Month: July 2020

The Outpost (R)

Film Reviews by Amy Diaz

U.S. Army soldiers operating in a remote corner of Afghanistan find themselves under attack in The Outpost, which is based on a true story told, among other places, in a book called The Outpost: An Untold Story of American Valor written by CNN’s Jake Tapper.

The movie takes place at what is eventually called Camp Keating, after Capt. Benjamin Keating (Orlando Bloom), the outpost’s commander as the movie opens. It doesn’t take military expertise to understand that this outpost is a bad scene — it is surrounded on three sides by mountains, putting the outpost and its personnel at the bottom of a bowl. Taliban soldiers can easily find a position on the mountains from which they can take easy shots at fighters throughout the camp. And they do, nearly every day, we’re told. For a while, the tension of bullets (and later mortars) entering the camp at any moment relaxes only at night because the Taliban fighters don’t have night vision.

We meet many of the soldiers who man this outpost, attempting to build relationships with the local population. What feels like oodles of people are introduced with on-screen IDs and we learn bits of information about lives back home. Ultimately, the men we probably spend the most time with are Specialist Ty Carter (Caleb Landry Jones), Lt. Andrew Bundermann (Taylor John Smith) and Staff Sgt. Clint Romesha (Scott Eastwood). The camp has a series of commanding captains, whom we also meet, each of whom has a different leadership style that presents a different set of challenges; their introductions serve as sort of chapters to the story as the movie builds to what we’re told from the beginning is definitely coming: the big one. That is how the soldiers refer to the inevitable attack by overwhelming numbers of Taliban using the advantage of the mountains to attempt to overrun the camp.

By the end of The Outpost, I completely understood all the storytelling decisions made in this story, which runs a little more than two hours and begins the most intense action (the predicted “big one”) a little more than an hour in. I feel like there was a version of this movie that could have slid in at fewer than 90 minutes and, similar to Tom Hanks’ recent Greyhound (which The Outpost sort of reminded me of), confined itself to the core of the fight. But Greyhound’s source material is a novel based on World War II events and this is a true story featuring soldiers who are real people, alive and deceased, with still living parents and spouses and children, and I understand why the movie puts such emphasis on having the audience learn everybody’s name and get at least a slice of backstory even when it feels like information overload.

The movie also stays away from having an overt point of view about the war and the larger politics involved. Instead, its criticism is pointed at military decisions made in reference to the outpost from its very existence in this (as the movie describes at the end) “obviously indefensible” location to various bad-call requests and decisions made by military officialdom elsewhere. The story’s focus is on the men, their bravery in their defense of each other and their ability to think on their feet and adapt when what seems like an unwinnable fight begins. B

Rated R for war violence and grisly images, pervasive language, and sexual references, according to the MPA on filmratings.com. Directed by Rob Lurie with a screenplay by Eric Johnson, The Outpost is two hours and three minutes long and distributed by Screen Media Ventures. The movie is available for rent.

Book Review 20/07/23

Parakeet, by Marie-Helene Bertino (224 pages, Farrar, Straus and Giroux)

The bride, “ethnically ambiguous,” has been banished to a luxurious inn, sent there by the groom a week before the wedding to decompress.

The groom, an elementary school principal, had proposed after five dates. The bride describes him like this: “He will never lie to me and he will never make me howl with laughter.” His family is composed of academics who each look “perpetually poised to ask a question after a great deal of thought.” Of course she said yes.

At the inn on Long Island, there is ambivalence and fear, not the normal pre-wedding jitters, but weapons-grade anxiety, the sort that makes it entirely plausible that a dead grandmother will show up in the form of a bird and make demands of the bride.

She was a “a rueful bird endowed with death’s clarity,” as acerbic in death as in life. She both warbled and cussed, and she soiled the bride’s wedding dress before she left.

Such is the powerful beginning to Parakeet by Marie-Helene Bertino, a much-lauded writer of fiction who lives up to the hype. A former fellow at MacDowell artist community in Peterborough (no longer “Colony”), Bertino has written one other novel, 2014’s 2 A.M. at the Cat’s Pajamas, and a collection of short stories. She’s already sold another novel, set to be published in 2022, pandemic willing.

