![]() Harold & Kumar Go to White Castle (Extreme Unrated) [Blu-ray] $28.99 Studio: New Line Home Video Release Date: 07/29/2008 Rating: Nr ![]() A16: Food + Wine $35.00 At San Francisco's acclaimed A16 restaurant (named for the highway that cuts across southern Italy), diners pack the house for chef Nate Appleman's house-cured salumi, textbook Naples-style pizzas, and gutsy slow-cooked meat dishes. Wine director Shelley Lindgren is renowned in the business for her expeditionary commitment to handcrafted southern Italian wines. In "A16: Food and Wine", Appleman and Lindgren share the source of their inspiration-the bold flavours of Campania. From chile-spiked seafood stews and savoury roasts to delicate antipasti and vegetable sides, the recipes are beguilingly rustic and approachable. Lindgren's vivid profiles of the key grapes and producers of southern Italy provide vital context for appreciating and pairing the wines. Stunning photography captures the wood-fired ambiance of the restaurant and the Campania countryside it celebrates. ![]() A Thousand Acres $9.99 Jessica Lange and Michelle Pfeiffer are quietly dazzling in this underrated adaptation of Jane Smiley's best-selling modern version of King Lear. The two play sisters of a stubborn, alcoholic Iowa farmer (Jason Robards), who decides to leave his fertile farm to them and their youngest sister (Jennifer Jason Leigh). It is a decision that rends the family, setting siblings against one another and forcing long-held secrets out of their guilty closets. The family dynamics become ever more destructive, and the refuge of sanity the two older sisters have created may be their only salvation. It's a tragedy not quite on a Shakespearean scale, but anyone who appreciates the difficulties of a dysfunctional family will relate to the heartbreak--and the promise of redemption. Pfeiffer especially is breathtaking as the good housewife Rose, whose rage at her father and her husband is never far from her placid surface. --Anne Hurley |
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