Another David Stratton marvellous movie: #80. John Turturro wrote and directed. The cast is stellar stellar: James Gandolfini leads opposite increasingly estranged wife Susan Sarandon with slatternly, working-class, hardbitten English Kate Winslet his piece on the side. (She's game, I'll give her that.) Christopher Walken puts in a one-note effort as a weak Elvis clone. Steve Buscemi's one liners fall flat. It's a musical. Produced by the Coen brothers and many others. I found it incoherent: lurv in Queens (?), and growing up in a splintering family. Most of it is a pile of fluff that tries to hit the heavy notes at the end, much like Honkytonk Man. Leering camerawork. Again lowly rated at IMDB.
Stephen Holden and Roger Ebert thought as much of it as Stratton did.
Picked up lunch at Out of the Blue on Clovelly Road, which I'd been past too many times. A bit expensive ($20.30) for mediocre fish (hake, grilled, not much choice), an OK Greek salad and some pre-deep-fried calamari. A couple of guys replacing the front door were careless about the customers. Why do that work at lunchtime?
I ate down on the rocks at Gordons Bay. The wind was up and the seagulls had decided to spend what I'd imagine is prime feeding time on the edge of the carpark, where some firies where practising their cherry picker technique. A few storm clouds blew through on an otherwise beaut day. Afterwards I tried snorkelling off the scuba ramp. Visibility was not great as the surf, high though weak, was somehow rough enough to stir everything up near the shoreline. Loads of small fry, some large wrasse, one large female groper, several smaller ones, but no sign of the big blue boy or any cephalopods. I managed to get a few shards of something-or-other stuck in the big toe of my right foot, beyond the reach of my tweezers.
