Sticks of Fire: a Tampa blog

Charity Dinner, part 5

Without much thought, I agreed that my husband and I would put on a charity dinner for the Boy Scouts.  Then I panicked.  Then I freaked out.  Then I formulated a plan.

The Noho Bistro was kind enough to donate space for the dinner. Publix and La Cense Beef donated food for the cause, and Vintage Wine Cellars donated the wine. Now we can create a great dinner to raise money for the Boy Scouts.

Greg designed a soup and entrée course, a celeriac root and roasted chile soup with cilantro oil and cardamom crème fresh and a pan roasted petit sirloin with tomato gazpacho coulis, zucchini and fennel “pappardelle”, and orange-almond-mint gremolata.  While NoHo chef and co-owner Jessica left us with a homemade cherry sorbet and Mexican chocolate cookies for dessert. Divine does not explain that sorbet nor the cookies.

NoHo chef and co-owner Tina ensured everything went to the tables perfectly, with help from our friends, Fred Stolz and Joe Prince.  They all received a standing ovation, and even stuck around to help clean the place up at the end of the night.

My FOH crew was made up of volunteers also. Carol Gualdiero and Sally Martin (Greg’s cousins) and our neighbor and friend, Marianne Santilli all volunteered to give up their Friday nights.

The celebrities? Gil Gerard (Buck Rogers), Michael Winslow (Police Academy, think the beat box man), Mark Goddard (Lost In Space) and Erin Gray (Buck Rogers) were just a few. Everyone was very, very gracious and thankful. Okay, one had too much to drink and had to be reminded by Greg to maintain his composure, while another kept groping my neighbor, but hey, it’s Hollywood!

Tommy has allowed me to list all of the donating businesses on Sticks Of Fire to the right. Please visit their sites and their stores. These are the kinds of businesses we need to support in Tampa. Ya know, for the Boy Scouts.

Thanks again, to everyone.

GOOD Magazine wants you to pimp your hometown:

GOOD Magazine | Goodmagazine - Project 011

Traveling to a new city is exciting, but also daunting. Without knowing what to see, eat, and do, visitors have a decent chance of ending up at the Hard Rock Cafe, or committing some other form of vacation suicide. That’s why we’re asking you to serve as a tourist bureau for your neighborhood. What is it that would make someone want to travel to where you are? Tell us about your favorite local spot, or better yet, take us on a video tour of it. The most illuminating tour guide will be rewarded with two domestic plane tickets anywhere JetBlue flies.

That’s it! Just submit a video promoting your hometown, and you could win a trip! They also plan to show all the videos they get online. Contest ends August 11, and you better check all the rules.

If you decide to enter the contest, let us know, and we’ll let everyone know!

This is OUR weekend, moms, and we should do whatever we want!

It felt really good to write that!

Of all the holidays in the calendar, I love Mother’s Day weekend the best (possible exception - my birthday)!

Now, if I get my way this weekend, I will be on the boat Saturday, listening to JGLB Saturday night and sleeping half the day away on Sunday! I’m pretty sure I will get my way because my little one will be at her mom’s this weekend and the older one is scheduled to work Saturday and a double shift on Sunday.

Don’t feel bad for me, I already received my card and gift from the little one with a BIG kiss and hug, and she should always spend mother’s day with her mommy! And I know my older one will HAVE to serve me that day, because I will go to the restaurant to make sure of it!  HA!

So what do you have planned?  Here are some ideas:

Saturday May 10 - Vinyl Records and CD Show from 8am until 3pm at the Holiday Inn Express, 4732 Dale Mabry, Tampa. I found this interesting for fans of the record player! This show is going to feature 45’s and LP’s covering the oldies, pop, rock, classical and everything in between. They will also have record supplies and even some CD’s. FMI call 727-251-9458. If anyone sees a beige plastic record player with a hinged top, it’s mine from my teen years and I miss it very much!

Saturday May 10 - Free Kids Movie at 10am at the Beach Theatre, 315 Corey Avenue, St. Pete Beach. This is the second time the Beach Theatre has made my list.  “Why” you ask?  Because it offers FREE movies!  This Saturday you can take your kids there to see Grease starring John Travolta and Olivia Newton-John. This is my daughter’s favorite movie of all time, and I really feel it is timeless. Also, 5/17 The Black Stallion and 5/24 Nancy Drew: Troubleshooter will be shown to kids for free. FMI call: 727-360-6697 or go to beach-theatre.com.

Saturday May 10 - The Princess and the Pea, 11am, Largo Cultral Center, 105 Central Park Drive, Largo. This performance will cost you from $5-$7. a valuable lesson will be taught to the entire royal court about first impressions, personal decisions and true love in this toe tapping musical. I have only read this book a million times as a child, I think this live play would be fun for a family outing.

