The Prestige (the movie)

Christopher Nolan is a very good director, having given us such wonderful films as Memento and Batman Begin and who does another very good job at the helm of The Prestige. Christopher Priest’s novel The Prestige (which I reviewed earlier) is a great novel. The movie’s stars – Hugh Jackman, Christian Bale, Michael Caine – all give fine performances, as do a number of the supporting actors like David Bowie, Scarlett Johansson, and Andie Serkis. The sets are astounding, the pacing good. Why, then, did I feel at least a bit unsatisfied as I walked out of the theatre?

To answer this, I have to go back to the book and look at what is different between book and movie. I should first say, though, that I don’t feel that a movie has to slavishly follow the book it’s based on, and that in fact this can be a bad idea. Movies and books are different things, and what works well in one may not work well in the other. A number of the changes Nolan made were necessary and effective. The book weaves back and forth between contemporary times and the late 1800s, the time in which the two magicians, Borden and Angier, perform and feud. Bale drops this and stays in one time. The changes that left me dissatisfied go deeper than that.

Both book and movie tell the story of the two great magicians – Angier and Borden. Both are men driven to continually one-up the other, and both at times do nasty things to one another. But, in the novel, the two characters both have aspects with which we sympathize, in part because Priest shows us that each feels stuck in the cycle of revenge and tries, at some time or another to break out. Angier, in particular, is someone who we come to understand and care about. In the movie, on the other hand, Angier is someone we don’t care about, and, by movie’s end, really don’t like at all.

WARNING: SPOILERS FOLLOW

Nolan makes two key changes that destroy any sympathy we might have for Angier. He frames Borden for his (Angier’s) murder, letting him go to the gallows in cold blooded fashion. Perhaps more importantly though is the way the great “illusion,” the New Transported Man, works. In both book and movie, it serves as a transporter device. In the book, it leaves behind a dead version of the person transported. In the movie, it leaves behind a living one, though one who is seems mentally disturbed. Angier deals with this by callously killing the version of himself left behind (in the trick by dropping him into a tank of water beneath the stage where he drowns). These two changes to the novel go together – Nolan needed the latter to enable the former, and to set up the mystery of the Prestige. But in making these changes, he built a wall between the audience and his characters.

Perhaps I wouldn’t have minded this as much had I not read the book. I like other movies where the characters are unsympathetic. But, in this case, I liked the characters in Priest’s novel and was disappointed that the characters on the screen were not these characters.

I should emphasize that, despite this, I liked the movie. There is much to admire here. As I said above, it has an enthralling plot, great acting, and wonderful sets. Nolan also does an effective job directing, weaving the parts of a complex story together and giving us clues along the way of what is going on. This is yet another good movie from a very good director. In the end, my sense of letdown comes, I think, from going into expecting a great movie. But do indeed go and see it. There is a lot to admire and much to enjoy here.

Lady of Mazes by Karl Schroeder

The way we live is tied to the level of our technology. This is a key differentiator in our world today. But what happens in the future, if humans have access to very advanced technology, including computer technology that makes it possible for people to transcend or to live in virtual realities that give them access to anything at anytime? In the Teven Coronol, an artificial world, virtual worlds at different levels co-exist, the level of technology that works within their realities controlled by the tech locks. Thus, the advances world of the Westhaven manifold, where people can are surrounded by high tech marvels and can create avatars of themselves so that they can actually interact in multiple situations at the same time, exits next to the world of Raven, a back-to-nature, primitive society, invisible (over the horizon) for most of those from Westhaven and where Westhaven’s technology will not work.

Livia Kodaly lives in Westerhaven, but she is one of the few who can interact with other manifolds and cultures. As such, she is in the right place – and of the right mindset – to be able to escape from Teven (in a house! -- surely the strangest space-faring vehicle since Poul Anderson’s beer-powered, bicycle-derived spaceship) when they are invaded by what appears to be outsiders under the control of an entity called 3340. She and two others flee to other habitats within the solar system, seeking aid, but finding a complex group of cultures – and finding out more about what really is going on and what their world and the other worlds in the solar system are like and who the main players really are – including the reasons behind the invasion of our habitat as well as the motives of that habitat’s founders.

This is a marvelously complex, richly detailed book. The society – or societies – and technologies Schroeder sets up are convincing – at times both enticing and frightening. There is infinite promise in the way people can seemingly do anything and interact in intricate ways, but at the same time the possibility that the ways they interact could be controlled, in ways that are almost unnoticeable and in fact seem like just manifestations of the desires and free will of the participants can be a bit scary.

