A+E

Garlic and Sapphires

By Ruth Reichl


$24.95

In her capacity as lead restaurant critic for the New York Times, Ruth Reichl led a Sybil-like existence, in multiple-personality, colorfully-costumed attempts to be anonymous in the madly competitive world of New York City restaurants. It's all chronicled in her latest book, an entertaining, breezily written tome that makes you realize her job isn't quite the dream everyone assumes, in spite of all the good food.

The Book Lover's Cookbook

By Shaunda Kennedy Wenger, Janet Kay Jensen


$14.95

On balance, this was a good idea: recipes inspired by celebrated works of literature, such as a pork roast with cabbage from Huckleberry Finn, and the fried rice dish from Pearl Buck's The Good Earth. The recipes are simple and straightforward, each accompanied by a passage from a book or poem. It's more of a compilation than an oeuvre, but worthwhile all the same.

1 "Great deal of confusion"

2 "Continuing expansion of ideas and projects" causing "multiple delays"

3 "Overwhelming rains"

4 "Great deal of confusion" (again, but on a different topic)

5 "City has great difficulty navigating through its own system"

6 "Third Street project will be a huge success"

Lemony Snicket's A Series of Unfortunate Events (PG) (3 stars)


$38.99

Despite lukewarm reviews for its theatrical release, this DVD edition will raise goose bumps in kids and impress adults with its set design and special technical effects. And the bonus extras in the two-disc package are quite good, indeed. There ought to be a special screen reserved in hell's multiplex, however, for otherwise serious movies that use corporate mascots in sight gags ... in this case, the Aflac duck.

The Assassination of Richard Nixon (NR) (4 stars)


$27.95

Sean Penn's Sam Bicke appears to have been inspired as much by Robert DeNiro's would-be assassin Travis Bickle in Taxi Driver as real-life would-be assassin Sam Byck. Penn's Bicke, "a grain of sand on the beach we call Earth," can easily stand on its own as a portrait of a man mortally wounded by society's quiet indignities. Penn is painfully exact in the depiction of Bicke's gradual mental deterioration, and his obsession over being recognized as an "honest" man.

Primer (R) (3 stars)


$27.95

This deliberately baffling tech-fi brain-teaser is exactly the kind of benignly self-conscious debut effort that plays better in the rarefied air of Park City, Utah—where, at Sundance 2004, it won the Grand Jury Prize—than at sea level, where folks actually have to pay to see movies. Shane Carruth borrowed from his engineering background to create a time-travel psycho-drama, in which a garage-lab contraption allows a group of young entrepreneurs to turn back time for financial gain. Naturally, all sorts of complicated moral, legal and mathematical conflicts ensue. It's a tough slog at times, but considering it was made for $7,000, well worth it.

Cirque du Soleil: Solstrom (NR) (3 stars)


$49.95

As much as Las Vegas has become Cirque du Soleil's unofficial home away from home, cable's Bravo has turned into the troupe's television abode. This has all 13 first-season episodes of the cable channel's variety mini-series, Solstrom, which showcases the talents of individual Cirque performers and those of kindred spirits from outside the realm.

John Krondes and the Jordanaires (1 star)


Vegas In the Morning

We're breaking our rule about not reviewing EPs to make room for this six-track CD—all six variations on one song. Hey, if it's being reviewed by the Las Vegas Centennial Celebration Committee, it can certainly be reviewed by The Las Vegas Weekly Committee to Review the Las Vegas Centennial Celebration Committee. And our review is ... eh? What do you make of a song about Vegas that calls us Tinseltown? One in which Krondes sings about hot-tubbing on roofs, the moon making the "night turn day, like a big balloon" and "las chicas son bonitas in Las Vegas"? All done to a Caribbean rhythm? Oscar, if you're reading this, just say no.