When I heard that Telltale Games was going to develop a video game based on the movie Jurassic Park, I was excited, intrigued, and a bit ambivalent. Excited because Telltale Games is by far my favorite video game company for the excellent work it has produced the last few years in reviving the adventure-game genre that LucasArts turned into an art form back in the 1990s. Intrigued because Jurassic Park seemed to be such a departure from the company’s other titles, which mostly involved sitting back, clicking on stuff, solving puzzles, and having a good laugh at witty dialogues. Ambivalent because I was worried the company might be stepping too far out of its comfort zone with a game based on a movie packed with fast-paced action and which had already spawned no shortage of action games, and frankly, I didn’t want another shooter game.

The ambivalence grew back in the spring when Telltale announced it was pushing back the release of the game until the fall while it improved the mechanics of the game. The game finally came out a few days ago, and since I’ve been sick and stuck at home with a fried brain and clogged sinuses the past couple days, I spent some of that time trying out Jurassic Park.

The game, like other Telltale products, comes in an episodic format, though unlike others, all the episodes were released in one package this time. I’m about one-and-a-half episodes in, and I can already say with confidence that this was well worth the wait and that Telltale has really outdone itself.

The game picks up where Dennis Nedry met his doom in a stranded jeep back in the original movie. In the movie, Nedry, the not-so-fleet-of-foot programmer who squabbled with the park’s creator over money, was on his way to deliver smuggled dinosaur embryos to his contacts from a rival corporation when he ran afoul of one of the parks’ carnivorous inhabitants. The game spins off of that loose thread and looks at what happened to his contacts. The other main characters in the game so far are Dr. Gerry Harding — who got about two lines in the original movie as the guy who tranquilized a triceratop for the visiting scientists — and his teenage daughter, who were also left stranded on the island before they could get to the evacuation boat. As our characters traipse through the jungle, we get hints that there are even more menacing creatures lurking than the T-rex and the velociraptors.

Telltale did a terrific job revamping its traditional interface to replicate the action-packed, edge-of-your-seat feel of the movie. There is still a version of the familiar point-and-click interface you find in many adventure games where you click on a hotspot to examine or use an object and solve a puzzle to advance the plot. However, the game also makes frequent use of the direction keys on the keyboard for action sequences. For instance, if you’re hacking your way through the jungle, you see directional arrows on screen at certain times, and you have to press the corresponding direction key at the right moment to cut your way through. There are also times when you need to keep tapping a key to complete a strenuous action, such as pushing a crate over a ledge.

At times, this new interface might seem unnecessarily complicated (“Why must I press three different arrow keys to load a tranquilizer gun?” I thought at one point). However, it really shines when you’re in a fast-paced sequence, which happens A LOT. Frantically tapping the up and down arrow keys to crawl out from under a pile of debris while a T-rex is about to stomp on you really makes you feel like you are in one of the scenes from the movie where the humans are pumping their arms and legs as hard as they can to try to outrun giant predators. Upping the stakes is the fact that, unlike other Telltale games, you can actually die in this one (and there are many painful and humorous ways to go, as one can imagine). Thankfully, if you do end up as T-rex bait, you are automatically transported back to the start of the action sequence to try again rather than losing all your progress up to that point.

I do have a couple minor complaints about the new interface. The picture-in-picture scene navigation — where you switch between different parts of the scene to control different characters (cutting as a director would, as the developers put it) — feels a bit unwieldy at times. The other complaint is that often you can see a hotspot on the screen, and yet you have to pan your field of vision over more before you can interact with it. While an admittedly minor point, over time this does add up to quite a few extra clicks to accomplish simple tasks like examining an object. Fortunately, so far I haven’t encountered any situations where those extra clicks interfered with an action sequence and left me in the jaws of a dinosaur.

While the gameplay mechanics are unlike anything Telltale had done before, the storytelling is as good as you would expect from a company that literally has made its name with storytelling. One difference, though: Instead of relying on the witty, sarcastic tone that permeates many of Telltale’s other titles, such as Monkey Island and Sam & Max, Jurassic Park faithfully captures the cinematic experience and the suspense of the original movie, leaving you expecting a raptor behind every tree and always waiting for a seemingly tranquil scene to turn into a heart-pounding chase. The game even employs some familiar Hollywood devices, from the one-dimensional minor characters whose fates are obviously sealed the second they set foot on the island to the old adage that nothing ever happens in a movie without a reason (Harding’s daughter tells dad that she has a big Spanish test coming up, and then two scenes later we find her having to piece together broken Spanish phrases to communicate with another character).

In Jurassic Park: The Game, Telltale masterfully weaves a new interface with the good traits that have become hallmarks of its games. The result is an experience that not only tells an interesting story, but also puts you right in the middle of the action and often leaves you on the edge of your seat like the movie did.

A behind-the-scene trailer from Telltale

I had previously written about my displeasure with the fact that J. Maarten Troost’s Lost on Planet China called my hometown, Guangzhou, an urban cesspool. I just finished the book, and despite that transgression, I found Lost on Planet China to be an entertaining travelogue.

Troost pulls no punches in recounting his trip through China, including his admission right in the introduction that he is no expert about China. He even wonders aloud how someone who speaks virtually no Chinese and knows little little the country can write a “biggish book” about it. He then proceeds to do what he said he would — offer an honest account of what he saw and what he felt during his trip, and his irreverent and self-effacing style makes him a terrific travel companion.

