Filling Up More Than “Satisfying,” Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Bars Are Surprisingly Good!

The Good: Tasty, Very healthy, Comparatively inexpensive
The Bad: Could always be healthier/less expensive
The Basics: Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bars are a less expensive option for those who like meal bars and are trying to cut down on sweets!


Locally, there is an event going on right now called Tip Up Town. For a week, the snowbirds come back to Northern Michigan and deign us with their presence so that during the summer there are still some businesses open to come back to. Seriously, the local economy pretty much dies during the winter and so the people who usually live here nine months out of the year coming back for a week and spending some money (despite the name of the event, few of them actually tip appropriately) actually helps quite a bit (despite how universally poorly they drive while here). As one of the local stores was celebrating the Tip Up Town event, they were selling off their stock of all sorts of granola, breakfast, and protein bars . . . dirt cheap. One of the ones I stocked up on was the Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bars.

The Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bars are “powered by Snickers” and are basically a protein bar designed for hikers, dieters, and those who want something a little healthier than candy bars!

Basics

Snickers is best known for making the classic candy bar and the Marathon Smart Stuff bars are advertised as Powered By Snickers, which seems to mean “trading on the Snicker’s name.” Marathon Smart Stuff bars are part of M&M/Mars’s attempt to expand into snack and health foods. Their Snack Bars come in several flavors and I chose the Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bar because I love chocolate and I figured if I was going to be biased toward a Marathon Smart Stuff bar, it would be the chocolate one!

Each Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bar is in a 1.23 oz. bar that is foil-wrapped. Each bar represents a single serving and the Snack Bars are each 1 1/4” wide by 5/8” thick by 3 1/4” long Snack Bar that is unsurprisingly breakable or squishable. A box of Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bars contains a dozen bars. Each bar looks like a chewy granola bar with a brown chocolate bottom. This is like a Clif bar that looks much like a health bar, which is exactly what it is!

Ease Of Preparation

Eating Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bars is simple. After removing the foil wrapper, simply pull out the bar and stick it in your mouth. There is no particularly complicated equation to eating this snack; it is an entirely ready-to-eat food!

Taste

Unwrapping the Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bar, I was pleasantly surprised by just how strong the chocolate scent was. This bar smells like milk chocolate. The chocolate scent is strong and sweet and inviting; it actually smells like a high-quality cocoa.

In the mouth, the Marathon Smart Stuff Snack Bars are chocolatey and dry. Unlike a candy bar, this only has the chocolate on the bottom; the bulk of the bar is dry, ricey and grainy. That said, the Smart Stuff Snack Bar is sweet enough and cocoa flavored enough to actually be enjoyable to eat. The grain is sweetened by caramel and the chocolate. There is nothing nutty to the taste, nor does it actually taste like a Snickers bar.

The Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp snack bar has a slightly dry aftertaste that is cut by the enduring sweetness of the chocolate.

Nutrition

Marathon Smart Stuff Snack Bars are intended as a snack or a meal replacement. These 1.23 oz. Snack Bar represent a single serving and they are surprisingly healthy. Made primarily of multigrain crisps, milk chocolate, and corn syrup, what surprised me was how there was nothing in these bars that was unpronouncable. This is a surprisingly good food product and these Snack Bars were produced on equipment that may leave the bar with wheat, tree nuts and milk, so they are not Vegan-compliant.

Marathon Smart Stuff's Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bars have 140 calories, 35 of which are from fat. A full serving represents 8% of one's RDA of saturated fat and these are cholesterol free. Surprisingly, they are fairly low in sodium with only 90 mg per serving and there are 5 grams of protein to be had by eating a full bar. These are a significant source of Vitamin C and Calcium in that each bar has 20% of the RDA of each. A single bar also has 10% of one’s recommended daily allowance of Vitamins A and E, Iron, Magnesium, Zinc and Copper.

Storage/Cleanup

As a healthy snack, Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bar remain fresh so long as they are kept in their wrappers. As long as the bars are not heated up, they remain fresh and the only real clean-up for them comes from wiping up crumbs. If the Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Marathon Smart Stuff bars get hot, though, the chocolate bottom will melt and cleaning that up can be a bit trickier, especially on light fabrics. Consult a fabric guide if the chocolate melts onto your clothes.

Overall

Marathon Smart Stuff Crunchy Chocolate Crisp Snack Bars are inexplicably being clearance locally, but that is lucky for me; this flavor is very much worth picking up!

For other reviews of healthy food, please check out:
Clif Builder’s Chocolate Mint Protein Bars
Quaker Vanilla Creme Brulee Popped rice snacks
Special K Protein Dark Chocolate Granola Bars

7/10

For other food and drink reviews, please check out my Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

The Fourth Season Of Fringe Keeps The Story Going Well!

The Good: Intriguing continuity, Good character work, Decent acting, Intriguing plot direction
The Bad: Some predictable moments/bottle episode issues
The Basics: Over the course of twenty-two episodes, Fringe Season Four explores an aberration in the timeline after Peter Bishop was erased.


There are few television series’ that I return to with such enthusiasm as Fringe. Before picking up Season Four of Fringe, I rewatched the entire series, which was helpful because the fourth season does not simply pick up where Season Three (reviewed here!) left off; it has frequent allusions to the first two seasons and to get the most out of it, one has to see those prior seasons. The fourth season might be a very minor slip from the quality of the third season, but it is still hard not to argue that Fringe is one of the rare shows that gets better and better as the series goes on. Fringe is a series that truly takes its time to develop and evolve and the fourth season is essentially a love story that explores the power of love and how loneliness and loss can leave people shattered to their core.

With twenty-two episodes, season four of Fringe reestablishes the Fringe multiverse as a place where the integral character – Peter Bishop – never existed. While this fundamentally redefines the series, the re-emergence of Peter Bishop into the altered multiverse creates new and old conflicts. The surprise of the season is how well it works, though parts of the season build up to nonevents (Peter Bishop spends most of the season trying to get back to “his Olivia,” implying that he is in a third universe, when the concept of the season is that the two universes are the same as in the prior two seasons, but as altered by Peter’s removal from the timestream). The fourth season of Fringe also added Lincoln Lee – played by Seth Gabel – as a main cast member. Lincoln Lee had previously only been seen (with one exception late in the third season) in his Alternate Universe version as a leader on their Fringe team.

With a bridge between the two universes formed and a peace accord reached, the distrust between the leaders of both universes grows in the wake of Peter being removed from the timeline by the Observers and his integrating with the machine left by the First People. In our universe, Lincoln Lee’s partner Robert Danzig is killed by new, organically-based shapeshifters. The reclusive Walter Bishop blames his alternate and Lee starts working with Olivia Dunham and her FBI Fringe team. The tensions between both sides rise when the Other Side seeks help from our side in dealing with a serial killer (whose counterpart teaches forensic psychology) who steals people’s happy memories as he kills them. Agent Dunham finds herself re-experiencing moments of time and she and Walter begin seeing a strange man flashing in and out of existence before them. After Dunham has a dream that includes Peter Bishop, Peter Bishop appears in a lake in New York.

Instantly suspicious of Peter Bishop, Walter and Olivia become convinced that the impossible man cannot truly exist. But when Peter is able to help expose information about how the new shapeshifters work and he recognizes their creator, David Robert Jones, he instantly becomes invaluable to Walternate. With Walternate desperate to stop the infiltrators and David Robert Jones and Peter desperate to return to his native universe, Olivia begins experiencing migraines. Jones needs Olivia to re-develop her talent and someone close to Olivia is working with Jones to dose Olivia with cortexiphan. Jones’s endgame seems to include radically altering the human genome and breaking down the barriers between the universes. With shapeshifters infiltrating the other side’s Fringe Division and Peter searching for a way home – using aid from the Observers – Olivia experiences a deep betrayal which allows her mind to break through the temporal barriers set up by the Observers. As the rebooted Olivia makes a conscious decision to sacrifice her memories for the love she had with Peter, Jones accelerates his experiments that put both universes in peril.

