For las vegans, Mount Charleston has always been a summer escape in the truest sense: When our streets, our homes and our tempers become overheated, we head for the almost heavenly alpine embrace of Cathedral Rock or Mary Jane Falls. This, then, is the summer when even Elysium fell, as a lightning strike on July 1 ignited a fre that has now devoured 20,000 acres, displaced 500 mountain-dwellers and sent a menacingly picturesque plume over the Valley. Firefghters hope to contain the blaze by July 19.
Have you taken a photo that captures the spirit of Las Vegas this week? Share it with us at VegasSeven.com/Moment.
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July 11–17, 2013
SAFE PLATES An expert’s take on food poisoning, inspections, caution and trust
Jean Hertzman, assistant dean of the William F. Harrah College of Hotel Administration at UNLV, got a first-hand taste of food poisoning years ago when she was an instructor at another school. She and most of her students in a food lab class got sick after tasting raw clams. “I avoided raw shellfish for many years,” she says. We asked Hertzman, an expert in food safety and restaurant operations, about the recent outbreak of salmonella in Las Vegas. Can you put the Firefly salmonella outbreak in context? Is it that unusual? It is a little unusual to have so many cases tied to a single restaurant. Many of the most well-known foodborne illness outbreaks were spread over more restaurants or grocery stores where chain operations were buying from a common supplier or manufacturer. (About one in six people in the U.S. get sick from a foodborne disease each year, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, with about 1 million illnesses due to salmonella.) What are the biggest misconceptions people have about food poisoning from restaurants? That most foodborne illness is caused by restaurants. More frequently, it’s caused by food eaten at home. Or it might not be from the restaurant that you ate at last. Many types of foodborne illness have long incubation times. Firefly has had an A grade in inspections for several years. So what does that say about the grading system and diner safety? Ratings are based on an inspection at a single point in time and only done approximately once per year. So much can happen in between. Many of the factors that cause lower grades are related to facility and equipment malfunctions, which don’t happen all the time.
July 11–17, 2013
Should diners be alarmed if their favorite restaurant suddenly gets a bad report? I would look to see if the problems are corrected and the grade is back up to A for the follow-up inspections, which are done shortly after the bad report. If so, I wouldn’t be too worried.
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Beyond just basic cleanliness, what should diners look for? Server knowledge about the food, which shows that the restaurant cares about training. Employees handling plates, glassware, utensils correctly. For example, one of my pet peeves is when bussers stick their fingers in the glasses when clearing tables. The guests at that table may have already left, but will the busser wash his/her hands before putting clean glasses on the table for the next guests? Do you personally avoid restaurants when you see they have demerits? I normally avoid restaurants with lower than an A grade, because there are so many options in Las Vegas, why take chances? But I have never walked out of a restaurant based on food safety.
And then his voice catches. “My dad drove a school bus. He beat cancer twice. It’s just that …” He taps the table, laughs a deprecating laugh to fend off the emotion and blows out a deep breath. “It’s just that I worked my butt off to get to this position. My dad could retire a little easier because of this place. The history …” He stops and looks away. “I can see the story now: ‘John Cries.’” Tabitha squeezes his arm and jumps in. “I don’t want us to sound like victims, because we’re not,” she says. Just weeks earlier, as Firefy was making 10th anniversary plans for July, a salmonella outbreak had sickened scores of diners at Firefy’s original location. Health inspectors swooped in on April 26 to shut the restaurant down; the Southern Nevada Health District tallied 73 confrmed cases of food poisoning and 221 probable cases, all between April 21 and 26. The district later determined that the bacteria had been spread in Firefy’s chorizo, and that the contamination likely occurred at the restaurant. (The U.S. Department of Agriculture has been left with the decision of whether to investigate the supply chain.) The Simmonses were stunned. Firefy had received A grades on its health inspections. How did this happen? As the number of affected people climbed, the TV cameras started showing up. The online community began weighing in. Some made jokes; some expressed disgust and vilifed Firefy’s management. “The frst thing we had to do was fgure out the situation and be sensitive to the people who got hurt—the people who were hurt by our restaurant,” Tabitha says. “And then we had to let people know how we were fxing it.” They decided to keep the restaurant shuttered until the new location, already slated to replace the old one, was ready a few weeks later. Meanwhile, they called a meeting of managers and key employees. “You have to get your employees involved and remember this isn’t just happening to you, the owners,” Tabitha says. “It’s their jobs and their ability to feed their kids, too. Let them know what’s happening, what needs to change, and let them tell you what needs to change.” They kept tabs on the health district’s investigation and hired a veteran food-safety expert, Tim Moulson of TERM Management Consulting, to retrain staff and overhaul the restaurant’s food-handling procedures at all three locations. Key managers are now required to pass the National Restaurant Association’s ServSafe certifcation program. With one location closed and business down at the other two, Firefy also had to lay off some employees, so they started with the few who weren’t adopting the changes as readily. “I can say honestly that I’m glad when a [health district] inspector shows up. I want them to come in,” John says. “It’s a good feeling to be so confdent.”
