Month: November 2007

Categories
Food & Wine Food & Drink

Head over heels for wines from Down Under

In 1997, Dan Philips, founder of Grateful Palate Imports, tasted his first Shiraz in Melbourne, Australia.

“It was like stumbling onto some kind of undiscovered winemaking utopia,” Philips says. “It was like Ponce de Leon discovering the Fountain of Youth.”

According to Philips, he finally found what he had been looking for “as a wine-obsessed teenager growing up in San Francisco.” It is that very first taste that drives his passion for Australian wine of all kinds. He spends much of the year in Australia visiting wineries in order to find the best wines to import to the United States.

What struck him about that Shiraz was the red’s brashness, a trait that is shared by Philips and drives his staunch defense of Australia’s wine industry. For those wine drinkers who view Australia as nothing more than a giant bucket of mediocre grape juice, Philips has a response.

“I hope you have lots of money so you can afford very expensive psychoanalysis and figure out your very deep problems or can afford to have a tongue implant,” he kids. The way he sees it, detractors of Australian wine probably “think Wilco is a bad band, Michael Stipe can’t sing, a monkey could paint Mark Rothko paintings, and barbecue is not haute cuisine.”

Even here in Memphis, we don’t view barbecue as haute cuisine. We view it as simply good food. We know what we like, and barbecue never fails to deliver. Many Australian wines are the same. They give wine drinkers what they want: simplicity, loads of flavor, and the total lack of needing to be overanalyzed.

“Australian winemakers are extremely wine-literate,” Philips says. “They’ve traveled the world and seen it all. But even with all this influence, they remain proudly Australian and want to make Australian wines. They, or at least the ones I’ve met and work with, don’t try to make Bordeaux rip-offs.”

The wine critic Robert Parker, founder of The Wine Advocate, has gone so far as to call Philips’ palate “brilliant,” a statement he has backed up by lavishing several 90-plus point ratings on the wines Grateful Palate represents. It is no secret that high scores drive sales in the wine business. These high ratings from Parker’s Wine Advocate and from Wine Spectator have aided the growth of Grateful Palate Imports in Memphis and across the country. But the growth is sustained by consumers returning to the wines over and over again.

They return to the 2005 Marquis Philips Cabernet Sauvignon for the “big, thick, juicy, fresh, exuberant blackberry and cassis fruit intermixed with striking vanillin and pain grille characteristics,” as described by Parker. They also return for the value that many of the wines offer. The Pillar Box Red blend (rated 91 points by Parker) sells for approximately $12.

Philips, for one, isn’t bothered by wine drinkers who don’t care for what Australia has to offer. “Thanks for liking bad wine,” he says. “It leaves more for those of us who don’t dream about meeting Larry Craig in the men’s room to drink. Have you ever had a bottle of Chateau Hypocrite? You’d love it in magnum.”

Marquis Philips “Holly’s Blend” 2006, Southeastern Australia, $12.99

Evil Cabernet Sauvignon 2005, Southeastern Australia, $12.99

McLean’s Farm Shiraz-Cabernet 2004, South Australia, $17.99

Hare’s Chase Red Blend 2005, Barossa Valley, $17.99

Marquis Philips Shiraz 2005, Southeastern Australia, $19.99

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Little Black Book

Ang Lee’s new World War II film, Lust, Caution, is about the complications, compromises, and perils of setting foot in that dangerous, shifting terrain where duty and passion overlap. In the film, a small-time female entertainer working for the political resistance invents a new identity and invades the upper class to get close to a big-time male political operative. This cool, detached character gradually lets his guard down around the wily female spy, and as their affair proceeds, they discover that their emotional and romantic bonds are stronger and more binding than the shackles of political allegiance. In the end, one of them is senselessly murdered, and the other one remains haunted by memories of an affair that was doomed at best.

Is anyone experiencing a mild sense of déjà vu right now? If you are, that’s because the plot of Lust, Caution is nearly identical to the plot of Paul Verhoeven’s Black Book, also released this year. And aside from the setting — Verhoeven’s film is set in Germany and the Netherlands while Lee’s work is set in Hong Kong and Japanese-occupied Shanghai — the films share much more than their basic story arcs. Both feature striking female leads who seek solace in the popular movies of the day when times grow tough, and both assume a grim view of resistance-fighting and wartime in general. But the difference between Black Book and Lust, Caution is the difference between art and commerce, genius and talent, inspiration and proficiency, memorable and forgettable, good and ungood.