The fourth season of Fringe has a number of stories that deal with love. Peter’s love for Olivia made it hard for him to be completely erased from the timeline and the love others had for Peter helped subconsciously suck him back into normal existence. The stories of Peter and Olivia are blended with serial killers who use pheromones and a man who developed a time machine that kept his wife in a loop that preserved her mind before she succumbed to Alzheimer’s. The fourth season of Fringe is smart enough to not simply be working back to its beginning; the universes were both fundamentally altered by the removal of Peter Bishop from the timeline, but that did not change how both Walter and Walternate lost their Peter and even Peter’s return does not restore Walter’s memories or rewrite the cases that Peter was not a part of before his return.

That requires a fundamental rewrite of the backstories of several of the characters and stories that were in prior seasons – Walter was removed from the asylum by Olivia and has been under her care for years, Olivia was raised by Nina Sharp in both universes – which makes for an enjoyable twist for viewers who have been watching the prior seasons. Knowing minutae about prior seasons makes a big difference as the season progresses – the show revisits an early Fringe case with the new universe alteration which is fun and understanding what happened to Colonel Broyles’s son that allows the Alternate Broyles to be exploited is not made explicit in the later episodes. Even details like the Alternate Olivia managing an impossible shot (she was an Olympic sharpshooter in the Alternate Universe in the prior timeline) are covered by having prior knowledge from earlier seasons.

What I found fascinating was how the minor characters who seem insignificant are given the freedom to develop over the course of the season. At the outset of the fourth season, it seemed like the producers and writers had absolutely no idea how to use Nina Sharp, but when she pops back up, she takes on a real significance (though in one of her most important episodes, the reversal is painfully predictable for fans of spy thrillers and science fiction). Astrid and the Alternate Astrid are given a surprisingly wonderful episode and when they share scenes it’s actually a treat to watch. Even Lincoln Lee has some cool moments as he has an understated, unrequited love for Olivia that gets crushed with Peter’s return.

To better understand what is going on in the fourth season of Fringe, it helps to know who the characters are and how they were redefined for the season. In the fourth season, the principle characters are:

Walter Bishop – Having tried to save his son twenty-six years prior and nearly precipitating a war between the universes when he abducted the Alternate Peter, but he died when the ice broke beneath him upon his return, he is on edge because Olivia has the power to have him remanded to the asylum. Terrified that Olivia will return him to St. Claire’s, he struggles with leaving his Harvard lab where he lives. Otherwise, he uses Astrid as his eyes and ears on all missions. When Peter appears, he is suspicious and refuses to accept him as his son. As he gets to know him, though, he does things like share the gifts he had bought for Peter after Peter’s death,

Olivia Dunham – Suffering from time loops and migraines, she was raised by Nina Sharp after she ran away from the Cortexiphan experiments as a child. She does not trust her alternate and she has custody of Walter. She distrusts Peter, but soon starts to rely upon his intel. When she is dosed with massive amounts of Cortexiphan, she begins to remember the alternate time line and her feelings for Peter Bishop make her feel something she did not expect,

Astrid – She leaves the lab to act as the eyes and ears of Walter, relaying all information to the Fringe scientist. She encounters her alternate self and has compassion for her unemotional counterpart. She is the consummate professional, even keeping her father at a distance from the work she does,

Nina – Still in command of Massive Dynamic (given the temporal reset), she raised Olivia Dunham. When Olivia makes the conscious choice to follow love, she implores her “daughter” to form a new bond with her,

Broyles – Professional as always, he runs the FBI Fringe Division. He is continually mystified working with Peter and Olivia, but is integral to keeping the peace with the alternate universe,

Lincoln Lee – An F.B.I. agent whose partner is killed by a shapeshifter, he is slowly brought into the fold of the Fringe Division. He becomes fascinated by how his life and the life of his alternate diverged. He is more reserved and less confident than his counterpart and working with Dunham slowly opens him up to feelings that make him want to stay in one place (which he never wanted to do before),

Peter Bishop – Phasing in and out after his existence is nullified, he is restored to the timeline through acts of love and an unexpected technology. When he finds that no one knows who he is, he appeals to Walter to explore the possibility that he actually exists and figure out how. When David Robert Jones resurfaces, he exposes him as the man behind the organic shapeshifters. Making a deal with Walternate to get him back to his native universe, he struggles to accept what the Observer (September) tells him about his existence. He loves Olivia and is cautious about making the same mistakes as he did in the past with the Alternate Olivia. He assists on cases that he is familiar with from the original timeline and works with the Fringe Team to save both universes,

Alternate Broyles – Almost instantly exposed as an ally to David Robert Jones, he runs the Fringe Division, though it takes some time for his weakness to be revealed. When Olivia is captured, he has to make a choice as to how to best save his family and his universe,

Alternate Astrid – A statistical expert, she has no real social skills. Even so, she crosses over to meet the other Astrid when her father dies and she does not know how to deal with it. She falls in love with liquid coffee,

Alternate Nina – Unsurprisingly devious, she has allied herself with the most dangerous person in the multiverse and she is prepared to use Olivia to reach their endgame,

Alternate Olivia – Distrusted by Walter for an incident where she replaced Olivia for some weeks, she works closely with the Alternate Lincoln Lee in investigating Fringe Events in the other universe. She tries to make peace with Walter and herself, but shows no attraction to Peter. Working with Walter, she comes to suspect the mole in the Fringe Division,

and Walternate – The chief suspect in the organic shapeshifter conspiracy, he takes a huge risk to trust Peter when Peter Bishop reappears. Otherwise, he takes a back seat as the Director of the Department Of Defense to investigate the shapeshifter conspiracy. As David Robert Jones moves to collapse both universes and create a new universe in his image, Walter opens himself to believing in extraordinary events in order to try to save his universe.

The fourth season of Fringe is dominated by performances by the second-tier actors. Anna Torv, Joshua Jackson, and John Noble are all predictably wonderful as their primary and Alternate characters, but none of them truly give viewers anything we have not already seen before. Seth Gabel becomes a surprisingly good addition to the cast as Lincoln Lee. He plays the primary Lincoln with a subtle romantic underpinning for Olivia that plays well over the course of the season. Gabel plays off himself expertly in the scenes he shares where he plays Lee and Alternate Lee. The creates two characters so distinctly different that when Lincoln Lee becomes obsessed with the question of where the two diverged, it seems perfectly natural for the viewer.

Of the long-term cast of Fringe, Jasika Nicole might well have the best role to showcase real emotional range and depth. Nicole plays Astrid and at the outset of the season, she has a much more active role in Fringe. Nicole also plays the Alternate Astrid and the other version of Astrid is downright robotic. When the two interact, the episodes are funny and their relationship is clever and well-defined. It offers Nicole the chance to play a truly different set of characters and that gives her a chance to shine (and she does).

On DVD and Blu-Ray, Fringe The Complete Fourth Season is loaded with bonus features from deleted and extended scenes to featurettes that both illustrate the making of the show and how various elements are tied together. The fourth season has great primary materials and the bonus features drive up the value of the Blu-Ray set.