Parakeet takes place within the span of a week, with occasional flashbacks and one poignant flash forward, to describe the trauma-pocked life of the bride and her brother. It’s astonishing to realize that the bride is never given a name (nor the groom) and this omission does not matter or even seem strange. We don’t need to know her name; we learn everything else that matters.

The “bird-shaped grandmother” that shows up in the bride’s room knows about the impending wedding, but asks the bride to do something that has nothing to do with the ceremony. She/it wants the bride to find her estranged brother, and she makes a cryptic prophecy: “You won’t find him.”

The bride hasn’t seen her brother, Tom, for seven years. He’s a playwright who became wealthy and famous for writing about his sister’s life and then vanished.

“The last time I saw Tom was at his own wedding, where he lay bloody on a gurney, asking me to hold his hand,” the narrator-bride says.

But she loved her grandmother and so sets off to find the brother she doesn’t really want to see, all the while tending to the mundanities of a pre-wedding week, such as dealing with the florist, buying a new dress and seeing her maid of honor, her best friend from childhood, who, as it turns out, isn’t the greatest friend after all.

As the bride describes the relationship, “There’ve been several times in our friendship when Rose and I reached what I feared was its conclusion, when an important update to our subscription to each other had lapsed, and we either had to renew or face the tenuousness of our connection.”

This is typical of Bertino’s writing, which is startlingly original and frequently witty, as in her description of the woman from whom she buys a wedding dress: “Ada doesn’t wax her eyebrows or even trim them in any way I can detect. The courage this requires stuns me.”

Later, the bride describes her “smile so pale and winsome I appear floured.”

The exquisite writing and fresh turns of phrase do not exist to cover up a flan-like plot. The story is rich in its own right, thickened by pain and trauma.

The bride works as a biographer of people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries, compiling the personal details of their lives for juries. (A visit she makes to a man whose brain is so unreliable that he needs to be reminded not to pull out a hot oven rack with his hand is especially poignant.)

But she has her own injuries, too, psychological ones from her mother and physical ones from a random attack. As she navigates the week, we are not sure if what she is experiencing is even real or the desperate imaginings of a brain that is truly broken.

Parakeet is a quiet thriller in that regard, pulsing with mysteries and questions. But it’s also a deeply empathetic portrayal of a woman struggling to discern what is real and right, like a bird banging into a glass window. It’s an excellent antidote to the common vacuous beach read.

A — Jennifer Graham

BOOK NOTES
The Twitter war over J.K. Rowling and her views on transgender people has lately expanded to include other authors, including New Hampshire’s Jodi Picoult.

Picoult, who lives in Hanover on property that has views of both the Green and White Mountains, was asked by a fan to weigh in and tweeted (as did Stephen King) that trans women are women. Rowling, who does not share that view, is getting backlash from fans of her Harry Potter franchise, with some going so far as to have Potter-themed tattoos removed.

Picoult, however, stands to benefit from her tweet, as some Twitter users suggested that people buy one of her books in solidarity. There are plenty to choose; she’s written 27, with another, The Book of Two Ways, coming out in September. (The prologue is on her website if you want a sneak peek.)

Meanwhile, Rowling has a new work called The Ickabog, which she is publishing, one chapter at a time, on a website called theickabog.com. Right now, the extended fairy tale consists of just Rowling’s words, but she is running a contest in both the U.S. and United Kingdom to choose illustrations that will be used when the book is published in the fall. Proceeds will go toward Covid-19 assistance.

For fare less controversial, Jane Austen fans might consider a book published this week: Rachel Cohen’s Austen Years, a Memoir in Five Novels (Farrar, Straus and Giroux, 304 pages).

The first line: “About seven years ago, not too long before our daughter was born, and a year before my father died, Jane Austen became my only author.” Sign me up.

