Absinthe, like ouzo and all other relatives, is best when tinkered with.
I had assumed the sugar was to cut the bitterness, or soften it. It does no such thing: louched absinthe is not perceptibly sweeter, but it is much more flavorful. I approved of this discovery.
Cachaça is a stealth bomber. Caipirinha, made of cachaça, sugar and crushed whole limes, goes down smooth as silk -- until you try to stand up.
Will keep this in mind. I saw it's the national cocktail of Brazil; I will see if I can get Viking Zen to make me one.
For one, it condemns Edward not for the right reasons (he was a Nazi panderer) but for the wrong ones (he wanted to marry a commoner who might like sex instead of keeping her as his mistress).
I didn't have that much of a problem with the presentation of David/Edward, since his most immediate relevance to his brother's story is his knack for getting out of his responsibilities, a state which he secures permanently with his marriage to Wallis; it is in some ways immaterial whether he is pro- or anti-Nazi, because the implications of that question belong to a world in which he has no interest, except insofar as it allows him the privileges he likes.1 That said, I wouldn't have minded more politics in the film overall; it could only have enhanced the audience's understanding of the pressures on Bertie, especially since some of what we now take as idiotically obvious in hindsight (appeasement: a bad idea) was by no means so clear-cut at the time (nearly everyone, I'm looking at you). And Timothy Spall was great casting for Churchill, but he doesn't work. Everyone else is a character; he's a cartoon. And this is not his story; it won't be until 1940. I know it's courting heresy to make a film about World War II without Winston—and his own speech impediment is the nice kind of historical filip that can't be made up—but I'd have left him somewhere back in the second draft, along with that really clever bit of dialogue that went nowhere. He may be the single real misstep the film makes for me, because of all the historical revisions that drag in his wake.
For just the scenes between Lionel and Bertie, I still think David Seidler deserved his Oscar. They are so zinc-sharp and strong, I've wondered if the play actually started life as a two-hander, just a speech therapist and his patient in a shabby consulting room. If so, I wouldn't mind seeing a stage production someday.
1. I find myself almost curious about some of the older depictions of the abdiction, when it was still considered a grand romantic gesture rather than an international catastrophe narrowly averted, but I'm not sure that almost is ever going to resolve into actually. There is an upcoming film, in any case.
no subject
I had assumed the sugar was to cut the bitterness, or soften it. It does no such thing: louched absinthe is not perceptibly sweeter, but it is much more flavorful. I approved of this discovery.
Cachaça is a stealth bomber. Caipirinha, made of cachaça, sugar and crushed whole limes, goes down smooth as silk -- until you try to stand up.
Will keep this in mind. I saw it's the national cocktail of Brazil; I will see if I can get Viking Zen to make me one.
For one, it condemns Edward not for the right reasons (he was a Nazi panderer) but for the wrong ones (he wanted to marry a commoner who might like sex instead of keeping her as his mistress).
I didn't have that much of a problem with the presentation of David/Edward, since his most immediate relevance to his brother's story is his knack for getting out of his responsibilities, a state which he secures permanently with his marriage to Wallis; it is in some ways immaterial whether he is pro- or anti-Nazi, because the implications of that question belong to a world in which he has no interest, except insofar as it allows him the privileges he likes.1 That said, I wouldn't have minded more politics in the film overall; it could only have enhanced the audience's understanding of the pressures on Bertie, especially since some of what we now take as idiotically obvious in hindsight (appeasement: a bad idea) was by no means so clear-cut at the time (nearly everyone, I'm looking at you). And Timothy Spall was great casting for Churchill, but he doesn't work. Everyone else is a character; he's a cartoon. And this is not his story; it won't be until 1940. I know it's courting heresy to make a film about World War II without Winston—and his own speech impediment is the nice kind of historical filip that can't be made up—but I'd have left him somewhere back in the second draft, along with that really clever bit of dialogue that went nowhere. He may be the single real misstep the film makes for me, because of all the historical revisions that drag in his wake.
For just the scenes between Lionel and Bertie, I still think David Seidler deserved his Oscar. They are so zinc-sharp and strong, I've wondered if the play actually started life as a two-hander, just a speech therapist and his patient in a shabby consulting room. If so, I wouldn't mind seeing a stage production someday.
1. I find myself almost curious about some of the older depictions of the abdiction, when it was still considered a grand romantic gesture rather than an international catastrophe narrowly averted, but I'm not sure that almost is ever going to resolve into actually. There is an upcoming film, in any case.