Went to see Heat on the big-screen at the AFI’s Silver theater last night with Galley Friend S.B. I saw Heat in a theater in December of 1995, and I’ve probably seen it 20 times since then on what have been reasonably nice AV setups at home. And there’s just no comparison. To pick just one aspect: At home, I had come to think of the final shoot-out on the airfield as anti-climax–for me, the movie ended as soon as De Niro kills Waingro and spots Pacino walking toward his car outside the hotel. From there we know how this story ends. Vincent can hit or miss, Neil can’t miss once. On the small screen, their final set-piece feels unnecessary.

But on the big screen, with the roar of the jet engines literally shaking your guts, it’s a totally different experience. That scene, with the glaring, white, runway lights nearly blinding the audience and the eerie stillness between landings. It’s fantastic. And Heat remains, for me, one of the best films of the ’90s and high-up on my all-time list.

So while breaking bread before the movie, S.B. and I were discussing what our top 5 crime movies would be, crime being reasonably narrowly defined. The loose list we cobbled together went something like this:

Godfather I
Godfather II
Goodfellas
Heat

From there we diverged. I’d go with some combination of Chinatown, Layercake (believe it, it’s that good), L.A. Confidential, and The Maltese Falcon, depending on the day. Yes, this is waaaay too weighted toward recent movies and it ignores, say, all of Hitchcock, mostly because I think of those films as being somewhat apart from the crime genre.

Your thoughts?

So awesome.

Be honest, you’ve always wanted to see George Michael topless.

Also, there’s a cameo by Buster.

Also, also, it’s amazing.

No surprise that Stephen King has a great essay on Harry Potter–EW is a much better magazine than it needs to be and their hiring of King to write the back page a couple of years ago was the best move in journalism since Si Newhouse handed the New Yorker over to David Remnick (peace be upon him).

Among other things, King understands, and with great charity, the difficulty inherent in reviewing books for a daily paper:

Due to the Kremlin-like secrecy surrounding the books, all reviews since 2000 or so have been strictly shoot-from-the-lip. The reviewers themselves were often great — Ms. Kakutani ain’t exactly chopped liver — but the very popularity of the books has often undone even the best intentions of the best critical writers. In their hurry to churn out column inches, and thus remain members of good standing in the Church of What’s Happening Now, very few of the Potter reviewers have said anything worth remembering. Most of this microwaved critical mush sees Harry — not to mention his friends and his adventures — in only two ways: sociologically (”Harry Potter: Boon or Childhood Disease?”) or economically (”Harry Potter and the Chamber of Discount Pricing”). They take a perfunctory wave at things like plot and language, but do little more…and really, how can they? When you have only four days to read a 750-page book, then write an 1,100-word review on it, how much time do you have to really enjoy the book? To think about the book? Jo Rowling set out a sumptuous seven-course meal, carefully prepared, beautifully cooked, and lovingly served out. The kids and adults who fell in love with the series (I among them) savored every mouthful, from the appetizer (Sorcerer’s Stone) to the dessert (the gorgeous epilogue of Deathly Hallows). Most reviewers, on the other hand, bolted everything down, then obligingly puked it back up half-digested on the book pages of their respective newspapers.

On the question of JKR’s actual writing:

Talent is never static, it’s always growing or dying, and the short form on Rowling is this: She was far better than R.L. Stine (an adequate but flavorless writer) when she started, but by the time she penned the final line of Deathly Hallows (”All was well.”), she had become one of the finer stylists in her native country — not as good as Ian McEwan or Ruth Rendell (at least not yet), but easily the peer of Beryl Bainbridge or Martin Amis.

In a move sure to help them capture their fifth-consecutive Cap Management Trophy, the Eagles cut Jeremiah Trotter yesterday.

You can say what you want about winning “Super Bowls” and the silly, phallic “Lombardi Trophy.” That junk is fine for the dinosaurs. But we live in a new age of sports entertainment. And in this new era nobody–nobody!–manages the salary cap like the Philadelphia Eagles.

Just win, baby!

In October, for the first time ever, you’ll be able to get ALL of Twin Peaks on DVD. Because of a complicated rights dispute, the all-important trailer was never released on DVD, only on VHS, so if you were trying to bring someone to the series before, they arrived in essentially hour three, which is like being dropped into the wilderness with no map.