This is a wonderful SF adventure that also is a novel rich in ideas. The main characters – particularly Livia and the few friends she’s closest to – are well drawn (though a few of the others she meets along the way and who tag along for a while seem a bit interchangeable) and the story is both exiting and rich in interesting, though provoking SF ideas about the nature of reality, how we interact with technology, and ultimately what gives meaning to our lives. There is also an interesting thread related to how we use narrative and story to structure our lives (an idea Pratchett is fond of exploring though which Schroeder comes at from a very different angle) that I – and I think anyone who is interested in the importance of story and how it relates to our lives – found very interesting.

This is Schroeder’s third novel (after Ventus and Permanence) and is his best yet (and I just bought his latest and should read it in the next few weeks). There is often talk about the major impact of the British SF in recent years, but Canadian SF also has been very important, with not only Sawyer, but Robert Charles Wilson, Robert Sawyer, Cory Doctorow and others (and of course on the fantasy side Charles de Lint). I’m looking forward to more from Schroeder.

Wintersmith by Terry Pratchett

Wintersmith is Terry Pratchett’s third YA novel about young witch Tiffany Aching. In this context, YA means what it means for so many great YA novels, ranging from Heinlein’s Citizen of the Galaxy to Pullman’s His Dark Materials: the main character is not an adult. Otherwise, this is in every way similar to other Discworld novels. Pratchett doesn’t in any way change the level of discourse: he still combines humor with truly important and serious issues, he still deftly moves from laugh-out-loud scenes to truly chilling and disturbing scenes to scenes that make you lean back and look at the world with a fresh insight.

Tiffany Aching first appeared in The Wee Free Men. There, she first encountered the Nac Mac Feegles – the Pictsies – the small, kilt-wearing, hard drinking, brawling, little blue men, who decide that she is the wee big hag – their witch – to whom they have a geas (a a very important obligation, not a bird). In that book, Tiffany begins her journey toward becoming a powerful witch, one she continues in A Hat Full of Sky and into the current novel. Along the way she grows – not as much (or not just) in power, but in knowledge and character, as she learns that being a witch isn’t usually about magic at all, but about listening to people, about sitting up with those who are dying and helping mothers giving birth and even helping to bring young lambs or calves into the world.

But, in Wintersmith, Tiffany has made a mistake. While watching a group of dancers ushering in the winter season, she joins the dance. In doing so, she inadvertently takes the place of the elemental queen of summer and attracts the attention of the elemental force of Winter – the Wintersmith. The Wintersmith is fascinated by her and attracted by her – and falls in love with her. Yet, as a force of nature, he doesn’t understand what that means. He’s never even really thought before. He’s much like a very immature young boy with the power of a god, who tries to win Tiffany by making all the snowflakes look like her and creating icebergs in her image. But in the process, he’s also brought perpetual winter on the land, a winter that can and eventually will spell disaster for everyone.

Tiffany, in part under the watchful eye of Granny Weatherwax and Nanny Ogg, but in part just using her own natural good sense, must learn what to do and in the end stand up to the Wintersmith. She must also learn much more about life and about being a witch – including learning that in the end it matters only that people are helped and the right things happen. In one very well done and moving section of the novel, Tiffany must help a young witch – one who is snotty, arrogant, and stuck up on her own rather new-age approach to magic – cope with a job which she didn’t deserve have gotten in the first place and who in the end will never acknowledge the help. It’s a wonderful learning experience for Tiffany, as well as a probing look by Pratchett into both Tiffany’s character and into what is important in life.

Along the way, Pratchett pulls in a number of wonderful characters. I’ve always liked his witches – who are far wiser, and far more interesting than his wizards (the latter are at their best when they are minor characters in books focused on other, more interesting characters) – and Wintersmith gives us a lot of both the stern, scary, but ultimately wise and humane (though she wouldn’t like that description) GrannyWeatherwax and the earthy and always amusing Nanny Ogg.

And, of course, there are the Feegles. I must admit that I slow down at every scenes involving Feegle dialog and am tempted to read it aloud (and at times I do; thank goodness I no longer commute on the bus, or people would think I was guilty of cackling). Rob Anybody and his brother Daft Wullie (who is one of Pratchett’s funniest characters), Wee Dangerous Spike, and the others, who speak in thick Scottish accents of a sort, whose favorite pastimes are drinking and fighting (usually, but not always, in that order), and who consider themselves to be true heroes – when facing danger, death, dragons, and demons, anyway (though not when forced to spell “marmalade” or when having to explain what they’ve been up to their wives and mothers) – are a wonderfully entertaining and likeable bunch.