Ultimately, season four of Fringe might be an extended play for the people who are already fans of the show, but it has some resonating themes and moments of greatness that make it worth watching and worth sticking with the show for.

For other works with Jared Harris, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
The Mortal Instruments: City Of Bones
Lincoln
Tales Of The Black Freighter
Mr. Deeds
Dead Man

7.5/10

For other television reviews, please be sure to visit my Television Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Unimpressive Oscarbait: I Keep Waiting For August: Osage County To Take Off.

The Good: Moments of performance, Some of the lines, Moments of humor.
The Bad: Hard to empathize with the characters, Sterile direction, Bland plot
The Basics: With an incredible cast, August: Osage County might be an acting showcase, but it still nets a painfully dull movie for the most part.


Before sitting down to watch August: Osage County, I became convinced of a simple premise: the main reason Meryl Streep is cast in movies these days is so the movie will get noticed during Oscar Pandering Season. It’s been years since anyone tried releasing a film with Meryl Streep outside Oscar Pandering Season – Julie & Julia (reviewed here!) was the last I know of – and while I suppose it is as good a reason as any to put Meryl Streep in a movie, it would be nice if the films for which she was cast had substance to back them up.

I mention this at the top of my review of August: Osage County because this is a movie with a massive cast of talented performers, including Meryl Streep, that goes nowhere as a film. This is not to say that Meryl Streep is not wonderful in August: Osage County - because she is – but one suspects that director John Wells loaded the film with Streep, Benedict Cumberbatch, Chris Cooper, Julia Roberts and Ewan McGregor in the hopes that viewers would be so blown away by who was on the screen that they would not notice that the movie is pretty boring. And I write that as one who loves the film Magnolia (reviewed here!). In fact, in her best moments in August: Osage County, Meryl Streep’s performance is reminiscent of Jason Robards’s performance in Magnolia as a person suffering through a painful end of life period.

Shortly after Beverly Weston sets his wife up with a caretaker, he disappears, leaving his wife Violet to die on her own (for all he apparently cares). Violet’s daughter, Ivy, calls Barbara and Barbara, her estranged husband Bill and their daughter Jean, return to their family’s house. Violet’s sister, Mattie Fae Aiken and her husband Charlie, come to help out as well. When Beverly’s body is recovered (having drown himself), the other daughter Karen and her older fiancé, Steve, show up for the funeral. Missing the funeral is Charlie and Mattie Fae’s son, Little Charlie, though he shows up for the post-funeral meal.

With the full family together after the funeral, the Westons, Aikens, and Fordhams sit down for one of the most uncomfortable meals in cinematic history. There, Violet spitefully sets family members against each other (and her) by claiming right to all of the money Beverly left (though the will was never legally changed) and the family tries to put up with the venomous woman, despite knowing that she doesn’t have very long left herself. Over the course of the stay, Little Charlie and Ivy’s affair comes out – though their true relationship is not disclosed to Little Charlie – and Steve tries to use weed to get Jean pliable enough to rape. As Violet’s pill-popping increases, the family falls apart, leaving only misery in her wake.

August: Osage County works, when it does, because it is funny. When it is not gut-wrenchingly, excruciatingly uncomfortable, August: Osage County has some very funny lines. Chris Cooper is in rare form as Charlie; his bit about eating some good fear is hilariously delivered and it’s easy to see the charm he possesses and portrays in almost every scene of August: Osage County. Cooper plays Charlie’s love for his son as perfectly organic and beautifully delivered (the moment he stands up for Little Charlie is one of the film’s high points). During the meal scenes, August: Osage County is reminiscent of Peep World (reviewed here!) for its charm, complicated dynamics, and the way the expert cast members play off one another.

Sadly, the comedy in August: Osage County ends. It does not merely end: it dies a fast, hard, miserable death. From the moment Steve first ambles up to Jean, there is something sinister about him. When he becomes more aggressive with her, the film commits to a tone that it never turns back from. For all the spite and horribleness of Violet, other characters managed to get in amusing lines before that. As a result, August: Osage County has a flow and some sense of enjoyment until that point. After that point, though, the film becomes oppressive and downright miserable.

While some of the characters are interesting (oddly, in a film dominated by wonderful women, only Ivy and Johnna Monevata – the caretaker – are truly likable), few are really decent people. Charlie is good, Little Charlie is so deeply caring, and even Bill has some moments, but the film is largely about dysfunction and how people react to the spiteful Violet. Violet is arguably Meryl Streep’s meanest role since The Devil Wears Prada (reviewed here!).

That makes the reason to endure the two hours of August: Osage County the acting. Everyone in the film perfectly embodies their characters and they perform admirably. While Meryl Streep and Julia Roberts continue to get most of the attention, I was impressed by Julianne Nicholson. Nicholson plays Ivy and she has great onscreen chemistry with Benedict Cumberbatch (Little Charlie). She plays Ivy with a deep, restrained sadness for most of the movie and she emotes so much with her eyes that it is hard not to empathize with her character.

That said, it’s unsurprising that August: Osage County did not get nominated for the Best Picture Oscar; it is a ponderous, painful movie. It’s worth watching once for the impressive acting, but unfathomable to want to sit through a second time as it is largely unenjoyable, regardless of how well it captures a slice of reality.

For other works with Benedict Cumberbatch, please check out my reviews of:
The Hobbit: The Desolation Of Smaug
12 Years A Slave
Star Trek Into Darkness
The Hobbit: An Unexpected Journey
Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy
Atonement
Fortysomething

5/10

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Not As Soft As The Name Implies, JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones Underwhelm.

The Good: They work flawlessly with MP3 players and computer products, Fashionable, Discrete, Inexpensive
The Bad: No volume control on buds, Not very soft
The Basics: JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones are good, but not quite what their name implies!


When I think of gummies, I think of soft, chewy candies, like Gummy worms or Gummy bears. I think that’s a pretty natural association, too. It seems strange to think about something called “Gumy” and get something that is hard. That is exactly what I got, though, with the JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones I was recently gifted. Given to me by my sister-in-law, the JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones she gave me are Coconut White, though they come in many stylish colors. Other than that and the very slightly softer ear pieces than the standard Apple iPod iBuds (reviewed here!), the JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones are pretty standard themselves.

As a result, the JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones hurt my ears, though not quite as much as the standard iBuds. I grew up in the 1980s, the decade that saw the big headphones of the prior decades made smaller into foam-covered headphones that cushioned the ear while pumping music right down the ear canal. Now, headphones are gone in favor of “earbuds,” which are hard plastic speakers that get shoved right into the ear canal. The JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones are not soft for their ear speaker’s coating, but somehow the plastic is smoother and just a little less hard than other earbuds I have tried.

The Gumy headphones come in an array of colors and they end in a traditional portable music headphone jack. The male end of the Gumy is a thin metal jack which fits into the “female” port on computers, MP3 players, portable stereos, portable c.d. players and anything else that used to accept small jack headphones (not like the big-60s and 70s headsets). Coconut White is the most simple Gumy color and that does not fit my personal style (black all the way), but all Gumy headphones seem to work equally well.

One is supposed to place the hard plastic – which includes the thin grille that makes up the speaker on the Gumy - directly into the ear and it generally remains in place for as long as one can stand it. The Gumy earbuds do not have volume control on the actual device. Instead, this is a thin white cord that is 39” long; plenty long to reach to portable or stationary music source nearby, provided one does not drop it. If one drops or knocks over their music source, depending on the angle, the earbuds will either wrench out of your ear canal (painful!) or it will disconnect from the jack (seldom will the very durable cord actually snap).