In his version of the story, though, Lee initially seems to have surpassed Verhoeven in the unnerving sex-scene department — and that’s no small feat. In a surprising narrative twist, Lee arranges a bait-and-switch “love scene” when Miss Wong (ably played by Tang Wei) and Mr. Yee (Tony Leung) first meet; what looks like a long, slow erotic interlude quickly turns into a rough, date-rape nightmare. There’s tremendous physical and emotional tension in the nude brawls between Wong and Yee that comes from the anger, rage, and frustration they bottle up inside. But this is too one-dimensional and as limited as showing sex as pure, mindless pleasure. I miss the way Verhoeven’s scenes worked as both titillation and commentary; the riskiest and strangest dominance and power games his characters played retain a kind of goofball consensual trippiness, as though pleasure, power, and exploitation were not just linked but eternally inseparable.

Verhoeven also has an audacity and knack for imagery and storytelling that Lee cannot approach. The characters in Lust, Caution wait around in the rain for days while nothing happens; in Black Book, no one was safe from harm for more than five minutes. Verhoeven’s film argued that the winners of the war were as heinous and cruel as the losers; on a smaller and decidedly less original scale, Lee’s film argues that when a woman says “I hate you,” she really means “I kinda like you.” These days, that observation isn’t enough.

Lust, Caution

Now playing

Studio on the Square

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Greek tragedy at sea.

Throughout history, sailing and the sea have been a source of hope and new beginnings, and stories of the sea have carried with them the glory of adventure balanced alongside the reality of human frailty. The British documentary Deep Water tells the tale of perhaps the last great sea adventure, the 1968 Golden Globe Race and its enigmatic and tragic hero, Donald Crowhurst.

In March 1968, The London Sunday Times announced that it was holding the Golden Globe. There were few conditions placed on the contestants; in all, the winner would be required to sail solo around the world without stopping. It was to be the greatest race at sea ever held and would be extremely dangerous, pushing to their limits the nine who signed up to contend for the prize. Almost all were veteran sailors who knew each other and were well acquainted with the challenges that lay ahead. It was in this rush of excitement that Crowhurst’s name first came to national attention in England.

Crowhurst was a family man who had four children and a wife and owned a small nautical electronics company. Like many Britons, Crowhurst had grown up near the sea but had never been a serious sailor. As the homegrown dark horse, the British media loved him, and his confidence was able to sell those around him on his dream of winning the race. He found a financial backer and began building a yacht. By October, he was under way, following his competitors south to the equator.

In July of the next year, three months after the race ended, Crowhurst’s boat was found empty and adrift in the Mid-Atlantic. There was no trace of the man, but Crowhurst’s journal, audiotape, 16mm film, and two logbooks would begin to unravel the mystery of his long voyage and his heartbreaking end.

Veteran filmmakers Louise Osmond and Jerry Rothwell lovingly and brilliantly piece together the story of Crowhurst and the Golden Globe using original news footage, the film found on Crowhurst’s boat, and the footage taken by the race’s other competitors. Newly filmed interviews with Simon Crowhurst, Donald’s son, and Sir Robin Knox-Johnston, the race’s winner, along with an ensemble of friends, colleagues, and contemporaries, candidly and energetically recreate the experience of the racers at sea and their families at home.

The film’s most powerful scenes, though, come from Crowhurst’s wife, Clare. Her comments are made with typical British understatement yet with a warmth that brings the audience into the heart of a loving wife. Clare Crowhurst admits that one of the reasons she was willing to be a part of the film project was the sensitivity and broadmindedness the filmmakers brought to her husband’s story.

Deep Water is a tragedy that even Sophocles would find compelling. In the dire last days of his life, Crowhurst can be seen as a modern-day Captain Ahab, shaking his fist toward heaven as his own pride and ambition come to bear against the overwhelming power of the sea.