Also, BSG is coming to HD DVD. I’m just sayin’.

Also, also, TV Guide has a super-excellent interview with Kristen Bell. Too many highlights to list here, but as a sample, she went to Comic Con and rode the Surfliner from LA to SD and claims that no one ever recognizes her.

Did I mention she was at Comic Con?

Despite the fact that Sega has discontinued all support for a last-gen system that few people ever adopted, two new games are now scheduled for release for the Dreamcast.

Paramount and Dreamworks Animation, which had previously released movies on both Blu-Ray and HD DVD, have now gone HD DVD exclusive.

This is a pretty big story, I think, particularly because of what it means for the fall and Christmas. If HD DVD is going to win the format war, they need to create a big gap in set-top players in the near future, maybe by the middle of 2008, because sooner or later the Blu-Ray player prices will fall.

I’ve thought all along that price-point, not content, would drive this race. Come Christmas, if there’s a sub-$200 HD DVD, and Shrek the Third, Transformers, and Blades of Glory are all HD DVD exclusive, then I think the Blu-Ray camp is in a precarious position and has to hope that overall adoption stays low.

And that’s the big question: How many people really need to go hi-def player in the first place? At the bottom of the Variety story, Sony claims that there are 60 million HD households worldwide. That seems like a very, very small number to me. And if I was the HD DVD camp, that’s what would worry me the most.

AICN has some good reporting with interesting comments from Paramount people:

Next, I talked with Alan Bell, the Chief Technology officer for Paramount. He’s been in charge of the technological decisions and realities for Paramount, since the advent of DVD. I asked Alan if he was happy with this decision, or if this was something that was being forced upon them.

Alan then went into a very complicated series of statements about how HD DVD was the format that makes sense for Paramount. It’s not just a matter of the amount of space that one format has over another. That’s a gross simplification between the two formats. You see, HD DVD was built upon… not just the technology of DVD, but the programming software and other aspects. When we began talking about the cost issues – Alan stated it’s very very complex, but that the replication facilities that have been built for the mass production of DVD – it’s much cheaper and simpler to convert for HD DVD mass production.

One of the benefits of food writing is eating. (Yes, I did just link to myself.) This is often done during an interview. At Restaurant Daniel, I had a madeleine that would’ve impressed Proust. At the French Culinary Institute, I sampled a consommé with morels out of Jacques Pépin’s bowl. That said, it wasn’t all haute cuisine. At some point during my interview with Pépin, the old-timer talked about the basics:

I tell young chefs particularly … to work in depth rather than spreading out. By this I mean that you can take five very modern dishes, like a lobster roll and a hot dog and a hamburger if you want and a BLT sandwich or whatever, it doesn’t matter. There is always a way of doing it better. For example, in Connecticut where I live, on Route 1, there is a small place called The Clam Castle in Madison. It just opened in the summer…. The guy does a lobster roll with, what do you call it, a Philadelphia roll, the flat roll–we actually invented it in Howard Johnson–the hot dog roll. So he browned them on each side gently in butter. There is a nice crust on the outside. He opened it, put like close to half a pound of lobster in good butter inside, salt, pepper, a bit of lemon juice. And Jean-Claude [Szurdak], after over 60 years as a chef, he’d [come] back to Connecticut and said, “Let’s go have a lobster roll.” He will remember that lobster roll. Likewise you will remember the greatest hamburger or hot dog or anything. You can always have a better mustard. You can always have a better bread. You can always have a better little thing. So, for a young chef, try to work in that direction, to do things better, rather than inventing a combination that no one has ever had.

Last Tuesday I went to The Clam Castle on Boston Post Road in Madison, Connecticut. The place is sort of a shack adorned with fishnets and harpoons. And for $12.99, I did in fact have one of the greatest lobster rolls ever. The meat was succulent and falling off the sides. (On the other hand, I would skip the clam fritters.) I also could not resist getting The Clam Castle t-shirt, which has printed on the back: “For Clamergencies, call 203-245-4911.”

I think I’m having a clamergency right about now.