JVC Gumy Stereo Headphones are very average earbud style headphones, which are fairly inexpensive, work fine, but still allow users to only use them for about six hours before they hurt one’s ears.

For other MP3 players and computer support products for them, please check out my reviews of:
GE 34205 HDMI Cable
iPod Shuffle (4th Generation)
RIM Snap-On Case for the Blackberry Curve

5/10

For other electronics products, please visit my index page by clicking here!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Messy, Musical, Melodramatic: The Great Gatsby Flops!

The Good: The humor works well, Decent acting, One or two moments of direction
The Bad: Pacing, Horrible soundtrack, Dull character progression, Most of the direction, Voiceovers
The Basics: Baz Lurhmann adapts The Great Gatsby with an overwhelming sense of (poor) style over substance.


One of the most-hyped films of 2013 was The Great Gatsby and given how many people recommended the film to me, I felt some compulsion to watch the movie. Having finally taken in Baz Luhrmann’s interpretation of the classic F. Scott Fitzgerald novel, I find myself in the minority once again. Luhrmann overwhelms what could have been an amazing cinematic rendition of the novel with an erratic sense of his style: while I am usually loathe to rate movies higher based on them possessing great special effects, with The Great Gatsby I find myself unwilling to limit my negative impression of the effects to only one of the ten customary points: in other words, the special effects in The Great Gatsby are so distractingly bad that they make the film drag and they destroy the positive aspects of the movie.

The Great Gatsby uses a modern soundtrack (Jay-Z, Beyonce, etc.) in its period piece in a way that seems like Luhrmann is trying to be trendy and edgy, but is executed with such sloppiness that it guts the resonance of the film almost immediately. Even worse are the visual effects. Luhrmann makes a conscious choice to change the film grain on many of his wide, party shots. This is completely distracting and pulls the viewer out of the realism of the film. The net result is a movie whose characters tell a story that should be interesting, but is so poorly presented that it becomes excruciating to sit through. And I write this as one who recalls loving the novel The Great Gatsby. As my wife noted, “For a movie with such an interesting mystery surrounding the protagonist, this movie sucked!”

In Prohibition Era, Post-World War I New York City, Nick Carraway is suffering from insomnia, depression and alcoholism and to relieve his symptoms, his doctor recommends he writes down his story. Carraway tells the story of his cousin, Daisy Buchanan, and his neighbor, J. Gatsby. Gatsby lives in the mansion next to the small home Carraway is in and Carraway travels to the other side of the Bay to visit Daisy and her husband Tom. After a drunken day with Tom, Tom’s mistress, and their friends, Carraway is invited to a party at Gatsby’s mansion. There, he meets the reclusive Gatsby (few of the party guests actually know who Gatsby is and only Carraway received an invitation to the party). Soon, Gatsby is taking Carraway around town and trying to convince the stock broker that he is trustworthy.

Gatsby asks Carraway for a favor (through a mutual friend); for Nick to invite Daisy over for tea. Carraway complies and he begins to learn of the convoluted history between Daisy and Gatsby and their affair that ended five years prior when Gatsby did not return from the War and Daisy married Tom. As Daisy and Gatsby rekindle their romance, Tom begins to investigate Gatsby’s obscured past. Carraway is drawn into the web of lies surrounding Tom, Daisy, and Gatsby and witnesses the destruction of multiple lives around him.

It’s hard for me to tell what Baz Luhrmann hoped to accomplish with The Great Gatsby. Was he trying to make a modern reinterpretation of the 1920s? The soundtrack seems to suggest that. Was he trying to make a film that captured the tone and feeling of the past? The film grain seems to suggest that. Was he going for a literal translation of The Greaty Gatsby for the screen? Toby Maguire’s unceasing voiceovers as Nick Carraway seem to suggest that (as he is thus able to deliver some of Fitzgerald’s best lines from the book that were not in the form of dialogue). Is he trying to make a smart character-driven movie? Leonardo DiCaprio’s ever-changing accent as Gatsby brilliantly shows the viewer what they need to know (that Gatsby’s character is shifty in nature), though that sort of intelligence is the exception, rather than the rule.

What Baz Luhrmann makes instead is a mess. Lacking one cohesive vision or idea, The Great Gatsby seems to take the shotgun approach and the film is bright and musical the way that Baz Luhrmann is known for. Unfortunately, it adds up to nothing nearly as special or interesting as the viewer would hope. The soap operatic nature of the love parallelogram that the main characters in The Great Gatsby are engaged in is exaggerated in the film.

Nick Carraway is well-presented by Toby Maguire, voiceovers notwithstanding. Carraway is reserved, but lacks the nervous quality of most of Maguire’s characters and the result is a more confident, less geeky Maguire which makes Carraway easy to watch. He becomes an interesting conduit to experience the life and times of Gatsby.

Leonardo DiCaprio is good as J. Gatsby, though it is Joel Edgerton who steals The Great Gatsby as Tom Buchanan. While some might be wowed by Carey Mulligan as Daisy, it’s hard to blame Baz Luhrmann for her. The character is virtually impossible to cast, but Mulligan was a particularly white bread option for her and she is much more bland than vivacious as Daisy. Sadly, she does not have the on-screen gravitas to make viewers believe that Gatsby and Tom would compete over her. But Edgerton . . . Edgerton plays Tom as menacing, charismatic, and smart. Despite being an incredibly unlikable individual, Tom is completely credible for all of the range of emotions he goes through. That type of transition can only be sold effectively by a wonderful actor and Joel Edgerton lives up in The Great Gatsby. Edgerton is tight-lipped and carries his body with a tension that makes his character seem angry under the surface in virtually every scene. Quite simply, he rocks.

Sadly, the Baz Luhrmann interpretation of The Great Gatsby does not. The film is a drawn-out mess that uses a few key literary elements and combines them with over-the-top moviemaking to make a film that ultimately adds up to less than what it should have been.

3.5/10

For other works with Joel Edgerton, please visit my reviews of:
The Odd Life Of Timothy Green
Smokin’ Aces
Revenge Of The Sith
Attack Of The Clones

For other movie reviews, please visit my Movie Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Simplified Premise, Great Idea: An Enemy Of The People!

The Good: Good plot, Decent characters, Themes
The Bad: No truly incredible lines, Underdeveloped characters, Rushed feeling
The Basics: Arthur Miller’s adaptation of Henrik Ibsen’s play about societal pressure is smart but underdeveloped in An Enemy Of The People.


As I work at night, I use my breaks to read. Ironically when I picked An Enemy Of The People off the shelf (I’ve had the book since college, but not yet gotten around to reading it), I had no idea how relevant it would be to my life at work. An Enemy Of The People is essentially about how economic pressures cause a whole town to turn against a single man. As managerial issues came up at work, I actually took comfort in reading An Enemy Of The People.

An Enemy Of The People was my first experience with a work of Arthur Miller. Ironically, my first experience with Miller is not one of his original works. Instead, Miller adapted the play from a work of Henrik Ibsen. The book of An Enemy Of The People is only 125 pages and the three act play is a fast read. Unfortunately, the duration of the play An Enemy Of The People is indicative of a lack of sophistication. The concept of An Enemy Of The People is very simple and the characters never truly develop; the protagonist starts and ends the same way with a bunch of people talking about him for most of the play. That makes An Enemy Of The People far less compelling than it otherwise could be.