Everyone has their favorite Discworld sub-series. Mine is still the City Guard (Guards, Guards etc.), but the Tiffany Aching books are rapidly catching up with the adult witch books (Equal Rites, Weird Sisters, etc.) for second place. I look forward to more in this series (but then I look forward to more of whatever Pratchett wants to write).

The Fourth Bear by Jasper Fforde

With his first book, The Eyre Affair, Jasper Fforde established himself as wonderfully adept at humorous fantasy of a literary bent. That novel introduced the character of literary detective Thursday Next, who has to solve a major crime: the kidnapping of Jane Eyre from her novel. It’s set in a marvelously literate world where much of the population is familiar with and devoted to literature, and where such marvelous things as nightly performances of Richard the Third (performed in the style of the Rocky Horror show) are a reality. Three more Thursday Next novels followed, all fun, though the world he’d created was starting to show some inconsistencies. But the combination of literary humor, out and out off-the-wall strangeness, and a plot interesting enough to hold the whole thing together were enough to make them a great deal of fun.

Fforde, though, decided to take a break from Thursday Next (though she’ll reportedly be back in 2007), to instead switch to a related world. In The Big Over Easy, he introduced inspector Jack Spratt of the Reading Nursery Crimes Division, who looks into crimes involved PDRs (persons of dubious reality – that is, fairy tale characters). The Big Over Easy was fun, though not as good as the Thursday Next books; while pretty good overall, it seemed to drag in spots. The Fourth Bear, the second Jack Spratt novel, though, is better, preserving all that was good in the previous book, but at the same time not feeling as flabby in parts.

The novel has several different things going on. As it starts, Spratt has been suspended due to problems in the resolution of the Little Red Riding Hood Caper (in which Red and Granny were eaten by the wolf and are now in need of extensive therapy – being swallowed alive does that to you) and for using children as bait to trap the Great Red-Legg’d Scissor-man (who cuts off the thumbs of children who such their thumbs). But at the same time, he’s needed more than ever. That homicidal maniac, the Gingerbreadman, has escaped from the insane asylum. Meanwhile, reporter “Goldilocks” Hatchett has disappeared and is later found dead after having visited the house of three bears.

Meanwhile, Jack’s domestic life is in chaos. His daughter is about to marry the titan Prometheus and is busy planning the wedding (should Zeus be invited?) Mr. Punch and his wife Judy have moved in next door, and their constant fighting makes it hard to get any piece. And his wife fines out that Jack himself is a PDR, and is very annoyed at his not telling her about it.

Take all this, combine it with exploding giant cucumbers, a theme park based on the World War I Battle of the Somme, a possibly dead scientist named McGuffin that everyone is chasing after, possible “porridge rings” selling illicit rolled oats to bears, and you get some idea of the wild insanity – and fun – of this novel.

And Fforde hasn’t abandoned the literary humor. One of my favorite scenes is when Jack and his wife attend a reception for a modern literary award:

“Jack, this is Marcus Sphincter, he’s one of the writers shortlisted for the prize this year.”

“That you, than you, thank you – most kind.”

“So what’s the title of this book you’ve written?”

“The terms ‘title,’ ‘book,’ and ‘written’ are so passé and 2004,’ announced Marcus airily, using his fingers in that annoying way that people do to signify quotation marks.

“It is 2004,” pointed out Jack.

“So early 2004,” said Marcus, hastily correcting himself. ‘Anyone can ‘write’ a ‘book,’ to raise my chosen art form to a higher plane I prefer to use the terms “designation,’ ‘codex’ and ‘composed.’

“Okay,” said Jack, “what’s the appellative of the tome you’ve created?”

“The what?”

“Hadn’t you hear?” asked Jack, hiding a smile and using that annoying finger-quotes thing back at Marcus, “’codex,’ ‘composed’ and ‘designation’ are out already; they were just too, too early evening.”

“They were?” asked Marcus, genuinely concerned.

The whole party sequence is a marvelous send-up of certain types of pretentiousness.