Troost undertook the journey through China as a scouting mission to determine whether he should move his family there (since he’s still living in America, I guess his conclusion was “no”). Thus begins the quintessential fish-out-of-water, laowai-in-China story. Troost starts the trip in Beijing, where he is immediately overwhelmed by the immense mass of humanity, terrified by the chaotic traffic, and astonished by the air pollution. Speaking nary a word of mandarin, he has to be chauffeured around China’s capital city, either by an old friend or by a “take-out girl”/student his friend hired for him as a translator.

Despite the language barrier, however, Troost soon adapts. He leaves Beijing alone and commences his exploration of the rest of the vast country. He learns how to bargain and by the end of the book he had wised up enough to be able to shame a taxi cab driver into actually charging him honest fare. He discovers locals who know enough English to converse with and get some explanation for the sights and sounds he was bombarded with. He even comes off as a grizzled China veteran at times while leading his “professional Republican friend” around southern and western China. It all makes for a often-hilarious and sometimes insightful read as he stumbles in and out of a brothel in Hangzhou, a gay bar in Xi’an, tourist traps everywhere, and the awe-spiring mountains of Tibet.

While Troost gained an increasing comfort level during his trek, he never lost his laowai perspective or sensibilities. He never stopped being astonished by the bad air quality, and he never, as he said many suggested to him during his trip, took off his glasses to see things from the Chinese perspective. It’s no surprise that he was most content in Hong Kong — which offers more Western culture than anywhere else in China — and the relatively sparsely populated areas of western China.

In some ways, Troost’s retention of his Western viewpoint is both the book’s biggest appeal and its greatest shortcoming. It’s appealing because it enhances the book as a travelogue of an experience in a totally foreign environment. Often, Troost is doing what your typical foreign visitor to China would be doing — seeing the must-see sights, being bused to destinations designed to fleece laowai visitors, gaping at the sight of people unleashing gobs of phlegm on the sidewalks. The fact that he retains his foreign point-of-view makes the book easier to relate to for his fellow laowais.

The same quality, however, is a shortcoming in that it prevents him from truly understanding the “why” behind the “what”. While the book was never intended to be an in-depth analysis, it is still nevertheless a tad annoying for someone like me, a native-born Chinese, who knows the “why” and does understand the Chinese perspective.

There’s a Chinese saying: “Looking at flowers while galloping by on a horse,” referring to seeing only what’s on the surface while rushing by, and Troost was definitely rushing through China as he was constantly on the move, going from one place to the next on planes, buses, trains, taxis, camels, and ships. While he draws some keen observations about the people and the places from these passing glances, they still often come off as lacking real insight, and he gets a number of wrong impressions. For instance, he observed that no one in China seems to participate in sports for recreation, which it’s just flat out not true, as I vividly remember the crowded ping pong tables and badminton courts of my childhood and seeing people play pickup basketball on my trip in 2008-09. And then of course, there’s the whole “Guangzhou is an urban cesspool” thing, which I shall try not to dwell on again here.

While Lost on Planet China may slightly aggravate Chinese readers like me, it is nonetheless a terrific travel book, offering an entertaining look at what to expect when you visit China, even if it’s wrong about as often as it’s right.

The non-vegetarian thali at Sitar Indian Cuisine.

I’ve only had Indian food a couple times in my life and neither experience was anything to dwell on. That, plus my general lack of enthusiasm for spicy foods, has kept me from really seeking out Indian cuisine. However, watching Anthony Bourdain eat his way around India on the Travel Channel recently gave both Courtney and me a craving for Indian food, so we decided to give Sitar Indian Cuisine in Durham a try last night. We saw that the restaurant had been voted to have the best Indian food in the Triangle — so says the coupon anyway — so we were hoping this would be an improvement over our past experiences.

The first good sign: the parking lot was almost full — at 6:30 on a Tuesday evening! — when we arrived. We were worried we would have to wait for a while, but fortunately, most of those people were attending a dinner meeting of the Triangle Population Center, and we got seated right away. The restaurant had a decent-sized dining room. It was a little bit noisy when those wild Triangle Population Center party-goers were congregating around the buffet line, but the volume died down as soon as they went into their private dining room and started eating (good sign No. 2). Then they started showing a Powerpoint presentation titled “The Ecuador Amazon-UNC Project Since 1989: Methods or Madness?” That title slide actually had us intrigued, but unfortunately, one member of the party soon got up and closed the sliding doors to the dining room, so we never found out whether it was methods or madness.

Clockwise from left: raitha, dal, goat curry, lamb korma, basmati rice.

As for the food, we each ordered the non-vegetarian thali — basically a combo platter. It was a good way to sample a variety of dishes, as each serving came with your choice of two meats, along with dal, samosa, naan bread, basmati rice, raitha, and rice pudding. For our meat dishes, we got the chicken tikka masala, lamb saag, lamb korma, and goat curry. While we waited for our food, we snacked on crispy tortillas dipped in three different sauces — a green sauce that tasted like a hot salsa, a dark red sweet sauce, and a mild chutney.

Our food came out fairly quickly. Each of our orders came on a metal tray, with each item in the platter in its own metal bowl. After the first bite, it was obvious that this was better Indian food than either of us had ever had. A couple more bites, and we both knew we would be coming back. The chicken tikka masala had a nice sweetness to it, and the lamb korma was covered in a delightful almond and cashew sauce. The lamb saag, which was dark green since it was cooked with spinach, tasted much better than it looked and carried a little bit of a kick. The goat curry was good, too, though you couldn’t really discern the flavor of the goat meat because it was concealed by the strong curry.