Deep Water

Opening Friday, November 2nd

Ridgeway

Categories
Film Features Film/TV

Birth Rights

Ricki Lake had an amazing experience she wanted to share — via film — with the world: giving birth to her second child Owen in her own home (the bathtub, to be exact). But the motive for Lake, an actress and former talk-show host, is far from creating shock value.

In her recent documentary The Business of Being Born, Lake and director Abby Epstein focus on the reemerging trend of midwifery. The film, which will be shown Thursday night at First Congregational Church, chronicles the lives of Lake and other expectant mothers as they wrestle with the fears and rewards of their decision to deliver babies at home.

Amy Stewart-Banbury is a certified professional midwife with Trillium WomanCare, which is hosting the screening along with Mothersville. She decided to screen the film because of the lack of information on midwifery.

“I think it shows the variety of decisions that women have,” Stewart-Banbury says. “I don’t think it says this is the right way or this is the wrong way, but it lets them know their options.”

The film also addresses the state of obstetrics in hospitals today, which Stewart-Banbury likens to an assembly line. Here, the film’s images of home birth are compelling and stand in stark contrast to the more impersonal world of hospitals.

“I think women will come away with a sense of empowerment,” Stewart-Banbury says, “because it shows that they have a choice.”

The Business of Being Born at First Congregational Church, 1000 S. Cooper, Thursday, November 1st, at 6:30 p.m. Suggested donation is $8, with proceeds going to the March of Dimes. Discussion of the film follows the screening.

Categories
Sports Sports Feature

Griz Lose Season Opener

Having been tied at just 2 minutes left in the game, the Memphis Grizzlies end up losing by 3 points to the San Antonio Spurs at last night’s season opener.

But it wasn’t all grim, read Chris Herrington’s re-cap of the game on his blog Beyond the Arc.

Categories
Music Music Features

Dickinson To Be Honored with Lifetime Achievement Award

CREDIT: popculturepress.com

Tonight at Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium, Jim Dickinson will be honored with a lifetime achievement award by the American Music Association for his work as a music producer.

“It actually means a lot to me to get any recognition outside of Memphis,” he told the Jackson Clarion-Ledger

Dickinson has had a long career as both a musician and producer. He recorded on the Sun label and played piano on the Rolling Stones’ Wild Horses. As a producer, he’s worked with Ry Cooder, The Replacements, and others.

To read the rest of the story, go here.

Categories
News

U of M To Receive Warhol Photos

CREDIT: image: britanica.com

The University of Memphis is one of 183 universities selected to receive original Polaroid photographs and gelatin silver prints by the late Pop artist Andy Warhol.

The photos and prints are being donated by the Andy Warhol Photographic Legacy Program in recognition of its 20th anniversary. More than 28,000 of these works, valued at $28 million, will go to university and college galleries. Each gallery will receive approximately 150 photos.

The photos are expected to arrive at the Art Museum of the University of Memphis in January.

The foundation’s goal for the donation to provide greater access to Warhol’s work.

Categories
News

StoryCorps in Memphis Thursday

CREDIT: image: Rob Lowell

The StoryCorps Griot is spending the next year traveling the country to gather the life stories of African Americans. It begins a six-week stay in Memphis on Thursday.

The initiative, funded by the Corporation for Public Broadcasting and in association with the National Museum of African American History and Culture, is the largest of its kind since the WPA’s Federal Writers Project, which gathered the stories of more than 2,000 former slaves in the 1930s. In Memphis, StoryCorps is partnering with WKNO and the Memphis Public Library.

Local participants are invited into StoryCorps’ mobile recording studio to share their stories. While the initiative is aimed at getting stories from World War II veterans and participants of the civil rights movement, everyone is invited. There is no fee, but a $10 donation is suggested.

Select portions of the interviews will be broadcast on the StoryCorps’ website and on NPR with permission.

The StoryCorps mobile studio will be parked at the Central Library, starting on Thursday at 11 a.m.

For more information, go to the StoryCorps website.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

POLITICS: A Tiff over TIFs

Shelby County commissioner Mike Ritz is a first-termer who, on issues ranging from outsourcing Head Start programs to combating sexually oriented businesses, has indicated a willingness to stick his neck out. He is about to do so again.