Firefy’s swift action and sincere communication, experts say, are the keys to rebuilding the restaurant’s reputation. “The owners didn’t try to explain away the problem,” notes Manya Susoev, a digital-media consultant who’s worked with the Light Group’s Fix, Stack and Yellowtail restaurants. “At no point did they give that nonapology apology, ‘We’re sorry if you felt bad.’ They promised to fx things, took action to fx things and then kept the information fowing.” By contrast there’s Amy’s Baking Company in Scottsdale, which went into full social media meltdown after an appearance on Gordon Ramsay’s Kitchen Nightmares. The owners took to attacking their critics, eventually earning nationwide coverage for their self-perpetuating tirades against social media users. “Then they took it even farther and claimed they were hacked,” Susoev says. “It’s the excuse du jour. It will only make things worse.” And locally, Bar+Bistro owner Wes Isbutt regrets an on-camera interview he gave about his restaurant being shut down for a day in April after a health district inspection. Soon, a crew walked in with cameras rolling for KTNV Channel 13’s “Dirty Dining” segment. “I had no chance,” Isbutt says. “The format is set up to catch you off guard. They want you to destroy yourself.” And Isbutt, an outspoken critic of the health district, admits he did just that. “We’re still high on their website because I made for good TV.”
The Simmonses had made the right initial moves. But the public relations crisis was only beginning. “Monday morning started with one [TV news] camera outside the door,” John says. “Then all of sudden every reporter in town was calling. I said, ‘Man, I need help.’” So Firefy hired a public relations agency for the frst time. Unlike national restaurant chains, which have large marketing and public relations budgets, local restaurants seldom have PR agencies on retainer. In a crisis, that absence leaves owners overwhelmed. Public relations professionals can also help clients anticipate questions, prepare for interviews and stick to best practices in social media. “A crisis is the worst time to wade through the nasty waters of comments coming at you,” Susoev says. “You can’t hide behind an agency—you still have to be in charge of the message—but they can guide you through the communications process and keep you focused on what’s important rather than the emotion involved.” The Las Vegas restaurant market adds a particular twist to this. So many restaurants are in casinos, which don’t allow television cameras on property without prior arrange-
Firefly owners Tabitha and John Simmons.
Social media was both a key to Firefy’s response to the crisis and an essential element for building trust
for the future. Pete Codella, a former president of the Las Vegas chapter of the Public Relations Society of America, says business owners should leave negative online comments up (except those that are vulgar or offensive) and respond frst in the same place the critics complained. The online community is essentially a free focus group. “The virtual world is just a refection of the physical,” he says. “If you were in your restaurant and you saw a drink dropped on a customer, you’d go over and make sure you addressed it. Take that same mentality online. Respond appropri-
ately and you’ll strengthen the relationship with your customers.” That’s a lesson Firefy won’t soon forget. When the news broke, the Simmonses were stunned by some of the more mean-spirited comments, and frustrated by misinformation. They soon began posting regular updates as information came in from the health district. By the time the restaurant reopened May 24 in the new location, supporters drowned out a couple of negative Facebook posts. Tabitha says she realized that some of the commenters saw Firefy as a headless corporate restaurant. In the past,
Firefy posted notices about upcoming events, but didn’t use social media to foster active conversations. Now she and John use social media as more of a two-way street, emphasizing Firefy’s local ownership and community presence. Mixed in with posts about new dishes and photos of customers’ celebrations are briefs about the restaurant’s extensive food-safety retraining. One customer responded by encouraging more such posts, because he was nervous about eating there again. Firefy posted an invitation for him to tour the location. And then another Facebook user asked to join.
“Now we realize that [social media] is how we can put a human face on the restaurant,” Tabitha says. “It’s a place where we can show that we walk our talk.” In the past month, she says, business has picked up at all three Firefy restaurants, and the chorizo dishes are selling at the same pace as they were before the outbreak. The new Paradise location has its offcial grand opening on August 1. “We survived starting up as an underfunded restaurant; we survived that terrible economy,” John says. “But this is so different. It’s never going to go away, but we hope we’ll be stronger for it.”
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ments. So, KTNV “couldn’t ambush someone at Julian Serrano [in Aria] when they were shut down,” Isbutt notes, referring to a 2012 health-inspection closure of that tapas restaurant. “They target independent owners like me because we can be caught off guard so easily.” In hindsight, he should have ignored the camera crew, Isbutt says. “They weren’t interested in learning the facts. Just in my reaction.”
