a really good professional player.”

Dawes sounds assured if measured on North Hills, an album that grows on a listener over time, suggesting a California version of the Band. “We were a band that hadn’t gone on tour,” Goldsmith says, “and the record sounds like that.”

Things have changed as Dawes heads for Royale on Nov. 6. Goldsmith bites into more electric-guitar solos onstage, and he promises more energy on a follow-up CD just completed with new pianist Alex Casnoff. Dawes spent more time on the album, which includes organ from Benmont Tench, a member of Tom Petty’s Heartbreakers who frequented Wilson’s jams.

Like that Florida-born group, Dawes keeps its feet in L.A. while nodding to the South, from the airy bluegrass-gospel harmonies of “Give Me Time” to Goldsmith’s lyrics, which reference Alabama and Carolina as well as California. Even when he sings, “I followed her here to Birmingham, where the soil is so much richer” in “That Western Skyline,” he embraces autobiography.

“She’s very real,” Goldsmith says from his L.A. home. “A city boy goes to Alabama and goes back home with his tail between his legs… not really having an understanding of what that world means.”

In turn, many of Goldsmith’s songs evoke prayers or even parables, an element some people have mined for Christian intent. “I don’t correct them or anything, but at the same time, a lot of these songs are extensions of my own confusions or questions with that sort of thing, my own relationship with faith,” he says. “It’s definitely not coming from a place of a guy who has anything figured out or any religion he’s committed himself to.”

He’s clearly committed to the music, both with Dawes and Middle Brother, a side group with kindred singers/songwriters John McCauley of Deer Tick and Matt Vasquez of Delta Spirit that should be releasing its own CD this spring. Goldsmith says Dawes, Deer Tick and Delta Spirit may even tour together to accommodate that collaboration. Talk about a dream combination for fans of the new Americana.

Dawes plays Royale on  Nov. 6.

Photo Credit: Katie Noble

By Amanda Knorr

It’s not easy to give your hair shine without weighing it down, or to give it volume without drying it out. Michael Albor, owner of the Loft Salon + Day Spa, feels your pain. As an educator, he’s constantly on the lookout for new developments in the industry. Last month, Albor unveiled his Newbury Street space, where he carries a novel hair care line that he’s sure will change the way we think of shampoo and conditioner. Even sought-after brands wash away your hair’s essential oils along with dirt, but the Biomega products (from the makers of Aquage) feature a technology that bonds essential fatty acids with water to restore the proper nutrients to your hair follicles without adding build up. Lathering is no longer a trade-off.

Biomega moisture shampoo and conditioner | $17 each at the Loft Salon + Day Spa | 253 Newbury St., Boston | 617-536-5638 | theloftsalonanddayspa.com

Photo Credit: Frank Masi/Summit Entertainment

By Sean Burns

A terrific concept that barely survives a botched execution, this overscaled adaptation of Warren Ellis’ DC comic stars Bruce Willis as a retired CIA agent having a terrible time adjusting to his quiet life in the suburbs. A former black-ops specialist used to toppling governments, Willis’ Frank Moses is now flummoxed by simple day-to-day tasks, like figuring out when he should put up the Christmas decorations. Lonely Frank finds himself so smitten with a telephone operator at the government pension department (Mary-Louise Parker) that he rips up his monthly checks just so he can call her to discuss cheesy romance novels.

Red’s early scenes have a disarming lightness, initially suggesting an armed and dangerous About Schmidt. Willis appears more alert onscreen than he’s been in years, striking up a playful chemistry with Parker’s loopy cubicle drone. But then one night, a S.W.A.T. team shows up and levels Frank’s suburban abode.

The title, we learn, is Agency code for Retired: Extremely Dangerous. It seems there’s a nasty bit of unfinished business from a job gone wrong back in the 1980s. Frank’s old team has been marked for elimination by the new regime, so he’s got to hit the retirement homes and round up his old partners in skullduggery, staying one step ahead of these damn kids who think they’re badass secret agents.

It’s an irresistible idea, particularly for fans of the “Get Off My Lawn” genre, best epitomized by The Expendables or anything starring Clint Eastwood. Red fills out the ranks with a killer cast, perhaps the most overqualified we’ve ever seen in a movie so primarily concerned with blowing stuff up. Morgan Freeman is all sly smiles as Willis’ former partner, ogling the nurses at the old-age home while grousing about the liver cancer that doesn’t seem to be slowing him down very much. John Malkovich brings the crazy as a paranoid casualty of the CIA’s LSD experiments. As far as over-the-top Malkovich performances go, this one is better judged than, say, Jonah Hex, as he varies the kooky tics and even deadpans now and again, always staying one degree shy of annoying.

Best in show are Helen Mirren and Brian Cox. Once the most ruthless wet-work asset MI6 ever trained, she’s now trying to act like Martha Stewart in a lavish McMansion, taking the occasional freelance hit to break up the monotony. He’s the Russian spy who never got over their secret Cold War affair, wandering through the movie with a giddy, love-struck grin, still convinced that when she shot him in the chest years back it was a sign of affection, because otherwise she would’ve aimed for his head.

There’s even a cameo by Ernest Borgnine, wearing a giant goofy smile and clearly overjoyed to still be in the pictures.

So far, so great. But the problem is that the story never develops into something worthy of these characters. A boilerplate conspiracy theory serves primarily to shuffle everybody from one exploding set-piece to another, and there’s a genuinely wretched performance by Richard Dreyfuss as a sniveling arms manufacturer. With the exception of Dreyfuss, the cast deftly downplays the silliness, yet Schwentke overindulges the tale’s comic-book origins. The movie suffers from way too many cartoony, CGI-enhanced shootouts, physics-defying camera swoops and awful scene transitions that transform into postcards. You can actually watch Willis lose interest as the film wears on, abandoning his character’s quirks and settling back into his routine, gun-toting stoicism.

There’s a great movie to be made with this cast and concept, but Red isn’t it. Willis’ promising romance with Parker (“I thought you’d have hair,” she quips) gets back-burnered into tired damsel-in-distress tropes. Some ripe political satire is sniffed at, only to be discarded. Meanwhile, Mirren and Cox merrily jaunt along as if starring in a much funnier film of their own. I’d love to see their spin-off.

On one hand, it’s impossible not to enjoy watching this gang of old pros having a laugh in ridiculous genre territory, but the low-key character comedy ends up buried beneath all the pyrotechnics. If the filmmakers had more faith in their cast (and their audience, for that matter), Red could’ve been something very special.

Red

Starring Bruce Willis, Morgan Freeman, Mary-Louise Parker, Helen Mirren and Brian Cox. Based on the comic book by Warren Ellis and Cully Hamner. Screenplay by Jon and Erich Hoeber. Directed by Robert Schwentke. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Nick Altschuller

“We were like, ‘I wonder how he’s going to take it?’ He’s either going to laugh or hate us,” says Beau Sturm, co-owner of Trina’s Starlite Lounge. Shortly thereafter, his friend Jim entered to peruse the new cocktail menu. At the bottom he found a drink created in his honor: Mr. Monahan. Only problem is, Jim’s last name is Lane.

As a bartender at Eastern Standard, Lane is known for his flips. A newly minted husband, Lane married Riley Monahan earlier this month. Explains Sturm, “In the same vein of paying tribute, we have to be friends and give him a little jab.”

Modeled on the classic Boston Flip, Mr. Monahan ($9) incorporates pumpkin puree, spice syrup and house-made bitters, and when combined with the meringue-like foam created from a shaken egg, the cocktail has a tasty, icebox-pie quality. Adding depth is 1 1/2 ounces of seven-and-a-half-year-old Applejack and a dram of Boston Bual Special Reserve, part of a new series of Madeiras that reflects styles popular in the 18th and 19th centuries. Sturm says, “The cool thing is this is a throwback to one of the first cocktails, and it uses an ingredient that’s been off the radar for years.”

Plus, naming new drinks lets you take shots at your friends. “I’m down with it. I think it’s great,” says Lane, enjoying a sip of his emasculating homage. “Tested and approved.”

Trina’s Starlite Lounge | 3 Beacon St., Somerville | 617-576-0006 | trinastarlitelounge.com

PHOTO Credit: DAN WATKINS

By Kyle Wright

Three days before the doors to Citizen Public House & Oyster Bar finally open, a staffer meticulously stencils each letter of the massive whiskey menu, boasting 75 options—including a hand-selected Four Roses bourbon that’s unique to the spot—onto the chalkboard. Owner David Dubois is MIA, having claimed brief sanctuary across the street at Tasty Burger, his other new restaurant in Fenway. That joint opened just weeks before, but its concept came long after he signed the lease on Citizen.

 “I think it’s everyone’s dream to open a real West Coast burger shack,” he notes upon arrival, “but the Citizen is what brought me to Fenway.” Dubois is no stranger to juggling multiple outposts. His Franklin Cafes (South End, Southie and Cape Ann) are late-night neighborhood staples, famed for their moderately priced menus. Loyalists can rest assured that the business model hasn’t changed much. “I didn’t want to dilute the name and just make it Franklin Fenway. This is a unique neighborhood.”

The atmosphere at Citizen is more brooding than anything Dubois has done before, but caramel leather and a well-worn fireplace lightens the mood. Black tone-on-tone fleur-de-lis wallpaper adds gloss, and the bathroom is denoted by a glowing sign that reads “Loo.” The menu, headed up by chef Brian Reyelt, focuses on American tavern fare, with an emphasis on roasted meats. The sea bass, grilled à la plancha with plenty of char on the edges, is served with bitter radicchio and escarole ($20). Breaking Dubois’ tried-and-true, under-$21 formula, a full pig roast for 10 can be had for $380 dollars, but requires 72-hours’ notice. Those who wish to go whole hog will also savor locally sourced seasonal vegetables and oysters.

Behind the burnished bar, Napa wines and 12 brews are on tap. Drinks, edited by mix maven Joy Richard, include made-to-order punches served scorpion-bowl style. Dubois adds, “Here, it’s all about the community. Even the drinking!”

Citizen Public House & Oyster Bar | 1310 Boylston St., Boston | 617-450-9000 | blog.citizenpub.com

PHOTO Credit: INA BEHREND

By Paul Robicheau

Guitar pioneer John McLaughlin could’ve rested on his laurels long ago. Fresh to New York in 1969, he joined groundbreaking jazz-rock trio the Tony Williams Lifetime and recorded his first of three albums with trumpet titan Miles Davis. One was the fusion landmark Bitches Brew, sporting a mercurial track that Davis titled “John McLaughlin.”

In the ’70s, the English-born guitarist brought jazz-rock speed and intensity to unmatched heights with his Mahavishnu Orchestra before shifting to acoustic guitar for the transcendent Shakti, which deeply integrated traditional South Indian music before future world-music trends. He’s continued to cross the map, from his guitar trio with Al DiMeola and flamenco legend Paco de Lucia to symphonic concertos and various fusion projects.

Today, at age 68, McLaughlin is far from retiring. “I’m going to be working ’til I just drop down dead,” he says from his home in Monaco. “There’s so much to do. There’s so much to find out.”

For his new disc, To the One, recorded with his current jazz-rock outfit the 4th Dimension, McLaughlin reflected on John Coltrane’s classic A Love Supreme. “This recording is almost a subconscious connection to that momentous event in late ’64 when I first heard that record,” says McLaughlin, who related to Coltrane’s reaffirmation of faith, reflected in that album’s liner notes, as well as in the music, blending “the spiritual dimension into jazz.”

To the One came to McLaughlin out of the blue. He was on a break from writing and performing last year after a tour with fellow Davis alumnus Chick Corea in the Five Peace Band. But when he was out to dinner one night, music began popping into his head, so he grabbed a stack of napkins to jot notes.

The stream of ideas bubbled for months, capped by a night when he awoke with the song titles and liner notes in his head as well. “It doesn’t really have any logical, rational explanation,” the guitarist says. “But then, music is not exactly what you’d call a rational profession, is it? Or it shouldn’t be anyway.”

The classically trained McLaughlin came into the profession as a self-described “jazz snob” who still loved the Mississippi blues and Elvis Presley, though he balked on the Beatles until their psychedelic phase. “They were tripping like everybody else, but they were writing beautiful music,” says McLaughlin, who also gave guitar lessons to Jimmy Page when they were teenagers.

During the next several years, he played pop sessions for Burt Bacharach and Petula Clark, and served in jazzy R&B groups before absorbing free jazz in Belgium prior to his move to New York.

“I experimented with feedback—there were no distortion pedals in those days,” he says. “But I quit that, because to play free jazz, you have to be a wonderful musician and a great human being. Too much self-indulgence. I’m a big fan of restraint.”

Restraint may not be the first thing that comes to mind with the Mahavishnu Orchestra, which balanced raw abandon with pinpoint control, as McLaughlin became known for lightning-fast guitar runs. But even when he summons similar zip on To the One tracks “Discovery” and “The Fine Line,” he conveys a relaxed feel.

“It’s like fast waves on top, but underneath you feel the long waves,” McLaughlin says, citing the layers of rhythm that he enjoyed in playing with tabla maestro Zakir Hussain—his foil in Shakti and its ’90s reincarnation Remember Shakti—and ex-Coltrane drummer Elvin Jones. “It’s almost multidimensional.”

McLaughlin finds a similarly broad percussive snap in the 4th Dimension, where keyboardist Gary Husband doubles on drums with Mark Mondesir while bassist Etienne M’Bappe holds the bottom.

“Complicity” is the word McLaughlin uses to describe the mutual understanding between musicians. “When you have real complicity expressed in a group, it’s very joyful,” says the guitarist, who brings the 4th Dimension to the House of Blues on Nov. 16. “It’s essential in a way to good music, because we’re inspiring each other and pushing each other.”

He felt it in the groups of Coltrane and Davis, whose photos he still displays in his work space. One image of Davis, he says with a chuckle, “just gets me every time. I have it very close when I’m working, ’cause he’s looking at me with this little smile on his face, like ‘You think you’re good, huh?’”

John McLaughlin and the 4th Dimension plays at the House of Blues on Nov. 16.

PHOTO Credit: © WARNER BROS. ENTERTAINMENT INC.

By Sean Burns

Solemn, heartfelt and a little goofy, the 32nd feature directed by Clint Eastwood will never be confused with his masterpieces. It’s his most uneven work behind the camera in years, unusually shaped and, at times, tonally confounding. Despite these flaws, Hereafter also contains moments of beauty and startling power, making the sloppiness forgivable, occasionally even endearing.

It begins audaciously with a sequence of terror as elegantly constructed as any in the filmmaker’s career. After a languid introduction to Marie (Cecile de France), a popular Parisian news anchor vacationing in Indonesia, we’re abruptly tossed into a horrifying recreation of the 2004 tsunami. Astounding as these special effects may be, Eastwood avoids the CGI disaster-porn of junk like 2012.

Rather than cutting to wide shots of sheer spectacle, he keeps the camera locked down at Marie’s eye level, making the mass destruction immediate and personal. Something happens to Marie underwater, and she briefly glimpses another world full of shadowy silhouettes standing before a bright white light. Forever changed by her near-death experience, Marie becomes obsessed with the subject, and then politely slinks to the narrative sidelines for a while.

Meanwhile, over in America, Matt Damon’s George Lonegan is sick of seeing dead people. A reluctant psychic who turned his back on a lucrative career to work in a factory, he knows all too well what awaits us after the final curtain. Though blessed with the ability to convey messages from the departed to their loved ones, George feels, and repeats a few too many times, that his gift is more like a curse.

Damon is a direct and unfussy performer, and his reticence is a natural match for Eastwood’s laconic style. It’s no wonder that this is their second collaboration in as many years. Damon’s stuck delivering a lot of the script’s most egregious mumbo jumbo, and there aren’t a lot of movie stars who could make a psychic reading feel so casual and offhand. It’s a far trickier performance than it may appear on the surface, and he grounds Hereafter’s supernatural trappings in a believable reality.

Unfortunately, screenwriter Peter Morgan borrows the multitrack playbook from awful films like Babel and Crash, squeezing in a third storyline in another distant locale. Frankie and George McLaren play plucky London twins struggling in a crummy housing project and covering for their junkie mom whenever the folks from social services come calling. Tragedy is of course inevitable, and one poor brother tries to find closure from a bevy of sometimes very funny New Age scam artists.