Sunday, Mothers Day, May 11 - A Mother’s Day Brunch at Don Vicente De Ybor Historical Inn 1915 Republica De Cuba Avenue, Ybor City, seatings at 11am and 1pm. This beautiful inn would be a nice change from Denny’s, McDonalds or the Golden Corral buffet! I say spend a little on Mother’s Day!  Of course, I am biased, but c’mon, get off your wallet, MOM is worth it!  The price is $32 for adults and $12 for kids. You will need to call and RSVP (make reservations) and you can get the menu choices as well, call 813-241-4545. For more info you can also go to DonVicenteInn.com.

Sunday, Mother’s Day, May 11^th, A Mother’s Day Celebration at the Red Rose Inn 2011 N. Wheeler Street, Plant City at 4pm. This famous hotel (famous in Plant City, at least) is having a grand celebration with live entertainment, a full buffet, desserts, and a flowing pink and lilac chocolate fountain. It will cost up to $29.95.  I have been to the Red Rose and it is very nice and I’m sure this will be a very special time for all the moms!

Hey filmmakers! It is time to get your movies into the Independents Film Festival! Check out the press release from our friends at the education channel:

The Education Channel in Tampa, Florida is currently soliciting films, videos, animations and digital media from independent artists, producers and students in Florida and beyond for inclusion in its 2008 Independent’s Film Festival. In celebration of fifteen years of promoting engaging quality movie making, the festival coordinators have announced a special pricing discount for Florida filmmakers this year. All Florida filmmakers will be able to enter for $20 while Florida students’ entry fee is $15.

All genres of film completed between March 2006 and May 2008 are welcome. Work must be submitted for review on DVD (NTSC) in English or with English subtitles by May 30, 2008. Premieres are strongly preferred.

The Education Channel will televise the Independents’ Film Festival in the fall with presentations throughout the month of September, culminating in a public event in early fall of the “best of” the festival. Web and flash films are also accepted for viewing on the Independentsfilmfest.com website as part of the festival.

All entries are competitively judged in the professional independent, and student categories for the “best of” awards. Entry forms must accompany submissions and are available in a pdf format on the website at http://www.independentsfilmfest.com. Entries are also accepted through the Withoutabox.com website.

The goal of the Independents’ Film Festival is to bring together, educational, cultural and film enthusiasts to celebrate independent filmmaking, enhance the opportunities for the Florida filmmaker and increase the public’s awareness and support for Florida independent filmmakers as a cultural and economic asset through exhibition of the finest in contemporary cinematic artistry.

The Independents’ Film Festival is a service of Tampa Educational Cable Consortium, a cultural, and educational organization devoted to celebrating excellence in the moving image. For additional information call 813-254-2253 ext. 206 or email info@indiefilmfest.us

If you are submitting a film, tell us about it in the comments.

Funny women salvage surrogate comedy

Kate Holbrook is a successful Philadelphia business executive. At age 37, she has it all — including a ticking biological clock. She’d like to have a baby (husband optional), but that doesn’t seem medically likely. Besides, she’s too busy and spoiled to go through the actual pains of pregnancy and birth.

So she finds an agency that will set her up with a surrogate. That’s the premise for “Baby Mama,” a modest comedy with two superb leads and not a whole lot else going for it.

Tina Fey, our current favorite female funny person, stars as Kate, and although Fey’s always a charmer (we loved her Weekend Updates on “Saturday Night Live”), she’s only half the reason to see the movie. The other half would be Amy Poehler (the current SNL Update anchor), who plays Angie Ostrowiski, a South Philly lowlife with neither scruples nor a sense of propriety. They’re an odd couple supreme, and whatever value this timid comedy offers comes through their interplay. Fortunately, there’s a lot of it.

Unfortunately, there are wasted distractions that don’t work quite as well. Sigourney Weaver, as the head of the agency that hooks them up, is a cold caricature, while Steve Martin, as a pony-tailed New Age phony, seems better suited to a skit than a full-length film.

Greg Kinnear plays a nice-guy part that offers him no challenge, and the script seems to wander off into we-ran-out-of-jokes territory before it should.

Still, Fey and Poehler are worth catching — but their goofy exchanges should work just as well on video.

PG-13; 96 minutes. C+

BobRossMovies.com

We told you last year that former Stinger’s stripper Mark Consuelo was producing a documentary about the Brandon High School wrestling team’s 34 year old winning streak. “The Streak” began in 1973, and the Eagles piled up 459 consecutive victories and went 468 matches without a defeat. Both of those numbers are national records for a high school team in any sport. Of course, the same year this movie is made, the Brandon Eagles finally lost a match.

At any rate, “The Streak” premieres on ESPN2 tonight at 9pm (2 hours), and ESPN.com’s Joe Tessitore previews the film:

It’s every bit as improbable as the Miracle on Ice, without the dramatic play-by-play call. It exudes greatness along the lines of Michael Jordan or Tiger Woods, but there’s no oversized commemorative coffee table book. It’s numbers-driven like Joe DiMaggio’s 56 straight games with a hit, but this streak always has been about the process, not the result.