July 11–17, 2013
“The first thing we had to do was figure out the situation and be sensitive to the people who got hurt—people who got hurt by our restaurant.”
nightlife
parties
tao Beach The Venetian [ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Powers Imagery
July 11–17, 2013
July 12 Javier Alba spins July 13 Carnival with sounds by DJ Crooked July 14 Sunday Brunch with sounds by D-Miles
nightlife
parties
Liquid Aria
[ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Derek Degner
July 11–17, 2013
July 13 Scooter and Lavelle spin July 14 Social Sundays July 17 Vibe Wednesday
nightlife
parties
Xs Nightswim Encore
[ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Danny Mahoney
July 11–17, 2013
July 14 AN21 and Max Vangeli spin July 21 Norman Doray spins July 28 Lil Jon spins
nightlife
parties
LaX Luxor
[ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Teddy Fujimoto and Toby Acuna
July 11–17, 2013
July 13 Hip-Hop vs. House July 17 Industry Wednesday July 26 Fantasy Friday
nightlife
parties
tryst Wynn
[ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Emilio Gonzales
July 11–17, 2013
July 18 Sidney Sampson spins July 20 Mad Decent Block Party ft. Dillon Francis July 27 DJ Melo D spins
nightlife
parties
Light
Mandalay Bay [ Upcoming ]
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See more photos from this gallery at SpyOnVegas.com
Photography by Teddy Fujimoto
July 11–17, 2013
July 12 Stafford Brothers spin July 13 Don Diablo & Steve Powers spin July 19 Krewella spins
drinking Dining
[ Scene StirS ]
July 11–17, 2013
For Eron Smith’s receipe for the Slightly Sophisticated cocktail, visit VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.
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Bat Man
garnishes needn’t be garish bouquets of tortured fruits or manhandled herbs. A swath of citrus can go a long way toward contributing aroma (gotta love those essential oils) as well as eye candy. What would a Horse’s Neck be without that luxuriously long ribbon of lemon peel? Eron Smith, bartender at Petrossian Bar in Bellagio, kept the garnish simple on his Slightly Sophisticated cocktail ($14), which
took frst place in MGM Resorts Internationals’ second annual Bacardi cocktail competition. Bellagio assistant beverage director Ricardo Murcia contributed the Bellagio “B,” and Smith’s father helped with the iconic Bacardi bat, which are branded into the peel. In the glass, the aim was to keep it simple, too, in homage to his mentors and infuencers, including Tony AbouGanim (the Modern Mixologist), Drew Levinson (Wirtz Beverage Nevada), Ray Srp (Hakkasan) and Darren West (Jean Georges Steakhouse). He also looked to
the Negroni and Sidecar for inspiration, where just a few ingredients can make magic. “When I started, a vodka with cranberry juice was considered a sophisticated drink,” Smith says. “When I hear the name Bacardi, I think of mojitos, boats, beaches and bikinis.” His refned, yet approachable, cocktail features neither of those, but the blend of Bacardi Pineapple Fusion rum, Amaro Montenegro, Heering Cherry liqueur and fresh-squeezed lemon juice in a chilled, sugar-rimmed cocktail glass evokes images of all of them. Slightly sophisticated, very vacation.
I just returned from a wonderful Independence Day weekend in the merelydouble-digit-heat of Park City, Utah, where I heard a rumor (it’s kind of a small town) that High West—Utah’s first legal distillery since Prohibition (HighWest.com)—is planning another expansion. Owner David Perkins confirms that he has purchased a neighboring confectionery two doors up the street in Park City’s Old Town, and plans to open it by the end of the year as a private events space to take some of the pressure off the world’s only ski-in gastro-distillery’s always-packed restaurant. On the menu: whiskey, natch, and small plates. This comes in addition to plans for a second distillery and corporate retreat on a Utah ranch, “Hopefully open next spring,” Perkins says, adding that the hotel is likely to be run by Auberge Resorts. “It will be a doozy.” Forget trust falls with your cube mates and imagine group distilling sessions! Closer to home, Nevada’s first legal distillery since Prohibition, Las Vegas Distillery, is now making private-label vodka, gin and rum for Downtown cocktail room, a project six months in the making. DCR owner Michael Cornthwaite and managing partner Jeremy Merritt will use the well spirits ($7 per drink at DCR) in all of their present and forthcoming projects. Cornthwaite and Merritt have three new venues in the works that Merritt says will open by late September or October. “We found that [distillery owner George Racz’s] ideals were in line with ours, and saw the opportunity to grow a relationship together,” Merritt says. “Both of us have pushed the boundaries in our respective professions. Support local!” More good news: In addition to lots of cat pics, I saw an interesting Facebook post on July 2 by former Cosmopolitan mixologist and Chandelier bar GM Mariena Mercer. “Miss Wizard” is returning to the Cosmopolitan to once again wow us with her boozy dry-ice wonders and to keep the Verbenas flowing. (Incidentally, if you haven’t had that off-menu oddity, the one with the Szechuan button, you’re missing out.) I was actually at the Cosmopolitan when I saw the post, at Blue Ribbon’s awesome Domain de Canton pairing dinner with Vesper GM Chris Hopkins and former Vesper GM (now a Wirtz Beverage Nevada beverage development specialist) Andrew Pollard as well as a number of Las Vegas bar stars. Talk about getting the band back together! Finally, a save the date: Henderson’s Gaetano’s ristorante will host its first beer-pairing dinner on July 26, featuring American craft beers from North Coast, Sierra Nevada, Anchor Brewing and others. Tickets are $70 per person; call 361-1661 to reserve your seats. — X.W. For more scene stirrings and shake-ups, visit VegasSeven.com/Cocktail-Culture.