Doctor Thomas Stockmann and his family live in Kirsten Springs in Norway, a small village that is on the verge of incredible growth because of the health properties of the water in the town. Thomas’s brother is the mayor of Kirsten Springs and they have an amicable relationship . . . until the day that Dr. Stockmann gets test results he sent away for on the water. University scientists confirmed for Dr. Stockmann that runoff from a nearby plant is poisoning the rejuvenating water of Kirsten Springs. Getting the support of the local newspaper to print the article on the water situation, Thomas believes he will be hailed as the savior of the village.

But, when Peter Stockmann learns about Dr. Stockmann’s plan to expose the water problem, he begins a smear campaign against the scientist. Mayor Stockmann tells the newspaper owners that if the Kirsten Springs spa project is torpedoed, he will have to levy a massive tax to fix the problem which will destroy the local economy. Attributing a sinister motive to his brother, Peter turns the newspaper against Thomas and works to ensure that none of the halls in town will host Thomas speaking about the problem. When one of the town’s few free speech activists allows Thomas to hold a symposium on the issue, Peter hijacks it and turns the town against Thomas before the doctor can even present his argument.

An Enemy Of The People is essentially about how politicians work to protect their own interests often at the expense of the truth to maintain their power. What is billed on the back of the book as a play about the strength of the truth is a bit of a misnomer; An Enemy Of The People focuses so little on Dr. Stockmann’s pursuit of the truth and so much more on Peter Stockmann’s machinations to discredit him. Peter works the newspaper staff and manipulates the townspeople with procedural issues as opposed to the substance of the argument Dr. Stockmann has.

In fact, the frustrating aspect of An Enemy Of The People is how Dr. Thomas Stockmann has motives assigned to him and he pretty much rolls over on that. Everyone else in authority in the town accepts the biased motive Peter assigns to Thomas as well. That’s frustrating to see and it also diminishes the characters that surround the protagonist and antagonist. I get that Miller/Ibsen is trying to illustrate that people are sheep, but in An Enemy Of The People they are put at such absolutes that the play is frustrating to read and the characters do not pop. The newspapermen do not bother to stand up to Peter and they are not smart enough to question Peter’s accusations. They have empirical evidence delivered from a University and yet seem to forget that in face of Peter making one statement about why he thinks Thomas is accusing the Springs of being poisoned.

The result is that there is remarkably little conflict; An Enemy Of The People has a quick revelation and reversal and the rest of the play is just Dr. Stockmann and his family being persecuted. Lacking extensive clever lines, An Enemy Of The People is a great idea, but a mediocre execution. It might be worth reading once, but it’s not a play I’m likely to keep in my permanent collection.

For other plays I have reviewed, please visit:
A Long Day’s Journey Into Night By Eugene O’Neill
The Complete Works Of William Shakespeare
Spamalot!

6.5/10

For other book reviews, please visit my Book Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

It Has All Been Building To “Zero Hour,” Which Underwhelms

The Good: The acting is fine, Good special effects
The Bad: Surprisingly low tension, No real character development, Plot
The Basics: “Zero Hour” resolves the third season in the most obvious way . . . until it takes a pointless right turn that seems very forced.


The climax of the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise came exactly where the second season finale, “The Expanse” (reviewed here!), promised. As a result, the culmination of the entire season of television – albeit shortened by poor ratings and thus, fewer produced episodes – was something of an anticlimax. Given that Star Trek: Enterprise is a prequel, there was little in the way of surprises the show could do; as a result, the predictability of “Zero Hour” seems obvious and the major surprise of the episode is unfortunately contrived.

Rick Berman and Brannon Braga, who wrote “Zero Hour,” built up to the episode and it follows directly on the heels of “Countdown” (reviewed here!). The problem with “Zero Hour,” outside the predictability, is that Braga and Berman seem to insist on creating an ending that leads into the fourth season in a way that takes an entirely different direction. Unfortunately, like the whole concept of an alien weapon that is being built to destroy Earth in a prequel, the resolution to the episode sets up another contrived plot that cannot possibly be sustained for an entire season. A time-travel or alternate universe scenario hardly seems as compelling as (I’m sure) Braga and Berman wanted.

While the Xindi Reptilians race toward Earth with the weapon, Archer, Sato, and the allied Xindi are in pursuit of them. Degra encrypted his schematics to the weapon and Archer applies pressure to Sato to break his code, but Sato’s guilt and inexperience leave her largely unable to focus and complete the decryption. Aboard the Enterprise, T’Pol and Tucker prepare to attack Sphere 41, which seems to be the key to knocking out the Sphere network that creates the Expanse. As Archer prepares to board the weapon, he is teleported to a point seven years in the future by Daniels, who tells him that the Captain is integral to the formation of the Federation.

With the distortions around Sphere 41 deeper than before (courtesy of the Sphere Builders panicking), the Enterprise has fifteen minutes inside the field to infiltrate and destroy the Sphere. Archer and Reed are actually excited when they detect that the weapon is now being escorted only by a single ship, Dolim’s. As Dolim attacks Earth’s largest space station, the crew aboard Enterprise begins to disintegrate from the spatial distortion. Disregarding Crewman Daniels’s warning, Archer stays aboard the weapon while Shran provides assistance to save Earth.

“Zero Hour” has a number of technical flaws in addition to its plot predictability and then abrupt plot turn. The Xindi have a technological level well beyond that of the StarFleet crew, which makes the fact that they need the help of the Enterprise to defeat the Xindi Reptilians and the Sphere Builders. While the trip to the future and even the return of the Andorian Shran, last seen in “Proving Ground” (reviewed here!), are unsurprising, the episode twists in its final moments, though it is hardly compelling. The idea that Archer is integral to the founding of the Federation is unsurprising; so when it appears he is lost, the viewer has to really stretch to believe that a Star Trek captain is being killed off.

There is a moment when it appears like “Zero Hour” might actually be clever or impressive on the character front and that is when the episode focuses on Hoshi Sato. Sato is misused yet again as a cryptographer; she is a linguist and has no real talent as a computer cryptographer. It seemed like Braga and Berman might have been clever enough to include the idea that Sato had been programmed by Dolim to stop Archer instead of leave her entirely able to recover from her torture in the prior episodes. Just as Sato easily overcomes her trauma, the character of Dolim is further diminished by the events of “Zero Hour.” Dolim hardly seems menacing or smart in “Zero Hour.”

As well, the Sphere Builders are diminished as well; they appear aboard the Enterprise in a disorganized and inefficient manner. With nine transdimensional beings aboard the Enterprise, there should have been no chance of the Enterprise succeeding. In fact, a minimal disruption in nine of the conduits from either the warp drive or deflector dish should have utterly destroyed the Enterprise; that the Sphere Builders utterly fail, despite suddenly manifesting energy weapons that blast from their hands and dematerializing transdimensional abilities that allow them to walk through walls and stick their hands into the power conduits.

While there are no bad performances in “Zero Hour,” there are no superlative acting moments either. Scott Bakula is downright dull as Archer; he presents Archer with no sense of consequence for his actions. The potential destruction of Earth is presented as blandly as possible by Bakula. Similarly, Sato is presented as entirely whiny – as opposed to traumatized – by Linda Park. Jeffrey Combs makes a powerful return to the program as Shran, which overshadows the emotional uncertainty Jolene Blalock plays as T’Pol. Most of the performances are pretty unimpressive, but the characters are not given much in the way to do to challenge the actors. Furthermore, the M.A.C.O.S. soldier who assists the assault on the Xindi weapon is not one of the ones who has been seen before, so his easily foreshadowed demise has absolutely no emotional impact.

