Month: August 2013

Categories
Arts

Film Review: We’re the Millers

Jennifer Aniston (above) and Jason Sudeikis star in the mad, mad Mary Jane farce, We’re the Millers.

We’re the Millers has the kind of story that can be hammered out in about 15 minutes, if its writers follow the “Save the Cat” formula. (Read this outline before you see it and you’ll actually see the story beats play out when you watch the movie.)

The central plot—a pot dealer recruits three people to help him smuggle two tons of marijuana from Mexico to the United States—is totally stupid. And there are lots of things in We’re the Millers that are just dumb, backward (like the movie’s treatment of Jennifer Aniston’s character), and not believable. Despite its by-the-numbers script and predictable story touches, there are enough funny—even unexpected—flourishes scattered throughout its 109 minutes to bring out the occasional gut laugh.

David (Jason Sudeikis) is the dealer. His entire rig—from the dime bags he sells to his boss’ money and his personal finances —is stolen by guys who look like variations of Shaun White as David and his doofus neighbor, Kenny (Will Poulter), try to stop them from robbing Casey (Emma Roberts), a runaway.

Aside: In one of the pleasant unexpected touches the movie supplies, David leaps from a fire escape into an industrial trash bin, only to have his backpack land first and close the bin’s lid. As a result, David hits the closed lid and is incapacitated. The Shaun White lookalikes find his address, beat him up, and take his stuff. In most movies, David would just land in the bin unharmed and escape.

David’s boss (Ed Helms, smiling and slimey) tells David that he’ll forgive him for losing his weed and his money, if he goes to Mexico and picks up two tons of pot from a connection. He’ll even pay David $100,000.00 But how will David pull it off?

Inspiration arrives in a totally contrived way as David is sitting on his stoop, wondering how to pull off the smuggling operation, as an RV filled with Midwestern rubes pulls up, its inhabitants lost. A-ha! He’ll get Kenny and Casey to pose as his kids, rent an RV, and bring the pot up that way.

Enter Rose (Aniston), a stripper who leaves her job just as her boss demands she start sleeping with the customers. She also loses her apartment (she’s David’s neighbor), and her boyfriend steals her money. She reluctantly goes along with the plan, posing as Mom.

The purpose of We’re the Millers is not to be groundbreaking. It’s to a) make money, and b) be funny. The story’s tired conventions—solving a problem that could only exist in a movie with characters that only exist in movies—are offset by a few mildly subversive things.

First, the main characters are, for all intents and purposes, drug smugglers, and we root for them. Second, a group of supporting characters featuring Nick Offerman and Kathryn Hahn turn out to be fun in addition to functional. Third, David is a self-involved asshole, and he’s the lead.

In the end We’re the Millers isn’t great, but it does have a surprise or two up its convention-bound sleeve. Stay for the credits.

We’re the Millers 

Opening Wednesday 8/7

R, 109 minutes

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Playing this week

2 Guns

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

20 Feet From Stardom
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

After Earth
Carmike Cinema 6

Before Midnight
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Bling Ring
Carmike Cinema 6

The Conjuring
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Croods
Carmike Cinema 6

Despicable Me 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Epic
Carmike Cinema 6

Fast and Furious 6
Carmike Cinema 6

Fruitvale Station
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Great Gatsby
Carmike Cinema 6

Grown Ups 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Heat
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Internship
Carmike Cinema 6

Monsters University
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

Pacific Rim
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

R.I.P.D.
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Red 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Smurfs 2
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Star Trek Into Darkness
Carmike Cinema 6

This Is the End
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The To Do List
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Turbo
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

The Way, Way Back
Regal Downtown Mall Cinema 6

The Wolverine
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

World War Z
Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX

Movie houses

Carmike Cinema 6
973-4294

Regal Downtown Mall
Cinema 6
979-7669

Regal Stonefield 14 and IMAX
244-3213

Categories
News

Rebecca’s Natural Food hosts seminar on home-brewing kombucha

Last Tuesday, 20-some kombucha lovers gathered at Rebecca’s Natural Food to learn the tricks of the brewing trade from Barefoot Bucha co-owner Ethan Zuckerman. The event was part of a six-week series on restoring the local food system. Photo: Annalee Grant

Ethan Zuckerman, Barefoot Bucha co-owner and master brewer along with wife Kate, shared the tricks of the kombucha brewing trade at a seminar hosted by Rebecca’s Natural Food on July 30 to a group of burgeoning ’bucha brewers. The seminar was one of a six-part series on the local food system, sponsored by Rebecca’s, Brightwood Vineyard and Farm, Wolf Creek Farm and the Piedmont Environmental Council.