Album Reviews 20/07/23

John Carpenter, “Skeleton”/”Unclean Spirit” (Sacred Bones Records)

It’s funny how things work out, isn’t it? I would have loved to hear the put-downs of Carpenter during the 1980s, mumbled during power-lunches with Hollywood executives, when they’d mercilessly tool on the musically untrained Carpenter’s insistence on soundtracking his movies (Halloween, The Thing, They Live, etc.). Of course, they probably ate all those words when he won a Saturn award for soundtracking his 1998 film Vampires, or maybe, more likely, they didn’t, but in any case, his musical style — bouncy, redundant Nintendo-techno — is pretty huge these days. This advance two-song single offers his signature vibe, which of course has seen a rebirth of late (think the theme music to the Netflix show Stranger Things), and voila, music critics have to pretend to be paying attention. “Skeleton” is a rather upbeat offing, entry-level ’80s krautrock with a good amount of heart, whereas the much darker “Unclean Spirit” conjures a cross between “Dies Irae” (the Gregorian chant that opens the movie The Shining) and, oh, something with the usual looping and piano-bonking, let’s say the theme to Halloween. Hey, if he’s happy, it’s fine with me. B+

Peel Dream Magazine, Moral Panics EP (Slumberland Records)

I wrote off this New York crew as the latest tuneless pile of emperor’s new clothes way back, upon hearing a few tunes from their 2018 debut LP Modern Metaphysics. Singer Joe Stevens is so bad that he single-handedly set back the entire hipster-pop movement a gorillion years (the only vocal comparison I can make is Lantern Waste, whose deliriously awful song “200 Miles to York” is often played as a joke by Toucher and Rich on their local 98.5 Sports Hub radio show in Boston). But whatever, here we go again, thankfully just an EP this time. It starts out survivably enough with “New Culture,” a droning stab at borderline no-wave remindful of Superdrag’s “Destination Ursa Major,” in other words amateurishly rendered Foo Fighters. Stevens doesn’t suck as bad as he usually does there, which had me — well, “salivating for more” wouldn’t be it; more like “not retching.” Of course, that attempt at normal music is immediately ruined by the pointless crayon-drawn doofus exercise “Verfremdungseffekt.” These folks have a gift for bad music, I’ll give ’em that. D

Retro Playlist
Eric W. Saeger recommends a couple of albums worth a second look.

As you (hopefully) just read, one signature feature of the pandemic is album release dates being canceled, changed or otherwise messed with. I’ve about given up the delusion that a release announcement consists of reliable information, but the show must go on here.

Another bizarre thing we’ve witnessed is the freezing of trends. In the area of music, after several years of the 1990s being laughed off as the worst decade for music ever (which always happens just before something blows big from the same arena), sure enough, bands were starting to fess up to listening to ’90s bands as a guilty pleasure. It was becoming cool for bands to cite grunge, riot grrl, commercial ska-pop, etc. influences when BS-ing rookie rock writers from Nylon and such. It looked unstoppable.

And then came Covid 19. Like I said somewhere above, at this point people are more occupied with virtue-signaling and fighting on social media and fretting about the apocalypse than reading some hipster dummy’s thoughts on Gwen Stefani’s “edgy” years. It’s as if every artistic rebirth and micro-renaissance that was in queue is in stasis, frozen like Ripley on Alien, waiting for the coast to be clear.

There were good things about the ’90s, at least in my view. Nirvana of course, Rage Against The Machine, Cypress Hill, Moby, Limp Bizkit, Korn, a bunch of other stuff, including many you’ve probably never heard of, bands that helped usher in the ’90s-rock era by releasing albums that were clear warnings of things to come. Transvision Vamp may have been doomed to obscurity from birth, but they were different in a lot of good ways, a sort of commercialized riot grrl thing that presaged sexy android-pop bands of the Aughts like Asteroids Galaxy Tour. In fact, Transvision Vamp peaked and declined at the decade’s turn, unfairly so, because their 1991 full-length Little Magnets Versus the Bubble of Babble was no less sexy and vampy and kickass than their 1988 Pop Art debut. Another one you may have missed was Gaye Bykers on Acid, which, along with a few other bands, almost squashed the grunge movement in favor of the “grebo” scene, which mashed influences from punk rock, EDM, hip-hop and psychedelia. We’d all be so much better off if their 1992 self-titled album hadn’t been lost in a sea of grunge (their 1987 freak-fringe niche-hit “WW7 Blues” is still monstrously cool).