The sides were excellent as well. The dal — a lentil stew — actually had probably as much a kick as any. The naan was soft and tasty, especially when dipped in the thick, flavor-rich sauces in the meats. The basmati rice had a very nice fragrance that was enhanced when you top it off with — what else — the sauces from the meats. And when we had eaten just about all we could, the chilled, slightly sweet rice pudding provided the perfect finish to the meal. We were stuffed, but there were still plenty of food left. In fact, we took home enough food for at least a meal for one. On our way out, we sampled the “mints” sitting near the door. It was basically a mix of tic tacs with anise seeds. The minty, herby mix was a nice way to cap a meal that delivered a dash of sweetness, a dash of heat, and a whole lot of good eating.

Thanks to Telltale Games, Guybrush Threepwood is back, with a vengeance!

While I was growing up, I became a huge fan of adventure games. The love affair began with me typing “Push rock” and seeing a giant boulder roll over and crush Sir Graham. And then I discovered LucasArts’ adventure games and was immediately hooked. Day of the Tentacle, Indiana Jones and the Fate of Atlantis, Full Throttle, The Dig, the entire Monkey Island series, Sam & Max Hit the Road, Grim Fandango. I played them all and loved each one. This was an era when a great game meant a great story rather than flashy graphics, and LucasArts was the master of that craft, serving one delightful mix of great stories, irreverent humor, and creative puzzles after another. They were such enjoyable gaming experiences that even after I’ve beaten the game, I’ve gone back and played each one multiple times over the years, just to experience the games again.

And then, sometime around 2000, after the release of the fourth Monkey Island game, LucasArts apparently decided that the only games worth its time were Star Wars games. It canceled sequels to Full Throttle and Sam & Max, and just like that, an amazing lineage of adventure games came to an abrupt end. The rest of the adventure-game genre was drying up as well. After yearning for years for a new adventure game from LucasArts, I had given up hope and presumed the adventure game genre to be dead.

Then, last year, we discovered a new Sam & Max game. We played it and loved it. In many ways, it was the classic LucasArts game, displaying the many traits of its impressive pedigree that made adventure games great. However, it wasn’t made by LucasArts. Instead, it came from a company called Telltale Games. Then, a couple weeks ago, I discovered that they made a fifth installment in the Monkey Island series — easily my favorite computer game franchise. My wife and I have been playing it for the last couple weeks and love it. Again, it’s right in line with its predecessors — great storytelling (I guess that’s to be expected from a company called Telltale Games), hilarious puzzles and dialogues, and an array of eccentric characters.

While downloading the game from the company’s Web site, I poked around the site and found out that Telltale Games was actually founded by a couple of former LucasArts developers who wanted to bring the story games that LucasArts turned into an art form back in vogue. Their games are slightly different from the traditional LucasArts adventure games in that they are episodic and released on a monthly basis. I actually kind of like the episodic format, as it divides a game up and gives you a clear goal for each stage of the game. And from what we’ve seen, each episode is chocked full of puzzles, making for at least a few hours of play on their own. It’s just great to see somebody finally breathing life into adventure games that understand how to be entertaining by engaging the player’s mind instead of just serving up a boatload of cool graphics. Here’s hoping another golden age dawns on the genre.

The marquee outside the Providence Performance Arts Center.

While in New England celebrating Christmas, we took in a performance of the musical “Wicked” at the Providence Performance Arts Center. The theater was opened in 1928, and everything about it, from the retro marquee out front to the ornate domed ceiling inside, bear proof of its age and history. One word of advice, though: If you go to see a show there in the winter, don’t bundle up too much. They seem to set the heat on full blast, and the seats are so close together that you have little room to put your outer layers of clothes after you shed them. Also, smuggle in your own beverage, unless you feel like paying for a $3.75 bottle of water (and considering the heat and the seeming lack of a water fountain, you’ll probably end up caving in and pony up the cash for it).

As for the show, the performance was outstanding. One amazing set followed another, and an impressive looking dragon hung over the stage the whole time (it wasn’t really part of the show, but was still cool nonetheless). The costumes were equally extravagant. The performers put on a strong display as well. We actually watched two understudies play the role of a couple of the main characters, and nothing about their performance tipped us off to that fact until we got home and read the program.

The musical’s shortcoming, however, lies with its all-too-predictable script. In essence, the story is a prequel and afterword to the “Wizard of Oz” and only touches on Dorothy in a few passing references. Instead, it focuses on the backstory of Elphaba (the Wicked Witch of the West) and Glinda (the Good Witch of the North), roommates at school who become friends and later enemies by the choices they make. However, it flips the roles and makes the traditional villain its heroine — a talented, good-hearted, but misunderstood outcast who takes a stand against an oppressive regime and pays the price. Most of the first half of the musical is a cross between Clueless or Legally Blond (with Glinda playing the Alicia Silverstone/Reese Witherspoon role) and a Kafka novel about state oppression. And as the story progresses, the Land of Oz is increasingly portrayed as a land of corruption, lies, propaganda, and oppression from a government that seems to be part Third Reich and part Bush regime.

While the message of the script — that we should question the actions of our government instead of living in blissful, willful ignorance — is admirable (if not a bit overdone), the way it is delivered leaves something to be desired. The message is hammered home in a blunt fashion that proves to be overly obvious at every turn. The fact that Elphaba is portrayed as just an outcast rather than evil at the outset tips you off right away that something’s not right in Oz, and you keep waiting for the other shoe to drop, and it doesn’t take long to figure out what that not-so-shocking revelation will be — well before it actually happens. The same holds true for most of the other plot twists, and a few minutes after intermission, you can probably figure out how the rest of the story will shake out. A the end, the script undermines the effect of the message it tried so hard to beat into our skulls by forcing a happy ending onto a story that wasn’t headed for one. And this certainly wasn’t done in the absurdist, escapism fashion ala “The Threepenny Opera“. Basically, if the story was portraying the Land of Oz as Nazi Germany, then the ending is telling us that all those who were sent to Auschwitz turned out fine.