An acquired taste for some, kombucha is a vinegary but sweet drink, often containing strings of bacteria and yeast in its raw form. After bottling, the drink’s carbonation makes it more like a soda, while still retaining the fermented taste.

Popular among the health-food crowd, kombucha is said to contain live probiotic bacteria that can aid digestive health, similar to some yogurts. It’s also known for its immune boosting and detoxification qualities, but some people seem to drink it just for the taste.

Barefoot Bucha has grown from its humble beginnings in 2010, when a truck tinkered up and down the streets of Charlottesville milkman-style, delivering kombucha to customers and retrieving each bottle to recycle.

“We realized that for our business model, this idea of returning the bottle–which I think is awesome–wasn’t working for us,” Zuckerman said.

Now, customers refill and reuse their bottles themselves at retailers around town with kegs, a model that fits better with Barefoot Bucha’s no waste principle. Currently about 8,000 bottles are in circulation in Charlottesville, Lynchburg, Alexandria, and Richmond.

Zuckerman recalled his first homebrewing days 11 years ago, and was happy to share his method with the 20-some people at Rebecca’s last Tuesday. Many were new to brewing, but the majority had dabbled in the past. The crowd, diverse in ages from their 20s and onward, came armed with questions and notebooks.

Kombucha starts with a symbiotic culture of bacteria and yeast, or SCOBY, which can be purchased online or locally at Rebecca’s, or shared from a fellow brewer who may have a layer to spare.

After being added to green or black tea brewed in unchlorinated, filtered water, with enough sugar to make you pucker, the SCOBY begins growing at the surface. Then it’s all sealed off in a large brewing vessel and covered with a thin, breathable cloth, where it ferments for anywhere between five days and two weeks.

Once it’s fermented, it’s really up to the brewer’s personal taste to decide when to bottle. Stick a straw in there every couple days, and when it reaches the desired level of sweetness and acidity, remove the SCOBY and a little bit of liquid to save for the next brew.

Zuckerman encourages home brewers to try different flavoring techniques—like adding rose petals while steeping the tea or fruit slices right before bottling—while being mindful of the changes their SCOBY undertakes after each addition.

“It’s all a science experiment – we’re all figuring it out,” he said.

The third seminar in the six-part Restoring Our Local Food System series is Tuesday, August 6 at Rebecca’s. Join Sharondale Farm’s Mark Jones at 6:30pm for an hour-long discussion about how to incorporate mushrooms and fungi into gardens and small farms using ecological design principles.—Annalee Grant

Categories
Living

A happy marriage: Maya perfects Charlottesville’s signature cuisine

Maya Chef Christian Kelly got his start at Clifton Inn, where he helped it achieve Relais & Chateaux status. Photo: Justin Ide

Thomas Jefferson, Charlottesville’s original gourmand, was famous for the food served at his Monticello home, which statesman Daniel Webster said was “half Virginian, half French…in good taste and abundance.” Fast forward 200 years, and things seem very much the same in Jefferson’s hometown. Half Virginian, half French food, in good taste and abundance, is everywhere. In fact, food that marries Southern and French tradition has become so common in Charlottesville restaurants that it may be our town’s signature cuisine.

Yet, while many area restaurants serve it, none does it better than Maya, the Midtown restaurant whose kitchen, now in its seventh year, has reached a level of consistency that few others can match.

At the helm is Christian Kelly, the former chef of Clifton Inn who in 2006 was lured away from fine dining by restaurateur Peter Castiglione. One of the founding owners of Zocalo, Castiglione had moved on and was seeking a chef to partner with on a new venture. Naturally, he started at the top. He remembered a dinner at Clifton a year earlier that he had enjoyed so much that he even scribbled a note to the chef that it was the best lobster he had ever eaten. Though it seemed like a long shot, he thought, maybe that chef would join him.

Castiglione’s timing was perfect. When Castiglione called, Kelly was at a spiritual crossroads of sorts. Kelly had recently helped Clifton become one of just 60 restaurants in America to qualify for Relais & Chateaux, the elite collection of luxury hotels and restaurants of the world. But, as significant as was that achievement, Kelly felt ready for a change.

Long before the term “farm-to-table” became popular, Kelly had first fallen in love with food growing up on his family’s farm in upstate New York, where his mother would prepare daily feasts from the farm’s bounty. Decades later, after working his way to the peak of Charlottesville fine dining, Kelly found himself longing to return to that type of cooking—simple dishes that celebrate the produce more than the preparation.

So, Kelly went for it. “I was dumbfounded when he said yes,” admitted Castiglione.