Photo by Kin Lui
Utah’s high West expands, and dCr sUpports LoCaL
Gastro Fare. Nurtured Ales. Jukebox Gold.
July 11–17, 2013
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active and ft. Rockft’s producers don’t say it, but the obvious precedent is Nick Jr.’s Yo Gabba Gabba, a retro-hipster children’s show created by two fathers with no educational or industry experience—just a strong dislike of kids TV programming. Like Rockft, Yo Gabba Gabba began as a privately fnanced pilot episode and circulated on the Internet. The director of Napoleon Dynamite discovered it, bringing it to the attention of Nickelodeon. Since its 2007 premiere, Yo Gabba Gabba has featured guest alt-rockers such as the Killers and Weezer, and has been nominated for six Daytime Emmys. By comparison, Rockft has a leg up thanks to Robbins’s play-gym. Moreover, he and Rich enlisted a shooter of edgy music videos for local bands such as Deadhand and Candy Warpop. The segments look glossy. But do Portlandia-watching parents want another Yo Gabba Gabba? “[Our] show promotes a healthy lifestyle,” Robbins says. “It’s easy to entertain kids, but sending a positive message is the challenge.” Rockft segments run the gamut, from learning a new sport to choosing nutritional food to waking up in the morning enthusiastically and ready to start the day. Robbins and his team have 50 online segments written, and he’s particularly excited about the next video, “Breakfast.” A live pig appears in the shoot—an $850 showbiz hoglet with her own handler. “I hope she likes bluegrass music,” Robbins
Music
LVCS hosts Tribal Seeds on July 17.
July 11–17, 2013
sonic sprawlers, V-poppers, retro-dreadnaughts
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FroM the Manatee-populated swamp rivers of St. Petersburg, Florida, emerges psychedelic post-rock instrumental combo Set and Setting. The band recently released its first full-length, Equanimity, which churns out one densely layered guitar riff after another. Some of the songs, especially live, sprawl beyond the 15-minute mark, but the dynamics are always enough to keep your attention. Caution: Set and Setting definitely boasts a metallic edge, yet it’s still ambient and celestial enough to appeal to indie-rock fans of Sigur Rós and Mogwai. In any case, be sure to bring earplugs, because these guys won’t compromise when it comes to stage volume at the Dive (9 p.m. July 13). Local “atmospheric-doom” trio Spiritual Shepherd opens. If you’re more of a punker, I have something else to recommend that same evening. Agent 86 is an old-school hard-core band that formed in California in 1982, but has since relocated to Las Vegas. This trio deals in true underground punk, with an aesthetic constructed from the era when gnarly cassette-tape EPs meant everything to a suburb-trapped kid. Songs such as “Vietnam Generation” and “New Wave Sucks” will certainly scratch any political hard-core itch you may be suffering. And while I can’t make the case that they’re as melodic or commercial as, say, Bad Religion, I can easily confirm I’d rather have my head detonated by Agent 86. The band plays Double Down Saloon at 10 p.m. July 13 along with a slew of rad acts—3D6, Skorchamenza, the Lazy Stalkers and the Slow Poisoner.
Answer honestly: When was the last time you took in a concert of Vietnamese pop music? That’s what I thought. Well, if you’re interested in multicultural music and broadening your earhole-palette, there’s the Beauty and Love event at House of Blues at 8 p.m. July 14. Myself, I’m not very familiar with most of these V-pop artists, and can only pronounce, at best, half of their names. But what I’ve learned from my Vietnamese friends, who actually shared some of their CDs with me, is that the music isn’t all that different from Japanese, Korean or Chinese commercial ballads. A male singer, Nguyên Khang, is my favorite among the 14 artists slated to perform. Summer has been brutal in Las Vegas so far. So why not cool down with some reggae courtesy of Tribal Seeds? This is a San Diego-based dreadlocks-draped sextet whose music hearkens back to the rock-steady grooves of classic artists such as Bob Marley and Steel Pulse. Singer Steven Jacobo possesses a terrific “jah-mon” voice that inspires me to want to pull off the tricky feat of dancing while downing an ice-cold Red Stripe— and maybe even smoking a funny cigarette in between. The Seeds’ best song, “Dark Angel,” is my favorite poolside jam right now, so I’m stoked to bask in this band’s good-time island vibes. Check ’em out at 7 p.m. July 17 at LVCS. Also on the bill: HaleAmanO, For Twenty Daze and Coco Nut. Your Vegas band releasing a CD soon? Email Jarret_Keene@Yahoo.com.
