Are you Americanized if you have to look up how much 150 milliliter is in cups?

A while ago we bought an electric grill. I use it on the balcony and it's great as it gives a real grilling flavor, and it's much nicer to grill food outside.

Tonight we had kebabs from Whole Foods: chicken with bell peppers and onions. Delicious, but 1 kebab is too much for 1 person. I made some Indonesian peanut sauce on the side.

By the way, 150 milliliter is slightly over 0.6 cups.

The Saturday evening screening of the Full Frame Festival last week was The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On, a 1987 movie by Japanese director Kazuo Hara. Sasha and I saw it in the Fletcher Hall in the Carolina theater.

This was truly an amazing documentary, about the search for answers in a war-crime case by Kenzo Okuzaki. As the New York Times put it in a great review (written in 1988):

"From everything the audience sees, Kenzo Okuzaki is a certifiable psychotic, though The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On never addresses this suspicion. He's the sort of fellow who writes long, crazily incoherent letters to editors, confronts people on street corners and harangues them with a loudspeaker from his van. It could be that Mr. Hara thinks the psychotic state is the only sane response to the contradictions in contemporary Japanese society."

Kenzo Okuzaki frequently uses violence and threats of violence to get the truth out the people he interviews, and at times it's easy to forget that this is an actual real-life documentary.

The movie was screened at the Full Festival in the "The Power Of Ten" series, a recommendation by film maker Michael Moore. The Q&A session with director Kazuo Hara after the movie was very interesting.

Michael Moore said he saw the movie when he was making his first major documentary, Roger and Me. While filming that he was somewhat concerned he was too harsh in his methods, but he joked that after seeing The Emperor's Naked Army Marches On he felt he was well within limits.

Mr. Hara said that after Kenzo Okuzaki came out of jail there was some talk about a follow up documentary but that Mr. Hara decided against it, because he feared that it would push Mr. Okuzaki over the border of sanity, an honorable choice.

The least interesting movie of the festival was Helvetica, a documentary about the font Helvetica.

The topic "Helvetica" was an nice choice and the movie maker found a lot of different angles to talk about the font. But that was exactly the problem: the movie consisted of nothing but talking heads and this got really boring after the first 30 minutes.

A number of the interviewees were Dutch. In the 1950s Dutch artists used Helvetica in their work and the documentary had interviews with them and footage of Amsterdam.

Gary Hustwit, the film's maker was at the screening, and I feel a bit bad for not liking the documentary. He seemed like a nice guy, and he said he "spent every free minute and very available dollar on the documentary".

The Full Frame Festival had a number of documentaries on the American South. The first of the two I saw was Banished, a film by Marco Williams on ethnic cleansing in the late 1800's and early 1900's in the United States.

Some of the cities where these "banishments" occurred a 100 years ago are still all-white, and Mr. Williams visits those cities with decedents of the black people that were expelled from their homes. It is dumbfounding to see the Confederate flag flying on public buildings in 2007.

The interviews with the Klan members are gripping enough ("no, I wouldn't want a black person to live next doors. I believe we have a valuable legacy to protect") but as a historian in the film points out, the real scary part is the attitude of the general population in some towns: "No Sir, the Klan is here because they feel welcome here".

See also http://www.banishedthefilm.com.

Today I visited the Eno River State Park for the first time. The park is about 15 minutes away from our house, closer than the Umstead Park.

I spent 3,5 hours walking the various trails in the park. The weather was great and it's a beautiful park, with the Eno River and various creeks flowing through it.

At one point the trail crossed a creek and there was no bridge -- I jumped from stone to stone to get to the other side (no, I didn't fall).

The entrance of the park.

Spring flower near the Eno River.

Wood.

Turtles enjoying the sun.

An old house in the woods.

The trail is flooded by a creek.

When I came closer I saw that there were stones that I could use to cross the creek.

Start of the Shakori trail.

The main feature after A Son's Sacrifice was A Table In Heaven, a documentary about the Maccioni family that runs the famous La Cirque restaurant in New York.

The documentary gives a very personal insight in the life of the Maccioni family, and their work to re-open the La Cirque restaurant in a new location in New York. The film maker was able to film private moments of the family, while they are living their life -- laughing, arguing, working and discussing all the details of the new restaurant.

My personal favorite scenes were when Mr. Sirio Maccioni, the founder of the restaurant, visits his son in Las Vegas who operates a successful La Cirque branch there. The son tells his kids: "keep the house tidy while grandpa is here!". When he later shows his father an elaborate Excel sheet with a business plan, the father ignores him and you can see the generation gap and differences in approaches.

The father and son from the movie were at the Q&A session, together with the Andrew Rossi, the director of the documentary. The director said that the he started working with the family in October 2004, and this afternoon was the first time the father and son saw the movie ("I am still stressed").

It was nice to see the main characters in real life, and it makes your realize again that this not a fiction movie but a real documentary. A funny question from the audience: "Do you still have the same real estate agent and does he still advice you on your regular business also?" The real estate agent the lady referred to can be seen in the film advising the family on restaurant matters, almost as a consigliere.

Honestly, I had not heard of the La Cirque restaurant before, but the film gives some background on how Mr. Maccioni grew the restaurant to the place to be seen. When the family had a grand reopening at the new location, an incredible amount of celebrities paid a visit. When Mr. Maccioni couldn't decide between 2 locations to open the new restaurant, he followed the advice from a regular guest, Henry Kissinger.

It was a good decision of Full Frame to show these 2 movies, both about family businesses, together.