Despite the flaws with the script, the performance of the cast and the impressive sets and costumes combined to deliver an entertaining couple of hours. Now, if only they didn’t try so hard to force-feed us a deep message in such a shallow manner …

My rating: 3.5 out of 5

While dropping off some stuff at the local PTA store a little while back, we browsed through the collection of used books and picked up a bunch, including “China: Alive in the Bitter Sea”, a 1982 book by Fox Butterfield, the New York Times’ first Beijing bureau chief. I’m almost through the book, and it’s been an extremely enjoyable read and a must-read for anyone interested in China.

The book, which draws its title from a Chinese phrase that means surviving in difficult circumstances, paints a vivid and sometimes gritty picture of life in China in the late 1970s, relaying the stories from a nation recovering from a decade lost to the madness and destruction of the Cultural Revolution, which raged from 1966 to 1976. Butterfield addresses seemingly every aspect of Chinese life, from erotic literature to tales of horror from labor camps.

Aside from pulling from his own experiences in China in the late 70s and early 80s, Butterfield also draws upon stories of earlier times from the many Chinese people he got to know. In retelling their stories, he demonstrates an amazing ability to get people who are living under a paranoid government that controls seemingly every aspect of daily life to open up to him. This is even more impressive considering the risks that many of these people were taking in even talking to a foreigner, much less giving personal, and sometimes sensitive, information to a foreign journalist (in fact, one of Butterfield’s interviewees was imprisoned for her actions). As someone who grew up in China in the 1980s, I can definitely relate to some of the stories while being taken aback by others, especially some of the ones about atrocities during the Cultural Revolution.

I’ve always believed that in order to truly understand what the breakneck-speed economic development of the last 20 years mean for China and its people, one must first understand where they were before that. Reading Butterfield’s book would be a good first step in gaining that understanding.

Looking at the list of movies I saw in theaters this year, I won’t have guessed that Zombieland would be the best of the bunch (which includes disappointing summer blockbusters such as Star Trek, Watchmen, and Wolverine), but it proved surprisingly entertaining.

When you break the film down, there isn’t any particular part that truly stands out. The plot isn’t anything original: America has been overrun by zombies, and four strangers on their separate ways to different locations rumored to be zombie-free are thrown together by circumstances and end up breaking one of the rules of surviving the zombie apocalypse: Don’t bond with anyone. The characters are a predictably one-dimensional (though well-played) bunch: A tough-as-nails zombie-killing machine (Woody Harrelson) who delights in toying with the undead before sending them to a gruesome end; a skittish, introverted college student (Jesse Eisenberg) who has stayed alive thanks in part to his lack of a life; a con artist bad girl (Emma Wood); and a gun-toting, wise-beyond-her-years 12-year-old (Abigail Breslin). The cliché romance between Eisenberg and Wood’s characters could be seen from a mile away. There’s an out-of-nowhere Bill Murray homage (about the funniest thing I’ve seen Murray in in years), and then there are your usual handful of plot holes, such as how they seemingly have no trouble finding fuel for their gas-guzzling Hummer (maybe it’s a hybrid), or where does the power to run a whole amusement park come from if no one is left to run the utilities.

Zombieland, however, is greater than the sum of its parts, mostly because it has one thing going for it: Lots and lots of hilarious zombie killing. The zombie slaying in this movie is kind of like the crack-laced seasoning in Bojangles’ chicken — an ingredient so powerfully good that it can turn any dish into a delicious treat. Really, the plot was just a haphazardly assembled device to string together disparate scenes of zombie annihilation, with reminders of various rules for survival sprinkled in.

The movie really doesn’t pretend or try to be more than what it is, and that’s part of the reason it worked. There’s no grand statements about life or humanity, no veiled metaphors, no forced B stories, no need for you to think; just lots and lots of zombies being dispatched in an entertaining fashion. The movie only runs 87 minutes, and really, that was about as long as it needed to be (although I could’ve definitely gone for a few more “Zombie Killer of the Week” scenes).

My rating: 3.8752343 out of 5

We took in the Friday night, July 31, performance. With both the plot and the songs being such familiar subject matters, we were able to simply sit back and enjoy, and there was much to like:

• Kate Fisher did a terrific job as Maria, not only in her singing but also with her interpretation of the character, which was pretty similar to Julie Andrew’s portrayal in the movie.
• The von Trapp children, all played by kids from Raleigh, were adorable. The “Sixteen Going on Seventeen” number between Liesl and Rolf was very charming.
• The dance sequence between the captain and Maria, one of my favorite scenes since the first time I saw the movie, was pulled off very well in a small space, and the orchestra’s rendition of “Ländler” was perfect.
• The sets were very well designed, ranging from beautiful backdrops of the Alps to a simple but effective setup for the monastery.



• The biggest and most pleasant surprise of the night was the performance of the of nuns. The chorus wowed the audience time and again, while Suzanne Ishee (right), in her role as Mother Abbess, stole the show, brought down the house, and left a ringing in our ears with her rendition of “Climb Ev’ry Mountain” just before intermission.