Yeah, a ’90s revival wouldn’t be the worst thing.

If you’re in a local band, now’s a great time to let me know about your EP, your single, whatever’s on your mind. Let me know how you’re holding yourself together without being able to play shows or jam with your homies. Send a recipe for keema matar. Email esaeger@cyberontix.com for fastest response.

PLAYLIST
A seriously abridged compendium of recent and future CD releases

• Friday, July 24, is ahead, and with it will come albums, some good, some bad, some why-would-anyone-bother-recording-this. To be honest, the list is pretty thin at this writing, which may be due to the fact that all the bands have figured out that people aren’t interested in music anymore, because it’s much more fun and self-fulfilling to argue with people on the internet, just to take the edge off the stir-craziness the coronavirus has wrought. Matter of fact, my usual source of hot new music nonsense, Metacritic, only has two upcoming new records listed, so I’m going by the list on Pause And Play. This means I am out of my comfort zone once again, having to deal with some stupid new website that wants me to fork over my email address and then drop a cookie into my Cookies folder, just so that Pause and Play can send me spam and slow down my “browsing experience” while the cookie tracks every moronic thing I look for on the internet. Does anyone not just click the little “X-close” button when presented with that kind of junk, or should I really just spend an entire afternoon searching Google for “best free spamblocker”? (I won’t do that. I spend a lot of time on the internet, yes, but going to such trouble seems a little obsessive.) Where was I? Right, albums. Most of these look kind of dumb and boring, like the only one I’m actually drawn to is Goons Be Gone, the new album from Los Angeles-based duo No Age! They make noise-rock, which you all know makes me smile, and… oh, come on, the release date changed to last week, according to Amazon! See why I hate using new systems? See why I didn’t want to use Pause and Play? Whatever, I’m listening to the single “Sandalwood” anyway, because the whole rollout here is a hot mess, and maybe it’s coming out on the 24th. Whatever, the tune is cool, noisy and messy, like Mick Jagger jamming with Half Japanese, and that brings us to some actual usable news, the first new album in 27 years from ancient punk band X, called Alphabetland! Ha ha, look how old they are now, like Exene looks like some random Birkenstock Karen who haggles with gift shop owners for price breaks on stinky incense. The title track is like early Ramones except with Exene singing half-heartedly. It’s eh.

• Neck Deep is a power-pop band from Wales, in the U.K. Their fourth album, All Distortions Are Intentional, is on the way as we speak, led by the single “Lowlife,” which is OK but sounds like the last nine billion songs you’ve heard that involve ripping off Weezer in Nirvana mode. So, unless anyone has questions — yes, you, in the back. No, I will never willingly listen to this song again. That it? Good, let’s proceed to the next thingie.

• Country-Americana-folkie Lori McKenna is from Stoughton, Mass., where there are no cowboys. She once received a country Grammy nomination. Her new album, The Balladeer, includes the single “Good Fight,” a strummy folk-pop song that you might like if you dig ’70s radio-pop.

• Time for one more, and I choose Irish singer Ronan Keating’s new album, Twenty Twenty! Did I choose wisely? No, unless you like shuffle-y chill-out Ed Sheeran-ish boy-band pop that would be a perfect fit on the Ellen show. I do not.

The Weekly Dish 20/07/23

• Mobile scoops: The Loudon Firefighters Association (8 Cooper St.) will host a drive-thru ice cream social on Saturday, July 25, from 4 to 8 p.m. Participants can place their order on the South Village Road side of the firehouse before picking up and exiting on the Cooper Street side. Ice cream flavors will include vanilla, chocolate and strawberry, with all kinds of optional toppings, like whipped cream, chocolate syrup, rainbow and chocolate sprinkles and a maraschino cherry. The cost is $5 per dish. See “LFD Drive-Thru Ice Cream Social” on Facebook for more details.