As in every movie using this template, the three disparate storylines must eventually converge in some sort of credulity-straining coincidence, preferably one with hefty metaphorical import. What’s interesting about Hereafter is the way Eastwood downplays the tidiness of Morgan’s script, forgoing the typical “interconnectedness of all things” sermonizing we’ve come to expect from such stories. The film dawdles around quite amiably, exploring character quirks and odd embellishments that most directors would leave on the cutting-room floor.

There’s a marvelous detour in which Bryce Dallas Howard plays Damon’s desk-mate at a night-school cooking class, and the movie slows to luxuriate in their flirtation. There’s also room for a lovely turn from comic actor Richard Kind, and a just plain weird one by Marthe Keller at a creepy Switzerland Hospice Center. Derek Jacobi even drops by to play himself, reading aloud from Little Dorrit seemingly just for the hell of it.

Growing less interested in the title subject as the film progresses, Hereafter seems more concerned with loneliness in this life than anything that happens after death. Time and again we return to Damon eating meals alone in his kitchen, just as isolated and aching as those who’ve lost a loved one. But as these characters begin shaking off their grief, colors bleed back into the images and the shadowy chiaroscuros of Tom Stern’s cinematography start to lift.

At 80 years old, Eastwood has earned the right to do whatever he damn well pleases, and Hereafter is nothing if not reflective of his specific sensibilities. The unhurried pace, tinkly piano score and lackadaisical continuity are pure Eastwood, and despite seeming out of his league handling supernatural subject matter, it’s really just another spin on the story he’s been telling since The Outlaw Josey Wales. Hereafter is ultimately the tale of three scarred loners at long last rejoining the community, which if you’re willing to stretch, is like starting a new life after death.

Hereafter 

Starring Matt Damon, Cecile de France, Frankie and George McLaren, Jay Mohr, Bryce Dallas Howard, Richard Kind and Derek Jacobi. Written by Peter Morgan. Directed by Clint Eastwood. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

PHOTO Credit: DAN WATKINS

By Liz Bomze

A far cry from the gluey, curdled version offered up at most Chinese restaurants, Shangri-La’s homestyle egg-drop soup is made of clear, full-bodied broth, brimming with cellophane noodles, wilted greens and shiitakes. Crowning the feast (it’s big enough for two) is an airy, lightly browned omelet that a grandmotherly server cuts and scoops into a bowl for you tableside.

Homestyle Egg-Drop Soup, $7.25

Shangri-La | 149 Belmont St., Belmont | 617-489-1488 | shangrilachinese.com

Photo: David Belisle

By Paul Robicheau

Jake Snider has long heard people categorize his prog-pop band Minus the Bear as “math rock,” a term for rhythmically complex guitar rock. It’s not a tag usually directed at an indie group with swelling mainstream appeal, and math rock only covers part of the equation when it comes to the Seattle band’s evolution.

“There’s definitely an intricacy to the way we put things together that can be confused with that stuff,” says singer/guitarist Snider, countering that Minus the Bear’s use of rhythm, meter and time signature is “fairly straight-up.”

Sure, Snider acknowledges, the nine-year-old group tapped the roots of math rock when band members were “on the same page” in listening to such dense ’60s and ’70s prog-rock influences as King Crimson, Yes and the Mahavishnu Orchestra before they made 2007’s Planet of Ice. But in line with members’ mellow-to-metal backgrounds before they launched Minus the Bear, the quintet both broadened and simplified its scope on the new album Omni.

“We diverged influence-wise, so we were all approaching this record from a different angle,” says Snider, 34. Guitarist Dave Knudson had been absorbing the funk of the Ohio Players and Parliament Funkadelic, bassist Cory Murchy was tuned into dub reggae and drummer Erin Tate stuck with a hip-hop and R&B diet. In the process, the band found a soulful groove on Omni, despite arty melodies and rhythmic shifts that remained coolly precise.

“My Time” sets the disc’s retro-futuristic tone, layering both funky and electronic pulses, as well as Knudson’s bouncy pattern on a Japanese Omnichord synthesizer. “He gets bored with playing conventional guitar,” Snider says. “He started with tapping and loops and sampling, and he wanted to try something else.”

Just two songs later, Knudson winds baritone-guitar riffs through “Secret Country,” which evokes ’80s-era Rush. And keyboardist Alex Rose finds new space throughout the album, often surfing the mix with woozy old-school synth melodies.

Snider credits new producer Joe Chiccarelli for paring down the group’s sound with a fresh ear, which included using Rose as a “paintbrush” for a more atmospheric touch than past records.

“We went into [the studio] with a really open mind, wanting to take advantage of the experience of having someone who hadn’t heard us play or who knew our weaknesses and our strengths,” Snider says of the Boston-born Chiccarelli. “The greatest thing he brought to the table was just the ability to get slamming sounds. His engineering skills are just impeccable.”

That’s what you get when you worked as an engineer for Frank Zappa long before producing recent albums for My Morning Jacket and the Shins. “He was somewhat instrumental in creating more of a pop record and having immediate ideas about what he wanted to get rid of in terms of arrangement changes,” Snider says. “He was just an old-school guy and would go out in the studio and move mikes and change amp settings and snare drums, so when you’d go in and listen to the take, it’d sound like a record.”

For his role, Snider strikes a different tone in the album’s moodier moments, singing with a detached soulfulness that’s more reminiscent of Peter Gabriel, Seal or the Blue Nile than the Descendents, Fugazi or Screaming Trees of his punk-fueled youth.

Lyrically, the singer entered conceptual territory, documenting a fictional couple’s brief, intense love affair—and dropping a few provocative lines like “The sweat rolls down your thigh,” and “When she moved down, she made my back arc.”

“It kind of fell into that pattern,” he says of the storyline. “Usually I write lyrics when I hear the music, and it just felt sensual or sexual to me.”

Minus the Bear has mainly built its audience through touring and returns on Dec. 7 to the Wilbur Theatre, which they packed in May. “We try to bring as much of the record to the live show as possible,” the shaggy-haired frontman says. “And it can be pretty intensive.”

Minus the Bear plays the Wilbur Theatre on Dec. 7.

Photo: Robert Zuckerman

By Sean Burns

The most common complaint leveled against movie critics—I seem to encounter it almost hourly on Internet message boards—is that we “expect every movie to be Citizen Kane.” This is often offered as a defense of the latest Transformers movie or some other horrid exercise in filmmaking incompetence that insults both the history of the medium and the intelligence of the audience.

However convenient and ad hominem the attack, it simply isn’t true. You can’t eat filet mignon for dinner every night, and sometimes you just feel like digging into a greasy cheeseburger. The critic’s job, I’ve always hoped, is to be able to differentiate between Mr. Bartley’s and McDonald’s. Tony Scott’s Unstoppable is an excellent cheeseburger, with particular emphasis on the cheese.

This is a slickly made, ferociously efficient machine without a single thought in its head besides entertaining you for 98 minutes and sending you home with a smile. Much to the consternation of people on the Internet, most critics don’t consider this an ignoble aspiration. We wish more movies would do the same.

Denzel Washington’s previous collaboration with director Tony Scott, last year’s unfortunate remake of The Taking of Pelham 1 2 3, took place on a hijacked subway train that remained immobile for most of the picture. Unstoppable, as the title may have tipped you off, overcorrects in the opposite direction, following a runaway freight train roaring through rural Pennsylvania. To sweeten the deal, this particular choo-choo happens to be laden with hazardous chemicals, prompting Rosario Dawson’s railroad manager to describe it as “a missile the size of the Chrysler building!”

Whether or not you take that hyperbolic line-reading in the spirit intended (or are willing to believe that Rosario Dawson could ever be a railroad manager) will determine your tolerance level for this picture, which we’re told is based on actual events that I can only assume have been exaggerated out of all conceivable proportion.

The setup is that because an obnoxious rail-yard worker (Ethan Suplee) wants to have lunch early, enough safety corners are cut that this deadly missile/train is sent chugging along without a conductor. Isn’t it terrible luck that a federal safety inspector (indie-darling Kevin Corrigan) just happens to be visiting that day? And did I forget to mention the other train full of sweet, innocent schoolchildren who happen to be headed down the very same track?

Lucky for us, a couple hundred miles down the line we’ve got grizzled conductor Frank Barnes (Denzel Washington) and his rookie partner Will Colson (Chris Pine) on what was supposed to be a routine assignment. (Cue dramatic music cue here.) Frank’s a surly lifer staring down a mandatory retirement package, but he’s got a few ideas about how to stop this train that the fat cats downtown don’t want to hear about. And the newbie might just have to prove that what he lacks in skill, he makes up for in heart, dammit. (Remember, I said this one was cheesy.)

Unstoppable is Washington’s fifth film with Tony Scott, so by now the actor just has to sit back and let his sly gravitas do the talking. Washington might be our most relaxed movie icon since Hollywood’s Golden Age, and everything he does looks effortless. Pine, wonderful in last year’s Star Trek, cements his movie star status, holding his own against an actor who often chews up his costars. This kid’s got the goods.

What makes the film such fun is that there’s no villain, just a one-thing-after-another series of logistical problems and physics equations. Scott catches a lot of flak in more rarified circles because, while his big brother Ridley aims for Oscars with epic slogs like the recent Robin Hood, Tony still slums in the action-movie ghetto, delivering unpretentious blockbusters, occasionally overedited to the point of incoherence.

A 66-year-old who always wears a pink baseball cap and khaki shorts, the younger Scott is a fascinating character. He’s a walking contradiction whose relentlessly macho movies always contain absurd homoerotic overtones (Top Gun, anybody?). Scott falls for every trendy, flash-in-the-pan visual strategy, which instantly puts a date stamp on his pictures. Yet he often retains a lean, clear, propulsive storytelling style that makes his audio-visual ADD feel almost beside the point. Here’s a director who knows what he’s doing, most of the time.

Unstoppable’s clean narrative lines lock Scott into a scenario where his restless camera style can’t stray too far off point, even though the guy apparently has never found a scene that he couldn’t shoot from a swooping helicopter.

Silly, I know. But ultimately satisfying.

Unstoppable
Starring Denzel Washington, Chris Pine, Rosario Dawson, Kevin Dunn, Ethan Suplee and Kevin Corrigan. Written by Mark Bomback. Directed by Tony Scott. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Photo: Dan Watkins

By Elizabeth Bomze

For years, lobsterman Mark Sewall has supplied his cousin Jeremy’s restaurant Lineage with York Harbor- crustaceans. Orders skyrocketed, though, when Jeremy Sewall and partners reinvented the old Great Bay space into Island Creek Oyster Bar—a serious (and sorely needed) seafood establishment. Among the most decadent offerings on the menu: an inspired surf and turf of ocher-tinted lobster-roe fettuccine crowned with grilled tail and claw meat, braised short ribs, and charred Brussels sprouts and chanterelles.

Photo: Dan Watkins

BY Amanda Knorr

The very thought of taking a bath in my previously used apartment makes me want to shower. But, for people with pristine tubs, a bubble bath can be an unmatched pleasure. These three potions are both decorative and effective.

Sake Bath | $80 at Fresh | 121 Newbury St., Boston
617-421-1212 | fresh.com

Lollia In Love Classic Petal Bubbling Bath
$36 at Shake the Tree | 67 Salem St., Boston
617-742-0484 | shakethetreeboston.com

TokyoMilk Bon Bon Bubbling Bath #12
$24 at Shake the Tree | 67 Salem St., Boston
617-742-0484 | shakethetreeboston.com

Photo: José Carlos Pires Pereira

By Sandy Block

If my recent blind tastings are any indication, there’s never been a better time to buy Champagne. When the world economy’s shaky and demand falters, producers hold it back from release a little longer and add a higher proportion of older “reserve” wines to enrich their blends. The following outstanding bottles should be enjoyed with food, as in France.

Gosset Brut “Excellence” NV ($40, Brix). An absolute stunner. With buttery fresh-bread aromas accented by hints of lemon and lime, it features silky midpalate textures and a long toasty finish. Balance, understatement, finesse: Pick any cliché you want—it’s a beautifully rich wine with a long chardonnay aftertaste that suggests thrilling partnership with seafood.

Ayala Brut “Majeur” NV ($53, The Wine Emporium). This obscure “designer Champagne” has an intriguing black cherry, almond, slightly smoky pinot-dominated aroma. On the palate, it’s very dry and lemony with a crisp mineral chalkiness and long tangy finish. Serve it with richer seafood steaks, such as tuna or salmon.

Taittinger Brut “La Française” NV ($55, The Wine Emporium). One of the great family-owned Champagne houses never disappoints with its flagship wine, an herb-and-brioche-scented medium-weight bubbly with creamy flavors. La Française has good intensity, vanilla, citrus and toast nuances and a persistent core of acidity. It tastes magical with raw shellfish.

Laurent-Perrier Brut NV ($45, Bauer Wine). Subtle and sleek, Laurent-Perrier has a lush cookie-dough aroma featuring sweet herbs and baking spices. It’s very soft and mellow but with lively crisp fruit on the finish. For an all-purpose Champagne, you can’t find better. Just don’t drink it out of the bottle (in public).

Master of Wine Sandy Block is vice president of beverage operations for Legal Sea Foods.

BY PAUL ROBICHEAU

Ghostland Observatory isn’t for everyone—and that’s just the way Austin’s flamboyant, electro-rock duo likes it.

“We didn’t start Ghostland to be some safe, mediocre, under-the-radar indie band,” says keyboardist/drummer/producer Thomas Ross Turner, who has provided the ying to frontman Aaron Behrens’ yang since the group broke out of Texas seven years ago.

“Aaron was wearing tight pink pants and pigtails, I was wearing a cape, and he’s dancing around and making gyrations with his pelvic muscles,” Turner says, recalling one early gig in New Jersey. “It looked like a bar full of lumberjacks and sailors, and they weren’t happy about what was going on onstage. But that was the kind of reaction we wanted. We wanted people to look shocked and sickened, or screaming and having the best time ever. So it’s cool that it’s still kinda working out that way.”

Only now the scale has grown larger—and tipped in Ghostland’s favor, driven by wild, laser-choreographed live sets at fancier clubs and major festivals. “There’s a good energy in the crowd,” says Turner, 31, before a show in Spokane, Wash. “There’s a lot of smiling faces and dancing and sweating. Most of the people who aren’t into that don’t go.”

To some degree, it recalls the raves that Turner promoted in his midteens. “It wasn’t the spotlight so much on the DJ; it’s the music and whatever lights and ambiance you created for the party,” he says. “That was how you sold tickets for your next one.”

Classically trained as a child, Turner began crafting his own electronic music, inspired by how Daft Punk transformed the raw punch of house and techno for a wider audience. He found a foil in Behrens, who patterned himself after “great entertainers like Freddie Mercury and Prince and James Brown,” Turner says. “Guys who had a real character about them and really had a presence onstage.”

Ghostland began playing small venues with conventional lighting “in front of five people, wherever we could get a gig,” Turner recalls. But he applied his rave-honed mindset for building a buzz.

“Instead of keeping the same small show and making more money, we said, ‘Let’s just freaking blow all the money on the craziest show we can think of.’” It was a strategy Ghostland took to heart when the duo preceded Bob Dylan on the big stage at the 2007 Austin City Limits Festival. “We’d spend our whole budget on just lasers or lights or whatever to make it super-cool.”

Musically, the duo has built some cool sounds along the way as well, though Ghostland cut back the busy layers for its fourth album, Codename: Rondo, recorded in Turner’s home studio.

“This record sounds sonically better to me than any we’ve done,” Turner says, though he’s still fond of the group’s 2005 debut delete.delete.i.eat.meat. “We said, ‘Let’s just go back and pretend we’re making a record for the first time again. Let’s encourage experimentation and strip it down and let there be dynamics.’”

Codename: Rondo has nothing to do with Boston basketball star Rajon Rondo, though Turner admits to cheering for the Celtics when they won the 2008 NBA championship. Instead, the title track finds Behrens trading his frisky whine for a near-spoken, tongue-in-cheek tale of a homoerotic hookup involving a guy named Jim, a red pickup truck and the “Slurpee station.”

Turner calls it a “nice little story that not too many people can understand,” inspired by people-watching in Newark.