I did have a few nitpicking complaints, though most of them are about the differences between the musical and the movie versions rather than about the production of the musical:

• The movie made various plot tweaks, and I feel that those changes resulted in a better story than the original plot of the musical.
  • In the musical, Maria sings “Do Re Mi” to the children basically right after she arrives at the family’s mansion, while in the movie the song doesn’t take place until later on — after she and the children have bonded. The musical’s plot feels more awkward on this point, as you have the children talking about their dislike of governesses one moment but then immediately warming up to Maria through the song.
  • In the movie, the baroness makes Maria confront the fact that she’s in love with the captain, while in the musical, it was Brigitta, the captain’s daughter. The lines, however, just sound too worldly for a 10-year-old, however smart and observant she may be. In addition, having the baroness deliver those lines to Maria, which results in the latter leaving the mansion, adds to the tension between the characters.
• Captain von Trapp in the musical, played by Tom Galantich, lacked the subtle sense of humor that Christopher Plummer injected into the character in the movie. While the character in both versions is strict, Plummer’s version definitely displays a wry wit, even in the early parts of the movie, that makes his later transformation seem more plausible. The captain in the musical,  however, is more or less a humor-less figure and comes off as kind of pompous. As a result, the alteration in his attitude feels forced.
• “No Way to Stop It”, the song performed by Max and the baroness, just didn’t seem to fit. Yes, part of it is probably because that song was removed in the movie version, but the song itself seemed out of place even in the musical, imparting an almost menacing feel and a more contemporary sound in contrast to the sweet and charming nature of the other numbers.

Best Neighborhood Bar (Durham County)

Indy’s Pick: Dain’s Place
Our pick: City Beverage

We aren’t big bar-goers, but we’ve taken a shine to City Beverage, a cozy little place nestled in the strip plaza on Hope Valley Road, right across the street from Woodcroft Shopping Center. It’s not smoky or overcrowded and offers good food, a nice selection of beers, excellent cocktails, unique decor, and friendly staff. If you are in the mood for a different cocktail, order the Flaming Ipo Bowl, which lives up to its name.

Best place to watch televised ACC basketball (Durham County)

Indy’s Pick: Satisfaction
Our pick: Champps and City Beverage
Champps at Southpoint is spacious and offers plenty of TVs. It also is able to accommodate large parties (we’ve organized groups of 13-15 for Duke-UNC games there). The atmosphere for big games is also excellent. On the other hand, if you are tired of fighting the crowd at sports bars like Champps or Carolina Ale House (where we’ve NEVER been able to get a seat for a Duke-UNC game), City Beverage is a surprisingly good alternative. We watched both Duke-UNC games, along with all of UNC’s NCAA Tournament games, there this year. Its low profile means no crowd, but there are enough people there that you do have an atmosphere. There are two bigger TV screens at each end of the establishment, along with a few smaller screens.

Best tailor shop

Indy’s Pick: Lee’s Tailor
Our pick: Fashion Tailors

OK, so we’re biased in this category, since my mom owns two tailor shops in the area, one in Carrboro and one in Durham. The Carrboro one opened in 1994 and the other followed a few years later. If you’re looking for great worksmanship, excellent prices, and friendly service, check out those stores.

Most romantic restaurant

Indy’s Pick: Second Empire Restaurant and Tavern
Our pick: The Melting Pot
If you serve chocolate fondue (our pick for best dessert in the Triangle), you’ve got a pretty good shot at being a romantic dining location. If you go to The Melting Pot, make a reservation in advance and ask for a booth on what they call “Lovers’ Lane”, a section of secluded booths with curtains that can be pulled shut for added privacy.

Best wings

Indy’s Pick: Carolina Ale House
Our pick: Bada Wings
I’m a bit of a wings freak and have had wings at a lot of places, and Bada Wings has been by far the best. I’m particular to the honey mustard wings, but they have a nice selection of flavors, as well as good wraps.

Best pizza

Indy’s Pick: Lilly’s Pizza
Our pick: Randy’s Pizza
There are two Randy’s Pizza locations within 10 minutes of our house, and their pizzas are the best we’ve had in the area. We also like Amante and Papa John’s, but Randy’s giant-sliced and affordably priced pies are our first choice.

Best barbecue

Indy’s Pick: Allen & Son
Our pick: Bullock’s

We haven’t been to Allen & Son, but Bullock’s is a go-to place for us when we are craving barbecue. If you go, get a few friend together and get the all-you-can-eat family-style option, which gives you bowl after bowl of delicious barbecue, fried chicken, Brunswick stew, green beans, fries, cole slaw, and terrific hushpuppies. Note that this place only accepts cash (there is an ATM right outside), and it closes at 8 p.m., so go early.

Best sushi

Indy’s Pick: Waraji
Our pick: Shiki Sushi
There are a couple sushi places that we like, but Shiki Sushi is by far our favorite. It has a large selection, all very well-prepared. It’s also a good bargain, as it offers a buy-one-get-one-free deal every night. There are tables outside that would be a good setting on a nice night. Another sushi tip: If you are craving big plates of decent sushi for a low price, go to China Buffet in Durham (across the street from Sam’s Club at South Square). You won’t find the fancy stuff like spider rolls here, but there are a decent selection of California rolls and various nigiri, and the best part is that it’s all-you-can-eat and included in the regular buffet price, which is very reasonable.

Best Italian

Indy’s Pick: Bella Monica
Our pick: Pulcinella
It’s usually a good sign for an Italian restaurant if you hear patrons there speaking Italian, and that’s the case with this little hole-in-the-wall place in Woodcroft Shopping Center. It’s small but serves very good meals, starting with excellent bread.