• Keeping it local: The New Hampshire Liquor Commission has launched a “Keep it Local” campaign to support wineries and distilleries in the state, it announced in a press release. From now until Aug. 30, all of the state’s Liquor & Wine Outlet stores are offering 20-percent discounts on purchases of three or more bottles of wines and spirits made, grown or produced in New Hampshire, all sizes, with the ability to mix and match them. “Covid-19 has impacted all industries, and our local wineries and distillers have been hit particularly hard,” NHLC Chairman Joseph Mollica said in a statement. “[This] … initiative helps generate sales, encourages responsible visitation and supports our local partners.” Visit liquorandwineoutlets.com/keepitlocal.

• Quick bites: You can now find pasta salads, homemade whoopie pies, Italian desserts and other quick bites from Angela’s Pasta & Cheese Shop for sale inside the cafe of the Bookery (844 Elm St., Manchester), which has new in-store hours Tuesday through Saturday, from 11 a.m. to 7 p.m. The downtown bookshop also recently introduced additional outdoor seating. Visit bookerymht.com or call 836-6600.

• Farewell to The Foothills: The Foothills of Warner, a longtime staple in town known for its baked goods, including its nearly five-pound cinnamon rolls, has announced its closure as of July 19. “Many factors went into this difficult decision. We want to thank all of our loyal customers for their support over the last 15 years,” read a July 16 post on the restaurant’s Facebook page. “We have made many wonderful friends and we will miss you all very much.” The building has operated as a restaurant for nearly 30 years but was originally housing, dating back to the early 1800s, owner Deb Moore told the Hippo last fall. It has also been a bank and a town post office during its lifetime.

Carpe diem

Something new in sparkling wines

Carpe diem — seize the day! Embark on something new! Even John Keating, played by Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society, famously says, “Carpe diem. Seize the day, boys. Make your lives extraordinary.” Well, broadening your experiences with wine is rewarding. Borrowing from that quote, an “extraordinary” array of wine produced from seemingly unlimited manners of blending of grape varieties produces a vastly diverse tasting spectrum and sensations.

Gruet Cuvée 89 Brut (originally priced at $29.99 and on sale at the NH Liquor and Wine Outlets at $14.99) is designed to be savored. The wine has a light straw color to it and to the nose there is a slight yeast note along with a little slate-like minerality. To the mouth, green apples along with citrus rind round the tongue. The label states, “Gruet specializes in Méthode Champenoise wines. The Cuvée 89 by Gruet is a brut style sparkling wine which boasts notes of green apple and ripe pear and finishes with round crisp acidity.” This wine is slightly “sweet” to some. That is not to be confused with an effervescent moscato, as it is not that sweet. This is a wine that can be enjoyed alongside some cheese and fruit; it is equally refreshing alone, sipped on a long summer’s afternoon.

What makes this sparkling wine so amazing is that it is from New Mexico, but its origins lie in France. Gilbert Gruet, the founder of Gruet Winery, was born to a poor family in the village of Bethon, in the Champagne region of France. He created a co-op in his village to market still wines, Champagnes and brandy. The family traveled to the American Southwest in search of soils and climate in which to farm and planted their first American vineyards in Engle, New Mexico, in 1984 on land with elevations of 4,000 to 5,000 feet above sea level. The sandy soils and dry climate with cool nights proved to be ideal. In 1989 their first releases developed a following, ultimately realizing awards in the early 2000s and in 2011 a No. 43 spot on Wine Spectator’s Top 100 Wines of the World list for its Non-Vintage Blanc de Noirs. Gilbert’s children Laurent and Nathalie now run the business.