The duo clearly appreciates offbeat characters and reflects that outlook onstage, where Behrens usually struts around in sunglasses and long braids. “This tour, he’s been just wearing the hair down,” Turner says as Ghostland heads for Royale on Dec. 15. “He’s been getting a little more raw and animalistic.”

Sounds like something the guys at the Slurpee station might like.

Photo Credit: David James

BY SEAN BURNS

Yes, this is the movie where they’re naked.

It’s sad that depictions of adult sexuality have become so rare in mainstream movies that Edward Zwick’s Love and Other Drugs can ride a tsunami of breathless coverage, from magazine covers to SNL jokes, about stars Anne Hathaway and Jake Gyllenhaal getting it on. (Those with longer memories might recall that these two crazy kids already did the deed five years ago in Brokeback Mountain.) Although I guess the sex-sells strategy will probably move more tickets than if they’d just called it a movie about Parkinson’s Disease.

Actually, it’s about a lot of things. Love and Other Drugs is by turns a raunchy bedroom farce, a health-care industry satire, a chick flick and a ’90s nostalgia piece wistful for those bygone days of economic prosperity. Watching it sometimes feels like channel surfing.

Demonstrating a keen ear for the decade’s most wretched music, the film kicks off with the Spin Doctors’ “Two Princes” introducing Jake Gyllenhaal’s Jamie Randall, a callow young stud picking up babes on the sales floor of an electronics store. Fired for banging the boss’ girlfriend in the supply closet, our swaggering lech soon stumbles into the pharmaceutical industry. Turns out that drug rep for Pfizer is the perfect gig for someone with Jamie’s supreme schmoozing skills and abject moral bankruptcy. Before long he’s got access to every doctor’s office in town by keeping their secretaries on speed dial.

But he meets his match in Hathaway’s Maggie Murdock, a brassy Bohemian artist who shares his hobby of casual fornication. They barely make it through the front door before they’re going at it, and once they’re done, she boots him out before he can button his pants. Tired of the clingy types, Jamie’s smitten with Maggie’s no-strings-attached policy. But their business-like arrangement is short-lived, as pesky conversations break out amid all the heavy breathing. Despite the best efforts of both parties, they soon find themselves in (gasp!) a relationship.

This gets tricky, as we’ve learned from her very first scene that Maggie suffers from early onset Parkinson’s. Thanks to Hathaway’s marvelous, prickly performance we see a young woman always on her guard, determined to shield herself from any attachments, as they’ll inevitably end in heartbreak. Maggie’s resigned to her disease and living for the moment, only hooking up with Jamie in the first place because he seems like precisely the kind of lout that she won’t have to worry about falling for. It’s a gutsy turn with some surprisingly sharp edges.

But the sharper Hathaway gets, the gummier Love and Other Drugs becomes. Gyllenhaal winds up repping the company’s new wonder drug, something called Viagra, thus sending the film off into a very long detour full of broad caricatures, priapism gags and moneymaking montages. There’s an obvious point here about Big Pharma devoting more resources to sustaining erections than to curing diseases, but it’s expressed in the most ham-fisted way, with real-life Parkinson’s sufferers just coming out and saying as much directly into the lens. The buoyant, bawdy energy of the film’s first hour depletes in a hurry, as Jamie is required to grow up and accept the fact that Maggie isn’t going to get any better.

Gyllenhaal is Hollywood’s luckiest actor, and not just because his job entails rolling around with a naked Anne Hathaway. Has such a modestly talented actor ever been so consistently outmatched onscreen? Whether with Heath Ledger in Brokeback Mountain or Mark Ruffalo and Robert Downey Jr. in Zodiac, Gyllenhaal has made a career out of being adequate while acting opposite greatness. He has some fun with Jamie’s carefree caddishness during the picture’s first half, even though he’s so transparently mimicking Tom Cruise that he even dons the Risky Business Ray-Bans. But as the film grows more maudlin, he can’t hold his own next to his costar.

Director Edward Zwick has devoted most of his career to stolid, historical epics like The Last Samurai and Defiance. Love and Other Drugs is a throwback to his first feature, the 1986 Rob Lowe vehicle About Last Night…, which softened up David Mamet’s play Sexual Perversity in Chicago to an almost comical extent. Grateful as I am that Zwick is getting back to his roots instead of burdening us with another three-hour Oscar effort, the mishmash of tones is clearly beyond his control. There’s a lot of funny stuff in this film, none of which involves Jamie’s perpetually masturbating brother (Josh Gad), who seems to have wandered in from a Judd Apatow knockoff.

Still, Hathaway is a marvel. She’s savvy enough an actress to understand that a character suffering from a terminal illness doesn’t need to go looking for sympathy, creating a tough, angry, complicated woman.

The character of Maggie Murdock deserved a better lot in life. And she deserved a better movie.

Love and Other Drugs

Starring Anne Hathaway, Jake Gyllenhaal, Josh Gad, Oliver Platt, Hank Azaria and Jill Clayburgh. Based on the book Hard Sell: The Evolution of a Viagra Salesman by Jamie Reidy. Screenplay by Charles Randolph, Edward Zwick and Marshall Herskovitz. Directed by Zwick. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

PhotoCredit: Dan Watkins

By Kyle Wright

For chef Marco Suarez, there’s something special about Jamaica Plain. “It’s the friendliest neighborhood in Boston,” he says. “But it’s a challenge to get my friends to make the trip.” One good reason to visit? Canary Square, the second restaurant he’s helmed in the area. Housed in the space that was once the Alchemist Lounge, it focuses on elevated bar food and American cuisine.

“I wanted the menu to have approachable food with an elegant twist,” says Suarez, who will appear on Food Network’s Chopped in early 2011. Entrees like mac ’n’ cheese spiked with creamy Taleggio ($15), or wood-roasted chicken with Brussels sprouts, radishes and bacon ($18) are products of the old-school techniques he refined during his time at Eastern Standard Kitchen, Ledge and Bon Savor. His focus here is on local ingredients, including Allandale Farm vegetables, Island Creek oysters and Woodbury shellfish.

Nearly everything in the space is somehow repurposed, reclaimed or recycled. Chairs are constructed from melted-down Coca-Cola bottles, and there’s plenty of old barn wood to add warm appeal throughout. “Jamaica Plain is more rustic and bohemian than other parts of the city,” says co-owner Jim Cochener who, along with partner Michael Moxley, owns Coda and Common Ground.

“The locals don’t have anything like this nearby,” Suarez says. “You can stay and linger.” An expansive bar with 30 draught beers is flanked by flat-screen TVs. “There are screens that slide over them,” Cochener adds. “I think the crowd in JP is more interested in talking to each other than sitting in front of a television.”

Canary Square | 435 South Huntington Ave., Jamaica Plain | 617-524-2500 | canarysquare.com

Photo Credit: Jared Charney

By Andrew Rimas

Harmonic vocal arrangements are in the cultural spotlight at the moment, which is good news for the Tufts University glee club, the Beelzebubs. “I got a bunch of phone calls from L.A. numbers while I was in the middle of class,” says Evan Powell, 20, bass and vocal percussion. “But I waited until after to check my voicemail.” The mystery caller was a producer for Fox’s Glee, and, last month, their version of Katy Perry’s “Teenage Dream” aired on the show. The single promptly hit No. 1 on iTunes and on Billboard’s digital chart, and No. 8 on the Billboard Hot 100. On Dec. 3 at Tufts’ Goddard Chapel, the Bubs perform and release their new single, “Sweet Caroline/Right Round,” sales of which benefit music programs in public schools.

BY PAUL ROBICHEAU

Kanye West My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy
It’s easy to run away from Yeezy for his oversized ego and antics. But it’s hard not to toast the guy’s savvy, maximal production. This ridiculously dense, genre-busting opus combines King Crimson samples, cameos ranging from Jay-Z, Rihanna, John Legend and spitfire Nicki Minaj to indie-rocker Bon Iver, and a bawdy Chris Rock skit that casts West as a superior stud. At least West has upped his game in the studio. Even as a rapper, he’s sharpened his flow.

Elton John and Leon Russell The Union
Good-bye, Billy Joel—this is the real piano-man summit. Sir Elton extends an invitation to his idol, not only orchestrating Russell’s mainstream comeback but also his own finest outing in years. T Bone Burnett pulls back on his usually atmospheric production to let this warm, wry celebration of R&B, country, gospel and mutual respect breathe on its own.

Janelle Monae The ArchAndroid
Few humans could manage such a mind-blowing debut, and this is a stylistically schizoid spectacle. The downside: It can be a challenge to absorb it all, especially the futuristic story line. Echoes of R&B, funk, pop, rock, disco, church, cabaret and Broadway collide in a galaxy ruled by Monae’s soaring voice.

Neil Young Le Noise
The godfather of grunge and hippie-folk melds a ghostly alloy of both in this soloride, crystallizing his elemental mystique through reverb-drenched electric guitar and vocals shaped by kindred producer Daniel Lanois.

Jason Moran Ten
Marking a decade with his jazz trio, pianist Moran gracefully distills influences from classical to hip-hop without overstating them. Nods to Monk, Andrew Hill, Jaki Byard and even Jimi Hendrix lace the band’s elegant, elastic tapestry.

Arcade Fire The Suburbs
Montreal’s majestic indie-rockers scale back their grandiose, chaotic glide for a more lyrically grounded narrative about universal alienation. It’s a transitional move for a high-flying band; towns aren’t the only things that are built to change.

Roky Erickson With Okkervil River True Love Cast Out All Evil
The tragic back story of this psychedelic-rock pioneer’s years in a criminal asylum are detailed in Okkervil frontman Will Sheff’s Grammy-nominated liner notes. For Erickson’s first record in more than a decade, Sheff also coaxes surprisingly lucid, endearing performances, adding a few folky, idiosyncratic demos for resonance.

The Dead Weather Sea of Cowards
A guilty pleasure of bloated, gothic blues-rock that’s more fun than the White Stripes. Maybe that’s because guiding force Jack White gets to play the drums in addition to guitar and shares vocals with feral foil Alison Mosshart. Unlike Led Zeppelin, it’s menacingly tongue in cheek.

Jamey Johnson The Guitar Song
Genuine country from an Alabama tunesmith who delivers a double CD split between dark and light terrain. Not that there’s much difference; his sobering baritone infuses most of these 25 tracks with empathy and spirit in the tradition of greats like Waylon Jennings, Merle Haggard and lesser-known favorites. “All the songs they wrote that gave us chills,” Johnson sings. “That’s why I write songs.

Gogol Bordello Trans-Continental Hustle
Gypsy-punk whirlwind Eugene Hutz and his international gang temper their typically raucous attack to hone songcraft with producer Rick Rubin. The result is both broader and more focused than the Bordello’s previous studio endeavors. Though they stretch outside their comfort zone, the rough-voiced Hutz and company retain their own personality.

BY SEAN BURNS

Starved down to a skeletal shadow of himself, Christian Bale first appears bellowing into the camera. Bug-eyed, with green rotted teeth and an omnipresent tattered baseball cap, his Dicky Eklund is a jabbering glad-hander, the self-proclaimed “Pride of Lowell.” Bale’s shocking look and garish accent are startling, his energy unrelenting.

This is the kind of terrible performance that wins Academy Awards. Thirty minutes into the picture I wanted somebody in a tux to walk out and hand him the Oscar already, so he’d go away.

A low-budget labor of love for producer/star Mark Wahlberg, The Fighter follows The Town and Conviction in this year’s Massachusetts Lampoon Show, in which glamorous movie stars drop their R’s and wear tacky clothes to convey “authenticity.” Blue-collar Bostonian has replaced redneck as Hollywood’s white-trash signifier of choice.

Thankfully nowhere near as silly as Ben Affleck’s recent attempt to turn Charlestown into the Wild West with tracksuits instead of chaps, The Fighter turns out to be a pretty good movie. Especially when Bale is offscreen.

Based on the true story of local boxing legend “Irish” Micky Ward, the film stars Wahlberg as the long-suffering anchor of a spectacularly dysfunctional family. As a pal said, it’s “the white Precious.”

Mother Alice Ward (Melissa Leo) is a caterwauling piece of work, the kind of shrew who smokes extra-long cigarettes and always claims that this is only her third Scotch. She’s been managing Micky’s career with little success, mismatching the poor kid with opponents 20 pounds heavier, blithely ignoring his growing reputation as a punching bag for up-and-comers. Half-brother Dicky might be a brilliant corner-man and one-time contender, but he’s also a raging crackhead. Seven ghastly, interchangeable sisters swarm around the living room screaming obscenities, and his sad-sack dad (the great Jack McGee) spends most squabbles attempting to slip away undetected.

Micky’s in his 30s, which is an awfully late stage in any boxer’s career, and he’s staring down a life of being a never-was in the shadow of his has-been brother. Still punchy from another pounding in the ring, Micky falls for Charlene (Amy Adams). A tough, potty-mouthed bartender who blew her shot at a scholarship by partying too hard, she’s trying to turn things around and imagine a life beyond Lowell’s clannish watering holes and dead-end streets. Can she inspire Micky to do the same?

The screenplay by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson leaves no cliché unturned. The Fighter still works, partially because of the energetic filmmaking by director David O. Russell, but mostly thanks to subtle, heartfelt performances by Wahlberg and Adams.

A magnificent comic actor who excels at supporting parts, Wahlberg has never before quite cut it as a leading man. He’s got a meathead charm that’s too often sapped by stalwart hero roles. At his worst, Wahlberg becomes recessive, sulking his way through misguided projects like The Happening or The Lovely Bones, when we really want to see the kind of livewire energy that allowed him to run away with The Departed. So credit Russell, who previously collaborated with Wahlberg on two of his best performances (1999’s Three Kings and 2004’s I Heart Huckabees) for fostering this onscreen coming-of-age. The Artist Formerly Known as Marky Mark is simply wonderful here, holding the film’s center with quiet dignity, channeling his comedic chops for a couple of priceless reaction shots and allowing the audience to come to him, especially when his fellow actors are bleating for our attention.

Adams is no slouch, either. A million miles from her sunny princess in Enchanted, her Charlene is a good deal paunchier and more uncompromising than most movie girlfriends. Spouting invectives in ill-fitting belly-shirts, she’s got a Kewpie-doll face and a backbone of steel. Perhaps by design, Wahlberg and Adams mimic Ward’s strategy inside the ring, allowing scene partners to punch themselves out before moving in for swift, economical body blows.

Betrayals and reconciliations are inevitable, and The Fighter never strays too far from the traditional sports-movie formula. But Russell shoots the film from unexpected angles. The local color feels naturalistic instead of fetishized. Russell’s 1996 screwball classic Flirting With Disaster established that nobody’s better at orchestrating a room full of shouting characters, but The Fighter excels in quieter passages. 

A wordless predawn sequence finds Micky once again donning his sweats and heading back into training. It’s the kind of triumphant turning point that most filmmakers would’ve oversold. But Russell allows it to play out in silent wide-shots, keeping Wahlberg in the far corners of the frames, dwarfed by his surroundings, à la Stallone in the original Rocky. It’s a gorgeous moment that brought tears to my eyes, and the kind of grace note that compensates for a lot of this picture’s many missteps.

The Fighter

Starring Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Melissa Leo, Mickey O’Keefe and Jack McGee. Screenplay by Scott Silver, Paul Tamasy and Eric Johnson. Directed by David O. Russell. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

By Elizabeth Bomze

By the number of Aussie transplants huddled over the meat pies and sausage rolls, seems there’s a huge demand in this city for Down Under staples. That’s why Sam Jackson opened KO Catering and Pies, a pint-sized South Boston food shop (formerly St. Alphonzo’s Kitchen). After four years in the Hub with nary a bite of flaky, savory pastries (with fillings like Irish beef stew), vegemite-slathered toast or chicken salt–flavored fries, Jackson’s hankering for a taste of home was all the motivation he needed to get rolling.        

KO Catering and Pies | 87 A St., South Boston | 617-269-4500 | kocateringandpies.com

BY KYLE WRIGHT

Fort Point may have its sights set on becoming the city’s new high-end dining destination, but for Chris Damian, it feels like home. At Papagãyo, the Mexican outpost and tequila bar he launched in late November, the goal is approachability. “I lived in the Seaport for a long time,” says Damian. “I’ve seen this area grow, they could use a restaurant like this.”

