Since we last talked, we’ve seen seven more movies and reached the halfway point of our stay. Actually I think wondering how sleeping on the same sheets for another five nights would be kept me up a bit last night. Or maybe it was that late afternoon iced coffee at Balzac’s.
We’ve been walking a lot, 6 and 7 miles a day, and seeing a lot of late movies getting back to the apartment at like 11:30/12:00. After our extremely nice brunch with Ethan Hawke on Sunday, we walked over to the Saint Lawrence Market stopping to visit the cows by the Mies buildings. It was a bit late in the day for the market, but we walked around and admired foods and bought a couple of apples and some grapes. Then we took the subway up to the Whole Foods that’s mere steps from the apartment and bought a salad to eat for dinner with our leftover Tutti Matti pizza. Which was still quite good.
The cows
The first of those late movies was Poetic License on Sunday night, about a forty-something woman who’s auditing a poetry workshop at the university where her husband has just taken a job, and starts hanging out with two twenty-somethings from the class. The Guardian liked it, declaring it good enough to overcome any charges of nepotism, with Maude Apatow directing her mother, Leslie Mann, with a cast including other children of the famous, like Cooper Hoffman, the son of Philip Seymour Hoffman, and Nico Parker who we only knew from This Is Us who also has parents in the movie biz. I was pretty drowsy at the beginning so missed some of the set up, but didn’t really feel the lack, although I might try to watch it when it gets to streaming where I expect it soon. My main problem with it was while I did see chemistry between the poetry class trio, especially the two boys, I didn’t see much between Leslie Mann’s character and her husband, played by Cliff “Method Man” Smith. But, judging from the number of “Wu-Tang Clan is Forever” yard signs I see in my college town neighborhoods, I guess he was a good choice for the part.
Monday began with Eternal Return at the fancy Princess of Wales theater. I took a bunch of pictures of the fancy bathroom with waterfall sinks and starry tile; I’ve always meant to and not sure I’ve done it before.
The reviews of Eternal Return aren’t that great – more fantasy than substance, thin characters – but we liked it a lot, especially Mark, who says the first 30 minutes set up section of the movie is possibly the best thing he’s seen in years. And I really liked watching Kit Harrington as the reserved cartographer love interest, the anti-Jon Snow. When asked how he felt about getting Harrington to act in his movie the director sais, “Isn’t he beautiful?” Yes. I also really liked the whole conceit of paying attention to your premonitions, even if it worked better when you were a kid.
After Eternal Return, we squeezed in Tuner, about a former child prodigy pianist with perfect pitch played by Leo Woodall, who’s got a hearing disability where he can’t stand loud noises. So rather than a career playing music he’s working as a piano tuner in his much older relative (or long time family friend) Harry’s business, said older relative played by Dustin Hoffman. It’s described as rom-com meets thriller and that’s about right, because Leo Woodall’s character Nicky gets involved with some security company thieves who employ him to put his perfect pitch to work cracking safes. Niki has a love interest, played by Havana Rose Liu, and their scenes are charming, but I thought the chemistry between Harry & Nicky even better. They even got Herbie Hancock to appear in a cameo.
Panel after Tuner – Hoffman, Woodall, Liu, Feldshu, a couple of writers or producers whose names I did not get, and the director, Daniel Roher
I haven’t been doing so great at taking pics of food, but I have taken lots of pics of coffee.
-
- Hot Black, Monday afternoon
-
- Balzac’s at the public library, Monday morning
-
- Another view of Balzac’s at the public library, Monday morning
-
- Hot Black Tuesday morning
-
- Balzac’s Wednesday morning where I started this post
After Tuner, we found a sandwich place called Vero that made sandwiches on big sheets of focacccia and bought two to bring back to the AirBNB for dinner. One with mortadella for me and one with turkey and ham for Mark. We took the street car and got off at Spadina Station, which is an underground stop that transfers to the subway. We came up out of the station, stopped to get a bag of chips to go with the sandwiches, and thus turned around we started walking west instead of east. I couldn’t figure out why if we were walking east the sun was still in my eyes the way it had been when were walking west to the sandwich shop, so after a couple of blocks I pulled put my phone compass and we got turned the right way. We were almost to Hot Docs, a theater we’d been to a few times at past TIFFs, hence our somewhat familiarity with the neighborhood.TIFF doesn’t use it anymore. We brought the sandwiches back to the apartment and ate them while watching some of our Sunday PBS shows, Professor T and Marlowe Mystery Club.
Our late movie Monday was Black Rabbit, actually the first two episodes of an eight-episode Netflix series, Jude Law and Jason Bateman as brothers. Both are struggling in their own way. Jude Law’s character Jake looks to be in better shape, since he’s running a popular nightclub called the Black Rabbit that’s so Brooklyn you can see the bridge from outside, but he’s in hoc to his eyeballs while dreaming of expanding. The Rabbit serves a $50 burger with a marrow bone stuck in the middle of it, and has an upstairs VIP bar. We first meet Jason Bateman’s character trying to sell his late dad’s coin collection to two guys outside a coin collecting convention in (I think) Vegas. The interaction goes awry and he heads back to Brooklyn where we eventually find out he owes something $140,000 in gambling debts. I think I will watch the rest of the series on Netflix, Mark maybe not.
So that’s up to Monday, which is so far looking like the best movie day to me..
Tuesday our first movie was Guillermo del Toro’s Frankenstein. It was quite fun to look at, but didn’t add anything new to the Frankenstein story. I thought there were some interesting design choices. The coffins were kind of ceramic sarcophagi with the dead person’s face visible for the procession to the grave then finally closed with a ceramic death mask before interment. Mia Goth and some of the other ladies got gauzy scarves to wear in bright colors, red and green and turquoise, that I really don’t think were in style in 1850s Austria. And like all the other versions the best part is when you get to the monster’s story. Friends.
I think this is Frankenstein’s mother’s coffin, the first that you see in the film
Frankenstein’s mother in a bright red gauzy scarf
Mia Goth in a green one
Before Frankenstein, we had coffee at Hot Black, pics above. The day before (or maybe Sunday) I took a bunch of pictures of their succulents in the back seating area.
And one of them is the current blog banner. Our Tuesday visit to Hot Black wasn’t quite as pleasant as some of our other trips because we were sitting next to a couple of guys talking movie production, kind of loudly, making it hard for us to talk about anything. Or even think. We decided we were not interested in one of the movies one of the guys was shopping, Honey Bunch, though we had both looked at it when compiling out initial lists. And we also got a cup of yogurt and granola that we did not notice was actually sheep milk yogurt. The funk of the sheep milk just tasted bad to us, although we both are happily eating the big chunk of Manchego cheese I bought at Costco for my birthday and that’s sheep.
After Frankenstein we found a real diner for breakfast, Avenue Open Kitchen. I didn’t take any pictures and I guess I’ll tell you about in the next post. And the other two movies we saw Tuesday, with gelato in between, Novelle Vague and Swiped.