The next year they opened Maya, named after Kelly’s daughter. To showcase the region’s produce, Kelly chose to focus on simple preparations of Southern cuisine. The accessible food and moderate prices ($12 Tuesdays!) have won Maya broad appeal across diverse parts of Jefferson’s hometown, including those at his University.

For example, UVA men’s basketball coach Tony Bennett calls Maya one of his favorite restaurants, and recently joined me for dinner there. One of the first meals Bennett ate in Charlottesville was at Maya, for an assistant coach job interview that helped reel in former Cavalier Jason Williford.

He has been hooked ever since, and has tried nearly everything on the menu, much of which consists of straight-up Southern classics like baby back ribs ($18) and cornmeal-crusted catfish ($15). The entrée plus two sides style of ordering is also a nod towards Southern tradition.

Bennett’s favorite dish happens to be the same as mine: “Local Trout” ($19), which is prepared as simply as it is named. A butterflied skin-on Rag Mountain trout is sautéed in nothing more than butter before a dousing of capers and a quick trip to the oven. Chef Kelly’s favorite, meanwhile, is an amalgam of menu items: an appetizer of cornmeal-crusted fried oysters ($9) eaten together with two sides, collard greens and stone-ground grits with white cheddar. The combination was so perfect that it might supplant the trout as my go-to order.

But, while you can take the chef out of fine dining, you can’t take fine dining out of the chef. Kelly’s classical French training manifests itself, particularly in his sauces. The country ham gravy that tops the local chicken breast ($19) combines Virginia ham with a classic French sauce, béchamel. The red wine reduction that accompanies Castiglione’s favorite dish, New York Strip ($26), is another example.

Exposed brick walls and tall ceilings help to create a relaxed setting that matches the food, whether in booths near the lively wrap-around bar, or in the cozy room upstairs. The partially covered patio is a welcome option, too, and was the ideal spot for our dinner on an unusually mild July evening.

Maya’s motto is: “Southern menu. Local food.” Throw in some French culinary tradition, and you have a restaurant that epitomizes Charlottesville cuisine and also warrants Bennett’s high praise. I bet his school’s founder would have approved, too.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: All’s Well that Ends Well

The lines between truth and fantasy are blurred in ASC’s All’s Well that Ends Well starring Tracie Thomason (pictured) as the lovely Helena.

The Bard is back with All’s Well that Ends Well, in a cunning adaptation of everyone’s favorite story, Cinderella. Though the title seems to hint towards “happily ever after,” this dark fairytale adopts elements of comedy and tragedy for a bittersweet study on the fickle human heart. Filled with clever wit, trademark soliloquies, and fun-filled surprises, it’s a refreshing rendition.

Through 11/29. $18-44, 7:30pm. Blackfriars Playhouse, 10 S. Market St., Staunton. Call (540) 851-1733 for details.

Categories
News

Green happenings: Charlottesville environmental news and events

File photo.

Each week, C-VILLE’s Green Scene page takes a look at local environmental news. The section’s bulletin board has information on local green events and keeps you up to date on statewide happenings. Got an event or a tip you’d like to see here and in the paper? Write us at news@c-ville.com. 

Fun with farmers: The Virginia Independent Consumers & Farmers Association is hosting Farm Food Voices, an event to bring farmers, consumers, and vendors together to gain a better understanding of the local food movement. It will be at Monticello High School on Thursday, August
8, beginning at 3pm. Come ready for guest speakers, door prizes, and more. Donations of $25 will
be appreciated.

Cocktail hour: Join your fellow environmentalists and Transition Charlottesville members for Green Drinks, a monthly, organic, self-organization gathering of people who think, eat, sleep, and live green. This month’s meet-up is on Thursday, August 8, at 6pm at Brookville Restaurant. 

Big rollers: Ladies, strap on your helmet and come enjoy an easy paced ride through town for Community Bikes’ weekly Women’s Bike Night. The group will meet at Community Bikes on Avon Street at 5:30 on Tuesday, August 13, before cruising around town through several neighborhoods. The ride will end at The Bridge Progressive Arts Initiative, for food and discussion on navigating the city using our senses for the new MapLab project.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Barhoppers

Live Arts teams up with Offstage Theater to bring back this staple of Charlottesville theater.

Belly up after work with local playwrights and thespians as part of the 17th Barhoppers theater series. This dramatic Charlottesville staple brings its “stage” to some favorite eateries for an evening of live skits, tasty bites, and ongoing libations. Featuring captivating original scripts, and faces you know, to start the week off with sidesplitting comedy and a dash of drama all from your seat at the bar.