Transforming the space that once housed the concept-heavy Achilles Project/Persephone boutique/restaurant mashup required extensive renovation, knocking down walls and lengthening the bar. Behind the counter, a Coldstone-style block will be used to keep tequila chilled. Admits Damian, “It’s still a work in progress.”

Some of the industrial design for which Achilles was lauded remains intact, but the once-stark walls are now vibrant with works by local artists. A life-size image of a mariachi band adheres to an expansive mirror, a kitschy supplement for the lack of live music.

The reputation of Mexican food in Boston is dicey, but Damian isn’t worried. He was the original chef at Harvard Square’s Border Cafe, before going on to launch Scollay Square, Tavern on the Water and a slew of Max & Dylans. As soon as the paint dries on Papagãyo, he and partner Brad Dalbeck will open Andiamo in Charlestown, bringing their empire up to six spots, plus a catering company. The Papagãyo menu is a smart mix of high and low, with standards like tacos ($7.95) or “fresh hacked” guacamole ($8.95) and more adventurous offerings like braised short-rib taquizas ($18.95) or tuna ceviche ($9.95), shaved tableside.

Patrons are greeted by a statue of Marilyn Monroe in The Seven Year Itch, painted to look like a south-of-the-border sex kitten. “She was in a friend’s basement,” he laughs. “I thought, why the hell not? She’s unique.” You won’t find that a few blocks over at Menton, but then again, you won’t find tequila-spiked snow cones ($12) there, either. Coming in pineapple, prickly pear, watermelon and orange flavors, they provide sweet validation for the trek.

Papagãyo 283 Summer St., Boston | 617-423-1000 | papagayoboston.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

Master of Wine Sandy Block is vice president of beverage operations for Legal Sea Foods.

I’m consistently amazed at wine’s wide spectrum of quality. At year’s end, I compare the good against the good, to find the truly great—the wines of transcendent merit. Here are the awards for best picks of the year.                  

The “It Comes From Where?” Award
Hermann J. Wiemer Dry Riesling, Finger Lakes, 2008 ($22, Winestone, Chestnut Hill)
Upstate New York? Trust me, although don’t trust the label. This isn’t “dry,” it’s proof of how good riesling from the frozen tundra of New York can be.

The “I Like Chard, but I Don’t Like Oak” Award
Foley “Steel” Chardonnay, Santa Barbara, 2009 ($32, The Urban Grape, Chestnut Hill)
Very simple: They make it without any aging in barrels. Oak junkies will swear the Foleys are lying, and normal people will like it, too.

The “It Tastes French but Isn’t” Award
Bethel Heights Estate Chardonnay, Willamette Valley, 2008 ($28, Wine Cask, Somerville)
A creamy, subtle, ultra-dry chardonnay. American material with French tailoring.

The “Ridiculously Good With Raw Shellfish” Award
Domaine de la Pépière “Clos des Briords” Muscadet, 2009 ($17.50, Vino Divino, Newton)
Shiveringly bone-dry, this is your basic good-vibe wine.

The “I’ve Got a Sweet Tooth but Won’t Drink White Zin” Award
Domaine du Viking Vouvray, Loire Valley, 2005 ($10, Legal Market, Chestnut Hill)
This is heaven in a glass, a divine nectar of such shimmering precision and agreeability that it’s almost a sin to drink now. Tastes of honey, pear and mineral.

The “How Do the Italians Do This for $15?” Award
Fumanelli Valpolicella Classico, 2009 ($15, V. Cirace & Son, Boston)
When I tasted this, my first reaction was: I wasn’t born yesterday—this can’t possibly cost less than $20. I was wrong. It’s a luscious cherry-filled fruit bomb, but with some earthy richness to it.

The “Merlot Can’t Possibly Be This Good, I Saw the Movie” Award
Shafer Vineyards Merlot, Napa Valley, 2007 ($54, Gordon’s, Waltham)
Hollywood lies! This is a world-class grape when done right, and the Shafer family from Stags Leap in Napa are on top of it.

The “Chardonnay Substitute for Those Embarrassed to Drink Chardonnay” Award
Terlano Pinot Bianco, Alto Adige, 2009 ($13, Select liquors, Allston)
This one is a dead ringer, but it’s a bit milder and mellower than chard, with a touch of spice and a lush, soft texture.

The “I Finally Found a Great Grüner” Award
Pichler Grüner Veltliner Federspiel, Austria, 2008 ($28, Bazaar, Allston)
This underground cult grape should mostly stay underground as far as I’m concerned, but this one’s a stunner. Thick and rich, with beautiful energetic fruit.

The “Time-Sensitive Single-Best Category of Wine to Buy Blindly” Award
2009 Beaujolais
It’s a once-in-a-blue-moon vintage for this underrated category. If you like red wine, but you don’t crave massive tannins, the ’09 Beaujolais harvest is a dream come true. Ultra-ripe and red-berry-like, it goes down so easy.

The “Run Don’t Walk, Because There’s Not Much Left” Award
Laurent-Perrier Champagne, 2000 (request from your retailer, should be $60)
A 10-year-old Champagne from a great producer, it walks the tightrope between power and finesse. This is a “wow” wine that somehow got lost in the shuffle.

The “I’ve Got to Impress My Boss, but I Can’t Spend More Than $50” Award
Turley Mead Ranch Zinfandel, Atlas Peak, 2007 ($40, available from winery mailing list)
Impressive. Not much else to be said, except spectacular, mind-boggling, over the top.

The “Best Winery Nobody Ever Heard Of” Award
Pegasus Bay, Waipara, New Zealand
Tucked away in a corner of South Island, everything Pegasus Bay does is good: chardonnay, pinot noir, riesling, the whole nine yards.

The “Lifetime Achievement” Award
Cloudy Bay, Marlborough, New Zealand
It launched New Zealand’s reputation 20 years ago, and it’s still the leader in terms of quality, image and style. The definition of sauvignon blanc and quintessential pinot noir.

Photo Credit: C. Taylor Crothers

By Paul Robicheau

Singer/mandolinist Chris Thile sees at least one parallel between bluegrass forefather Bill Monroe and modern rock band Radiohead: the desire to experiment.

“Bill was constantly tinkering with his creation,” says Thile, leader of the New York-based Punch Brothers. “Any music that’s healthy will be doing that. That’s the problem with genre. To keep it intact or keep it cohesive, there has to be some weird limitations placed on things—and that’s not how creative people work.”

For an example, just look to the Punch Brothers. Thile and his bandmates play acoustic instruments and touch on the jazzy improvisations and high-pitched harmonies of the bluegrass tradition. But, as he adds, “There, the similarities end.”

The Punch Brothers give Thile the kind of sleek, sophisticated vehicle he needs to expand on ground he broke with his previous trio, Nickel Creek. Like that commercially successful band, the Punch Brothers are influenced by progressive bluegrass artists such as Béla Fleck and Edgar Meyer. Yet they’re just as likely to take cues from Bartók or Radiohead, a band whose tunes they’ve covered.

“Now it’s all over the deck,” says Thile, whose group played the Wang Theatre last fall with T Bone Burnett’s star-laced Speaking Clock Revue. “The things that we enjoy are united by a spirit of musical exploration.”

For their 2008 debut, Punch, Thile steered the quintet through his classically structured “The Blind Leaving the Blind,” a four-movement rumination on the collapse of his marriage. But for the group’s latest album, Antifogmatic, he loosened his control to spark more collaborative interaction.

“The reason to collaborate in the first place is there’s an increased possibility for transcendence,” he says from a train traveling between Providence and New York. “Now the ideas are coming from everyone, and we’re all pitching in. It’s liquid.”

It’s a more fluid process when you’re surrounded by such top-flight peers as fiddler Gabe Witcher, banjoist Noam Pikelny, guitarist Chris Eldridge and upright bassist Paul Kowert. It’s easier still when you live and work in the same place. “We’ve settled down into a more sustainable band dynamic,” the 29-year-old California native says of their move to New York City. “To live alongside one another really helps the creative process. You have more common references.”

For regular fodder, they go out drinking together. Although the Punch Brothers took their name from a jingle in a Mark Twain story, the concept of imbibing has graced many a song since they opened their debut with “Punch Bowl.” Antifogmatic adopts an old term for a beverage hearty enough to face rough weather, and the new album features a stomping number called “Rye Whiskey.”

 “The boys and I are fairly ensconced in New York’s beautiful cocktail culture,” Thile says. That exposure only fuels his tales of romantic faith and uncertainty. “The recklessness of waning youth is really interesting to me, how people conduct themselves romantically and also just communally. So many of the stories I’ve been interested in telling lyrically lately have been from observing people’s behavior on these nights out.”

Antifogmatic is infused with this newfound urban energy. The album’s producer, Jon Brion, also has worked with artists as diverse as Fiona Apple, Brad Mehldau, Kanye West and Of Montreal. “Acoustic music specialists have this kind of delicate, clinical approach, and Jon has a little more of a mad scientist approach,” Thile says. “This music is dynamic and occasionally explosive. It is pretty, but that’s not where it lives.”

The lead track “You Are” evokes the arc and attitude of an alt-rock song despite its acoustic instrumentation. “Next to the Trash” spins bluegrass and sea-shanty eddies around a frisky vocal more akin to Dave Matthews or Mumford & Sons. Other tracks float sparse balladry. Despite their use of these conventions, the quintet’s edgy tonalities and strange melodic, harmonic and rhythmic shifts can prove unsettling.

“It’s always sort of veering in and out of fairly conventional areas of music, like you’re patting someone on the shoulder and then slapping them in the face,” Thile says. “I love that combination.”

The Punch Brothers play the Somerville Theatre on January 13.

BY SEAN BURNS

The ghost of John Cassavetes looms large over writer/director Derek Cianfrance’s second feature.

I mean this as the highest of compliments, since more than 40 years ago Cassavetes almost single-handedly redefined American cinema, telling independently financed, stubbornly personal tales of the suburban, the angry and the forgotten. He made movies about the kinds of things nobody else would ever bother making movies about. Like what happens when love dies.

Blue Valentine is a vicious little number, charting the courtship and dissolution of a marriage, often in alternating scenes. Whiplashing from the dizzying heights of adolescent infatuation back to middle-age sadness, the movie somehow captures both the euphoria of attraction and the hellish claustrophobia of a failed relationship. It’s exasperating, infuriating and something very special.

Ryan Gosling, who brought such odd and unexpected tangents to the role of a crackhead schoolteacher in his breakout feature Half Nelson, stars here as Dean, a swaggering bad-boy who likes to drink beer for breakfast and does a terrible job of hiding his heart of gold. A mumble-mouthed high-school dropout working for a moving company, Dean seemingly can’t help himself from lavishing random acts of kindness upon clients who couldn’t care less. He’s raw, sensitive and almost achingly unguarded.

The only person in the world who sees this is Michelle Williams’ Cindy, a local girl who’s been around the block a few times only to be stranded with the kind of dim-bulb jock boyfriend who always promises to pull out, yet always stays in. She dotes on her invalid grandmother, wondering aloud if this is all there really is.

The connection between Dean and Cindy is first electric, then deadening. Cianfrance’s cruelest cuts are between the beginning and the end of their relationship. Though sometimes too schematic in its construction, the movie is brutal and unwavering in its depiction of a love affair running out of steam until there’s nothing left but hurt.

Toggling back and forth, it’s tough to reconcile Gosling’s shambling, drunken wreck with his alternate, 20s-something dreamer. His hairline retreating, fingertips stained with nicotine and paint-flecks, Dean’s trying the best he can to salvage things according to his own severely limited abilities, booking a weekend at a cheesy sex motel in the Poconos (he has a gift certificate) and begging Cindy to drop the kid off at her dad’s so they can get loaded and screw like the old days.

Even far away from home, the same passive-aggressive fights keep erupting. There’s bad drunkenness, desultory sex and the most painful second honeymoon you’ll ever witness.

Williams has a brilliantly opaque performance style—at times her face is a blank slate, inviting the audience to draw its own conclusions. At other moments she’s so cryptic that she almost disappears. But what I don’t think we’ve ever seen before is what comes through in Blue Valentine’s sadistic flashbacks. In early scenes she has a coltish, agonizing vulnerability that matches Gosling’s yearning.

You’ll keep rooting for these kids to get together, even though you know they’re just going to tear each other apart.

So we go, round and round. Saddled with money woes and family problems, the two just can’t stop ripping into each other. What once seemed so idyllic and full of possibility now feels like a dead end. Gosling gets the showboat part, pounding walls (and others), but Williams gets the trickier role, requiring steely resolve.

All Dean’s mood-swings, excessive drinking and lack of ambition were funny once—romantic even. Yet several years down the road there’s a daughter to think about, and a future that just isn’t happening. His idea of a grand romantic gesture is to show up at her office and jealously punch out her boss, and Cindy has no choice but to shut down. It’s an incredibly daring performance. He gets the big moments, but she’s the one who has to let go.

Cianfrance wears the Cassavetes influence on his sleeve, shooting in shallow-focus, hand-held close-ups and allowing long scenes to play out for minutes on end without interruption. His faults lie in the construction, particularly having shot the flashbacks on film and the breakup on digital, often calling a bit too much attention to his own cleverness in that regard.

Still, this movie destroyed me.

Blue Valentine

Starring Ryan Gosling, Michelle Williams, Faith Wladyka and Mike Vogel. Screenplay by Derek Cianfrance, Joey Curtis and Cami Delavigne. Directed by Cianfrance. At Kendall Square.

Photo Credit: DAN WATKINS

BY KYLE WRIGHT

“Tequila is definitely the new connoisseur’s drink,” says Stephanie Jamison, co-owner of Lolita Cocina and Tequila Bar. “People want to understand it.” If the recent surge in bars specializing in the hangover-inducer is any indication, she’s right. In addition to Lolita, there’s Papagãyo in Fort Point, while Michael Schlow’s Tico is set to launch in the Back Bay before spring. But similarities between the three—beyond slinging fire water—are few.

At Lolita, the endgame is to get lost in a wicked atmosphere cultivated with glowing red lights and dark corners. It looks gothic and sleek, with digitized Latin beats blaring through speakers and silent film projections dancing on the exposed brick walls. “We loved the underground feel,” says Jamison. “It’s the kind of place you can let loose in.”

The construction of the space is nearly identical to its former Paparazzi incarnation, but additions like alligator-embossed tile, leather booths and blood red damask wallpaper play up the bordello vibe. The result is like going drinking in the middle of Lady Gaga’s “Alejandro” video.

Adjacent to the bar, a tequila locker houses prized bottles, with certain labels jumping into triple digits for a single shot. Cocktails and margaritas emphasize fresh ingredients.

“We’re resetting people’s expectations,” says Jamison. All guests are greeted with a smoking bowl of mint-grapefruit granita (spiked or virgin) and end their meal with green apple cotton candy and pop rocks.

Chef Brian Roche’s menu lends an approachable twist to the brooding décor, with four kinds of guacamole (including one with lobster and lump crab), bubbling queso fundido dip ($11) and a spicy carne asada ($23). “It’s dangerous and sexy,” Jamison adds, “but it’s still a neighborhood restaurant.” That’s good to hear, particularly knowing that when the word dangerous is used around Mexican food, it’s usually referring to Montezuma’s revenge.

Lolita Cocina and Tequila Bar | 271 Dartmouth Street, Boston | 617-369-5609 | lolitaboston.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Lindsey Canant

Michael “Fitzie” FitzPatrick, chief libations officer at Tremont 647, believes in seasonal ingredients. In his seven years tending bar, he’s invented cocktails like the Eggnog from Hell and the Fallen Apple. This winter, he’s concocted the Milk & Honey ($9), which combines a Brandy Alexander with motherly wisdom. “When I was sick or couldn’t sleep as a kid, my mom would make me warm milk with a bit of honey and a dash of vanilla extract,” Fitzie explains. “This is a grownup spin.”

He mixes 1 1/2 ounces of Evan Williams Honey Reserve Bourbon with 1 1/2 ounces white crème de cacao and tops it with steamed milk and grated nutmeg. As the only hot option on this season’s menu, the frothy, sweet-leaning cocktail has become the restaurant’s go-to digestif. Smooth and easy-drinking, the cocktail is a perfect relaxing nightcap.