Best Chinese

Indy’s Pick: Five Star Restaurant
Our pick: Hong Kong Restaurant

I’m going on a bit of a rant here. Usually Chinese restaurants in America fall into two categories: The typical place that lumps all the varieties of Chinese cuisine into one giant, generic, sauce-heavy style, or a fancy, high-end restaurant that serves up pricy, fusion food. Hong Kong Restaurant, located off Guess Road, is neither of those. Rather, it is the best kind of Chinese restaurant — one that serves amazing, authentic Chinese cuisine in a down-to-earth fashion and at reasonable prices. I’ve been going to Hong Kong Restaurant since the early 90s, and it continues to impress with its authentic Cantonese cuisine. A highlight is dimsum lunch on the weekends (think Chinese tapas), where servers push around carts offering a large selection of light appetizer-size dishes. If you do dimsum, make sure to try the nomeigei (sticky rice with chicken, Chinese sausage, dried mushrooms wrapped in a lotus leaf), hagao (shrimp dumplings), chasiubao (roasted pork buns), wugog (fried taro dumplings) and, if you are a bit more daring, fongjiao (chicken feet). The place also has a great dinner menu. If you go for dinner, don’t waste your time with generic Chinese-American orders like beef with broccoli. Go for the crispy duck, roasted hen, or a steamed fish, and find out what real Chinese cooking should be. Note: It gets very crowded during lunch on the weekends, so if you want dimsum, either go early (11 a.m.) or late (1 p.m.) to avoid a long wait.

Best Sunday Brunch

Indy’s Pick: Crook’s Corner
Our pick: Spice Street
This Asian fusion restaurant in University Mall has a terrific buffet spread for Sunday brunch, and the last time we went, they had a band playing. I’ve always been a fan of their chicken salad, and I have yet to have an unsatisfactory meal there.

A couple of our own categories

Best ice cream

Our pick: La Vita Dolce and Maple View Ice Cream
There are a lot of places that serve ice cream that we like, but La Vita Dolce at Southpoint Mall in Durham is the only place near us that serves gelato, in many unique flavors no less. Our other favorite is Maple View in Carrboro, which makes the milk that goes into its ice cream.

Best fried chicken

Our pick: Bojangles
So what if it’s a chain? When you serve fried chicken and fries laced with crack seasoning (how else can you explain the addictive nature of Bojangles?), you win.

Most interesting concept for a restaurant

Our pick: Crazy Fire Mongolian Grill

They have four locations in Raleigh and Cary. The one on Capital Boulevard is quite nice and posh, but the others look run-of-the-mill from the outside. Once you go in, however, you see what makes this restaurant special. You take a bowl, fill it up at a buffet bar of raw meat, seafood, and vegetables, top it off with a large selection of seasoning, oils, and sauces, and take it to the chefs, who are operating around a large, round grill. They take your bowl(s) and throw your ingredients on to the grill, and cook it as you watch. It takes about five minutes to cook, and then they serve it to you with a side of white or brown rice. The grill is big enough to cook about a dozen people’s food at one time, and even though they keep your pile separate, you are apt to pick up a stray snowpea or two from your neighbor’s pile. While you wait for your food, take a whack at the gong hanging in front of the kitchen. Lunch is served by the bowl, while dinner is all-you-can-eat. Tip: For each trip to the buffet bar, fill up two bowls instead of one and pack it in tight as the ingredients shrink a lot once they are cooked.

Most surprising place for a good meal

Our pick: Grand Asia Market eatery

You would never think that the McDonald’s in your local Walmart would be a place for good food, right? At the Grand Asia Market in Cary, however, the in-store dining is unlike anything you’ve seen. The eatery, called the Joy Luck Club, offers a large menu of excellent, freshly made Chinese dishes, some familiar to Americans, some not. It also operates a rotisserie that makes fresh roast ducks and crispy roast pork (both of which are must-try items) and a bakery that whips up many delightful Chinese pastries. There is a reason this little eatery is packed to the gills every weekend around lunch time. Even if you can’t find a seat, just order something to go. While you are at it, take a stroll through the store itself and pick up some very fresh (as in live) seafood, traditional Chinese snacks, or fresh vegetables at noticeably lower prices than the typical grocery store. Note: The eatery is cash-only, and the store only accepts credit cards on purchases of more than $10.

I would warn you that this review probably contains some spoilers, but really, the new Star Trek movie was spoiled long before I started writing this review.

It was widely known that J.J. Abrams was brought in on the new Star Trek movie to breathe new life into the venerable franchise, which had sagged in recent years and went into hibernation after the forgettable spin-off series “Enterprise” failed to bring in many new fans while turning away a lot of the existing fan base.

Abrams certainly gave the franchise a fresh canvas from which to proceed, but in the process, the movie he created basically disavowed everything the franchise, with its ten movies and five TV shows, had created. In fact, the movie does more than disavow them; it basically says none of those things ever existed, so we are now free to do whatever we want.

If part of the filmmakers’ goal was to please Trek fans, as they’ve claimed, then they’ve failed miserably on that account. Anyone who has even just casually followed the Star Trek franchise would recognize this movie as running completely counter to many of core themes of Star Trek. As for the other (and primary) goal — attracting new fans to Star Trek, I doubt this movie did that. If you are someone who has not seen a second of Star Trek in your life, this movie would come off as just another run-of-the-mill sci-fi action flick filled with gorgeous CG effects, lots of explosions, and cliché dialogs. Not bad, but certainly nothing that won’t get overshadowed the minute the next summer blockbuster sci-fi film comes along with more and bigger explosions.

I can’t talk about my biggest complaint about the movie without giving away much of the ending. So click to read at your own discretion.

