You Can't Lose If You Don't Play

I LOVE NEW YORK. Last night I had the oppor-tunity to take the matter up with someone who professed the opposite, and with every turn, he seemed to have to admit that any grounds for NOT loving New York-- the crowds, the noise, the smells-- and OH, are there smells-- can be caveatted. This, for instance, is a pastrami on rye from the Stage Deli at 47th and Broadway, ingredients for which the Wifey brought back for me at the conclusion of her trip yesterday. They packed it all as componentry-- bread, meat, mustard, pickles-- and there was enough meat that I was able to have one for a late lunch yesterday afternoon, and then cobble one together with Arnold rye and some Ploughman's Polish mustard. I love New York. A pastrami on rye from the Stage Deli is a pure, bold truth. You cannot convince me otherwise.

This is not the film of the day, although it could have been. I watched this over a week ago, and thought almost instantly I could review it in two words: good enough. Which describes everything: the script, the direction, the acting, the characters, the dialogue. It's all good enough. Especially the characters. With one single exception, this film is populated with people who mean well in the Carlinian sense. (And the one who didn't mean well was so sharply drawn that I winced just about every time she came on screen, before even a single line of dialogue was spoken.) It had the unmistakable feel of a faked up real world, one that has been fiddled and jiggered with so that everyone comes out just all right, having made sacrifices to do so, sure, but all right nonetheless. But see, that's not really a criticism. It's a summation. And all it really tells you about the movie is that it's easy to watch. The only other thing I have to add requires a quick explanation. We are fond of saying, in our household, of various actors, "I'd watch So-And-So (insert mundane task here)." I would never thought to have said it, but I have now watched Paul Giamatti plunge a toilet, and it's the only piece of acting I have ever seen him do that struck me as gimmicky.

This is the film of the day. It popped into rotation a coupla weeks ago, and I knew sooner or later I'd get around to it. And, as predicted-- as I predicted, back when this came out in theaters and was an instant Oscar buzz-- it couldn't help but be compelling, given the subject matter. Here's something that doesn't get said enough: the royalties of Europe, all of them, gave Germany every opportunity not to wage war, but Hitler was bound and determined to do so, and utterly convinced that the inevitable outcome would be the conquest of the globe by the German armies. That bastard was crazy.

Anyways. The major knock against this when it hit theaters was that there were parts that were probably not completely accurate, which is kind of a bum rap, because those bits would have happened behind closed doors and would not have been recorded for posterity. And also that the speech therapist in question may have been more charlatan than scientist, but I never got hold of anything that substantiated that-- or, frankly, disproved it either, which is odd. But this was a good enough entertainment for a lunchtime. Which is an odd thing, too. Given the source material. Towards the end, I found myself thinking "You know what would go down nicely after this? A Fish Called Wanda." (You know, because of Michael Palin's beautiful stutter job.) Yeah. That kind of sums it up.
So while I am sure that no one reading this could have any doubts as to my recommendation regarding the sandwich-- oh, and by the way, starting with the boho black and finishing with the IPA worked splendidly as well-- I am equally sure that you can figure out my recommendations regarding the films. Which is: meh. You could get it at the grocery store and do as well.