The first sip is like nestling into a warm bed on a cold night, though the Tremont 647 bar is markedly more social. Notes of cacao and honey are subtle instead of candy-sweet, and the bourbon blends easily with the creaminess of the milk, leaving a silky finish that lingers long enough to tuck you in, just like mom used to.

Tremont 647 | 647 Tremont St., Boston | 617-266-4600 | tremont647.com

Photo Credit: Elaine Constantine

Paul Robicheau

Some performers look back at their childhood stage experience as something cute or prophetic. For Elisabeth Maurus, known better as folk-pop upstart Lissie, her title role in the musical Annie at age nine provides her with resonance and inner guidance.

“I always relate to her as a character, and think how sweet it was that I got to play [her] when I was young,” says Maurus, 28. “In times of struggle and people trying to bring her down, she had so much hope, and that’s what I try to embody in my life.”

It’s been a winding road for the freckly blonde who bounced from small-town Illinois to Colorado, Paris and Hollywood by age 21. She’s finally found a groove with her beguiling debut album, Catching a Tiger, as well as popular covers of Lady Gaga, Kid Cudi and Metallica.

“I didn’t understand how viral YouTube things really went,” says Maurus, whose live take on Gaga’s “Bad Romance” sparked nearly 2 million views. “So I didn’t know it would get that reaction.” Of her diverse song selections, she adds, “Each one of my covers has really come from a genuine moment of ‘I really like this song,’” noting that she discovered Kid Cudi’s “Pursuit of Happiness” while driving with a friend around Rock Island, Ill. That’s where Maurus was raised on country, hip-hop, rock and show tunes, listening to Willie Nelson, Snoop Dogg and Phish as well as Sarah McLachlan and Fiona Apple. The youngest of four children, she also was inspired by her grandfather, a champion barbershop-quartet singer. “All that [music] subconsciously gets into your taste,” says Maurus, who plays the Paradise Rock Club on Jan. 29.

“I was into taking the front of the stage and singing louder than anyone else, and I had this sort of big, husky, belting voice from a young age.” Not that her booming personality helped in high school. The story goes that Maurus was expelled after a run-in with a teacher, but she downplays the event. “I had a lot of teachers who were hell-bent on putting me in my place,” she says. “I would talk back, and I still have that in me…. I’ve got gumption, and I stick up for what I believe in.”

During a stint at Colorado State University, Maurus performed on DJ Harry’s heavily licensed “All My Life,” heard on the TV shows Veronica Mars, House and The O.C. And after a semester in Paris, she headed to L.A. to try a music career.

Her early years in L.A. were a slow study in dichotomy. Maurus sold honey at a farmers’ market and worked at Urban Outfitters while playing club gigs and scoring sporadic coups. She opened for Lenny Kravitz after he heard her on MySpace and was briefly signed to Madonna’s Maverick label. Maurus was invited to sing at a few celebrity parties, including a gig at a secret location that turned out to be Demi Moore and Ashton Kutcher’s wedding.

“I wasn’t nervous because I know I can sing, but the socializing part I was a bit uncomfortable with,” she says. “[The wedding] didn’t do a lot for my career, but it’s an interesting story.”

Frustrated with the big city and mulling the end of a long-term relationship, Maurus moved to Ojai, a quiet mountain town north of L.A. “It saved me from a hard time and pulled me out of a funk,” she says. “I got my confidence back.”

Maurus channeled her experiences into Catching a Tiger while shifting through various styles and producers. She recorded four tracks with producer Bill Reynolds from Band of Horses, using “Bully” (“Your heart’s been broken, but martyrs never open doors”) and the wistful “Everywhere I Go” as pipelines to her emotional turnaround.

Kings of Leon producer Jacquire King steered more commercial opening tunes, including the Fleetwood Mac–evoking “In Sleep.” And Ed Harcourt cowrote and produced “Oh Mississippi,” a gospel piano ballad that Maurus nailed in stark form on the British TV showcase Later… With Jools Holland, sealing UK acclaim.

But it’s all Lissie. “I’m not covering my face with 10 pounds of makeup or showing up in some strange costume,” she says from her Ojai home. “Of course I want to learn new things, and I’m adaptable. I’m not going to rule anything out. But I really can’t fake it.”

Lissie plays the Paradise on Jan. 29.

BY SEAN BURNS

Shot locally back in February of 2009, acclaimed TV director John Wells’ feature debut has taken its sweet time getting to the multiplexes. It’s easy to see why. With around 10 percent of the country out of work, the amount of sympathy you’ll be able to generate for downsized rich dudes probably depends on your own financial circumstances. It’s tough to feel torn up about Ben Affleck having to sell his Porsche when most of us are hustling to make rent at the end of every month.

Affleck stars as Bobby Walker, hotshot salesman at a fictional Massachusetts company called GTX. Founded as a lone shipyard in Gloucester run by two best friends (Craig T. Nelson and Tommy Lee Jones), GTX has grown into a multimillion-dollar operation, suddenly cutting personnel like crazy to keep the shareholders happy in this troubled economic climate.

Jones’ Gene McClary is the saintly, clear-eyed pragmatist, watching helplessly as his life’s work is stripped for parts by corporate paper pushers. Nelson’s James Salinger is the villainous CEO, singularly focused on ramping up the stock price to make GTX more attractive to potential buyers, and aching to cash out and retire.

Bobby is one of the first let go, and The Company Men doesn’t stint on the humiliations that ensue. Sent packing by an ice-queen HR automaton (Maria Bello), he spends a fair chunk of the picture in increasingly frantic denial. Insisting on preserving the illusion of success, Bobby keeps the sports car, the steak dinners and the country club membership, refusing to even entertain the idea of moving somewhere more reasonable than a suburban mansion. Affleck excels at playing callow, his boorishness put to the test by the cheesy self-help slogans of outplacement seminars.

Wells is revered in television, having been the showrunner for ER, then resuscitating The West Wing after the departure of creator Aaron Sorkin. Despite the contributions of brilliant cinematographer Roger Deakins, The Company Men has a distinctly small-screen sensibility, often feeling like an entire season of one of Wells’ polished dramas whittled down to feature length.

It also feels inauthentic, a combination of talking points and statistics missing the grace notes of real-life experience. Bobby’s fall is absurdly diagrammed, with the former master of the universe forced to move his family back into his parents’ house (couldn’t they have just rented an apartment?) and take a charity job hanging drywall with his surly, salt-of-the-earth brother-in-law, played by Kevin Costner.

Even worse is the plight of Chris Cooper’s Phil Woodward, a 30-year GTX vet who comes unhinged after being shown the exit door. It’s here Wells all but plagiarizes entire scenes from Fernando León de Aranoa’s marvelous 2002 film, Mondays in the Sun, which starred Javier Bardem as a pugnacious alpha dog in a group of recently unemployed shipyard workers. The comparison between the two films is instructive, as Mondays coursed with grit and vinegar, whereas The Company Men is glossy and resigned.

Adding to the ersatz pallor is Hollywood’s recent, unfortunate affinity for terrible Boston accents. In the equivalent to an English drawing room drama spoken in Cockney slang, The Company Men’s moneyed, white-collar MBA’s all drop their R’s and bellow profanity like they’re auditioning for the sequel to The Departed. Does the movie really think that people living in Wellesley mansions sound like extras from The Fighter? This also gives Costner another chance to prove for the umpteenth time that he has no business doing accents, ever.

But Tommy Lee Jones, bless his heart, just talks like Tommy Lee Jones. Deftly underplaying and speaking volumes with his silence, his Gene McClary hovers over the film with sad-eyed grace, wondering where it all went so wrong. Unfortunately, most of Jones’ performance seems to have been left on the cutting-room floor. He’s having an affair with Bello’s HR tyrant, and at one point even leaves his wife for her. The illicit couple is living together in one scene yet estranged minutes later, with no explanation.

Even the McClary character becomes problematic in The Company Men’s final reel. For a movie purporting to explore the bitter realities of unemployment, the disingenuous conclusion undercuts any lessons learned. Most folks today aren’t as fortunate as any of these men, and most of us never had Porsches to sell in the first place.

The Company Men

Starring Ben Affleck, Tommy Lee Jones, Chris Cooper, Rosemarie DeWitt, Maria Bello and Kevin Costner. Written and directed by John Wells. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Elizabeth Bomze

As a new semester kicks off, the long-held dream of Boston College students—and hungry Cleveland Circle commuters—has come true: grilled cheese on wheels. Manned by James and Mike DiSabatino, Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese Truck will soon turn out melty munchies just like the ones the brothers whipped up while touring with Mike’s metal band. There’s a rotating menu of breads (sourdough, brioche), cheese (goat, cheddar), fixings (pineapple, candied bacon) and, of course, fried local pickles with cheese sauce.        

Roxy’s Gourmet Grilled Cheese Truck | Usually parked on the corner of Beacon Street and Chestnut Hill Avenue, Brighton | roxysgrilledcheese.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

BY KYLE WRIGHT           

When we first reported on the double-fried promise of Saus last May, it seemed inevitable that snack-happy Bostonians would be getting their frite fix within days—weeks, at the latest. But then, nothing.

The doors at the Faneuil Hall spot have been locked for nearly eight months, but passersby who stop to peek inside the windows on Union Street will probably see owners Chin Kuo, Renee Eliah and Tanya Kropinicki hard at work. “Every month was something new, and it was extremely discouraging.” Eliah says. “More than one person said to give up.”

Fortunately, the trio knows a thing or two about perseverance. They met as colleagues at a software company downtown, and when the ax started swinging, they were among the first let go. “We always wanted a lunch place like this, and we couldn’t find it,” Kropinicki observes. “It seemed like it was now or never.”

Rolls of red tape brought the process to a halt for the first-time restaurateurs (all of whom are under 25), but a January permit approval has them on track to finally get frying come early February. “We’re excited, but we’re pinching ourselves,” she says.

“We’ve had such an outpouring of people excited to try the fries and waffles,” Eliah adds. “It’s been hard to have to disappoint them for so long.”

The menu at Saus hasn’t changed much during the delay, though they’ve used the time to fine-tune recipes. “Feedback from our friends and social media has played a huge role in selecting our sauces,” Kuo says. Among the house-made dips is the Vampire Slayer, a roasted-garlic-infused mayo for the golden fries, and a spin on Nutella, perfect for drizzling on the Belgian liège waffles. They also plan on offering two additional special sauces per week.

The walls host a collage of cartoons hand-selected by the owners, a nod to Belgian comic culture. “It’s Boston meets Europe,” Eliah notes. “Everyone loves fries, no matter where they’re from!”

Saus | 33 Union St., Boston | 617-248-8835 | eatfrites.com

Photo Credit: Todd Dionne

By Nick Altschuller

The path of the amateur wine connoisseur can be traced in the drinking history of professional hockey player
Mark Recchi. After winning his first championship with Pittsburgh at the age of 22, what did he gulp from Lord Stanley’s Cup? “Beer.” Under the tutelage of Mario Lemieux, Recchi expanded his tastes, and when he won the Cup in 2006, he says, “I had wine in there, I had beer in there, Champagne—I had it all going.” Now with his own cellar stocked with classic Bordeaux and California cabs, what will the 42-year-old sip should his second year with the Bruins prove victorious? Perhaps the 1970 Pétrus he’s been saving for a special occasion? “Definitely wine,”
he assures.

Photo Credit: Andrew Strasser

Paul Robicheau

Music emanates from a crowded stage. The guitars from Black Sabbath’s “War Pigs” howl while Ludacris raps “Get out the way, bitch” in perfect sync. Missy Elliot gets her freak on over a Ramones riff. Busta Rhymes bridges Radiohead and Prince, and Lady Gaga coos about a “disco stick” in step with the Beastie Boys over Iggy Pop’s driving “Lust for Life” groove.

But only one performer commands the stage. Flanked by a mob of dancing fans that sweat out his kaleidoscopic pop collages under a blitz of lights, balloons, confetti and toilet paper, Girl Talk (the nom de plume of mashup maestro Gregg Gillis) welcomes fans to his party-hearty world.

The Pittsburgh native blends all those artists on his latest album, All Day, a free download composed from 373 samples. When performing live, the ex-biomedical engineer keeps tweaking as he triggers loops by hand on a laptop covered in plastic wrap to protect it from the chaos he’s kindled.

“Every part of this whole project has been an experiment,” says Gillis, 29. “How far can it go, both musically and in terms of the shows and the size of it? There’s no clear precedent.”

In eight years, Gillis has gone from underground renegade to high-profile pied piper. He began performing his mixes at small bars and art galleries. Now he’s headlining giant clubs that include Lupo’s in Providence on Feb. 25 and Boston’s House of Blues on the following night. Until recently, Gillis invited anyone onstage, but now he lets his crew cherry-pick his posse to leverage some control.

In terms of legal precedent, Gillis bypasses the usual practice of paying other artists for their sampled work. So many samples could cost him a fortune. Though he cites a fair-use accommodation in U.S. copyright law for transformative work, Gillis hasn’t had to argue his case because no artists have challenged him.

“I don’t think it’s shocking to people anymore,” he says. “The idea of intellectual property is gradually shifting.”

It’s not like Gillis hides the hooks of mega-hits by Beyoncé, U2, John Lennon or Lil’ Wayne. But he delights in juxtaposing disparate elements, like layering bawdy hip-hop chants over classic rock and synth-pop. “To make it transformative, it’s about taking a song that everyone knows and creating a different mood,” he says. “[And] taking two pieces of music that seem like they’re from different worlds and finding some common ground.”

Gillis uses AudioMulch software to help sync samples and he occasionally alters the sound or speed of beats and vocals. But around the time of his 2006 release, Night Ripper, he opted to create mixes with minimal processing. “I thought this would sound really cool if this was a cut-and-paste exercise,” he says. “If you never heard these songs before, it would just sound like some weird-ass band.”

Soon after All Day’s Nov. 15 release, breakdowns of its samples popped up across the Internet. One great way to experience the album is a rolling grid at Mashupbreakdown.com that names the artists, block-by-block, as the tracks play. “That’s really cool,” Gillis says. “I’m working with other people’s material and people are taking what I worked on and they can build on it.”

In his youth, Gillis enjoyed noise-rock, from Merzbow to Nirvana, and started making music in avant-garde electronic circles where his dance-pop fodder wasn’t embraced. “This project has always been about embracing pop music and sort of ushering it to places where it might be confrontational,” he says. “It seemed somewhat appropriate for this to have an audience outside of that scene.”

It’s an audience that’s less analytical and more animated than average. “A lot of people just know this as something to get drunk to,” he says from a Houston tour stop. “I’ll spend two and a half years putting these records together and labor over the transitions and the level of detail that goes into all of it. To me, there’s definitely an art to it—and a craft. And if people kind of miss that aspect, it’s all good. It’s almost like a compliment.”

In turn, Gillis plays the cheerleading rock star, stripping off his shirt and bopping wildly around his laptop. “I want it to be less like a standard electronic show and more like a spectacle,” he says, “where you feel like you’re at a Bon Jovi show.” 

Girl Talk plays the House of Blues on Feb. 26.

BY SEAN BURNS
At what point does relentless misery become inadvertently hilarious?

There’s a great running gag on this season of 30 Rock, in which Tracy Morgan’s loose-cannon comedian signs on to star in a grim indie movie about life in the ghetto (dubbed Hard to Watch) because he wants to win an Oscar. I thought a lot about Hard to Watch while enduring Biutiful, the latest slog through multicultural suffering directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu.

Iñárritu made a dazzling debut in 2000 with Amores Perros, three interlocking tales of heartbreak and street crime in Mexico City linked together by a couple of unfortunate dogs. The film’s title translates to “Love’s a Bitch,” displaying a wicked sense of humor that disappeared from his work almost immediately thereafter. Iñárritu subsequently collaborated with his Perros screenwriter Guillermo Arriaga on 21 Grams and Babel, two increasingly overwrought, time-twisting melodramas that prove the law of diminishing returns.

