Yipes! Is it really nine months since our last date?
Lea and I went out tonight for dinner and a movie. We went back to Surin and ordered exactly all of the same things we did the last time, but our chocolate martinis, though still reasonably tasty, were not at all what we had last time. That was a big part of the reason Lea wanted to return, so that was a little disappointing. Otherwise it was a great meal.
Next up was Appaloosa. Lea first suggested we see it together a couple of weeks ago. Westerns aren’t my favorite, but I’ll watch and enjoy anything that’s well-acted, and the cast looked promising. (We did wind 
up watching it two hours later than we planned because dinner took just a little bit too long for us to catch the earlier showing.)
It’s a nice, solid steak and baked potato of a film. You’ve eaten it all before, but it’s a damned fine cut of meat, and it’s expertly prepared. It’s full of well-crafted characters saying and doing well-crafted things. The sets are marvelous, as is the camera work. There are no wasted scenes.
I’m going to pick at it for one thing, though. This might be the most trivially-rated R film I’ve ever seen. The tip-it-over content was easily omissible (a handful of “fuck”s, basically; I think the brief and faraway shot of Renée Zellweger’s bare bottom would have flown in a PG-13).
And that’s what it should have been rated (for violence and language). The art of this film would not have suffered a tenth of a percent, and an audience open enough to include unescorted 13-year-olds would have been a good thing (given a lot of the other fare pitched their way).
We made excellent use of six hours tonight.
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Best chocolate martini I’ve had in this lifetime was served to me here:
http://www.sceneatmonaco.com/home.asp
My liver and I don’t make this recommendation lightly.
The chocolate martini we had the time before was like a milkshake with booze – I could not shut up about it. I didn’t have any problem knocking that sucker back, either. This one was clear and tasted a little like chocolate and a lot like booze. So, I left about $4.50 of a $9.00 martini on the table. I was VERY disappointed. I don’t think it was what we ordered. I think the waiter got confused and brought us the wrong thing (maybe a traditional chocolate martini instead of the specialty one).
I enjoyed the movie, though. Jeremy Irons is such a good bad guy. I thought Ed Harris and Viggo Mortensen made convincing cowboys, too. It was a nice mix of bad ass when it came to business but goofy boys when it came to women / emotions. I wasn’t blown away by Renee Zellweger in this, though. I really like her, too. So, I was kind of disappointed that her performance seemed so flat to me. I agree with Bo’s “steak and potato” assesment. You kind of knew what you were going to get but it was done well enough that I enjoyed it.