Through 8/20. $10, 7:30pm. Dates vary at bars around town: August 4,5,6 at The Local; August 11,12,13 at Millie Joe; and August 18,19,20 at Rapture.

Categories
News

Bob Goodlatte, the representative from Roanoke, has the floor

Bob Goodlatte

For those who have assiduously followed this column (yes, both of you), the name Bob Goodlatte may not immediately ring a bell. The reason for this is simple: as a consummate back-bencher and milquetoast anti-immigrant conservative, Virginia’s 6th district U.S. House representative is about as boring as they come. (Seriously—most stories on the guy lead with the fact that he collects elephant figurines and signed baseballs.)

But with Goodlatte’s recent promotion to chairman of the House Judiciary Committee (which oversees all things immigration), the story became much more interesting. After all, this is a guy who proudly touts his A+ rating from the rabidly isolationist group NumbersUSA, backed a bill that would require hospitals to report undocumented immigrants, and has supported the repeal of the Constitution’s 14th amendment, which grants immediate citizenship to all children born in the United States.

In fact, when Goodlatte was elevated to judiciary chairman by House Speaker John Boehner, there was some speculation that he was installed specifically to scuttle immigration reform. And indeed, after a comprehensive immigration package passed the Senate by a 68-32 vote (a margin almost unprecedented in the Obama era), Goodlatte was among the first to say that the Senate bill’s “pathway to citizenship” would not fly in the Republican-dominated House.

Appearing on CNN’s “State of the Union,” Goodlatte insisted that his caucus wouldn’t accept a “special pathway to citizenship, where people who are here unlawfully get something that people who have worked for decades to immigrate lawfully do not have.” What’s more, House Republicans have completely rejected the idea of an all-inclusive bill, and are instead claiming that they will work on passing a series of smaller, focused immigration bills, addressing such issues as border security and green card reform. (Of course, even these measures are theoretical, as the House adjourned for the summer without taking up a single immigration bill.)

Still, many Republicans (chief among them John McCain, the Arizona senator who ran for president promising to “fix the dang fence”) have loudly insisted that refusing to address immigration reform will doom the party to electoral failure. And to his credit, Goodlatte has struck a far more conciliatory tone than his predecessor as judiciary chairman, Texas Rep. Lamar Smith. (In a recent series of interviews with Spanish-language outlets such as Univision, Goodlatte has tentatively supported a “pathway to legalization,” and pointedly criticized his fellow House member Steve King, who recently claimed that many immigrant children “weigh 130 pounds and they’ve got calves the size of cantaloupes because they’re hauling 75 pounds of marijuana across the desert.”)

Whether or not any of this inclusive rhetoric results in decent legislation remains to be seen. Given the GOP’s recent history on the issue, the chances seem very slim indeed. But here at the Odd Dominion, we’re big believers in enlightened redemption (even if it’s transparently fueled by fear of electoral catastrophe). And so we’ll keep an eye on the good gentleman from Roanoke, and hope against hope that he manages to do the right thing—both for his party and, by extension, our increasingly diverse nation.

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: Disney Junior Live

Pirates and princesses abound in the Disney Junior’s touring variety show aimed at the new fans, but familiar to all ages.

As an intro to the Disney classics, Disney Junior Live: Pirate and Princess Adventure is an icon-filled mix of glass slippers, tiaras, and swashbuckling, high seas adventures matched with special appearances by Cinderella, Peter Pan, and the notorious Captain Hook. Characters from the hit series “Sofia the First” and “Jake and the Never Land Pirates” also take the stage for teaching moments about the true meaning of being a leader, whether as a princess or a hero.

Saturday 8/10. $20-35, shows at 3pm and 6pm. John Paul Jones Arena, 295 Massie Rd. 243-4960.

Categories
News

UVA tennis player Jarmere Jenkins wins McKevlin Award as top ACC male athlete

Jarmere Jenkins graduated from UVA in May with a bachelor’s degree in anthropology, and a whole slew of state and national athletic awards. He just received the McKevlin Award, the ACC’s top honor for male athlete, and is beginning his professional tennis career on the ITA collegiate team. Photo courtesy UVA Athletics

Jarmere Jenkins may have grown up with enough siblings to field a complete batting lineup in the family’s backyard baseball games, but he fell in love with tennis at age 4 and hasn’t looked at another sport.

