Aimee and I made Gosford Park our Wednesday-night movie this week. Robert Altman pushed just about every Anglophiliac button I have in this film. Yes, a murder occurs, but Gosford Park is less whodunit than character study. Every single actor in the huge cast was at the top of their game, and Clive Owen is my new tall-dark-and-handsome man for the week. I love Altman, I love the rambling way he lets a tale unfold.

On Saturday I got involved in a major cooking project and misjudged my time in such a way that it bollocksed my dinner plans. I was oven-drying tomatoes for a flatbread I'm making next weekend and planned everything out to the minute, completely missing the part in the recipe that instructed me to leave the 'maters marinating for an hour. Oops. With a few quick adjustments it was a mushroom Gardenburger at home instead of the new Turkish restaurant in the city for dinner, all for the sake of dried tomatoes.

That evening I made my way to Fort Mason to see Robert Moses' Kin perform Word of Mouth. By total coincidence they were dancing in the same building that the Alternative Press Expo was taking place in, so I walked slowly past the darkened windows and peered in at the familiar comic book tables. I was a little sad that I had decided not to go, but I felt better when the Cowell Theater bar beagle let me give his ears a healthy scratch while he made good and sure I wasn't hiding a treat somewhere on my person.

The performance itself was simply amazing. The evening was divided into 11 separate works, each with a distinct soundtrack. I got chills all the way through. Robert Moses explained in the program that Word of Mouth takes place in the "milieu of incomplete knowledge, changing belief, and desire for consistency" that characterizes the African-American experience. "Babble" used Carl Hancock Rux's poetry to awesome effect, and in "Children from the Other Side of the Blanket" there was a beautiful moment when Eminem joined Dr. Dre's rap and the male dancers responded by clapping their hands over the mouths and ears of the female dancers and lifting them offstage and out of sight. I was also deeply moved by "The Language of Flesh and Blood," a potent evocation of love and desire. Moses and his 13 dancers representing all the colors of the rainbow moved to jazz, hip-hop, roots, blues, and spirituals with modern choreography influenced by all of those different styles. I loved that there were kids half my age in the audience who were watching contemporary dance and were really getting into it because of the music.

Gosford Park
Robert Moses' Kin