But the novel isn’t just humorous. It’s also rather exciting. It works both as a very humorous – at times, laugh-out-loud funny –novel and as a pretty good hard-boiled detective novel. There are some very thrilling sequences, and some page turning moments where you really worry a bit about the characters and what will happen to them. Spratt and his partners Mary Mary and Ashley (an alien) pursue a well thought out and suspenseful mystery, in which all the disparate elements are pulled together nicely in the end.

Jack, Mary, and Ashley will be coming back in The Last Great Tortoise Race – presumably in 2008, since The War of the Words (Thursday Next 5) is promised for 2007. I’m looking forward to it.

Pandora’s Star by Peter F. Hamilton

Pandora’s Star is the first half of a long space opera by Peter Hamilton, Britain’s second biggest seller when it comes to space opera (behind Iain Banks). It’s a rich, incredibly detailed work, and many the amount of detail can serve as an illustration of one key way that the new space opera (sometimes called “Baroque space opera”) differs from the space opera of the 1930s and 1940s. There are numerous extra details and extra touches, the society (societies, actually) are complex and again shown in detail, and even some of the technology is explained. Contrast this with, say, Doc Smith’s books, where we really know next to nothing about the societies involved (other than the Lensman act as a police force, and the Earth has a planetary government of some sort), and what we do know is rather flat.

This is both a great strength of the new space opera in general and Hamilton in particular, though in Hamilton’s case it’s also sometimes a flaw. The current volume is 988 pages long. It’s a good book – a very good one in many ways – but it would have been even better at perhaps 750 pages. There are a number of different threads involved, and while in the end all are important, the earlier parts of some could have been trimmed back. For example, a major thread involves a police inspector tacking down a terrorist. It’s interesting in its way, but it’s also distracting from the main thrust of the book (at least until later in the book when the thread begins to be tied in more tightly). This is of course a danger for any ambitious author who has many plot threads: some interest the reader more than others, and I at least found myself getting a bit impatient during some of the threads, wanting to get back to the ones that interested me more.

After an amusing prologue (in which the first expedition to Mars is surprised by the inventors of wormhole travel, who reveal their new discovery to the world by greeting the Martian expedition), the novel starts several hundred years in the future. Humanity has used wormholes to spread out to a number of nearby stars and create the Commonwealth. Since the wormholes allow direct planet-to-planet travel, we really don’t have starships; we don’t need them. Meanwhile, advances in the life sciences have allowed humans to regenerate themselves periodically, making them virtually immortal. And downloaded backups mean that even someone who is killed can be re-lifed from the backup. Several alien species have been encountered, but they are all friendly, and in some cases quite strange.

As the novel starts, astronomers make a major discovery. A routine sky survey has shown that two stars seem to have disappeared. Closer examination indicates that they may have been surrounded by Dyson spheres. One astronomer travels to the correct location in space such that he can watch the time when the stars are enclosed and makes an even more amazing discovery: the envelopment of the stars was almost instantaneous. So, humanity builds its first real starship to go and investigate. Why was the barrier built – to protect someone, to retrain someone, or for some other reason?

Another plot thread involves what at first seems like a crack-pot group. An crashed alien starship had been found years before on the most distant of humanity’s settlements. A cult, the Guardians of Selfhood, grew up there that believes that the pilot of the ship – the Starflyer – survived and that moreover it has infiltrated human government and is manipulating us. It all seems rather crazy at first, but as the book goes on, it seems less crazy.

Another subplot involves one of the inventors of the wormhole – Ozzie Isaac – who goes following the alien Silfen. Silfen are almost elvish and seem to have the ability to walk between worlds. Ozzie follows in an attempt to learn more about the Dyson stars. This whole segment though is another example of what I mentioned above. Parts are interesting enough, and it’s important to the overall plot, but it’s too long. The first world Ozzie gets to is an ice world, and Hamilton gives us several dozen pages of description of what goes on there. A couple of pages would have been better, despite the fact that Ozzie is perhaps the most engaging character in the novel: he boy genius who despite everything really in some ways hasn’t grown up – but who remains very sharp and insightful.

It’s nearly half way through the book before we finally get to the first Dyson star and exploration start. At this point, things pick up, and the second half of the book moves along much better than the first. I may be a cliché to refer to something as a “page-turner,” but the second half of Pandora’s Star qualifies. Somehow, after the humans get to the first Dyson star and being their explorations, the huge energy barrier surrounding the star vanishes, releasing the inhabitants.