This week, Ritz threw down the gauntlet against funding a developmental proposal which the University of Memphis is pushing hard and which Ritz sees as an out-and-out rip-off of the taxpayers.

The projec, approved by a 7-2 vote in committee Wednesday and up before the full commission next week, would require TIF (tax increment financing) outlays for a portion of the adjacent Highland Street strip as a “gateway” to the university. The premise of TIF projects is that they generate significant increases in the tax base over the long haul.

“These TIFs are supposed to be used for public projects,” Ritz says. These include such things, as he has pointed out in notes sent to the media, as housing developments, street and sewer improvements, lighting, and parks.

But the Poag McEwen Lifestyle Center project on Highland, as Ritz sees it, is little more than a “gift” to the developers, who propose building a retail center/apartment complex on the west side of Highland from Fox Channel 13 north to the site now occupied by Highland Church of Christ.

“The University of Memphis is running interference for something that shouldn’t get done,” says Ritz, who maintains that the developers would be using a total of $12 million from the city and county and would be under no obligation to pay any of it back.

“There has been no analysis done on this project, and it contains no performance requirements,” says Ritz, who argues in his distributed notes about the project that “retail centers move sales and jobs around, they do not grow local economy; [there is] no growth of jobs or tax base.” In a conversation this week, he added, “It’s like moving checkers around on checkerboards. There’s no lasting benefit.”

Ritz’s statement of concern comes on the heels of two new reports.

One report from county trustee Bob Patterson notes that 120 local companies have tax freezes under PILOT (payment-in-lieu-of-taxes) programs and that some $44 million worth of county property taxes and 372 parcels of land are involved in the programs.

Another report, from the Memphis and Shelby County Industrial Development Board’s performance and assessment committee, indicates the likelihood of default by several corporations on obligations relating to their tax breaks under PILOT programs. Under the circumstances, Ritz says, the Highland project amounts to an additional “giveaway” which the county simply can’t afford.

University of Memphis officials have been aggressively promoting the project as a way of shoring up the university’s “front door.” One who concurs is veteran U of M booster Harold Byrd, who has had his differences with university president Shirley Raines concerning her lack of enthusiasm for an on-campus football stadium, of which Byrd has been a strong proponent.

But Byrd says he’s on “the same page” with Raines about the Highland Street project. “It would shore up an area that, particularly south and west of campus, has begun to deteriorate.” Citing what he says is a prevalence of “cash-for-title businesses, pawnshops, and fortune tellers,” Byrd says, “It’s definitely a distressed commercial and retail area.” Moreover, he says, “the residential area south of the university is in strong decline.”

Both circumstances would respond positively to the proposed Poag McEwen Lifestyle Center, he said, and the “gateway” aspect of the project would benefit the entire community, not just the university area itself. (For more on this perspective, see “City Campus”.)

On the first round on Wednesday, the Highland TIF project, which has the imprimatur of the Memphis and Shelby County Redevelopment Agency, got preliminary support on the County Commission, too. The 7-2 vote in favor (Wyatt Bunker joined Ritz in opposition) came despite a recusal from Commissioner Steve Mulroy, a University of Memphis law professor.

Though Ritz continues to lobby his colleagues against the Highland TIF proposal, the commission is scheduled to take up — and almost certainly approve — the measure on a formal vote next week.

• This coming week sees the formal completion of the 2007 Memphis election cycle, with four City Council runoffs being decided on Thursday, November 8. The contests are between Stephanie Gatewood and Bill Morrison in District 1; Bill Boyd and Brian Stephens in District 2; Harold Collins and Ike Griffith in District 3; and Edmund Ford Jr. and James O. Catchings in District 6. Pre-election updates,as well as full coverage of the results, will be posted on the Flyer Web site and in next week’s print issue.

Categories
Politics Politics Feature

Ritz Goes Against U of M on Highland TIF

No stranger to controversy, Shelby County Commissioner Mike Ritz threw down the gauntlet this week against funding a developmental proposal which the University of Memphis is pushing hard and which Ritz sees as an out-and-out rip-off of the taxpayers.

For the rest of the story, go to “Political Beat”.