Ultimately, “Zero Hour” finishes the arc of the third season of Star Trek: Enterprise in a thoroughly unremarkable way.

The three biggest gaffes in “Zero Hour:”
3. The Xindi use conduits that are far faster and more efficient than the StarFleet warp drive . . . so how did the Federation develop following “Zero Hour” to be the dominant power in the Quadrant?!,
2. The initial Federation seems larger than the Council seen in Star Trek IV: The Voyage Home (reviewed here!),
1. Tucker’s weapon against the Sphere is a deflector dish pulse; weaponizing the deflector dish did not happen until “The Best Of Both Worlds” (reviewed here!).

[Knowing that single episodes are an inefficient way to get episodes, it's worth looking into Star Trek: Enterprise - The Complete Third Season on DVD or Blu-Ray, which is also a better economical choice than buying individual episodes. Read my review of the penultimate season here!
Thanks!]

4.5/10

For other Star Trek episode and movie reviews, please visit my Star Trek Review Index Page!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Two Cool Accessories Does Not Adequately Sell The Commander Benjamin Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform Figure!

The Good: Good sculpt, Good coloring, Decent variety of accessories.
The Bad: Accessory coloring, Very overproduced, Very bland facial expression, Lacks skin depth and shading, No significant leg articulation
The Basics: The Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform is a decent display piece, but not a great action figure.


Sometimes, I find myself wondering just what the heck toy companies are thinking when I see the results of their work. In the case of the Playmates Toys Star Trek: Deep Space Nine toy line, there were some times when the manufacturer made some inexplicable choices. The Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform figure, for example, had knees that were articulated, but a groin socket joint that was not articulated. As a result, at best the figure could look vaguely like it was running (though Sisko would not be likely to run while in the dress uniform.

Commander Sisko, for those who were not tuned in to Star Trek: Deep Space Nine (reviewed here!), was the Commander and then the Captain of space station Deep Space Nine. He wore the Dress Uniform on occasions like meeting the Wadi in “Move Along Home” (reviewed here!). He very infrequently wore the Dress Uniform as the Commander and later as the Captain.

Basics

The Star Trek: Deep Space Nine 1995 Collection of action figures contained twelve figures and it was largely made up of guest characters and obscure variants of the command crew of Deep Space Nine. Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform is the human officer, looking just as he did when he was forced to dress up for important events. Sisko appears in his second release figure (there were two Siskos in the second line) as an pretty generic red-uniformed StarFleet officer in Dress Uniform. He is attired in his maroon and black StarFleet Dress uniform. This was one of the most common action figures in the assortment and it remains fairly easy to find even now. Still, card collectors helped keep this from being a complete pegwarmer as it features a SkyBox pog exclusive to the action figure, which made it hunted by trading card collectors as well.

The Commander Sisko figure is the human StarFleet officer as he appeared in the infrequent episodes where Sisko wore the Dress Uniform, with the maroon uniform and with hair on his head. Commander Sisko is attired in his dark red (for Command division) Dress Uniform. The outfit is colored appropriately, including the single open gold/black rank pip on the collar, though there is no physical distinction between the body of this Sisko and the Riker in Dress Uniform figure (from the Officers Collectors Set).

Standing four and three quarters inches tall, this is a decent likeness of Commander Sisko immortalized in plastic. The character is molded with his hands ready to hold most of his accessories in a half-closed position. His legs have a fairly straight-legged stance, so this figure stands up and looks like he is ready to be displayed, as opposed to an action pose which made some of the earlier Star Trek figures more problematic for posing in displays. Commander Sisko has good balance both on and off his stand, probably because he has so little leg articulation. There is a decent level of uniform detailing, including the communicator pin on the chest being both molded into the figure and then painted on. The sculpted details include such finer details as fingernails, but not knuckles.

Commander Sisko's face is molded in a bland, neutral expression that makes Sisko looks bored and kind of dull. This is apparently identical to other Sisko figures created in the first two lines as it has hair that is molded on, close-cropped. Sisko looks more like he is wearing a helmet than that he has hair.

The paint job is fair at best, especially for the face. The skin tones are monotonal brown with no shading or subtlety. The figure's lips are barely painted and they are an unrealistic shade of pink. As well, Sisko's eyes are black with white pupils, which is disturbing. On the body of the figure, the Star Trek: Deep Space Nine figures seem to have been rushed to market as there is nothing truly unique with this figure. As a result the bottoms of the pants lack the piping detail the actual uniform had.

Accessories

Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform comes with five accessories, including the base, one of which is unique to this figure. Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform comes with a StarFleet carrying case, DS9 monitor, 3-D Chess board, Saltah’na Clock and the base. The Action base is a StarFleet delta shield symbol with the name "SISKO" stuck on it with a cheap, black sticker. The center of the base has a peg which fits into the hole in either of Commander Sisko's feet! When Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform stands flatfooted on the stand, he is stable for balance and has a decent, neutral display appearance.

The StarFleet carrying case is a tube that may be slung nicely over the shoulder of the Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform figure. The tube was 1” long and 1/2” in diameter. It had a thin strap that makes the overall carrying case 2” tall. This is a monotonal navy blue accessory with a white StarFleet logo silk screened onto it. Outside its coloring, it fits the figure perfectly.

The DS9 Monitor is a 15/16” wide by 1 1/8” deep by 3/4” tall laptop computer accessory. These were seen on desks around Deep Space Nine and the screen on Sisko’s is a sticker that has an outline of Deep Space Nine on it. The monitor looks silly in Sisko’s hands.

The 3-D Chess Board is also intended for a nonexistent desktop. It’s a 1 13/16” tall chess board with four levels and a Knight piece on the top level. The board is monotonal blue, which is not at all realistic for the prop replica.

Unique to this figure is the Saltah’na Clock. The Saltah’na Clock was featured exclusively in the episode “Dramatis Personae” (reviewed here!). Commander Sisko built the Saltah’na Clock in that episode while under the influence of alien forces. The 1 3/16” long and wide by 1” tall three-plated clock looks exactly like the alien clock Sisko assembled, save that it is navy blue.

That is the unfortunate aspect of all four of Commander Sisko's accessories; they are molded in an unrealistic navy blue plastic which looks unlike what any of the props looked like on the show. Clearly Playmates went through some effort to sculpt the accessories realistically, but the coloring minimizes the sense of realism and clashes with the coloring of the figure. Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform is over-accessorized and with the lame coloring of the accessories, it is a bit of a drawback for the overall figure.

Even so, Playmates included a pog trading card unique to the figure from SkyBox which attracted trading card collectors to this figure in addition to toy collectors. The trading card has a shot of Sisko’s head over the wormhole. The back has a simple checklist of the figures that came with pogs.

Playability

Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform continued a generally high level quality from Playmates and he was quite good at the time, pleasing collectors and fans alike. Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform is appropriately stiff and has poor overall poseability. Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform is endowed with nine points of articulation: knees, biceps, elbows, shoulders, and neck. All of the joints, save the elbows and knees, are simple swivel joints. As a result, the neck turns left to right, but the head cannot nod. Similarly, the shoulders are not ball and socket joints and only rotate. Still, Playmates dealt with this limitation by having a swivel joint in the bicep, that allows everything below to turn and offers real decent poseability!

Moreover, for use with actual play, Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform may bend or extend at the elbows, which offers a greater amount of movement potential making him one of the more realistic Star Trek action figures to play with (for those who actually play with these toys!). On his base, Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform is exceptionally stable, though the legs do not move enough to offer real posing variety. Off the stand, the figure falls over exceptionally easily.