The characters

One of the reasons I had strong reservations about the movie was that the cast looked like “Star Trek: 90210″, but I can deal with a younger, sexier crew if they portrayed their characters faithfully. And yes, I realize that this is a prequel, so they won’t act 100 percent like their characters on the TV series or in the previous movies. However, all the main characters in this movie come off as so far removed from their old counterparts that it’s virtually impossible to see this crew of the Enterprise maturing into the people portrayed on the Original Series.

Chris Pine certainly displays the brashness one would expect in a young James T. Kirk, but the problem is that the brashness is basically the only thing his Kirk shows. Pine’s Kirk goes through the entire movie acting like an arrogant, pompous James Dean-wannabe, going out of his way to thump his nose at any hint of authority or the chain of command. It is hard to see this Kirk becoming the Kirk on the Original Series, who, while he would defy orders on occasions when he feels it’s necessary, still at his heart believes in the chain of command. And the movie gives you no hint that the young Kirk would start behaving more like the old Kirk. In fact, he’s rewarded for breaking every rule in the Starfleet book, which one can only assume would encourage him to keep doing so. The young Kirk takes his rebel-without-a-cause act so far that instead of pulling for him, you spend the whole movie wishing he would get shot by a Romulan phaser rifle, be eaten by the mutant Jurassic Park escapees he’s fleeing from, or just have his neck broken by Spock.

The other main characters also suffer from similar problems. In general, they all come off as smart-ass, loose-cannon college kids whose attitude would have no place in Starfleet Academy:

• Zachary Quinto’s young Spock spends most of the movie with an arrogant half-smile on his face and seems a lot more human than Vulcan, which is the exact opposite of what the Spock character is supposed to be. Yes, he’s younger and hasn’t acquired the discipline the older Spock displays, I get that. But really, can you see Spock, even in his younger days, making out with Uhura (yes, Uhura) in front of an audience in the transporter room? Or pounding Kirk’s face on the bridge because of a few insults?
• Speaking of Uhura (Zoe Saldana), her role in the movie seems to consist of acting like jailbait and engaging in that forced, where-did-that-come-from romance with Spock. Moreover, she comes off as the snobby brat who would bug her professors constantly to try to argue her way into a couple extra points on an assignment.
• Karl Urban actually does the best job of all the main cast in portraying his character — Leonard McCoy — in a way that makes it seem plausible that he would develop into the person Star Trek fans have come to know. Yet, even he suffers from a case of rebelliousness for no apparent reason other than that he’s younger.
• Chekov (Anton Yelchin) looks nothing like his older self and is basically a bundle of hyper-stimulated nerves with a mouth that tries to cram in as many words starting with V as possible. Hey, “nuclear wessels” was funny when you do it once or twice, but when you take that one shtick and make it all that the character is, it just becomes annoying.
• John Cho as Sulu comes close to his older counterpart on the Original Series in one unfortunate way: He got about two lines and a sword-fight scene, and the rest of the time he was just pushing buttons and counting out loud.

• As a sign of how bad the characterization is in this movie, they even made Scotty (Simon Pegg) annoying. Seriously, how the heck do you make Scotty annoying? And what the hell is the deal with that little weird, completely out-of-place alien sidekick of his (pictured)? Did you stumble onto the wrong set, Jar Jar?

Also, I didn’t like how conveniently every one of these characters gets placed in a post of power aboard the Enterprise when most of them start off being cadets. Most preposterous of all, of course, is the way Kirk goes from suspended cadet and stoleaway to captain in a day, in much the same way that Homer Simpson becomes a submarine captain in the episode where he joins the navy reserves, except with less humorous results.

Squeezing in homages and missing the point

The filmmakers seemed to think that preserving the essence of Star Trek meant running down a checklist of trademark lines and shticks. Mind meld, check. Have Bones say, “Dammit, I’m a doctor, not a …”, check. Have Chekov say a word starting with V, check, check, and check. Throw in some photon torpedos and transporter sequences. OK, now the old fans are happy, right?

WRONG! What Abrams and company didn’t seem to get is that a good Star Trek production doesn’t need a single Vulcan nerve pinch, a single “nuclear wessel”, or even a single photon torpedo. It’s all about the story, stupid, and this particular story betrays everything that is Star Trek. Star Trek has never been about those things, or big explosions and effects. Remember, this was a show that won a loyal following despite having fights between Kirk and a guy in a giant lizard costume and some of the cheesiest special effects you’ll find on TV in any era. To think that fans of the franchise would be appeased simply by seeing a few old trademark lines forced into a decidedly un-Trek-like production is patronizing.

Look, I’m not asking for the movie to mimic the Original Series in terms of the campiness, the hamminess, or the laughably bad effects and fight scenes. In fact, the Star Trek franchise hasn’t been about that ever since the 60s. What it has always been about is the vision of a Utopian future, where people have evolved a better nature. This movie doesn’t give any trace of those improved sensibilities. As one example, Spock doesn’t like Kirk challenging his authority, so he gives him a neck pinch and orders him thrown into an escape pod and marooned on a dangerous ice planet. Where the heck does that fit in with Starfleet’s enlightened principles? In fact, the characters in this movie are more like what humanity is now than what they are supposed to have become in the future of the Star Trek universe.

I know it’s not easy to concoct a good story that fits within the frame that the Star Trek franchise has laid down, as so much has already been done. However, in this case, it was as if the filmmakers didn’t even try. It seemed like they just said, “Oh, it’s hard to comply with the parameters of the Star Trek universe, so we are just going to obliterate that universe and do our own thing.” Hey, if it’s hard to set a story within the existing frame, then don’t do a prequel. Set it in the future. In fact, this story could have been set in a time following all the previous Star Trek shows and movies and would have worked better. As it is, it turned its back on everything that came before it and in essence delivered a big middle finger to all that Star Trek was and the fans who loved it.