Despite an incredible eye for composition and the ability to elicit excellent performances from his actors, Iñárritu has no idea how to modulate the tone of a movie beyond a single note of resounding dread. I’d hoped his much-publicized falling out with Arriaga might have loosened the filmmaker up a bit, allowing him to try a few different colors on his palette, or maybe even crack a joke. Alas, Biutiful is even more miserable than his previous pictures. It makes the ponderous Babel seem like a lighthearted romp.

Javier Bardem stars as Uxbal, a two-bit hustler trying to get by on the ugly side of Barcelona. He works as a middleman, setting up illegal immigrants in the business of knockoff handbags, either selling them on street corners or laboring in an underground sweatshop owned by a couple of creepy guys (who periodically have graphic sex for no other reason than to make the audience uncomfortable). Uxbal runs interference, paying off cops and trying to convince himself that he’s not exploiting these poor, downtrodden folks.

He’s skirting the edge of the poverty line, trying to rescue his kids from their abusive, bipolar mother, played here with no small amount of caterwauling by Maricel Álvarez. She’s a part-time hooker who’s sleeping with Uxbal’s sleazy brother; that is, when she’s not busy slapping around the children and doling out heaps of vicious psychological abuse.

Uxbal also happens to be dying of prostate cancer, so massive portions of the movie are devoted to him urinating blood. Had Iñárritu cut half the shots of Javier Bardem wincing over the toilet, Biutiful could’ve clocked in at a more reasonable length.

Instead, it plods on for a full two and a half hours, following this hapless grifter through scenarios that inevitably escalate from bad to worse to outlandishly awful. And because what the picture really needed was more anguish and sorrow, Uxbal can also communicate with the dead. Dropping in a bizarre note of magic for no discernible reason, Biutiful has our hero hanging out at morgues to help the dead “along their way.”

There’s nothing wrong with bleak or depressing movies—in fact, most of my favorites are films my mother could never sit through. There’s also nothing wrong with a filmmaker putting you through the emotional wringer, as long as there’s good reason. Biutiful feels exploitative and crass. There’s not much to it besides the unenlightening observation that life can really suck sometimes. Iñárritu is retracing the same steps he’s been circling since Amores Perros, and his fetish for suffering is starting to feel more perverse than artful.

It’s a shame, as he’s got incredible skills behind the camera and a leading man who’s willing to follow him anywhere. By this point it feels redundant to call Javier Bardem brilliant. The guy is the greatest living actor not named Daniel Day-Lewis. With his hangdog eyes and stooped posture, Bardem heroically shoulders Uxbal’s burdens, mustering up empathy that the screenplay can’t be bothered to provide.

But to what end? What’s being communicated here? By the time the bodies of dead women and children began washing up on a Barcelona beach, I couldn’t take it anymore and let out an inappropriate giggle. The movie’s self-important commitment to unyielding despair had finally become a joke, and there was still an hour to go. As a screenwriter friend of mine always says, “If you don’t offer your audience moments of comic relief, they’ll come up with their own.”

30 Rock should have Iñárritu guest star—as the director of Hard to Watch.

Biutiful 

Starring Javier Bardem, Maricel Álvarez, Eduard Fernández, Diaryatou Daff and Cheng Tai Shen. Written by Alejandro González Iñárritu, Armando Bo and Nicolás Giacobone. Directed by Alejandro González Iñárritu. At Kendall Square.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Elizabeth Bomze

In preparation for Valentine’s Day, Valerie Conyngham is experimenting with rose-petal and whiskey-infused
caramel. The budding chocolatier fancies her new venture—and herself—in the image of the movie Chocolat and its protagonist, Vianne. Hence Vianne Chocolat, her business that she runs out of Jamaica Plain’s communal Crop-Circle Kitchen. Every Friday, Conyngham spins high quality, local ingredients into decadent two-bite treats: clove-and-orange-scented ganache squares, violet-liqueur-spiked swirls and, crowd favorite, burnt caramel cups.

Vianne Chocolat: Available at local specialty stores and online. viannechocolat.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Lindsey Canant

Most in need of a boost:

a) Bust

b) Bottom line

c) Confidence

d) Luxury

e) Skin-to-fabric ratio

Ideal night out includes dinner at:

a) Menton

b) Franklin Café

c) Bistro du Midi

d) L’Espalier

e) Lolita

Karaoke anthem:

a) “Proud Mary” by Tina Turner

b) “California Gurls” by Katy Perry

c) “Mine” by Taylor Swift

d) “Time After Time” by Cyndi Lauper

e) “Buttons” by the Pussycat Dolls

Style icon:

a) Christina Hendricks

b) Carey Mulligan

c) Audrey Tautou

d) Dita Von Teese

e) Kim Kardashian

International destination:

a) Stockholm (buttoned up on top, fun underneath)

b) Tangier (cool bazaars)

c) Provence (décolletage)

d) Milan(couturiers, indulgence)

e) London (cheeky knickers)

If you chose mostly A's:
Intimacy’s bra-fit experts and fashion-meets-function foundational garments will make you feel beautiful from the inside out.

Intimacy | Copley Place, Boston | 857-277-7887 | myintimacy.com

If you chose mostly Bs:
Sedurre offers quirky and playful goods for all price points.

Sedurre | 28 ½ Prince St., Boston | 617-720-4400 | sedurreboston.com

If you chose mostly Cs:
Forty Winks has a well-edited selection of flirty, feel-good pieces. 

Forty Winks | 56 JFK St., Cambridge | 617-492-9100 | shopfortywinks.com

If you chose mostly Ds:
La Perla is for those who can afford to invest in their underwear. 

La Perla | 250 Boylston St., Boston |617-423-5709 | laperla.com

If you chose mostly Es:

Agent Provocateur suits scantily-clad vixens with a sense of daring.

Agent Provocateur | 123 Newbury St., Boston | 617-267-0220 | agentprovocateur.com

Photo Credit: Ryan Mastro

Paul Robicheau

With its ornate stained-glass windows and vaulted ceilings, Old South Church stands as a stately Back Bay sanctuary, not a hip concert venue. But it’s just the kind of place to attract indie-folk darlings the Low Anthem, playing there on March 4.

“We love the sound of our music—particularly the pump organ and the vocal harmonies—in a church,” co-founding bassist/drummer Jeff Prystowsky says. “And also the feeling of guilt that people bring when they walk into church. That kind of energy can oftentimes have a positive effect on the show.”

In turn, the Low Anthem recorded its new CD Smart Flesh in a cavernous, vacant Rhode Island factory last winter. “We said, ‘Let’s try to find a space that could be like a church,’” he says. “An alternative space that has its own unique surroundings and its own unique reverb. And we found that in the pasta-sauce factory.”

The building had been used to manufacture former Providence Mayor Buddy Cianci’s brand of marinara. Since the fabled mayor served prison time for corruption, is this where their interest in guilt originates? Prystowsky laughs, saying they didn’t know about Cianci’s history with the factory when they decided to work there, despite the tomato-shaped welcome mat.

“The space colored the record to such an extent that we really think of it as the primary instrument on the recording,” Prystowsky says of the factory’s acoustic qualities. That’s no small feat for a group of multi-instrumentalists whose arsenal includes antique drums and organs, horns, hammered dulcimers, musical saws, jaw harps and crotales, a set of tuned cymbals played with a bow.

It took a month for the self-producing band to strategically place microphones and amplifiers to capture the best sounds. The complex’s industrial heaters, a bicycle’s ride apart, determined the group’s living and working areas. But they were too noisy for recording, and space heaters proved insufficient for a building that couldn’t hold heat.

“We were recording all night in frigid conditions with gloves, scarves and overcoats,” Prystowsky recalls of the “chops-busting cold” that slowed the pace of their playing. “We’d huddle up and say, ‘Here’s what we’re going to do. Let’s do it beautifully.’ And we’d focus in and get as close to each other as we could.” The band’s core dynamics and working conditions are manifest in the album’s intimate sound.

Prystowsky and singer/guitarist Ben Knox Miller met as fellow “baseball nuts” and college radio DJs at Brown University, where they began to jam together with Dan Lefkowitz. Prystowsky grew up in New York City jazz clubs, while Miller was into Bob Dylan and Leonard Cohen. After discovering Tom Waits, they began switching instruments to vary arrangements.

Lefkowitz left the band and moved to Arkansas (though he returns as an opening act at Old South Church), and classically trained Bostonian Jocie Adams came aboard, completing the trio that recorded 2009’s critically lauded Oh My God, Charlie Darwin in a cabin on Block Island. The addition of Berklee-trained Mat Davidson on tour and now on Smart Flesh marked the group’s development into a diverse quartet.

In tune with its origins, the new disc favors a more atmospheric vibe, from the plaintive “Ghost Woman Blues” to the Copland-esque tone poem “Wire,” capped by Adams’ somber clarinet. But Prystowsky says the band realized the record might benefit from sonic contrast and added three tracks from a summertime session in a garage that had more in common with the Block Island space.

“Complete opposite conditions,” he says of the Gator Pit, which they christened the garage that once housed reptiles. “It was muggy and moldy.” Not that a listener would be able to discern the contrasting environment in the Leonard Cohen–like lilt of “Burn” and the stomping “Hey, All You Hippies!”

There’s an adaptability to the Low Anthem, who shift to rock-club mode to open for Iron and Wine at the House of Blues on April 19. “We never play the same set list,” Prystowsky says. “And we’re always reacting to whatever the room is bringing us.”

The Low Anthem plays Old South Church on March 4.

BY SEAN BURNS

“What’s with all these awards in Hollywood? They’re always giving out awards. Best Fascist Dictator: Adolf Hitler.”—Woody Allen, Annie Hall.

It’s that time of the year again, or rather, it has been for several months now. Oscar season unofficially kicks off when the first contenders are unveiled at the Toronto International Film Festival each September, and the hype machine doesn’t let up for at least six months. When the winners of the 83rd annual Academy Awards are announced at the Kodak Theatre on Feb. 27, I’ll be breathing a giant sigh of relief that all has finally been said and done. Maybe then we might be able to get back to our lives and focus on something else… anything else?
We’ve already sat through carbon-copied acceptance tomes at the Golden Globes, the Screen Actors Guild Awards and the Critics’ Choice Awards. There’s been more boozing and schmoozing than Charlie Sheen’s typical Tuesday.

Although results from the British Academy of Film and Television Arts ceremony won’t be announced ’til after this goes to press, I think we can safely assume that The King’s Speech cleaned up. And don’t forget, the Film Independent Spirit Awards are still waiting in the wings.

As for the Critics’ societies—Boston’s chapter is just one on the list, stretching from Hollywood to the middle of nowhere. There’s also the National Society of Film Critics, the Black Film Critics Circle and both the Alliance of Women Film Journalists and the Women Film Critics Circle.

Poring over all this data from so many disparate organizations, the one thing I’ve been able to glean is that a lot of people really enjoyed The Social Network.

Yet Oscar remains the main event, staking out primetime turf weeks after all the precursor ceremonies, with even financially-strapped newspapers hiring full-time “Oscar prognosticators” to keep track of the day-in, day-out vagaries of the horse race. Make no mistake: This is a big business, as reliant upon dirty politics as a local election. Taking into account “For Your Consideration” trade magazine advertisements, private screenings and lavish meet-and-greet parties, it’s not uncommon for movie studios to blow more money wooing Academy voters than was spent on making the films themselves.

In sillier times I cared about such things. Nowadays, I just feel sorry for the nominees. How exhausting it must be to do quality work in a picture that has been recognized by your peers, only to have to run an endless, contractually-obligated, red-carpet gauntlet, answering dopey questions for Access Hollywood while delivering the same “gracious” speeches ad infinitum for the duration of a college semester? My heart goes out to director David Fincher, who’s currently in Sweden trying to shoot The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo, yet finds himself stuck flying back to Los Angeles to join the glad-handing circuit every time some podunk organization clicks “like” on The Social Network.

Meanwhile, at its awards ceremony last month, our own Boston Society of Film Critics disappointingly neglected to address the routine practice of both the AMC Boston Common and Regal Fenway cinemas of digitally projecting 2D movies through a 3D lens, thereby significantly muting the colors, while also dimming and distorting the image. I can’t recall the last time I saw a film at either location presented properly, and I attended advance screenings of True Grit at both theaters, with the same dire result each time.

It was only after the commercial release that I was able to make the haul to the suburbs and at last see Roger Deakins’ brilliant photography as it was meant to be exhibited. Amusingly enough, in the interim, the BSFC voted Deakins the year’s best cinematographer, based solely upon those early, shoddy screenings. It makes you wonder what other accolades this marvelous film might’ve received, had only somebody bothered to place the correct lens on the projector.

We get in for free. You’re paying $11.50 for this crap. More pressing matters abound than instantly forgettable lists of accolades.

Great movies stand the test of time. Award recognition fades in the rearview mirror. Driving Miss Daisy won best picture the same year Do the Right Thing wasn’t even nominated, but decades have a funny way of separating the wheat from the chaff. Does anybody still think that Oscar-favorite Dances With Wolves was a better movie than GoodFellas? Meanwhile, I bet you can’t even tell me who won best supporting actor last year. (I had to look it up.)

Photo Credit: Emily Sopha

BY KYLE WRIGHT

Gavin Creel is a Broadway star and recording artist best known for his roles in La Cage aux Folles, Thoroughly Modern Millie and, most recently, Hair. The Tony-nominated actor stars in American Repertory Theater’s musical spin on Aeschylus’ Prometheus Bound, opening Feb. 25 at Oberon.

Oberon is a small venue. What can the audience expect from such an intimate setting?

This is actually my favorite kind of setting. I perform out a lot with my original music, so I’m used to being in jazz clubs or cabarets. A bar, a good sound system. It’s all you need! Diane Paulus says that it’s the “theater space of tomorrow,” and I see it. I’m just excited.

Serj Tankian (of System of a Down) and Steven Sater provided the score for the show. Safe to assume this is going to be a lot different from your past works?

When people ask me what to expect, I just say, “It’s going to be loud.” It’s unapologetic in its style with pop and rock music and punk, with stunning choral arrangements. We’re trying to honor Aeschylus’ work and the Greek traditions wherever we can, but it has the flavor of a low ceiling, basement rock club. It’s like you found this place.

You first worked with Diane Paulus on Hair, and now you’re back for Prometheus Bound. What keeps you returning to work with her?

I was working on a reading of Pippin, and she mentioned Prometheus to me. I took it on faith because I trust her completely. She’s got her finger on commercial theater and wants to challenge what people think. Working with her is fun and scary. It’s all about the norm versus the new.

Are you looking forward to anything in particular now that you’ll be living in Cambridge?

I heard that there’s a museum filled with little glass boxes filled with flowers and bugs. I really can’t wait to
see that.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

Lindsey Canant

When Daniel Motsinger left his post as sommelier at Radius, he set out to conquer the wilder cocktail frontier. Unlike wines, which are chosen for specific flavor profiles, he views cocktail mixing as more experimental. “You have to be open to what happens,” he says. Although he’s known for his tequila drinks, Motsinger enjoys mixing other agave-based spirits to create the unexpected. Mescal, he says, is the only liquor that enhances mood and energy.

Hence the Smoke Monster ($11). Although  the name’s not a reference to Lost, the bar does benefit from Hollywood’s influence. “At this bar, sports don’t generate excitement. It’s all about movies,” Motsinger says, adding that the Smoke Monster is popular with patrons of the nearby Kendall Square Cinema. 

The Smoke Monster’s plot develops in stages. On the nose, the lightly oaked and fresh agave smell of blanco tequila dominates, mixing with fresh grapefruit to produce a vibrant citrus scent. Upon first sip, though, the mescal’s smoky, peaty flavor surprises. Next, subtle notes of honey lend sweetness. The final sips offer a tart, citrus crescendo that resolves the drink’s loose ends. Motsinger persuaded a skeptic at the bar to taste the drink despite his aversion to tequila. The customer noted, “I like it. But I don’t like that I like it.” Spoiler alert: He drank happily ever after.

The Blue Room | One Kendall Square, Cambridge | 617-494-9034 | theblueroom.net

By Elizabeth Bomze

It’s no small task to take on a classic, but three locals have reinterpreted the comfort food king: spaghetti and meatballs. These are dishes worth a little iconoclasm.