Collectibility

Playmates overproduced the second wave of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine figures and Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform was a slow seller of the assortment. Commander Sisko had two different renditions in the second assortment and the Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform was still a pegwarmer. As a result, he has not appreciated at all in value since his initial release almost twenty years ago.

That said, at least Playmates tried to make the figures collectible. Each figure has an individual number on the bottom of his right foot. In the attempt to make them appear limited, they had numbers stamped on them, though one has to seriously wonder how limited something should be considered when there are at least 41000 figures out there (my Commander Sisko is #040463!).

Overview

The Commander Sisko In StarFleet Dress Uniform figure was not terribly flexible, but even though the accessories were poorly colored, they fit the figure surprisingly well (in terms of content, if not playability). This figure gets a very weak “recommend” from me as it is a bland toy.

For other figures from this same series of Star Trek: Deep Space Nine figures, please check out my reviews of:
Chief Miles Edward O’Brien In StarFleet Duty Uniform
Lieutenant Thomas Riker
Doctor Julian Bashir In StarFleet Duty Uniform
Jake Sisko
Rom and Nog
The Tosk
Q
Vedek Bareil

5.5/10

For other Star Trek toy reviews, please visit my Star Trek Toy Review Index Page for an organized listing.

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Ultra-Chocolatey: Sheila G’s Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle Might Be Broken, But It’s Good!

The Good: Affordable, Good ingredients, Good company! Flavorful
The Bad: Packaging does not protect the Brownie Brittle AT ALL! Not especially nutritious
The Basics: Sheila G’s Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle might not thrill those who love caramel, or who want cookies that are intact, but it is surprisingly flavorful and worth trying!


Having recently received the entire product line from Sheila G’s and it is worth saying up front in my review of their Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle that the company is good. The people there are friendly and they seem to be committed to making a quality product. The Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle is a good product that is entirely diminished by the packaging. In the bag I was sent directly from the factory, there was only one unbroken piece of Brownie Brittle and there half an ounce (1/8th of the package!) of Brownie Brittle as crumbs.

The final flavor of Brownie Brittle from Sheila G’s for me to review (at least until they introduce a new flavor!) is the Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle. Brownie Brittle is essentially a cookie; those who associate gooey softness with brownies will be shocked by the Brownie Brittle; these treats are much closer to being cookies, thin and crispy, than they are like brownies. One of the serious detractions to buying Sheila G’s Brownie Brittle in the stores is the packaging; while I love resealable packages, the type of bag that the Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle comes in does not adequately protect the product so consumers get the most out of it. That at least one-eighth of the package sent directly from the factory was crumbs illustrates well the severe weakness of their packaging. It is harder to endorse the product knowing that consumers are likely to get less than their money’s worth out of a bag (thanks to breakage).

That said, the Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle tastes wonderful and is possibly the most chocolatey Brownie Brittle Sheila G’s makes.

Basics

Redefining the nature of traditional brownies, Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle are 1/8" thick and, when unbroken, they are 2 1/2” long by 2” wide rectangular “chips” (or cookies). Each piece of Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle is fairly rough on both sides, like the bottom of a brownie that has been very much overcooked to solidify with the bubbles from the batter. Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle comes in a 4 oz. bag. According to the nutrition facts, a serving of Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle is one ounce, 28 grams and there are four servings per container. Measuring out this bag was virtually impossible from the breakage. I had to weigh out the Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle and I got three and a half very, very broken up servings and another half-ounce of just pulverized crumbs.

For those who have never had Brownie Brittle before, Brownie Brittle are flat, hard chips that are similar to bagel chips. Moisture - or saliva - dissolves Brownie Brittle on the tongue. They are more like a thin cookie than a soft, chewy brownie and in even from the well-protected bag sent directly from the company, the vast majority of the pieces of Brownie Brittle were broken up bits. The Salted Caramel Brownie Bites have the actual caramel chips embedded in the tops of the Brownie Brittle. They actually look like they are melted onto the tops. Some of the pieces have as few as one caramel chip, some as many as eight!

Ease Of Preparation

Unlike making brownies from scratch, Brownie Brittle is easy to prepare. Simply open the resealable bag and remove four pieces (if there are that many not broken up into tiny pieces in the bag) and consume. There is no other preparation needed; this is a ready-to-eat product. As one who absolutely loves the end of cereal (cereal crumbs), I found a certain delight in taking the crumbs at the bottom of the bag, adding milk to it and eating it like cereal crumbs! This flavor is like eating the bottom of a bowl of Cocoa Puffs!

Taste

Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle smells just like fresh-baked brownies. The aroma is strong and distinct and there is no hint of anything to the scent these brownie brittle pieces emit except for chocolate and cocoa. The scent is inviting and familiar to anyone who loves brownies.

On the taste front, the Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle is intensely chocolatey. The top of each has a tang of saltiness that manages to accent the chocolate beautifully. The salty accent comes from the bits of caramel and the hard chips of caramel carry the salty, slightly buttery flavor over the chocolate. The blending makes for a dry, powerfully chocolate cookie flavor that is recognizable and delicious.

The caramel cuts some of the dryness of the cookie, though it makes the chocolate of the brownie seem like it is made of a darker chocolate. The flavors blend perfectly and the ultimate flavor that the Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle finishes with is a dark chocolate flavor; like super-concentrated, dry, chocolate. This is not at all unpleasant, but the caramel flavor is definitely more subtle than prominent; it accents the chocolate flavor as opposed to augmenting the Brownie Brittle with a strong flavor of its own.

Nutrition

Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle is a baked sweet, so one ought not to be living off it. The Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle pieces are made primarily of sugar, enriched bleached wheat flour, and cocoa. There are, surprisingly, no unidentifiable ingredients in this food product and nothing that seems at all artificial (in fact, this is one of the few mass-produced product I have reviewed where the ingredients list reads more like a recipe than a chemical equation!). The bag of Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle carries an allergy warning for wheat, eggs, soy, and milk. It is also noted that this Brownie Brittle was made on machinery that also processes tree nuts.

Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle has 120 calories per serving, 35 of which are from fat, though it is very tough to stick with the somewhat nebulous serving size of 28 grams. The 4 grams of fat represent 6% of the recommended daily value of fat and 5% of the daily recommended saturated fat; there are no trans fats in this Brownie Brittle. As well, there are 115 milligrams of sodium and 14 grams of sugars (21 total grams of carbohydrates). There is a gram of protein and 4% of one’s RDA of Iron in a serving of Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle, but there are no other real nutrients in these.

These are not nutritious, but have nothing bad in them, so they make for a healthier sweet snack, though they are not Vegan compliant.

Storage/Clean-up

The Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle stores just fine in its bag, breakage aside, and as long as they are kept in a cool, dry (preferably dark) place it ought to last for a few months. The bag I received a couple of days ago, directly from the company bore a November 1, 2014 expiration date.

Unless one really crunches down sloppily on these, cleanup ought not to be an issue. The Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle generates a ton of crumbs, but they are pretty easy to clean up.

Overall

Sheila G’s Salted Caramel Brownie Brittle are flavorful and chocolatey, but not a great value because of how much breakage the bags encourage. Those who want a delicious chocolate cookie will find these are a decent treat!

For other Sheila G’s products, please be sure to visit my reviews of:
Toffee Crunch Brownie Brittle
Mint Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle
Chocolate Chip Brownie Brittle

7/10

For other food or drink reviews, please visit my Food And Drink Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |

Decent Lyrics Cannot Save Joni Mitchell's Ladies Of The Canyon From Mediocrity!

