I was recently reading some online music reviews when I stumbled across a review for Lucky Soul’s debut album The Great Unwanted in a sidebar for a review of another band. Without hearing any of their music, I took a chance and purchased the album from Amazon.com based entirely on the strength of the review, the classiness of the album cover, and the description of their sound.

I was extremely pleased with the results of my gamble.

This album is really quite charming, and I found myself listening to Lucky Soul’s smooth neo-50s-meets-indie-pop sound in constant rotation for several days after purchasing it. The musicians keep things interesting and very catchy from one solid song to the next while singer Ali Howards delivers a nice range of vocals that hit everything from sexy and fun to sharp and poignant.

Highly recommended! Especially if you like the Life-era sound of The Cardigans.

Yesterday (September 7) was my five year wedding anniversary. Usually, my wife and I take a trip somewhere out of town for this occasion, but this year we decided to stay in town during our vacation with no plans in particular other than that we would eat dinner at a nice restaurant on the actual day of our anniversary. This is no small feat mind you as my wife suffers from celiac disease aka gluten-intolerance. Essentially, this means she cannot eat anything derived from wheat, rye, barley, or oats (usually) without getting really sick in her digestive system for days. So if you think about how much food out there involves bread, pasta, or just seasonings that involve wheat as a filler product, then you can start to imagine how annoying and hard it is to find places where we can safely eat worry free. Fortunately, there are more and more places that are gluten aware and a few that even offer gluten-free menus, but even then we have to worry about whether the staff is truly well-informed because we have often encountered staff who prepare a salad with croûtons and simply scoop them off when they see the note about gluten-free food thinking that this will suffice when it will not.

Over the last few years since her diagnosis, our restaurant choices have been pretty narrow as it’s such a pain to feel out a new place for safety and suitability, but in the last year we have had a new resource to turn to for guidance in the shape of the Atlanta Gluten Free Dining club. People share reviews there of places where they have successfully enjoyed gluten-free meals. So with our anniversary rapidly approaching and wishing to try someplace different, we consulted the group’s forum and found a few options including the one that we eventually settled upon: Roy’s.

We made reservations for 7pm on Friday night, and as directed on the forum, I informed the staff in advance that my wife would require gluten free dining. We found it interesting that this Roy’s location was unassumingly tucked away on the bottom floor of a several stories corporate building in a Buckhead business complex instead of prominently parading in the sea of commerce in the surrounding area. A nice valet met us when we left our blue Honda Fit and then we proceeded into the restaurant itself where we were greeted with the pleasant ambiance of a live pianist and a tastefully decorated establishment decked out in pleasing shades of orange and purple that went together nicely with my wife’s dress. It seemed almost as if she had scoped out the place in advance before deciding what she would wear that evening, but she denies this.

When we sat at our table we found a special touch in that our menus had been custom prepared with a nice message congratulating us on five years of marriage. It was nice to see that they had done something with the information that I provided when they inquired on the phone whether this visit was for a special occasion. Our friendly waiter Paul arrived and brought out a serving of edamame to start our evening which is an excellent alternative to the traditional bread found at many restaurants. I say this not only in light of my wife’s not being able to eat bread, but also because I often find that when I get to a restaurant I am hungry and so eat too much bread and then cannot truly savor the main course or find room for dessert. The edamame was nice in that it helped to soothe and encourage the appetite while not being particularly filling either. They were also particularly tasty with a special blend of seasoning and sugar that our waiter suggests goes well on French fries as well. We were given two complimentary samples of the seasoning and perhaps one evening we shall try it out on some freshly prepared sweet potato fries!

Next came our appetizer. We selected a serving of prosciutto wrapped tiger shrimp served on a layer of grits prepared in some delicious sauce that escapes my recollection. We each had a pair of shrimp and they were very delicious. The grits sauce was nice, too, but I preferred to simply savor the shrimp and prosciutto naked while Melinda cleaned up the sauce with her shrimp. It was what I call a perfect appetizer in that it was satisfying but not over-filling. Notice a common theme here. I am constantly finding myself absolutely stuffed half-way through the main meal or at the start of dessert, and this always pains me because I love trying desserts when I go some place new. And Roy’s has a reputation for an excellent dessert specialty that I did not wish to miss. More on that later.

Our meals arrived shortly after we finished the appetizers. Roy’s is famous for their seafood entrées although from what I can tell they have wonderful landlubber meals as well. Still, the hands down favorite of guests who frequent the restaurant is Roy’s Hawaiian Style Misoyaki Butterfish, and I can see why. This dish was truly heaven on a plate. It came out exquisitely presented on a pilaf of rice with lovely green, thinly sliced cucumber garnish and a small topping of bright red caviar. As pretty as the dish was, it was simply divine to eat. Very smooth and rich with an almost velvety creaminess to it, but with a light finish that doesn’t overpower or linger too long so that subsequent bites are just as wonderful as the first. The sauce pooling at the bottom helped spread the flavor to the rice and made it all too easy to finish this meal quickly down to the last bite.

Melinda unfortunately could not enjoy the butterfish because it is prepared with soy sauce, and almost all brands of soy sauce have wheat as their second ingredient. Instead, she had the opportunity to try another excellent dish – the Crab and Potato Crusted Ono. I didn’t try it myself, but it sounded very good and looked very elegant in its presentation. Unlike the butterfish, this meal came out on a larger plate with two sauces pooled out in a pretty pattern much like one sees on some fancy desserts involving chocolate and raspberry syrups or sauces. Melinda enjoyed it very much.