You said it, Shatner.

In the end, this movie didn’t rejuvenate the Star Trek franchise. It merely created a new entity that co-opted the Star Trek name, and judging from the quality of this movie, these new voyages would have nowhere near the staying power of their predecessors. Before, I was hoping this movie might spawn a new TV series. Now, I’m just wishing we could create an alternate reality where this movie never existed.

My rating: A steamin’ pile of poop

The last couple blockbuster action flicks I’ve seen — “Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull” and “Watchmen” — have kind of been letdowns. Not that they were horrible, but I expected them to be much better than they were. That pattern continued this past weekend, though to a lesser degree, with “X-Men Origins: Wolverine”.

The Bad

The movie was filled with clichés, from the plot to the dialogues. Yes, comic book movies have always had some cliché elements in them, just because of the nature of the genre, but the latest X-Men movie lacked much of the nuances that made its three predecessors terrific films. You could literally tell which characters were going to be killed off within a minute or two of their entrance into the movie. The dialogues also get to groaner level on the cliché meter at times.

The other problem that plagued the film was some bad CG effects, which is kind of a strange problem for the fourth movie in a comic book film franchise to have. There were shots where Wolverine’s claws seemed ridiculously fake, looking almost like plastic attachments. Again, this seems an odd problem for the movie to have as his claws looked very realistic in the previous films. The claws seem to be somewhat larger and bulkier than they were in the first three films, and perhaps that added to the unrealistic appearance. We are also treated to a disturbingly creepy CG Patrick Stewart as Professor Xavier at one point. As one fellow moviegoer said on his way out the theater, they probably could’ve done better if they just took some shots of Patrick Stewart from his Jean-Luc Picard days and put it in the film.

The Good

The cliché-riddled plot and some poor CG effects notwithstanding, the movie does deliver pretty well on what people likely went to the theater for — Wolverine kicking butt. Hugh Jackman again does a terrific job in the character, which, because this is a prequel, is a bit less rough and ruthless as in the previous movies. The wry Wolverine sense of humor still comes through, as does his reckless abandon when pushed. The fight sequences lived up to expectations, with Wolverine slashing through jeeps, helicopters, cages, and just about everything in sight. The movie also introduces a host of new mutants, each of whom provides their own little action-sequence eye candy for the audience, and the movie climaxes with a pretty awesome fight on top of a nuclear cooling tower.

In the end, Jackman and the action scenes save the flick from its generic action-movie plot and cliché dialogues. If you are interested in this movie for the former two more than the latter two, then it’s still a film that you will get some enjoyment out of, but “Wolverine” comes up well short of its enormous potential.

So two of the movies I was looking forward to for this year — “Watchmen” and “Wolverine” — have fallen short of expectations. Next up: the Star Trek movie, which I’m already skeptical of after seeing the trailers. Here’s hoping I can avoid an 0-for-3.

Rating: 3 out of 5

We attended a preview performance of Pride & Prejudice by the PlayMakers Repertory Company at UNC last night. All in all, I would say it was a decent performance, but its main flaw was one that was hard to ignore — several major characters whom I felt were miscast:

• Elizabeth Bennett: The heroin of the novel is supposed to be strong in will and spirit, a tad snarky, and full of spunk. Those qualities didn’t really come through in the play, and part of it was because the actress who played Lizzie was the shortest one in the cast — a good foot and a half shorter than many of the other actors. They did some smart staging to minimize that obvious difference, such as having Lizzie on a higher step than her companion whenever she was taking a stroll around the stage with someone. However, it’s hard for her to hold her own in witty repartee when she spends the bulk of the time staring up at everyone else.
• George Wickham: The villain of the novel is supposed to be a playboy, a handsome heartthrob who can steal a lady’s heart at first sight and charm her into scandalous behavior. In the play, however, the character looks more like a slightly chubby frat boy, and it was kind of strange watching the young ladies swoon over him. This isn’t a slam on the actor. The problem is that the role is so clearly defined, and it’s one he’s suited for.
• Charlotte Lucas: In the novel, Charlotte is supposed to be rather plain, with poor prospects of marriage (which is why she ended up with intolerable Mr. Collins). Charlotte in the play, however, seems much flashier and in fact probably overshadows some of the other girls who are supposed to be greater beauties. If you didn’t read the novel and saw the play, you would be wondering why Charlotte isn’t the one soaking up the attention from the gentlemen and why in the world she would settle for Collins.

Despite the miscasting, there were some aspects of the play that I liked:

• The adaptation of the novel for the stage: The novel consisted mainly of three things — narration, heavy dialogues, and lengthy letters. I thought the play stayed true to the book and did a terrific job incorporating the narration and the letters into the performance through the script, the staging, and the lighting in a way that made them feel natural. It was immediately clear to the audience when they were hearing a narration or a letter, and the transition did not feel abrupt or out of place.
• The choreography: In both the novel and the movie adaptations, one of the highlights were the balls marked by large group dances. I thought the play replicated this quite well with a relatively small cast. The scenes were also complemented well by the accompaniment.
• The costumes: If PlayMakers finds its wardrobe raided sometime in the next week or two, the investigation should probably start at our house, where Courtney will likely be parading around in a regency gown and bonnet. Of course, now she’s itching to go to the Jane Austen Festival in Bath, England, next year. Anybody know someone who makes regency outfits?