Despite a rave review from the NEW YORK TIMES I find it hard to warm up to Yuja Wang’s CD. Yuja Wang plays with great technique and energy. She cruises through Chopin’s “Piano Sonata #2 in B flat minor.” Yuja Wang even brings life to Chopin’s funeral march. In Legeti’s “Etude 4: Fanfares” Wang’s fingers fly across the keyboard. Her Scriabin “Piano Sonata #2 in G sharp minor” is precise. She wraps up the CD with a spirited version of Liszt’s “Piano Sonata in B minor.” But I don’t sense any joy in this music. Yes, it’s wonderfully played, but it sounds empty to me. GRADE: C+
SONATAS & ETUDES By Yuja Wang
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This new version of WOLFENSTEIN is not as much fun as RETURN TO CASTLE WOLFENSTEIN, but it has some new features. Chief among these is “The Veil” which is an energy field that makes your character faster and more powerful for brief periods of time. The Veil also opens doors into other dimensions and reveals other occult secrets. Nazis and the occult…what more could you ask for? I would ask for a little more fluid gameplay. The action is usually brief, but intense. Then, there’s a lot of downtime while you search for gold, energy for The Veil, and Intel. The designers of WOLFENSTEIN have also added a DIABLO feature of buying weapon upgrades. If you like first-person shooter games, WOLFENSTEIN will amuse you. GRADE: B
What if Thomas Pynchon, the genius writer of V. and Gravity’s Rainbow, wrote a Private Eye novel? Well, he did and Inherent Vice is the result. Hippie-dippy P.I. Larry “Doc” Sportello investigates the disappearance of real estate billionaire, Mickey Wolfmann (although Doc is more interested in his old girl friend, Shasta, who is one of Wolfmann’s harem). The usual Pynchon riffs on conspiracies (the secret organization “The Golden Fang”) and the drug culture references are here in abundance. And the goofy Pynchon names pop up all over the place: Puck Beaverton, Bigfoot Bjornsen, Rudy Blatnoyd, Elmina Breeze, and that’s just the “B”s. Pynchon even provides a soundtrack to the book:
Okay, they killed off the annoying cat, but then the writers added the annoying teenager, “Charlie.” So Season Five was a mixed bag. Tonight’s finale might end in a cliffhanger. It would be nice if this final episode had some humor in it. The more I watch The Closer the more I prefer the comedic episodes more than the serious episodes. The ensemble cast has plenty of jokers, Provenza and Flynn, and Kyra Sedgwick can be very funny when given the right material. Police work is grim enough so a lighter touch is refreshing to me. I’d prefer a 60/40 mix of the comedy episodes and the dramatic episodes. It’s a credit to the excellent cast that they can pull off both comedy and drama. Check your local listings for broadcast times. 
Margaret MacMillan is a Canadian historian who finds the “rewriting” and suppression of history by governments and political groups offensive. In this slim volume, MacMillan provides plenty of examples of politicians tampering with history. Stalin pretty much erased Leon Trotsky. Mao had his Red Guard thugs silence anyone who dared to refer to the past: teachers, historians, doctors, etc. John F. Kennedy suffered from serious illnesses and took a cocktail of serious drugs while he was President yet few people knew about it. For McMillan, history is a story that holds information about our futures. To tamper with that information is to distort decisions about the problems facing us. Margaret MacMillan has written a series of fine essays that are both insightful and passionate. GRADE: B+ 
Anthony Boucher was the best critic of mystery fiction, but among living critics you’d have to put Jon L. Breen at the top of the list. His long and illustrious career features many great articles (“American Women Mystery Writers”) and many insightful analyzes of mystery authors (Michael Connelly, Loren D. Estleman, William Campbell Gault, Edward D. Hoch, P. D. James, Elmore Leonard, Henning Mankell, Margaret Millar, and Ellery Queen just to name a few from this volume). If you’re interested in fine writing and thoughtful studies into mystery fiction, A Shot Rang Out provides plenty of both. GRADE: A
Philip Seymour Hoffman, George Clooney, Gwyneth Paltrow, and Johnny Depp. I will watch almost any movie these actors are in. When I first saw Cate Blanchett in Elizabeth I was stunned by her performance. But when I watched Cate Blanchett in The Gift, I added Cate to that list above. The Gift was a small film that moved beneath most people’s radar even though it was directed by Sam Raimi and starred Cate (of course), Giovanni Ribisi, Keanu Reeves, Katie Holmes, Hilary Swank, and Greg Kinnear. Cate Blanchett plays a poor Southern woman, Annabelle “Annie” Wilson, who has powers, real Powers. She’s asked to use her extrasensory perception to find a missing woman. The ending is weak, but no matter. What matters is Cate Blanchett’s utterly convincing portrayal of a poor Southern woman with “The Gift.” If you haven’t seen this gem of a movie, you can buy it at Sam’s Club now for $4.86. 
Padma Lakshmi, Tom Colicchio, and a bevy of celebrity chefs (Wolfgang Puck in this first episode) get to torture (and eliminate one by one) a new bunch of wannabes in this new season of Top Chef. I don’t usually watch reality TV shows, but Top Chef has a special appeal. The food challenges are interesting and the producers constantly throw curves at the contestants. BRAVO replays these programs endlessly so if you miss an episode, it’s easy to get caught up. I think Padma should be given a bigger role. 
There’s not much plot to Julie & Julia, but with Meryl Streep channeling Julia Child and Amy Adams at her elfin cutest, who cares? Nora Ephron’s movie bounces back and forth from Julia Child’s search to dispel the boredom of being the lanky wife to a U. S. diplomat in Paris and Julie’s search to find something to give her life meaning. Both women come to the same conclusion: cooking. Julia Child learns how to cook French food and writes a legendary cookbook. Decades later, Julie starts blogging and decides to cook all 524 recipes in Mastering the Art of French Cooking in 365 days. The characters never meet. There’s no suspense. The biggest surprise is that Julia Child and her husband (played winningly by Stanley Tucci) live into their 90’s despite all the butter in Child’s recipes. GRADE: B
This is the bargain you Sherlockians have been waiting for: the 2-volume set of The Annotated Sherlock Holmes (Leslie S. Klinger, editor) for $19.98. AMAZON wants $59.85 for the hardcover set. And AMAZON is charging $26.37 for Volume One and $28.43 for Volume Two separately! Once again, Daedalus Books makes it irresistible to buy these wonderful volumes (1878 pages!) at this rock-bottom price. Just go to