A&E
stage
Frosted Flair
The magician and host of Food Network’s Cupcake Wars mixes patter and batter By Camille Cannon
July 11–17, 2013
in 2006, magician Justin Willman entered the culinary world with a guest spot on Rachael Ray. He’s since become the host of reality competitions on Food Network: including the six-episode Last Cake Standing and fan favorite Cupcake Wars, now in its ninth season. The shows don’t involve magic, but they do rely on Willman’s quick wit and improvisation—qualities the 33-year-old also employs when he tours as a magician. If magic and cakes weren’t enough, Willman also makes regular appearances on The Tonight Show and Ellen, and come January he will host a revamped Win, Lose or Draw on Disney Channel. For his frst offcial Las Vegas performance, Willman’s doing double-duty: performing his live magic show, Tricked Out on July 13-14 and judging the Las Vegas Cupcake Bake-Off on July 14. Here he shares the enchanting ingredients inside his bag of tricks.
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You’ve been to Las Vegas before. What did you do when you were here in the past? It’s my frst time playing Vegas as a headlining act. It’s a boyhood dream come true. When I was a kid, around 15 or 16, I would do magic competitions and a lot of those were in Vegas. But that was like a whole “past life.” That was me in a tuxedo with birds. I put my sister in a French maid’s outft as my lovely assistant. It was a different job then.
Had you always planned on a career as a performer? You studied journalism in college, correct? That’s correct. [I went to school] to do what you’re doing. Did you go to college for magic? You’d be my dream woman. … I have good parents who wouldn’t let me get away with going to magic college, which doesn’t exist anyway. I grew up watching The Tonight Show, and I fgured that you can’t major in “Hosting The Tonight Show,” but the next
best thing you can do is major in broadcast journalism and fgure out how be a natural on television. Given all your screen time, you must attract a wide audience. To whom do you gear your magic? I like to write it like a good Pixar movie where it’s a little something for everybody. There’s tons of stuff that kids would enjoy without it being a kiddie show. In addition to comedy, what else can people expect from your live show? We have these high-tech magical devices around at all times that do impossible things that we take for granted. I like to point out the parallel between magic that restores our childlike wonder and also do magic with high-tech devices. The show is about reminding ourselves how cool it is to not know how something works. We can’t go two minutes of
Justin Willman’s tricked Out tOur Suncoast Showroom, 7:30 p.m. July 13-14, $18-$44, 636-7075, SuncoastCasino.com.
las Vegas cupcake Bake-Off Suncoast Grand Ballroom, noon July 14, $20 ($10 per child), BakeLV.com. not knowing something before we Google it. Being able to live for more than an hour in your seat where things are unexplainable and you learn to love it and feel good about it, that’s what I like to bring to the people. Describe your most memorable trick-gone-wrong.
I’m sure there are so many times when something has gone wrong, but those are the things that my therapist helps me forget. With so many hosting gigs do you think you’re encroaching on Ryan Seacrest territory? I’m not encroaching on Ryan Seacrest money yet. But I am encroaching on his territory. What word best describes what you do? Entertainer. That’s broad enough. Hopefully people will be entertained, and hopefully not expect me to take my clothes off. Actually, I do take my clothes off in one trick. I don’t want to lie to you, that is part of the show. It’s a family show still. It will make sense when you see it.
Will Willman bring “Magician-DJ Wars” to Las Vegas? Find out in an extended interview at VegasSeven.com/ FrostedFlair.
A&E
Movies
Like a landlubbing Jack Sparrow: Depp as Tonto.
Hi-yo, Loser!