The Good: Good lyrics, General voice, Soothing sound
The Bad: Homogenous vocals and instrumentals end up bland upon repetition, Short!
The Basics: Joni Mitchell presents a musically unimpressive album that has a few wonderful lyrics and an impressive -if repetitive- vocal range with Ladies Of The Canyon.


I'm beginning to feel like I might have liked Joni Mitchell a whole lot better if I had started with one of her Greatest Hits albums because, so far, having listened to Song To A Seagull (reviewed here!) and now Ladies Of The Canyon (I have another I've been listening to, too) I have been strongly underwhelmed by the singer-songwriter. Actually, while I find myself disappointed by the music and the general straightforward and boring vocals, Joni Mitchell continues to impress me as a songwriter. Lyrically, Ladies Of The Canyon is all right, the problem is how the lyrics are presented.

With twelve tracks clocking in at exactly forty-five minutes, Ladies Of The Canyon is very much the work of Joni Mitchell. She composed and arranged the album, as well as provided the primary vocals, guitar and piano. All of the songs were written by Joni Mitchell. She did not produce the album, but it does seem likely that she was heavily involved in the creative process at that level as well. Regardless, with so much of the lyrics, instrumentals and vocals falling under her pen, it seems reasonable to call this Joni Mitchell's creative endeavor.

The problem is, it is boring. Vocally, musically, this is a surprisingly dull album; it is limited in sound and scope and it literally came down to the toss of a coin for the "recommend" I ultimately gave it. Ladies Of The Canyon is hampered by tracks that sound similar to one another and a lack of musical and vocal diversity that makes listening to the album - especially over and over again - a less enjoyable experience than it ought to be. If one has heard other works of hers, and in my case coming right off Song To A Seagull probably did not help, the album suffers even more because there is no real growth between the albums. Had Mitchell combined this album with another when it was converted to a compact disc format, it might have given it greater value to make it worth the investment.

As it is, Joni Mitchell presents a very straightforward folk-light rock album with Ladies Of The Canyon and as a result, the album lives with the conceits of the folk-rock genre and comes close to dying on the limitations of a solo artist in that same genre. Well known for being less produced than rock and roll and especially pop-rock, folk rock is especially limited when presented by an artist who is not careful and very skilled.

So, for example, "Conversation" begins with a remarkably similar straightforward guitar strumming and tune as "Big Yellow Taxi." Despite almost completely different tempos of the vocals, the instrumentals and the latter's more melody-based theme, both ultimately have the same general feel and sound because of the strong, generic guitar strumming that recalls the other. Similarly, "Morning Morgantown" and "The Circle Game" have similar tunes and instrumentals.

The only real musical surprise that is pleasant in the instrumentals is the appearance of the clarinet at the end of "For Free." After a rather placid and predictable tune that follows the same format as the rest of the album (I have it on constant rotation, so despite it being the second song on the album, this phrase applies) the vocals cut out and a new instrument breaks out and it is euphoric to hear because it is so different from the rest of the album.

Ladies Of The Canyon is a fairly slow album with almost all of the instrumentals carrying slow, ponderous music. "Willy" blends almost seamlessly into "The Arrangement" via the contemplative and almost mournful piano in both songs. It seems like only "Big Yellow Taxi" and "The Circle Game" dare to crank up the tempo and even then, "The Circle Game" only truly breaks out of the tempo rut when it is presenting the chorus.

Yes, this is a slow album and it is more narcolepsy-inducing than intimate in its lack of tempo. The slow pace translates into a lack of pep on the album and it makes it hard to listen to more than once at a time.

That said, the instrumentals are almost outdone in their blandness by the vocals. This is one of the stranger musical arguments to make, yet here it is. On Ladies Of The Canyon, Joni Mitchell displays incredible vocal range. She is a comfortable soprano who goes high and clear on songs like Ladies Of The Canyon and "Willy" and she can go into the alto range and lower, like on "The Priest." Mitchell's excellence of vocal range even appears within songs. In "Big Yellow Taxi," near the very end, she plummets from notes in the soprano range down into tenor range and she does it with an effortless quality that is impressive.

In an academic sense, Mitchell's voice and vocal range is truly impressive. The problem with the album is that all the leaps and range changes sound identical to the others. On "Blue Boy," Mitchell starts high as a soprano and as the song becomes more of a musical story, she lowers her range in exactly the same way she presents "Willy" and "The Arrangement." Come to think of it, her formula on the album Ladies Of The Canyon seems to be just that; she starts high (if she's presenting high range vocals) and then as the song becomes more of a story in the lyrics, she slips to a more "conversational" vocal range where the lines may be heard clearer and at a slightly faster tempo than the more showy pitches she begins the tracks at.

The effect is, it almost sounds like Mitchell becomes tired singing high and just devolves in a bored fashion to the more safe vocal ranges. This is, of course, not likely what is actually happening, but the sound of the album with track after track presented in the same vocal formula, makes one think that it could be what is going on.

The exception is the oft-covered "Big Yellow Taxi," which starts Mitchell out in the lower vocal ranges right in the middle of a musical story and it works. What doesn't work are some of the higher range notes in "Woodstock." "Woodstock," I actually recognized when I heard it from an episode of Six Feet Under called "Back In The Garden" from the second season (reviewed here!), and near the end of the song, Mitchell returns to the higher ranges for lyricless vocalizations that unfortunately become atonal and her voice breaks a couple of times. It is the only example of truly poor vocal choices on the album, but the sound of the compelling song becomes unpleasant.

Ultimately, what drags the album Ladies Of The Canyon up into the "average" territory and earns it one of the weakest "recommends" I have given out lately, are the lyrics. Joni Mitchell is an able musical storyteller and she sings some wonderful songs on this album. "Big Yellow Taxi," the classic that reminds us "Don't it always seems to go / That you don't know what you've got / Till it's gone / They paved paradise / And put up a parking lot" is often covered because it is a wonderful song! Moreover, it has a timeless message that is resonating even today (and will likely continue to resonate for decades yet).

But songs like "The Circle Game" where Mitchell tells a complete musical story - in this case the aging of a child into an adult - illustrate an amazing ability in Joni Mitchell's songwriting talents. She has a wonderful sense of poetics and storytelling and opening a song with wonderful picturesque descriptions like, "Yesterday a child came out to wonder / Caught a dragonfly inside a jar / Fearful when the sky was full of thunder / And tearful at the falling of a star" ("The Circle Game"). Indeed, despite some of the predictable rhymes in the song, it is an amazing track based on the imagery, poetics and story.

Mitchell presents a number of songs about not quite fitting or the melancholy of life on Ladies Of The Canyon, so it's not much of an upper album, but it is consistent. And lyrically, it is impressive that such a young artist could create so many musical stories; one wishes there were more, even if they had continued to sound as much like the others as the tracks on the album already did.

Those who like very classic folk rock or - seriously - need pleasant-sounding music to put themselves or children to sleep with - will want to pick up Ladies Of The Canyon. I suspect, for the rest of us, that the best tracks appear on some of her compilations alongside more musically diverse songs.

The best track is "The Circle Game" (though admittedly, that has a very personal connection for me as it was played at a loved-one's funeral, so I'm not exactly unbiased on this one) and the weak point is "The Arrangement," which leaves even less impression than most of the rest of the album.

For other, former, Artist Of The Month reviews, please check out:
“Jackie’s Strength” (single) – Tori Amos
Any Day Now - Joan Baez
MTV Unplugged - 10,000 Maniacs

5/10

For other music reviews, please visit my Music Review Index Page for an organized listing!

© 2014, 2008 W.L. Swarts. May not be reprinted without permission.
| | |