Veuve du Vernay Ice Sparkling Demi Sec Rosé (originally priced at $16.99 and on sale at the NH Liquor and Wine Outlets at $11.99) has been created especially to be enjoyed on ice in a large glass. Defined as a “vin mousseux,” a sparkling wine with an alcoholic content at 11 percent, it is perfect as an aperitif or for dessert. Its color is the slightest of a pale pink and its nose is very slight with raspberries and some citrus. To the mouth it has fruit notes of raspberries with a very slight edge of acidity. A blend of non-vintage syrah, cinsault and brenache, it is bright and refreshing, and with its low alcoholic content it is perfect for a warm, sunny afternoon. Like prosecco, the wine is created using the Charmat process — that is, its secondary fermentation takes place in pressurized stainless steel tanks. When complete, it is filtered and bottled under pressure. This is distinct from the Méthode Champenoise noted above wherein the secondary fermentation takes place in the bottle.

This wine is one of several sparkling wines owned by the house of Patriarche, a Beaune, Burgundy-based wine company that in turn is owned by the conglomerate Group Castel, a multinational beverage company producing wine, beer and soft drinks from estates around the world. These wines are produced in Bordeaux and exported to more than 40 countries. The wine is classified as a Vin de France, a new national appellation from France. This new classification releases the wine from the strict, confining, traditional classifications France has used since the start of the 19th century and allows the public to better understand French wine; a Burgundy becomes a pinot noir, named for the grape from which it is produced.

So break away from the traditional chardonnay or pinot grigio, or even prosecco, and explore these sparkling wines on a sunny weekend afternoon! You will be happy with your discovery!

In the kitchen with Jon Buatti

In December 2019, Jon Buatti of Auburn took over ownership of Michelle’s Gourmet Pastries & Deli in Manchester, bringing with him a culinary education and a specialization in custom cake decorating. With the business now known as the Bearded Baking Co. (819 Union St., Manchester, 647-7150, beardedbaking.com), Buatti has built upon the longtime success of the popular Queen City bakeshop and deli, offering custom cakes with many of his own sponge and buttercream recipes. The bakery and deli also features a selection of breakfast and lunch sandwiches and smaller treats like cookies, cupcakes, cheesecakes, bread pudding, chocolate-covered pretzels and more. A Salem native, Buatti got his start in the industry as a busboy at La Bec Rouge in Hampton Beach before volunteering to work a shift making plated desserts. He graduated from Salem High School’s culinary program, followed by Southern New Hampshire University’s associate’s program in baking and culinary arts and its bachelor’s program in culinary management.

What is your must-have kitchen item?

Either an offset spatula or a bench scraper.

What would you have for your last meal?

Anything with barbecue. Ribs, maybe, or barbecue chicken.

What is your favorite local restaurant?

My fiancée and I love The Crown Tavern [in Manchester]. I get the Pep N’ Honey pizza, and their wings are outrageous.

What celebrity would you like to see ordering from your bakery?

Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson.

What is your personal favorite thing that you have ever baked?

As far as a specific cake that I’ve done, it’s a two-way tie with both of the wedding cakes I did for my two older sisters. Those were fun because being part of the wedding, I worked on it for a week straight for both of them, with a revolving door of friends and family coming in the kitchen to catch up and see how the cake was going.

What is the biggest food trend in New Hampshire right now?

Anything dietary, so gluten-free, vegan and sugar-free. We definitely do a lot more custom orders for those types of desserts.

What is your favorite thing to cook at home?

Our favorite dish to make at home together is zuppa toscana. It’s a kale cream soup with tons of veggies.

Homemade scones
From the kitchen of Jon Buatti of the Bearded Baking Co. in Manchester

4½ cups flour
½ tablespoon + ½ teaspoon baking powder
½ teaspoon baking soda
½ teaspoon salt
2 sticks unsalted butter, cubed
1½ cups heavy cream
¾ cup corn syrup

Combine all dry ingredients into a bowl. Cut cold butter into dry ingredients. Create a well with dry ingredients and fold in corn syrup. Add in fillings of choice and form into even disks (makes about 10).

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