This overly violent Lone Ranger remake is just another excuse for Johnny Depp to get in costume By Michael Phillips
July 11–17, 2013
Tribune Media Services
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Not that JohNNy Depp did them for free, but Disney Enterprises Inc. owes Depp and his mock-heroic portrayal of the knave Jack Sparrow a great deal for the fnancial success of the four Pirates of the Caribbean pictures. You know how it is with four hits: There’s always the threat of a ffth. Meanwhile, Disney, producer Jerry Bruckheimer and director Gore Verbinski have moved on to another quarterbillion-dollar gamble. This time Depp takes on the most famous yet most marginalized sidekick in 20th-century popular culture, the Native American known in his early radio days as “the faithful Indian companion” to “the daring and resourceful masked rider of the plains.” Disney’s The Lone Ranger allows the stoic second
banana enough screen time and narrative elbow room so that the movie really should’ve been called Tonto’s Revenge, or Tonto Steps Up 2 the Saddle or, given the movie’s perspective on the titular hero, Tonto and the Dweeb. In marketing terms, it behooves Disney to draw as many parallels as possible between the Pirates franchise and this new open-air adventure. Well, there’s this: While nominally a Western, The Lone Ranger is completely at sea. How/why/wherefore did it turn out this way? The evidence suggests a combination of hubris, errant revisionism, a misguided and perverse degree of violence, and a script that never worked in the frst place, in the second draft or in any of the rewrites. Is it too late to shut down production on
a summer picture that’s already in theaters? The framing device established by that script promises at least a workable approach. In 1933 San Francisco, an ancient Native American (Depp, borrowing Dustin Hoffman’s old-man makeup from Little Big Man) works as part of a dusty sideshow, posing lifelessly (we think it’s a dummy at frst) as The Noble Savage. Then he fxes his gaze on a wide-eyed preteen in a cowboy outft, and the boy learns the truth of Tonto’s decades-old story of how he came to partner with the Texas Ranger-turnedstone-cold seeker of Old Testament revenge. Lawman John Reid, the square-jawed, Eastern-educated masked man played by Armie Hammer (The Social Network, J. Edgar) is only slightly more comfortable in Verbinski’s venal Old West than Bob Hope was in the Paleface comedies. But this is no comedy, or rather, the attempts at muttered wisecracks (“What’s with the mask?” queries a wise old native chief) and elaborate Buster Keaton-inspired stunt work sit uneasily alongside scarifying attack rabbits or minor characters (such as Stephen Root’s railroad man)
getting shot in the back and screaming in pain while someone makes a speech. Most egregiously, we have the psychopathic outlaw Butch Cavendish, played by William Fichtner, who doesn’t merely shoot and kill Reid’s Ranger brother; he cuts out his heart and eats it. Uh, fellas? Who the hi-yo Silver is this movie for? As in the animated Rango, which Verbinski also directed, The Lone Ranger has ambitions toward a vision of the American West that tells the truth (a version of it, anyway) about the genocidal slaughter, dirty dealings and cynicism-inducing dread involved in the “settling.” (Rango owed as much to the story line of Chinatown as it did to Cat Ballou.) As the elder Tonto delves into the frst fashback, we meet the Lone Ranger and the younger Tonto in the middle of a bank robbery. The movie then lurches on, from one enormous, inert action sequence to another, to answer the question: How did the Lone Ranger become a bank robber, and why? Faced with a force of evil as bad as Cavendish, and the motivations of those behind the transcontinental railroad (Tom Wilkinson adds a touch of gravity as the empire builder), Reid has no choice but to bury
his upright, law-abiding ways and go rogue with his frenemy Tonto. Helena Bonham Carter shows up as a one-legged madam, whose replacement leg hides a double-barreled shotgun. Ruth Wilson plays the widow of Reid’s brother, who attracts the attention of Wilkinson’s railroad magnate. Barry Pepper cuts a sharp, Custerlike fgure as a captain drawn into an Indian war that is not what it seems. With the exception of Hammer, who never seems to lose his parodic edge, the actors are not the problem. Everything else is. If the movie gets by with audiences, it’ll be thanks to the 21st-century novelty of seeing huge, chaotic action set pieces, one early and one a couple of hours later, set aboard spiffylooking period-accurate locomotives. I’m not sure, though, if Verbinski’s fastidious attention to production design means much amid the usual onslaught of computer-generated imagery (buffaloes, rabid attack rabbits). The director has said that he envisioned the Lone Ranger as the James Stewart character from The Man Who Shot Liberty Valance being thrown headlong into a Sam Peckinpah splatter-fest. Is this really what we want from a good-time summer picture? Is Depp’s minimalist mugging as Tonto fresh enough to warrant good word-of-mouth? Every time the flm nods in the direction of The Lone Ranger of old, either the radio version or the television series, it’s essentially to dump on it; when we fnally hear the “Hi-yo, Silver! Away!” line from Hammer, it’s simply to set up a witless put down from Tonto. I didn’t grow up loving The Lone Ranger, or watching the show, so I have no allegiance to the earlier versions of the mythology. The old condescension toward Tonto was pretty galling. But here, in scenes such as hundreds of Natives being slaughtered by U.S. troops behind Gatling guns, we have Tonto and the Lone Ranger acting like a couple of comic-relief ninnies, screwing around aimlessly for laughs on a handcar. It’s as if the movie were having a nervous breakdown. At one point the masked man gets his head dragged through horse manure. Watching The Lone Ranger, you know the feeling. The Lone Ranger (PG-13) ★✩✩✩✩
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A&E
movies
minion’s might
Despicable sequel is not deplorable By Michael Phillips Tribune Media Services
older kids and their minion guardians could do worse than Despicable Me 2, the sequel to the 2010 smash about a supervillain turned adoptive parent. On the other hand, reports of the movie’s charm have been greatly exaggerated. It’s a reasonably effcient babysitter, done up in 3-D computergenerated animation of no special distinction. But the frst one’s weird mixture of James Bond bombast and hyperactive pill-shaped Minions (the protagonist Gru’s goggle-clad helpers) had the element of surprise in its favor. This time, Gru (voiced by Steve Carell) is placed in the takes-one-to-catch-one mold of Hannibal Lecter. An arctic research lab gets sucked up into space by a giant magnet in the prologue. The AntiVillain League (Kristen Wiig voices Lucy, the sweet, tightly wound AVL agent) recruits Gru to track down the villain
Minions garner laughs, even if you can’t quite tell them apart.