These aliens are a remarkable example of creating truly alien aliens. Hamilton gives us a bit of their history and shows how their society is put together, and it is very non-human. They are also about the nastiest aliens around. They are group minds – central, immobile beings serve as the central brain, completely controlling mobile members of the species; their goal seems to be to be the only intelligence around: in fact, each “individual,” which can comprise hundreds of immotiles and thousands upon thousands of motiles, wants to be the only intelligent being, and seeks to overcome and wipe out the others. They’ve been waging war against one another as each central consciousness tries to become the only one (they’ve wiped out every other life form on their planet), and, with the barrier down, now try to spread out in the galaxy, toward human space. It’s both fascinating and frightening.

Hamilton has done a fine job of world building, of society building, and of alien building. He’s also done a good job with his characters, ranging from Ozzie, the several hundred year old hippie (that’s the only way to describe him) to Paula Myo, the obsessive criminal investigator to Wilson Kime, the commander of the Martian expedition who gets a second chance as he leads the first mission to the Dyson stars. They’re all well-drawn and believable. Moreover , the extensive political maneuverings and the way the people and the society work – in ways different from our own, in particular in it’s pace and it’s longer view – seem to fit for society of people with very long lives.

Yes, I think it’s too long by a bit, but despite that, it’s a good book and a lot of fun to read. I don’t think Hamilton is quite to the level of Banks, MacLeod, or Reynolds, but he’s still worth reading, especially if, like me, you enjoy space opera. (I’d also heartily recommend Hamilton’s short fiction, by the way.)

Pandora’s Star is just the first part of a longer novel. I plan to read the second part – Judas Unchained – within the next few weeks.

Beethoven: Symphony number 9 (Fricsay/Berlin Philharmonic)

Before I begin this, my first review here of a piece of music, a caveat. I’m strictly a listener. I can’t read music. I know only a little music theory. Musicians and those well versed in music probably won’t get much out of this review, beyond my personal impressions. Now, with that out of the way…

My earliest impressions of Beethoven – the recording that established the base for me by which all other performances of Beethoven’s symphonies are judged – are mostly by the Berlin Philharmonic. The very first records I ever bought as a teenager were Wilhelm Furtwängler’s recordings of the Third, Fifth, and Seventh symphonies. I chose them in part because they were mono recordings. I had just gotten an old record player – a record player, not a stereo – from my mother, and I wanted some non-stereo records I could play. (I won’t try to go into why I decided to give Beethoven a try, and why I wouldn’t go anywhere near my mother's few records, which were all bad country recordings.) Furtwängler’s fit the bill, and they were reasonably priced (read “cheap”); I bought them and listened to them time after time for weeks.

I strayed away from the Berlin for a while, trying out Toscinini’s recordings (his recording of the Sixth is still one of my favorites), but then, when I decided to try some full priced recordings, I came back to the Berlin Philharmonic, this time conducted by Herbert von Karajan, and for a while Karajan was the Beethoven conductor for me. I realize that Karajan is one of those who many love while many others hate. I loved his work (at least his work with Nineteenth Century composers like Beethoven, Brahms, and Schubert; I’m less fond of his Mozart). His brisk tempos and tight control defined Beethoven for me when I was in my twenties.

Over the years, I’ve listed to many other recordings. Some I’ve liked a lot in their own ways – Karl Bohm, John Eliot Gardiner, Nikolaus Harnoncourt – and others I’ve not been as fond of (I found Roger Norrington’s recordings to be disappointing, for example). Recently, though, my Amazon recommendations included one for a recording of the Beethoven Ninth that I wasn’t familiar with: Ferenc Fricsay’s 1958 recording with the Berlin Philharmonic – the first stereo recording of the Ninth. It’s part of Deutsche Grammophon’s “The Originals” series. It’d been years since I bought a new recording of the Ninth, so I thought I’d give it a try.

I probably don’t need to say much about the Ninth itself. Either you’ve heard it a number of times or you’re most likely not still reading this review. But it’s an incredibly powerful work. It ranges from barbarous to frenetic, from majestic to tragic to gloriously joyful as it finishes with its famous choral movement. It’s always dangerous to try to assign “meaning” to a symphony, but the Ninth, given it’s “ode to joy” final movement points the way to at least one interpretation. I’ve always looked at it as showing, musically, our overcoming our baser selves in favor of community, friendship, and joy. The first three movements of the symphony show barbarism, show primitive, frenetic energy, then, in the third movement, tend toward tragedy and sadness. But all of this is overcome in the fourth movement by an immense outpouring of happiness and joy. The movement even emphases this, in the way it starts. In the first few minutes, the major themes of the first three movements attempt to return, only to be driven back by the themes of the finale.