Braised Pork and Veal Meatballs With Toasted Orecchiette, $25
Chef/owner Steve Johnson’s unorthodox, but brilliant,
riff on a dish he ate years ago in Puglia swaps sauce for chicken stock and pairs fried pasta with kale, maitake mushrooms, Turkish paprika and a handful of shredded Piave cheese.

Rendezvous | 502 Mass. Ave., Cambridge | 617-576-1900 rendezvouscentralsquare.com

Pasta al Forno, $17
Chef/owner Anthony DiCenso trades spaghetti for curvy tubes of homemade rigatoni, tosses them with marble-sized meatballs and blankets the whopping portion in gobs of stretchy mozzarella before baking.

Rino’s Place | 258 Saratoga St., East Boston | 617-567-7412 rinosplace.com

Maccheroncelli and Wagyu Meatballs, $14-$28
In one of his restaurant’s first (and most popular) dishes, chef Robert Jean’s hollow pasta strands tangle with wagyu beef and a butter-enriched Barolo demi-glace, satisfying the sophisticate—and kid—in his Back Bay clientele.

Sorellina | 1 Huntington Ave., Boston | 617-412-4600 sorellinaboston.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

BY KYLE WRIGHT

Over the past few months, Boston’s taste for Spanish and Latin American food has led to new venues appearing all over the city. When word spread that Michael Schlow would open a tequila and tapas bar in the former Cottonwood Café space, curiosity piqued. But Schlow is quick to set the record straight. “Yes, we have small plates. Yes, there are a lot of Latin American and Spanish influences, but first and foremost we are an American restaurant,” he says. “People are quick to judge. This is definitely not a tapas bar.”

At Tico, the food draws on Latin American and Spanish flavor profiles, but it doesn’t try to be authentic or traditional. “People told me that this kind of food doesn’t do well in New England,” Schlow says. “But I was cooking with these flavors at home for guests, and I saw how well it was received.” Schlow took inspiration for his new venture from trips to Spain and Mexico, where he relished the chance to try local cuisine from small villages.

Like the dishes, the ambience is a creative translation. Mismatched chairs from Mexico and gothic pendant lamps from Spain anchor the bar. Columns are covered with Spanish advertisements. Rolling translucent panels divide the restaurant and sport abstract photography by Christian Boyd, allowing for privacy without shading the space.

The many tequilas lined up behind the bar are certainly on trend, but they aren’t news to Schlow. “Opening Tico has allowed me to learn more about it, but I’ve been interested in tequila for years. That’s the icing on the cake for me.”

Schlow has built his career around elevating everyday food; despite lots of competition, the Radius burger remains near the top of the ground-beef heap. He’s now added a signature burger to Via Matta’s menu, and fanfare may continue when enthusiasts sample Tico’s model. Covered in cheddar and piled with bacon, it’s a sandwich true to the restaurant, not to preconceived notions. “There isn’t any guacamole or salsa on it. This isn’t that kind of place.”

Photo Credit: Bleddyn Butcher

Paul Robicheau

The chances once seemed slim that Celtic-punk pioneers the Pogues would endure for a quarter century-—or that singer Shane MacGowan would survive at all. The ragged frontman, whose drink- and drug-fueled instability has distracted from his gift for literary verse, was even booted from the group in 1991.

Yet the London-based band reformed with MacGowan this past decade and have graced Boston with semiannual concerts around St. Patrick’s Day since 2006. Similar to local favorites the Dropkick Murphys, the Pogues have become a March institution, thriving in spite of MacGowan’s sometimes shaky state.

But things may come to a head. “It has become harder and harder sorta dragging Shane around as he’s gotten older,” says cofounder Spider Stacy, 52. “Everybody [in the group] is that much older, and everybody gets that much more tired that much more quickly, and it’s particularly noticeable with Shane.”

So the band has followed a “Farewell Christmas Tour” of the U.K. with a six-city U.S. swing that rolls through Boston’s House of Blues on March 11–12, billed as “A Parting Glass With… the Pogues.”

“If it is—or you suspect that it is—the last time you might be doing something, it’s only fair to let people know,” Stacy says from his London home, noting the band plans to remain on the European festival circuit. “With regard to the States, it almost certainly is the last time we’ll be doing it like this.”

Now in their 50s, most members of the group have embraced either sobriety or “a more considered approach to the way you live your life,” Stacy says, but MacGowan’s not among them. “That does kinda have an effect, and not necessarily a positive one.”

For one thing, he says, the Pogues haven’t been up to recording new material, particularly at a level to match the peak they reached in the ’80s. “I don’t see us recapturing that,” Stacy says. “I don’t see how anybody could reasonably expect us to.”

Yet Stacy counters that onstage, the Pogues are “actually better than we ever were,” and the group’s albums never equaled their live sound. “One of the most surprising things for me since we had the first reunion back in 2001 was the sheer force of the band,” he says. “That wasn’t in any way diminished. The fact that some of us weren’t crazy anymore certainly didn’t do us any harm.”

So does the more seasoned delivery of today’s Pogues stand up to the intensity of the band’s early years? “It’s a fallacy that you need alcohol or anything to achieve that reckless abandon,” Stacy says. “You’ve just got to play the music the way it’s meant to be played. It’s meant to be attacked, really.”

The Pogues’ largely acoustic attack veers from the traditional way of playing the tin whistle, accordion and mandolin, even on standards like “The Wild Rover.” “There were [factions] in the Irish folk scene that thought we were pretty much heretics, but there were other people of equal or greater standing who thought we were more in the nature of liberators,” Stacy says. He cites second-generation Irish kids who grew up “not really liking some of the songs we were playing because it was their parents’ or grandparents’ music, and they heard us doing it funneled through this different sensibility.”

The band again defied tradition with original songs like “The Sick Bed of Cuchulainn,” in which MacGowan snarled, “When you pissed yourself in Frankfurt and got syph down in Cologne, and you heard the rattling death trains as you lay there all alone.” Such a volatile mix of punk and Irish music was novel in the early ’80s. “I was surprised that nobody thought of it first,” Stacy says.

Stacy says he considers Flogging Molly derivative of the Pogues, but he champions the Dropkick Murphys, who play the House of Blues on March 16–18. He and MacGowan each collaborated with the group, which Stacy views as a more straight-ahead punk outfit. He also claims a long-running disagreement with Dropkicks founder Ken Casey on the issue of influence. “I think the Dropkicks would’ve existed without the Pogues,” Stacy states. “He says absolutely not.”

MacGowan and Stacy were both punk devotees before turning to Irish influences, having met at a Ramones concert. “I went outside for a breath of fresh air,” Stacy recalls. “He was out there and said, ‘Are you enjoying yourself?’ I said, ‘Yeah,’ and he said, ‘That’s what it’s all about, idn’t it?’”

The Pogues play the House of Blues March 11-12.

BY SEAN BURNS

Not too long ago, a coworker asked me to name my favorite actor “right now.” He looked baffled when I answered, “Matt Damon.”

Granted, we’re not talking about the pantheon here—the Brandos, Pacinos and De Niros. Who has time to wrestle with the problematic legacies they’ve left behind? The “right now” in his query prompted me to shoot from the hip, thinking, off the top of my head, whose pictures I look forward to seeing the most, at this particular moment.

My answer surprised me, too. But I guess that’s Damon’s gift. He’s always rock-solid, yet we always seem surprised. One terrific performance after another for 15 years, and still we’re constantly saying the same thing to our friends, “You know who’s really good in this movie? Matt Damon.”

Damon will probably never hit the operatic heights of Daniel Day-Lewis or the soulful aches of Javier Bardem. He’s a much sturdier, lower-key performer. He’s more like Burt Lancaster or Paul Newman, the kind of actor who’s appreciated more as the years go by. It takes people a while to catch on to dependable excellence, especially when you’re not making a big fuss about yourself.

Another reason I like Damon so much is that he doesn’t make garbage. It would’ve been very easy for him to follow his buddy Ben Affleck’s model and cash in on that Good Will Hunting heat with a lot of brain-dead blockbusters, but you’ll never find Damon working for Michael Bay. He gravitates towards offbeat projects with distinguished pedigrees, racking up a résumé that includes many of today’s most exciting directors. Even his bad movies are interesting, and always made for adults.

The Adjustment Bureau is that kind of bad movie. It’s a classy flop: All its sins are of ambition. The film is at least attempting something unconventional without talking down to the audience. True to form, there’s a deeply committed Damon performance, which happens to be the best thing about it. But even I have to admit that the
film stinks.

Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick, whose brain-twisting existential malaise has been adapted for everything from Blade Runner to Total Recall to Minority Report, The Adjustment Bureau stars Damon as David Norris, a cocky young politician. He’s got a history of bar fights and frat-boy loutishness, but that’s not going to keep him from angling for a New York Senate seat. A distracting amount of cameos litter the opening reels, as most of our exposition is delivered via Jon Stewart during Norris’ appearance on The Daily Show, and even more crucial plot information is explained on Meet the Press by James Carville and Mary Matalin. It’s an impressive game of political Where’s Waldo?, but hardly the stuff of drama.

In the men’s room rehearsing his concession speech, Damon’s Norris meets a blowsy party-crasher played by Emily Blunt, kicking off a delightful back-and-forth of screwball banter. First-time director George Nolfi plays with the cavernous space of a hotel bathroom, doubling up on mirrors, pushing in for intimacy, and basically cutting together one of the funniest, most offhandedly sexy scenes you’ll see this year. These two crazy, impetuous kids clearly belong together. Too bad the science-fiction plot says otherwise.

Enter the Adjustment Bureau, a collection of awesome character actors in fedoras clomping around en masse, bumping into people and causing so-called coincidences that rupture the patterns of the CGI graphs appearing in their antiquated notebooks. Answering to somebody called the Chairman, who’s supposed to maybe be God, they work like trenchcoat-clad angels, taking orders from memos delivered in faded manila envelopes.

Soon this potentially interesting story is torpedoed by exposition-heavy claptrap. Most of The Adjustment Bureau’s screentime is spent with one great actor after another (John Slattery, Anthony Mackie, finally even the legendary Terence Stamp) sitting down with Damon and explaining, for the umpteenth time, that he’s not allowed to go home and have amazing sex with Emily Blunt because that’ll disrupt the Chairman’s plan. Then they get up and chase each other around again.

In some scenes, Bureau members can merely point with their finger and shatter somebody’s foot. In others, they have to run after them. Their superpowers are arbitrary depending on the whims of the plot, which is all just an excuse for more classically Dick-ish debates on predetermination versus free will. And apparently magic fedoras allow access through secret doorways that teleport you across entire city blocks.

But you know who’s really good in this movie? Matt Damon.

The Adjustment Bureau 

Starring Matt Damon, Emily Blunt, John Slattery, Anthony Mackie and Terence Stamp. Based on a short story by Philip K. Dick. Written and directed by George Nolfi. At Boston Common, Fenway and in the suburbs.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

BY KYLE WRIGHT

Mention Dorchester dining to snooty urbanites and, depending on their last trip, they’ll either scoff at the absurdity of the concept or recount the fabulous meal they once had at Ashmont Grill. Chef Chris Douglass pioneered the movement toward quality, community-oriented spots, and others are following suit. “We wanted to open here because we all live in the neighborhood and know the potential value,” says Driscoll DoCanto, co-owner of Savin Bar and Kitchen. “The people on Savin Hill don’t have something like this within walking distance.”

Set to launch in early March, Savin Bar and Kitchen aims to blend the neighborhood bar and grill formula with an inventive menu helmed by chef Todd Lesakowski (of the Franklin Café and Rhode Island’s Cav). “We’re pulling some of the American classics out of the dark,” he adds. Those dishes range from pork-shoulder confit wrapped in bacon ($19) to a simple baguette stuffed with French ham and cornichon butter ($9).

“This is definitely a neighborhood that people are interested in,” says co-owner Kenneth Osherow. He’s no stranger to the Hill, owning Savin Scoop, McKenna’s Café and a laundry list of surrounding properties, but this will be his first foray into dinner service.

The restaurant’s location is steeped in neighborhood lore; it’s housed local favorite C.F. Donovan’s and, earlier, the Bulldog Tavern—stomping ground of gangster Eddie “The Bulldog” Connors. Extensive renovations have added an open kitchen, tufted banquettes (reupholstered in velvet) and a reclaimed oak bar built to withstand heavy traffic. The eatery also has the only liquor license on the Hill.

Downstairs a cozy corner adjacent to the prep kitchen has been renovated, but Osherow and DoCanto are waiting to determine its fate. “We don’t know what the people around here want. It could end up being a bar or a private room. Time—and the people—will tell, and then we’ll give them what they need.”

BY KYLE WRIGHT

Actress and Pocasset native Kristin Carey has appeared in many TV series, including Criminal Minds, Bones and The West Wing. She makes her feature film debut opposite Owen Wilson and Jason Sudeikis in Peter and Bobby Farrelly’s Hall Pass.

Your character in the movie is billed as a cougar. Do you share any qualifying characteristics?
Well, I do wear a lot of leopard! And I have a sexual appetite that cannot be satiated. OK, I’m totally kidding. I love her boldness, I think we share some of that. She knows what she wants. I think I’m a little young for a cougar.

What was the audition process like for this film?
I’ve known the Farrelly brothers for a while. We bonded over the Red Sox, the Celtics and the Patriots. They’re New England guys. They like to work with people they have a connection with, and they thought of me for this role. The set was like a lovefest.

Did anyone pull any pranks on set?
When we were filming our big sex scene, I thought it’d be funny to put on this prosthetic penis with red pubic hair and surprise the guys. Unfortunately (or fortunately) the cameras caught the whole thing. It’ll be on the DVD extras.

Who’d you rather: Owen Wilson or Jason Sudeikis?
But they’re both such great guys! I guess Jason, because I tend be more interested in brunets. A guy with a sense of humor is very sexy.

By Amanda Knorr

Brooches can seem a little dowdy, but these six may change your mind. Skip heavy jewelry and adorn yourself with funky, feminine pins. To customize your look, stick them on blazers, cardigans, scarves and even T-shirts.

Left to right, top to bottom:

Three-piece crest brooch
$34 at Madewell, 329 Newbury St., Boston
617-424-0904 | madewell.com

Chain fringe brooch
$32 at Madewell, 329 Newbury St., Boston
617-424-0904 |  madewell.com

Antique metal and pearl pin
$12 at Urban Outfitters, 361 Newbury St., Boston
617-236-0088 | urbanoutfitters.com

Jeweled flower pin
$15 at J.Crew, Copley Place, Boston
617-236-5950 | jcrew.com

Lizzie Fortunato midnight waltz pin
$250 at Looc, 12 Union Park St., Boston
617-357-5333 | loocboutique.com

Dill military brooch
$35 at Banana Republic, Copley Place, Boston
617-424-7817 | bananarepublic.com

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

Lindsey Canant

For better or worse, Boston and tea will always go together. But despite the fuss, all we managed was an Earl Grey–flavored harbor while Long Island manufactured their own sick salute to tea. Times are changing. Pinkies out, Boston, and bottoms up. 

Don Matteo $12
BiNA Osteria | 581 Washington St., Boston | 617-956-0888 binaboston.com

English breakfast tea makes a strong, deep flavor base whose richness is a welcome antidote to wintry weather. A dash of Baileys adds a creamy aroma, while the tea melds with vanilla-infused Makers Mark on the palate for a hardly-sweet, no-nonsense herbal flavor with a spicy finish.

Geisha $9
City Bar | 61 Exeter St., Boston | 617-933-4800 | citybarboston.com

This Bellini-esque sparkling cocktail uses Zen Green Tea liqueur to brighten passion fruit’s full-bodied pulp. With tea flavors grounding the Geisha’s delicate balance, it’s an ideally refreshing aperitif. Invented by Trina Sturm (now of Trina’s Starlite Lounge) it mixes accessibility with Champagne-flute sophistication.

ACRB Tea Party $10
Audubon Circle | 838 Beacon St., Boston | 617-421-1910  auduboncircle.us

The ACRB tea party is a citrusy refresher.  Vodka undergoes a three-day tea infusion before it’s muddled with fresh mint. The result is an initial shock to the tastebuds, rounded out by tangy lime and lemonade. This well-executed twist on the mojito will be perfect for sipping on the Audubon patio come summer.