The 22-year-old Atlanta, Georgia native and recent University of Virginia graduate just received the McKevlin Award as the ACC’s top male athlete—a title with a past honoree list that includes four Naismith Basketball Hall of Famers, seven number one NBA draft picks, and a Heisman Trophy winner. Aside from University of Maryland’s John Lucas, who played both tennis and basketball, Jenkins is the first tennis player to receive the award. It’s the perfect send-off as he leaves the UVA team —which just snatched up its first national championship in May—and transitions from collegiate tennis to a professional tour.

“It was overwhelming at first,” Jenkins said of the award. “I mean, Michael Jordan is on that list.”

The second youngest of nine children, Jenkins grew up playing with and against his eight siblings on the court. It was “controlled competitiveness,” he said, laughing at the memory of being sponsored by Adidas while his brother was sponsored by Nike. He started playing competitively around age eight, and by the time he hit adolescence he started homeschooling and focusing on his career as a competitive junior tennis player.

“I didn’t go to prom or anything, and the last time I sat in a classroom was in the seventh grade,” Jenkins said. “Tennis definitely dominated my life.”

Upon his arrival at UVA in 2009, Jenkins said he began to regret not attending a public high school and learning how to socialize outside of athletics. Living in a dorm, sitting in a classroom, scheduling his life around academics—it was all completely new. He doesn’t downplay how challenging the transition was.

“It was really hard,” he said. “I didn’t know how to talk about anything other than tennis.”

Social and academic pressures aside, one of the toughest obstacles for Jenkins was the sudden realization that he wasn’t always going to win.

“Losing was the hardest part. I used to define myself by wins and losses,” Jenkins said.

He credits UVA’s head tennis coach, Brian Boland, with helping him accept the fact that life—and even tennis—didn’t have to revolve around winning and losing. Boland, who’s entering his 18th year of college coaching and 13th year at UVA, recalled watching Jenkins struggle as he adapted to his new surroundings.

“He had to adjust from the selfish life of junior tennis to the unselfish life of being part of a team,” Boland said. “He had such incredible expectations for himself, and wanted things to happen sooner than they did.”

Jenkins started out “in the bottom half of the lineup” for his first two years on the team, Boland said, and was playing with some of the best seniors in the world.

“It was very humbling for him,” Boland said. “As much as he wanted to be the best player on the team, he had the opportunity to have some of the best players in college tennis surrounding him, and he understood that they had a lot to offer him.”

After two years in the team atmosphere, he slowly worked his way up in the rankings. Jenkins became a team captain as a junior, and one of the only players Boland has seen hold the position for two consecutive years.

“You have a better opportunity to develop as a player and as a person when you start to understand that you’re doing something that’s bigger than yourself,” Boland said. “Not only did he absolutely grow  as a player, but he absolutely became a leader within that environment.”

Jenkins has dozens of titles under his belt, including Intercollegiate Tennis Association (ITA) National Player of the Year, NCAA Doubles Champion with teammate Marc Styslinger, ITA Singles and Doubles All-American, UVA Male Athlete of the Year, and NCAA Tournament MVP—and those are only from 2012-2013. He’s the fifth UVA athlete to receive the McKevlin Award; the last was lacrosse player Chris Rotelli in 2003.

Since graduating and saying goodbye to the teammates that became his second family over the past four years, Jenkins has wasted no time diving headfirst into the world of professional tennis. For the next year he’ll be traveling with the ITA collegiate team, practicing daily and competing two or three times a month. After that, he said he’ll be on his own to find a personal coach to travel with, and he intends to remain on the tennis court as long as he’s physically able.

“I’m not settling down any time soon,” Jenkins said.

For Boland, the most rewarding aspect of his job is keeping up with his athletes after graduation.

“It’s just pure joy to be able to watch them go through this process and then go on and take on those next challenges. Not many days go by where I don’t talk to any former players,” he said, adding that, as a former competitor and longtime coach, he couldn’t ask for a more gratifying gig. “If you’re a college coach, regardless of the sport or level, this is the way you would want to script it.”

Categories
Arts

ARTS Pick: The Shine Brothers

The Shine Brothers get down and stay dirty with their self-made brand of "sexbeat" musical mayhem.

L.A. sunshine pop meets dirty woven “psych-my-delic” harmonies when The Shine Brothers climb on stage this week. Claiming influences as irreverent and eclectic as “conflict, nature, enlightenment, revenge, and sugar” the garage rock ensemble, fronted by Nate Ryan of The Black Angels, is known for its rollicking live show. Girl Choir and Big Air, a local two-man rock factory featuring Rob Dobson of The Fire Tapes and drummer Greg Sloan of Dwight Howard Johnson, open.

Thursday 8/8. $8, 9pm. Twisted Branch Tea Bazaar, 414 E. Main St., Downtown Mall. 293-9947.