in question, El Macho. Much of Despicable Me 2 takes place in an antiseptic Logan’s Run-styled mall, where Gru and Lu work undercover, and their fellow tenants include a hair-club toupee peddler (Ken Jeong, voice) and a seductive Mexican restaurant owner (Benjamin Bratt, taking over for the originally slated Al Pacino) whose dreamy teenage son (Moises Arias) catches the eye of Gru’s
oldest (Miranda Cosgrove). To my taste, as well as that of several nervous preteens in the preview audience, the script by Cinco Paul and Ken Daurio (The Lorax, Horton Hears a Who!) goes in for an awful lot of cheap scares, notably when the Minions are injected with a serum changing them into hairy, menacing purple beasts. Would it kill a movie such as this to fnd another way to
keep the target audience in its collective seat? The Minions are amusing, but they remain largely undifferentiated creatures, saved from pure generica only by their peppy gibberish-based language skills, heavy on the fatulence sound effects. Steve Carell’s Slavic infections as Gru do the trick, as before. Wiig’s clever hesitations and comic timing help save the
short reviews
July 11–17, 2013
Kevin Hart: Let Me Explain (R)
VEGAS SEVEN
98
★★✩✩✩
This short concert film captures standup comic Kevin Hart’s Madison Square Garden show and pads it with a long, dead, scripted prologue that doesn’t really work. Hart has hit the big time, and it shows, but we tend to like our comics angry and dissatisfied. While he’s an impressive performer, the writing just isn’t as strong, and most of the show just has Hart working too hard to make inferior material go over. His surprise hit Laugh at My Pain from 2011 is much funnier.
The Heat (R) ★★★✩✩
This buddy cop movie is female-based for once. Sandra Bullock plays a New York cop bucking for a promotion. She travels to Boston to nail a drug lord. That’s about all the plot there is, even though the movie goes on another two hours about it. Melissa McCarthy is the local blowhard with a badge. The odd couple learns to work together, eventually winding up, as these movies always do, in an abandoned warehouse full of criminal scum. It’s simple, but the co-stars are great.
White House Down (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
This may sound familiar, but in this movie, the White House is under siege. Jaime Foxx plays an earnest but earnestly funny commander in chief. Channing Tatum plays Cale, a war vet/D.C. cop who can’t convince Maggie Gyllenhaal to let him in the Secret Service. He has to content himself with guarding the speaker of the House and getting his daughter (Joey King) a White House tour. Naturally, the bad guys bust in, and the only person who can save his daughter, the pres and the world is Cale.
day. The minute her character’s pointy-ish nose appears onscreen, with the rest of her, you know she and the extremely pointy-nosed Gru are going to be sweethearts. Next year, the Minions star in their own movie, titled Minions. Despicable Me 2 will do, until that one comes along. Despicable Me 2 (PG) ★★✩✩✩
[ by tribune media services ]
World War Z (PG-13) ★★✩✩✩
In this wildly budgeted zombie apocalypse film, Gerry Lane (Brad Pitt) and his family are stuck in traffic. Suddenly: zombie attack. In a matter of minutes, many of the world’s cities are in flames. The zombies turn quick and are fast as lightning! Gerry escapes with the fam, are rescued by U.N. forces and relocated to an aircraft carrier. From there, Gerry gets sent on a series of ad hoc missions (South Korea, Israel, Cardiff, Wales) to find the elusive origin and concoct a cure. It’s a wild ride, if a little light on story.
Marketplace
7 questions
Has the polarization of American politics made it harder to get bipartisan support? Historically we have had terrifc bipartisan support, but fascinatingly it has tended to be urban Democrats and rural Republicans. Rural America and the politicians in those states have been terrifc supporters, because we democratize education and make the arts accessible. As Republicans have shifted more to the Tea Party side, that bipartisan coalition has begun to break down, and that disturbs us. We were proud that we were bipartisan and frustrated by that Pat Buchanan legacy from the Nixon administration, when he got people to say Republicans were against us, but the data showed we had big supporters.
