Among today’s movies, Bottle Shock, a fairly entertaining comedy based on the true story of how California wine makers won a now-famous blind tasting in Paris in 1976.  Bill Pullman plays Jim Barrett, the vintner who quits as the partner of a law firm to put his heart and soul into a Napa Valley winery.  Alan Rickman is the Englishman who owns a wine shop in Paris and arranges the event.  The rest of the cast includes Dennis Farina, Rachael Taylor and Eliza Dushku.  And Chris Pike, Capt Kirk of Star Trek, is almost completely unrecognizable under a blond wig as B0 Barrett.

The film isn’t particularly outstanding in any way but it does make for a good afternoon’s entertainment.  I think it does do a good job of showing how hard it is to make a decent bottle of wine.  And then there’s this brief exchange, halfway through the film:

Bill Pullman:  Why don’t I like you?

Alan Rickman:  Cause you think I’m an asshole.  And I’m not really.  I’m just British and, well, you’re not.

We also watched Fame, the original Alan Parker film, not the recent remake, because I thought it would be the kind of thing my gf would enjoy (and I was right).  I haven’t watched it in a long time and perhaps this is the first time that I’ve appreciated what Parker accomplished here.

The film fictionalizes two actual New York City high schools, the School of Performing Arts and the High School of Music & Art.  I actually went through the audition process for the latter school and failed.  (They liked my piano and bass playing but asked me to repeat various rhythms that they tapped out for me and apparently I didn’t do that well.)  So it’s not an easy film for me to watch.

And I spent the rest of the day installing Photoshop CS4 and attempting to jump in at the middle, watching a video here and attempting to extract objects from a photo – and it was not quite an abject failure but far from successful.  I think the guy in the video is talking too fast plus he’s of the “do this, do that” persuasion and not of the “do this and do that because it will then give these” persuasion.  Following his clicks without understanding why I’m doing it doesn’t facilitate truly learning the steps, at least not for me.  Luckily I also bought Scott Kelby’s Photoshop book, just haven’t cracked it yet.

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