Bottle Shock

The bottles of Chardonnay Château Montelena was a while back aiming to get the gold, that precious award of metal, the Golden Globe. Or rather, the film 'Bottle Shock' with this wine as the main feature is. You know, the coveted award by all film producers as the clear indication of being likely the Oscar winner. 'Bottle Shock' is a romantic comedy with wine as the central theme, promising to be the film of the year. My kind of film. I love wine, and I definitely love romance, and the combination of both in a comedy suggests happy ending, and I sure like that too. It was based on the actual event taken place on the 24th of May in 1976, in the hotel Intercontinental in Paris. On that day the Californian wine had made a surprising jump to be on par with, including topping wines from France. "I knew nothing of the incident", admitted Alan Rickman, the leading actor who interpreted Steven Spurrier, the British wine expert living in France who, united with 11 other expert Sommeliers, blindfolded, were to taste and compare Chardonnay and Cabernet produced in California, with the well respected Borgona and Bordeaux from France. Wine tasting is a determining milestone in the quality of wine and makes good story for movies. Especially after that film, the name of which I can't remember, that even won an Oscar some years ago. Although this film was received with open arms in the Sundance Film Festival for independent films, it has created an open war between the producers and Steven Spurrier himself. The actor said he had talked to Spurrier on the phone, but what he didn't say was that Spurrier burst out laughing when he heard that Rickman was going to play him in the film, and he hung up on him. "There's hardly a drop of truth and many, many lies." said Spurrier referring to the film, when interviewed by the wine magazine 'Decanter', and says he's thinking of taking the matter to the tribunals. To start with, he spat out, that Rickman was about 20 years older than he was, and he portrayed the central character (Spurrier) like an arrogant Know-all and a comedian. What was even worst, the picture attributed all the success of the Californian wine to Jim Burnette, the proprietor of the bodegas Château Montelena, and to his son, both involved in the production, instead of Mike Grgich in the elaboration of the winning Chardonnay which is now preserved in the history in the virtues of Smithsonian, in Washington. While all that was going on, it had meantime generated another version: 'The Judgement of Paris - the real version according to Spurrier, based on the book by George Taher, the journalist of the 'Time' magazine, that had made known worldwide the success of the Californian wine. It's being talked about that Hugh Grant or Jude Law be would the lead star in the film. From the look of it, fact or fiction, half truths or nothing but the truth, winner or loser... all comes to money and fame fabrication and big buck business! Me? I have no prejudice, I would leave out the commercial intrigues and strategies to simply enjoy both films.   Tags:wine,film,bottleshock

• Current Mood: Accomplished

Eavesdropping In A Bar

A guy walks into a bar with a slab of asphalt under his arm and says,
"Bartender, two beers please. One for me, and one for the road."

An amnesiac walks into a bar and asks the bartender, "Do I come here often?"

A Pirate walks into a bar with a steering wheel fastened to his fly. The
bartender points and says, "Hey! You have a steering wheel stuck on your
fly!" And the pirate says: "Arrrgh. And it's driving me nuts!"

A dyslexic walks into a bra.

A young Texan walks into a bar and orders a drink. "Got any ID?" asks the
bartender. The Texan replies, "About what?"

A man walks into a bar wearing nothing but a set of jumper cables. He says,
"Bartender, give me a beer." The bartender says, "You can have a beer,
but I don't want you starting anything!"

A Latin scholar walks into a bar and says, "I'll have a martinus." The
bartender asks him. "Don't you mean martini?" The man tells the bartender,
"Listen, if I wanted two or more drinks I would have asked for them."

Tags:Eavesdrop,Bar

• Current Mood: Amused

Trojan Horse And Fish

One Of My Blogs yesterday talked about modern art, but that might not be so modern now . The value of necessity and utility is not very clear any more, whether the subject serves the object or the reverse. The newest photography, by Romain Laurent, depicts conglomeration of people, or shoes, or piles of fish !!

Another example is the installation of Rafa Gallard, titled 'Bimba Gum', in which there are great, thick and enormous pieces of gum having been chewed by Bimba Bose, (celebrity I presume), In which can also be seen the impression of huge dental mark and the rest of DNA.

Or the world of fashion, like in the suggestive horse of Trojan, by Sonia Carballo, or the project of the group 'A happy world', with it's emblem of 'Live Fashion, Die Young' (!!) ... are amongst some of the themes. Not sure whether it's artistic; weird is all I can say.

Confused? Baffled? I certainly am. The so called modern art today is getting impossible to define -photography, murals, graffiti, installations, structures of any kind, videos and video clips ... summing up to more than 100 proposals, many of them come, quite significantly, from artists who work for sectors of fashion and publicity.

So what do you think of this fish mount? Artistic? Or just dead fish?

Tags: trojanhorse, fish

• Current Mood: Artistic

My New Shoes

It might sound quite incredible but it's a fact that I have never in my life owned or worn a pair of sports shoes, trainers or anything of the sort. I don't have many obsessions, but one of them is my crazy love for shoes: pretty, elegant, unique in colour and design, and with high heels. I go everywhere and do everything wearing high heels, even my rain boots have got high heels! Just as well I can even run with 3-4 inches heels on! For the very first time, about 3 or 4 years ago, I was suddenly very tempted to buy myself a pair of trainers. Might easily have even ended up buying more than one pair, as I discovered some real unusual ones in Multibrand shops. They were all mainly sports shoes, but the newest novelty then was that they carried a whole range of all sorts of vintage or period prints for that autumn-winter season, like this one here inspired by gangsters in old films and available in several colours.Plentiful were other designs too, in themes of rock, movies of the 50's, aesthetic Pulp fiction, evergreen singers, Californian skaters, Sherlock Holmes, etc. Homage to certain cult in the U.S. by the firm 'Circa' which was opening up their market in fashions of street wear. This one I liked belonged to their range called 'Select'. The only thing I didn't like very much was the price. The one in the photo was €105. I knew then I would most likely never actually wear them to go anywhere either. But owning a pair appealed to me, just in case some day might I need to walk across some sand dunes or snake pits or something ... What did I do eventually with those shoes? I gave them away that's what!! Without having worn them more than the first 5 minutes when I got them home, to walk around the house on the carpeted floor! Tags:trainers,highheels

• Current Mood: Crazy