Fricsay’s performance is powerful, but at the same time very straightforward and to the point. In many ways it feels both majestic in the ways it brings out all the grandeur and sweep of Beethoven and at the same time lean. The overall structure – the architecture if you will – is laid bare for us to hear, in ways that it’s not in the hands of some other conductors. His tempos are powerful and controlled, though not as brisk as those of Toscanini or Karajan. He uses some variation of tempo, though not the way Furtwängler did. Overall, the effect is one that emphasizes the power of the music, laying it all out for the listener. (A you read this paragraph, I hope you remembered my initial caveat about my not being a musician. I don’t really know the best way to say some of the things I’d like to say about music. Perhaps I need to review more music, as a way of learning.)

The Berlin Philharmonic in his hands – as it was for Furtwängler earlier and Karajan later – is a finely tuned instrument that hits a false note and always responds precisely to the conductor. The chorus and soloists are good, coping even with some very difficult passages. (It’s been said that Beethoven didn’t really understand the human voice and there are few short sequences in the Ninth where he comes as close to tripping up as anywhere in his major works.) The whole affect is a good one. This is one of the truly great performances of the Ninth, ranking with Furtwängler’s and Karajan’s best (Karajan recording the Beethoven cycle several times).

Fricsay died young, at age 48. It’s a shame, as he probably would be as well known as Karajan had he not done so. I’m going to look for more of his recordings.

Wine for the Confused

John Cleese is one of my favorite performers. Many of my favorite Monty Python routines were by Cleese. Fawlty Towers was absolutely brilliant – one of the funniest TV shows ever. And A Fish Called Wanda was a wonderful film. Cleese has also been host to a number of specials of all sorts, such as his great series on the human face. In 2004, he made – hosted and co-wrote – a short documentary called Wine for the Confused. It’s a marvelous piece on wine, both for someone who is a wine novice and wants to learn more as well as someone who already knows about wine.

Cleese has a very no-nonsense, anti-snob approach. He emphasizes that it’s all a matter of taste. It doesn’t matter if some wine critic thinks a wine is great. If you don’t like it, it’s not good for you. On the other hand, he also suggests not being prejudiced and being willing to try new things – or even styles of wine which you are sure you weren’t all that fond of. In one of the extras, he makes the point that he thought he wasn’t a Syrah fan, until someone urged him to try a particular one, which he then found had many of the qualities that, for him, Syrah often lacked.

Cleese lives in the Santa Barbara area of California, and during the show he travels to several wineries on the Central Coast, talking to the wine makers and tasting the wine. He focuses on six grapes, what he calls the three great white grapes and the three great red grapes: Riesling, Sauvignon Blanc, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, Merlot, and Cabernet Sauvignon. I’m not sure that I agree that these are the six great grapes(I’m a big fan of zinfandels, and also like Syrah/Shiraz as well as several Italian grapes a lot), since I have others I like at least as much, but, for a forty-five minute special, he has to limit it somehow. He does a good job exploring these grapes and in the process exploring wine – how the grapes are grown, importance of location and climate, how aging affects one, the elements of taste, and so on. Cleese is both insightful and, at times, very funny. In one scene, he satirizes the restaurants where the waiters are snobby and unhelpful suggesting wine, which helps him to point out what things are helpful (and how to ask questions to get the best match for what you like).

During one segment he takes six wines, ranging in price from $5 to $200, all hidden in paper bags and has his guests try each, then try to guess which is the $200 bottle. The guesses run the spectrum: as many guess the $5 bottle as actually guess right, backing up his “it’s all about taste” message.

In another interesting sequence, Cleese hands his guests opaque containers (the squeeze-bottle style of sports bottle) and asks them to try it. He then asks them whether it was red or white. About half guess each way. I’d have had trouble understand that part had it not been for a wine tasting Laurie and I had gone to a few weeks ago. One of the wines was a Chardonnay, but it was a very un-oaked, full-bodied chardonnay, and I can imagine, had I done a blind taste test, not being sure whether it was a hearty white or a lighter red. (I’m sure, had Cleese done his test with a Sauvignon Blanc and a Cabernet, everyone would have guessed right.)

The DVD also includes extra scenes of Cleese talking about wine and talking with wine makers. It’s available for sale from Amazon or for rental from Netflix (as is just about everything). It’s a lot of fun, and recommended to anyone interested in food and wine.