The boss of Vegas PBS on why his is a model station, playing the politics game and losing control of the remote
July 11–17, 2013
By Steve Bornfeld
VEGAS SEVEN
110
Forgive the soFt-spoken gentleman with the gentle smile for blushing. You might also turn a bit rosy in the cheeks if such accolades came your way. Last year, said gentleman—Tom Axtell, general manager of Vegas PBS (KLVX Channel 10)—was awarded the network’s prestigious Scott C. Elliott Development Professional of the Year Award. Earlier this year, PBS President and CEO Paula Kerger brought her national board to Las Vegas because, as reported by the Las Vegas Review-Journal, she “wanted the board to see what a TV station should look like.” Why? Because Axtell’s affliate is now the most-watched PBS station in America on a per-capita basis. That’s out of more than 350 of them. Now that’s blush-worthy. “I have so much fun when I go to these national meetings and people do the Vegas put-down,” says Axtell, 63, who has helmed KLVX since 1994 and previously held positions at stations in Spokane, Washington, and Milwaukee. “I’ll say, ‘Let’s go see who was the best [ratings] for Nova.’ It wasn’t Boston. We outperform Boston and New York on science [shows]—Vegas. We are better than anybody thinks.” What makes Vegas PBS “what a TV station should look like”? Public broadcasters have been inventive, though within public broadcasting, you still have people saying, “I run a TV station.” I say, “We run a multimedia technology corporation that
focuses on public service.” From 1994 to 1999, my job was to run a good public television station. In 1999, the federal government said television is going from analog to digital. Our management team and board looked at what that meant. When we approved the capital campaign for
How did you adjust to the new environment? We created business partnerships that realize that rhetoric. We worked hard with the [Clark County] School District, taking high school classes that were on in the middle of the night that people recorded and made them online digital classes. … We did the same thing with job training when the recession hit, with adult-education classes for GEDs, and also generated a substantial revenue stream. We had a program last year where we were a PBS test site and tested with nine local schools for 40 telephone apps, all based on PBS children’s characters. For a low-income family whose smartphone is their only Internet, we can take our linear television, transfer some into a lesson on basic math or English language vocabulary, and make it a game your child will play with. It’s called PBS Kids Lab. What about noneducational programming? Three years ago, 91 percent of the viewing of public-televi-
sion programming was at the time the station broadcast. Last year, 70 percent of our viewing was at the time we broadcast it; 30 percent was time-shifted. So when we produce a local program now we publish it—we call it publishing—on YouTube and on our website and the different products. And (last month) PBS signed an agreement with Roku (which manufactures digital receivers, allowing Internet programming to be streamed on television sets). We’re also good in the TV business. In the last three years, we’ve had the highest gross ratings point of any PBS station in the United States. What does this market like? Independent programming— programs like POV and Independent Lens get much higher ratings here. I think that’s because we have a libertarian attitude; we don’t like people telling us what to do. Science also overindexes. Arts and performance over-index. We have a huge infrastructure of people who work in the performing arts, not just performing, but doing lighting and running audio boards. I’ve had people come up to me at a grocery store who work at one of the properties and talk about one of the technical audios on one of our shows.
What shows does the local PBS chieftain watch when no one’s looking? Castle is a cute little drama and a fun mystery. I watch mostly PBS. The other viewing in my house is driven by my wife. She will insist you see The Bachelorette and the closing episodes of American Idol. If I don’t want to watch that, I have to go to another room.
Photo by Bryan Hainer
Tom Axtell
this building (3050 E. Flamingo Rd.) in 2004, we had gone from saying we needed the building for a television station to saying we need a building that will allow us to have digital media for every device that exists.
Do you foresee providing more national content? We have four programs in national syndication now. Opening night at The Smith Center (From Dust to Dreams) and Signing Time! that’s on in more than 100 markets. We have Wonders of the West on national parks within 200 miles of Las Vegas, and we have another on fertility. We have done two experiments at The Smith Center to see how we can do production without a $2 million production truck. We are looking at doing production at [The Smith Center’s] Cabaret [Jazz] theater, and we will probably make capital purchases to begin what we hope will be a four- to six-part series called Live From The Smith Center, modeled after Live From Lincoln Center. But we have chosen not to put the risk capital into pledge shows focused on the great performers on the Strip, because it costs so much. PBS will say, “If you want to do a pledge show here, we will pay you no more than 10 percent of what we think it will make nationally.” Then you can try to make it on the back end selling DVDs and things. You’re talking about million-dollar bets. We just don’t have the capital to do that.