“It is an achievement as extraordinary as anything ever seen in American sports,” filmmaker Jon Hock says.

Hyperbole, you say? As extraordinary as anything ever seen in American sports?

Well, you can dismiss this as just another sports story drowning in predictable exaggeration. I almost did. But then you open your eyes, look past the tall talk, and find what first connected you to sports long ago.

Hooray for the Brandon High School Eagles for creating and maintaining such an incredible story. Hooray to Mark Consuelos and ESPN for recognizing the accomplishment, and recording it on film. Watch tonight on ESPN2.

Spurlock’s search finds that people are people. Everywhere.

Remember Morgan Spurlock? He’s the plucky, plainspoken guy who earned comic-documentary cred with “Super Size Me,” in which he stuffed himself with McDonald’s junk for a whole month while his health and love life slid down the tubes.

After an unimpressive stint as a TV documentarian, Spurlock returns to big screens with “Where in the World Is Osama Bin Laden?” As the whimsical title suggests, it’s a tongue-in-cheek, self-indulgent quest for brotherhood and justice, based on the notion that the world isn’t safe until the famous t errorist can be located and captured.

Of course, Morgan Spurlock isn’t going to catch that guy. He doesn’t really try. But because his girlfriend is about to have their child, he announces that he’ll be leaving her in New York while he gallivants on a fact-finding fun tour of Afghanistan, Egypt, Israel, Morocco, Pakistan and Saudi Arabia. In each land, the viewer-friendly filmmaker — neither as incisive nor insightful as his role model Michael Moore — asks local folks how they feel about the United States, the war on t errorism and, of course, the notorious Bin Laden.

At first, we were appalled by the silliness of it all. We wondered why his lady didn’t punch him out for abandoning her during her third trimester. And Spurlock’s foreign-policy expertise is so lowbrow that we wondered what he really hoped to discover.

But the film sneaks up on you. The movie’s title only hints at his agenda, which is to remind us that there are good folks and hopeless jerks everywhere you go. And because Spurlock is such a rank amateur at interviewing and analyzing, we can’t help but relate as he’s informed, argued with, ignored and even a ssaulted. (That last part was in Israel, where ultra-Orthodox Jews would rather beat him up than talk to him. Seems they don’t cotton to outsiders.)

Some themes come through regularly, particularly the idea that Middle Easterners don’t h ate America as much as they deplore American policies. Some interviewees are bright and thoughtful. Others are idiots, like the one who tells a Spurlock that the 9/11 attack was merely a cinematic effect, like Babe the talking pig. You’d laugh if it weren’t so disturbing.

And just when you think Spurlock’s world tour is a repetitive waste of effort, a cumulative effect kicks in. By the time the end credits roll — to the tune of Elvis Costello singing “What’s So Funny About Peace, Love and Understanding” — we appreciate what the man is getting at. His baby isn’t being born into a perfect world, and it will take more than catching one t errorist to make it right.

The 93-minute film is rated PG. We give it a B-.

More Movie Madness at BobRossMovies.com

Pacino thriller is bloody nonsense

If someone tells you he intends to kill you in exactly 88 minutes, what would you do?

Personally, I’d dash to the nearest police station and hang around for an hour and a half or so.

But not Dr. Jack Gramm. This professor is a forensic psychologist with a lucrative, admirable sideline: He testifies against murderers so they are put away for good. In “88 Minutes,” one such criminal is about to be executed when a fresh victim turns up — trussed and bled the same way the convicted one killed his prey. Did Dr. Jack mess up? Or is there a copycat on the loose? And what’s with the threatening phone caller who promises to end Gramm’s life in, as we said, 88 minutes?

Red herrings and dopey twists fill this homicidal thriller, which apparently sat on a shelf for a while before being released in the U.S.

Al Pacino fans won’t care. In a rare excursion into genre flicks, the master thespian turns Gramm into an unflappable investigator who seems to ignore obvious threats while trusting all the wrong people.

Sloppy writing and incomprehensible exposition dull this macabre excursion. Messy murders punctuate the action, while we wonder who the real villain might be.

Suspects abound. Gramm’s gorgeous assistant (Alicia Witt) seems too good to be true, while one of his prize students (Leelee Sobieski) is too devoted for words. Could it be his secretary (Amy Brenneman), his university colleague (Debra Kara Unger) or maybe his pal on the police force (William Forsythe)?

And there’s the leering but possibly innocent man on death row (Neal McDonough), who never misses a chance to embarrass the man who helped put him away. How does he do it?

It’s fun to wonder, but the solution is such a letdown that you might be disappointed or even angered.

The film is rated R and runs a long 105 minutes.
We grade it a C.
Find more film fun at BobRossMovies.com