With two fine meals behind us, we eagerly awaited the dessert: Roy’s Melting Hot Chocolate Soufflé. It was well worth the wait! It consists of a flourless chocolate cake with a molten hot center served à la mode. It combined just the right balance of subdued and rich flavors. We finished the dessert feeling extremely satisfied and yet were not ready to burst nor did we need to down a glass of water to cleanse the palate.

We had an excellent time at Roy’s and are already thinking of what we might try there on a second visit. We highly recommend it to friends and family. The ambiance is pleasant, the staff are friendly and courteous, the food is beautiful and delicious. I just hope that next time I will summon the strength to resist a second helping of the butterfish as I would really like to try Roy’s Duck served with a crispy confit and orange reduction. It sounds like something that I would truly relish!

So my wife and I went to see the latest Harry Potter film last evening.

I am not a hardcore Harry Potter fan. When the original film came out, I had never read any of the books as I don’t tend to read children’s books, although I had heard that they were rather good from some of our friends. However, the 2001 film won me over for its excellence and its since of wonder. When the second movie finally loomed near, my wife and I read the first book, and thereafter, we adopted this pattern for our Potter consumption: read the novel from which the previous movie was adapted to refresh our memories and then see the lastest film entry.

Our pattern was doomed to failure as we continued to enjoy the successive film adaptions. After watching Harry Potter and the Goblet of Fire, my wife could wait no more and she plunged ahead devouring books 4-6. Seeing as I didn’t want to risk having the story spoiled for me accidentally and seeing as my wife was eager to discuss the books, I too followed her in this reading endeavor and found myself enjoying every moment of the series.

That is why it pains me to find this latest film adaption flat and disappointing. I don’t know whether it’s because I’m biased by having already read the excellent book from which the material springs (I doubt this since I’ve loved other adaptions where I am familiar with the source material) or if it is the new director for this film or the fact that the principle actors have been playing these roles for six years now and are finding the whole thing tiresome. What I do know is that I found the film a mediocre disappointment that bored me at a few points and that actually managed to draw me out of the magic of story telling and bring to my attention the mechanics of filmmaking to notice the flaws on display.

The first thing that leapt out at me was the editing of the basic story. I realize that the source novel is massive and that it was inevitable that many of the subplots and scenes would need to be cut to fit it into a standard movie-length adaptation, but they cut some things that I thought were vital for the development of some of the characters (and this pieces will be sorely missed in the next film). More immediately damaging was the fact that the way the filmmakers cut things out and pieced scenes together produced a very episodic and jerky film where the pacing just felt off to me. Even if I had not read the book, I think I would have noticed that material is simply missing. The third film also suffered from this problem, but its otherwise excellent production kept the editing from being an albatross draped over its shoulders.

In this case, the rest of the filmmaking only added to the mess. I felt that the acting and the scenes were all very static and lifeless. The main characters seem to do a lot of standing around and talking and often seem bored or wooden. The one chief exception to this is Imelda Staunton as Dolores Umbridge. Her performance is excellent and her character unlike many of the other adult characters is given enough screen time to actually breath and live. The normally excellent Gary Oldman and Alan Rickman seem little more than stage props with the bits that they are given to do in this film – which is a big shame since they are fine actors and the roles as written in the source novel have a lot of depth and material to explore.

This film just felt tired to me. With the staticness and the disjointed pacing, I found myself wondering how much longer the film would last about two-thirds of the way into it – which is almost unheard of for me even while watching a bad or mediocre film.

The special effects were commedable once again. There were some magical moments at Hogwarts such as the magical paper airplane and the Weasley twins OWLs stunt, but there were a few places where even the special effects failed to truly deliver. I’m sorry, but after seeing the wonderous spectacle of absolutely perfect and believable giant transforming robots in Transformers, some of the stuff on display here like the overly cutesy Giant just didn’t cut it for me. We can do much better these days and audiences shouldn’t settle for less.

Finally, the film’s conclusion was a mixed bag – albeit this time it was not entirely the fault of the filmmakers. This book’s conclusion features a battle between the forces of good and evil in which a group of children are pitted against the evil death eaters and no matter what rationalization one wishes to use, I found it extremely implausible in the book that the children could manage to hold their own for even a short amount of time and find it equally so here. Although the effects in this battle are nice to watch and deliver some of the better visuals in the film, there is no real tension in the scene and I never felt fear for the children – which is in sharp contrast to the most excellent finale to the previous film. The death eaters come off here as a bit of a joke instead of real source of menace. Only the excellent Ralph Fiennes as Lord Voldemorte rescues this scene dramatically by capping it with some true villiany and a real sense of threatening power. However, the film makers decide to ruin things a bit here by introducing some silly trite stuff about friendship and love that weren’t in the book and shouldn’t have been in this film.

It’s a shame that such an excellent story as Harry Potter and the Order of the Phoenix was brought to the screen in such a lifeless by-the-numbers manner. I really hope the filmmakers recapture their game with the next film.

At least there’s still Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows on the bookshelf. I’m pouncing on that book as soon as my wife finishes devouring it! :)