Photo Credit: Katie Noble

By B.N. Lee

Davis Square has a lot to offer: a great movie theater/concert venue, a Goodwill store with an impressive book section, a solid Irish pub and decent BBQ, and, of course, Gargoyles on the Square—the city’s best experimental, fine-dining venue fronted by a reality-TV runner-up. But to judge by the popularity of Foundry on Elm, what Davis Square was missing was a brasserie in the mold of Gaslight, Eastern Standard and Russell House Tavern—a place specializing in fancy cocktails and steak frites. From its menu layout to its red-leather banquettes and marble-top bar, Foundry unabashedly conforms to the Eastern Standard template. Too bad the food is only a dim shadow of its inspiration.

Foundry is upfront about its objective. The waitress cheerfully informed us, “We’re trying to be a brasserie meets gastropub.” But on a Friday night, the 200-person space instead resembled a brasserie meets sports bar. Practically every wall surface in the bar area is hung with flat-screens—even the bathroom has a TV over the sink so you won’t miss a crucial play. The music jarringly leapt between reggae and club tracks. In back, the ambience was more subdued, with booths shielding out the din. If you have a preference on noise levels, be sure to specify your choice when making a reservation. Alas, both times we sat in the Señor Frog section.

Of the appetizers, I enjoyed the assorted farm-stand pickles ($6), which included green beans, red peppers, celery root and carrots. Though the brine was too sour, the vibrant taste of the vegetables compensated for the mouth-puckering tartness. Crab cakes ($13) were also a solid choice. Packed with tender crab instead of filler and lightly coated with panko, they easily broke apart at the touch of a fork and paired well with a corn relish. Less successful was the raw bar plateau ($45), a large platter of oysters, littleneck clams, shrimp and Jonah crab claws accompanied by a small plate of tuna tartare. Perhaps the shellfish weren’t in their prime or had been sitting on ice too long, but they tasted frosty and dull.

The two biggest disappointments among the entrees were the shrimp etouffée ($18) and the steak frites ($19). Although the shrimp were perfectly cooked, the etouffée was astoundingly bland for a dish that should be well-seasoned and spicy. The sauce tasted like flour and hardly anything else; I felt tempted to take up the waitress’ offer to replace it with another selection when she saw my untouched dish. My companion’s steak, requested medium, arrived raw and cold. When the kitchen returned it to the stove, they overcorrected and dried it into leather. Far better than the steak frites was a savory New York strip ($26), which came with a hearty portobello hash, broccolini and bourbon demi-glace. But the pan-seared scallops ($20) were the best dish I tasted. The sweet, sea-redolent meat was enhanced by a fennel-leek soubise, beluga lentils and preserved lemon. Tiny fronds of fennel lent both flair and a subtle licorice flavor that combined beautifully with the shellfish.

Like the rest of the meal, desserts were mixed. A crème brûlée with vanilla shortbread ($7) would’ve been delicious if it hadn’t come out refrigerator-cold, caramelized crust and all. The Baileys cheesecake ($7) was a generous serving with chocolate-mint sauce and Baileys crème Anglaise, a real treat for those who like their cheesecake dense.

Foundry has an extensive drink menu. Both of my cocktails, Old Granddad’s Cherry and the Ginger Smash ($9.25 each), tasted light on alcohol and heavy on syrup. With more than 23 drafts, including Dogfish Head 60 Minute IPA ($5.50), I recommend skipping the overpriced cocktails and getting a pint instead.

Although no entree on the menu tops $26, I was still surprised by how steep the check was in relation to the quality of food. Foundry on Elm is a sound option if you’re already in Davis Square and have a craving for brasserie fare. But there’s no need to make a special trip. 

B.N.’s Picks

Crab cakes

New York strip steak

Pan-seared scallops

Baileys cheesecake

____________________________________

Foundry on Elm

Lunch: Mon.-Sat., 11 am-3 pm

Dinner: Sun.-Wed., 5-10:30 pm; Thu.-Sat., 5-11 pm

Brunch: Sun., 10:30 am-3:30 pm

Reservations: Yes

Credit Cards: Yes

Handicapped Accessible: Yes

Parking: Street

Liquor: Full

By Nick Altschuller

For Newbury Street designer Daniela Corte, fashion is a family business. Her father owned a men’s line in Argentina, and her first job was cutting silk for neckties. “My dad dressed the president,” Corte explains. “It was very much the old-school way of dressing.” After moving to the States and focusing on couture, in 2000 she switched to resort wear, a style looking to flaunt the body as much as cover it. Her work caught the national eye, and this year’s Sports Illustrated Swimsuit Edition includes a Corte piece in the peacock pattern used in her 2011 collection (like the one seen here). The look shows that, despite moving from spiffy to sexy, Corte’s still influenced by her roots. “I’m very much into print,” she says. “I get inspired by textile.”

Credits:

Photograph: Adam DeTour; makeup: Diane Mammola/Salon Mario Russo; hair: Salon Mario Russo; sunglasses: SEE Eyewear seeeyewear.com; model: Kelly/Maggie Inc.

Photo Credit: Steven Parke

BY RAUL ROBICHEAU

It was a great day for jazz when singer/bassist Esperanza Spalding snatched the best new artist prize from Justin Bieber at the 2011 Grammy Awards. Adding the Stanley Clarke Band’s award for best contemporary jazz album, it became, as Clarke says, “A great day for bass players.”

Clarke deserves much of the credit for moving the instrument into the mainstream. With his snappy, nimble attack, he was jazz’s first virtuoso of the electric bass in the ’70s, both as a solo artist and with the pioneering jazz-rock group Return to Forever.

“That underdog, working-class musician thing that was associated with the bass player, that’s completely erased, especially when you see a lot of young kids now who go to school just to learn the electric bass,” says Clarke, 59. “That’s actually what blows my mind. I come from the generation where if you went to school to study anything about the bass, it was the acoustic bass, with the idea that you’d join an orchestra or teach.”

Like Spalding, whom he tapped to sing on his 2007 disc, The Toys of Men, Philadelphia native Clarke began on the acoustic bass, moving from classical studies to playing jazz with Art Blakey, Dexter Gordon and Pharoah Sanders. And when he picked up the electric bass guitar, he kept playing upright acoustic as well.

“I don’t want to come off like I’m arrogant,” Clarke says from his home studio/office in Topanga, Calif. “But the electric bass is more like a hobby to me. It was something that I played in bands at parties and things. But I studied the acoustic bass.”

He’ll play plenty of both on the road this year. Clarke missed the Grammy Awards while touring with the latest incarnation of RTF, which should hit Boston this summer. The Stanley Clarke Band plays Royale on March 24 on a cobilled tour with the Victor Wooten Band, featuring the Flecktones virtuoso who formed bass supertrio SMV with Clarke and Marcus Miller.

Clarke says, “When I first started making solo records, there was just a handful of people that had records out as bass players. Now, worldwide, there are thousands.” They range from the Hawaiian guy he met whose album cover sported a bass coming out of a pineapple (“I said to myself, ‘I know this doesn’t sound good,’” Clarke says) to a German group with four bass players. “It was pounding,” Clarke recalls.

He goes on to laud the latest edition of RTF, in which he, keyboardist Chick Corea and drummer Lenny White are joined by guitarist Frank Gambale and violinist Jean-Luc Ponty, another ’70s veteran who played with Clarke on The Rite of Strings. “I always played the bass,” Clarke says. “But I had the mind of a singer or a bandleader. I always knew how to put music together. I was always a composer and always had an ability to rehearse any band.”

Clarke notes that they’re playing tunes from throughout the RTF catalog as well as members’ solo albums on this year’s tour. That means Clarke fans can expect to hear his bass-riffing anthem “School Days” as well as the RTF showpiece “No Mystery.”

It’ll be somewhat the same with the Stanley Clarke Band, which recast “No Mystery” in amped-up form on its Grammy-winning eponymous debut. The band’s album—with keyboardist Ruslan Sirota, drummer Ronald Bruner Jr. and featured guest Hiromi on piano—balances edgy virtuosity in the RTF vein with smoother melodic structures, with bass often taking the lead.

“What I really tried to do was make a record that had a feeling like the records we did in the ’70s, which is live and loud—not too loud, but alive,” says Clarke, who coproduced much of the album in his home studio. There, he also works on film and TV scores, having amassed credits from the TV series Pee-Wee’s Playhouse and movies Boyz ’N the Hood and Romeo Must Die.

“Technology has totally empowered the musician,” he says. “As far as being able to deliver product and create a piece of art, this is the best time to be a musician.” Even if you’re a bassist. “The bass is liberated,” says Clarke, who also teaches when he’s home, encouraging students to play both electric and acoustic. “It’s got its own universe now.”

The Stanley Clarke Band plays Royale on March 24.

BY SEAN BURNS

There have been at least 16 big-screen adaptations of Charlotte Brontë’s 1847 novel, Jane Eyre, as well as another dozen or so made for TV. The tale has been prequel-ized and sequel-ized several times, most memorably in Jean Rhys’ Wide Sargasso Sea (which scored its own naughty NC-17 adaptation back in 1993, plus a slightly classier BBC translation in 2004). Jane Eyre has spawned ballets, operas, a symphony and even a comic book. I’d also be derelict in my critical duties if I didn’t mention Val Lewton and Jacques Tourneur’s 1943 take on the material: I Walked With a Zombie.

With these iconic roles already assayed by Orson Welles, Joan Fontaine, Colin Clive, Elizabeth Taylor, George C. Scott, Susannah York, William Hurt, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Anna Paquin, Samantha Morton, Ciaran Hinds, Timothy Dalton and even Andrea Martin and Joe Flaherty on SCTV, is there anything more that could possibly be gleaned from spending yet another couple hours with Jane and Mr. Rochester?

Director Cary Joji Fukunaga’s 2011 take is dutiful, for the most part adequate and, as far as I can see, has absolutely no compelling reason to exist. Scripted by Moira Buffini, who last year penned Stephen Frears’ dreadful countryside farce Tamara Drewe, the movie hits every expected CliffsNotes highlight, streamlining the story but offering no fresh insight or contemporary resonance—which I foolishly assumed was the reason artists revisited classic works in the first place.

Fukunaga helmed 2009’s gritty immigration drama Sin Nombre, which struck this viewer as another one of those MTV music videos for poverty that were all the rage back in the City of God/Slumdog Millionaire era. He initially attempts to shake up the text with some rough-hewn naturalism, fixating on the Derbyshire landscapes and overplaying the miserable weather. The shots are handheld and often underexposed, announcing from the outset that this isn’t your mom’s Jane Eyre.

Except it really is. Once you look past the shaky-cameras and ugly costumes, there’s nothing new. We begin with young orphaned Jane (deftly played by Amelia Clarkson) facing a litany of abuse and being locked in the red room by nasty Mrs. Reed (Sally Hawkins, temperamentally a very long way from her turn in Happy-Go-Lucky). Things go from bad to worse when Jane’s shipped off to the Lowood School, where she learns how to take a beating from the headmistress and watches her best friend die of typhus.

Upon her eventual graduation from this miserable pit, Jane lands a job as governess at Thornfield Hall. She also appears to have misplaced her personality somewhere amid all these expository flashbacks. Clarkson plays the young Jane as a raging spitfire, with the precocious guile of a Manny & Lo–era Scarlett Johansson (if you can remember that brief period before she started acting with her curves). But, replaced by it-girl Mia Wasikowska for the adult segments, Jane becomes inert. Staring vacantly into space and offering a single facial expression that indicates bewilderment, it’s a drastically different performance than the one we were watching before. It’s also a dull one.

Luckily, Michael Fassbender is there to liven things up as the moody Mr. Rochester. Wearing some extremely unfortunate, pubic-looking sideburns, this wry Irish actor offers a less operatically tormented Rochester than Welles’ legendary turn, instead playing up the character’s lazy contempt for everyone in his company. He’s perpetually in a snit, with a devastating quip for every occasion, and it’s a treat to watch Fassbender thawing into his unexpected feelings for this mouthy governess.

If only Jane were as mouthy as he claims. Fukunaga’s Jane Eyre quickly becomes one of those movies where the supporting characters spend the majority of their screen time telling the lead how great he or she is, without any of those admirable traits being visible to the viewer. Judi Dench is on hand to shovel heaps of exposition and to compliment Jane at every turn. Billy Elliot’s Jamie Bell appears, smitten with what he calls “her spirit” and gets stranded in the kind of role Colin Firth used to play 15 years ago, back when he was every woman’s second choice.

Wasikowska, who also appeared in The Kids Are All Right and that dire Alice in Wonderland thing, has a sizable critical fanbase, but I’m baffled by her appeal. There’s none of the backbone and fortitude we keep hearing that Jane has in spades. For the most part she just blandly stands around, suffering from Fukunaga’s ugly natural lighting and deliberately drab color scheme.

Perhaps Amelia Clarkson will be old enough to finish the job as the adult Jane when the inevitable remake comes around in another five or six years.

Jane Eyre

Starring Mia Wasikowska, Michael Fassbender, Jamie Bell, Sally Hawkins and Judi Dench. Based on the novel by Charlotte Brontë. Directed by Cary Joji Fukunaga. At Kendall Square and West Newton Cinema.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

BY KYLE WRIGHT

The folks at Thelonious Monkfish know jazz and sushi aren’t exactly a Getz/Gilberto combination, but that’s part of the fun. This month-old Central Square spot, instantly of note for its ludicrous moniker, focuses on Asian-fusion cuisine delivered with a playful twist. “I didn’t want to make a restaurant that was strict,” says owner Jamme Chantler. “We like breathing room.” While there’s plenty of space for adventure on the menu, the actual restaurant is unassuming and modest, with a single row of tables, a sushi bar and a raised, Japanese-style seating area.

Chantler got his start in Asian cuisine owning restaurants like Pepper Sky’s (just a block away on Pearl Street) and Tuk Tuk in Tewksbury. There, the focus is on Thai dishes. “There’s certainly an influence of Thai food behind many of the items on the menu,” he says. “But we saw a need for sushi in Central Square, so we decided to marry cuisines together.” Chef/co-owner Chupada Phomjun’s standard takes on pad thai appear on the menu, alongside more unusual fare like Mad Monk noodles ($11.95), a garlicky mound of soba, shiitake mushrooms and red peppers covered in a hoisin-peanut sauce.

The sushi menu borrows plenty of names from jazz and pop culture vernacular, including the chili-sauced Mack the Knife maki ($6.50) or Regattabar roll ($6.50), with salmon, cucumber, avocado, lettuce, tobiko and mayo. “Sometimes we come up with the names first,” Chantler adds. “It’s all in good fun.”

Jazz music fills the space, although the long-term goal is to host live music on the reclaimed-wood platform in the corner. “The Thai king is quite a jazz musician, you know,” says Chantler, referring to King Bhumibol Adulyadej. His Royal Highness played with Jack Teagarden, Benny Goodman and others before assuming the throne, so maybe the name isn’t as far of a stretch as most would think. No word on how he feels about sushi, though.

Photo Credit: Dan Watkins

By Lindsey Canant

While looking for ways to mix wine with other non-spirits, Toro beverage manager Courtney Bissonnette drew upon what she calls her “dear love,” sherry. With its sherry count in the double digits and cocktails like the rebujito and sherry julep (both $8) on the menu, Toro has mastered this specialty niche.

Every year, Toro staffers undergo a month-long sherry training to help them overcome misconceptions about the Spanish wine. “Sherry is sadly misunderstood,” Bissonnette explains. “In America, people think of it as something that their grandmother kept or that British people drink before bed.”

But she’s noticed it become popular with a younger, spirit-savvy crowd. Used playfully, often in the place of vermouth, sherry’s profile is on the rise. You could say it’s the newest old thing to take the cocktail world by storm.

The sherry julep’s pale cream sherry combines with a dash of cava to bring the cheerful familiarity of cream soda to the palate, while the latter’s sparkle adds mild notes of citrus to the bouquet. The off-dry muscatel-based sherry is smooth, sweet and lightly floral. Muddled mint rounds out the flavors with a fresh herbal touch.  

Nearing the glass’ bottom, the mint becomes both bolder and brighter—just like sherry’s image. “It takes a while to grasp,” Bissonnette says. But once you start exploring, you’ll sip like an old-timer on this revived tipple.