Movie Mania: from the theatre to your bed

Last December, D. and I went to see Mission Impossible: Ghost Protocol in IMAX just so D. could see the first six minutes of the new Batman movie The Dark Knight Rises. A few nights before that at 10 pm., D. had gone to the same IMAX theatre at the Scotiabank movie theatre in downtown Montreal to watch just the first six minutes, and then get up and leave. He told me there were people dressed up as Batman, people dressed up as the Joker, and someone dressed as Robin - all for six minutes. D. is so into the director Christopher Nolan that seeing the first six minutes of the Dark Knight Rises was worth seeing twice. (Unsurprisingly, D. obviously went to the midnight show of Batman when it opened last week, and then we saw it on Friday night, and then he saw it again with his brothers on Sunday. That's 3 times in 3 days.)



I like that kind of devotion. I like people who love directors and certain movies so much they have to see the first six minutes, or they have to go to the midnight showing the day (or rather the night before) it opens. I like people who dress up as Batman (or as pirates which L. told me she and her friends did in a movie theatre in Dallas when Pirates of the Caribbean came out 9 years ago). I like people like N. who could always be counted on to see the Harry Potter movies at the midnight showing, and who saw Serenity at midnight too. We crossed paths in front of a movie theatre on Shattuck in Berkeley in March 2006 when N. was lining up to get in to the theatre on the opening night of V for Vendetta. I was super embarrassed that I was leaving the theatre at this point, having just seen Failure to Launch. (For the record: I have a weakness for Matthew McConaughey which is why I saw that movie, but I am the first to admit that it was a bad movie. I also saw Ghosts of Girlfriends Past in theatres for the same reason, and had the same disappointed reaction.)

I love going to the movies, and I wish I could go more. I always love winter vacation because, especially in high school and during university, I would go see so many movies. But I don't have the same passion for the movies that I have for other things, like books for example. And some people, like my brother, think my taste in movies is appallingly bad. I do like seeing cheesy movies, that's true. But I think it ties in to how for me, movies are mostly just fun and entertainment, whereas reading for me is about more than that. As an example of my relationship with movies, the last movie I can remember being really really excited for - to the extent that I went to see it on opening night with A., E. and L. way back in June 2002 - was the Divine Secrets of the Ya-Ya Sisterhood, and that was because I had loved the book so much!! Sadly it wasn't even that good.

Every once in a while, however, I'll find a movie that I love. Most recently those movies have been Whip It which Drew Barrymore directed and which is so good. It did really badly in theatres and I don't know why because it's so good! I wish Drew Barrymore would direct another movie but I worry she won't because Whip It made so little money. If you haven't seen it, you should rent it. I saw it in theatres, and then I watched it twice in a row on a plane ride. I watched it once, contemplated watching a different movie for about half a second, and then pressed the screen to re-watch Whip It. The other most recent movie I loved so much was The Lives of Others. This is another movie that if you haven't seen it, you must. I first saw it in Paris in March 2007. It moved me so much that I happily went to see it again with N. 2 months later when he was visiting Paris and staying with me for 6 days. Both times I was seeing a German movie with French subtitles and was curious to see if I'd find the movie any different if I watched it with English subtitles. S. and I rented it once and I actually think I preferred the French subtitles. Maybe just because I felt like some of the English translations seemed different than what I remembered reading in French. That movie was especially intriguing to me because I am fascinated by the history of the Eastern bloc, and much of the movie is set in 1984, the year I was born.



Another movie related thing I like is seeing two movies in one day. I've done it at home a few times - gone to see a movie in the afternoon with a friend, and then another movie that night with my parents. Sometimes it's just good to make it a movie day and watch more than one. On a June Friday in Paris, I had the day off from work and decided to go see one movie which started at 10 am and another that started at 3 pm both alone. I went to more movies alone those first six months of 2007 that I lived in Paris than I ever had before or ever have since. In fact, I'm not sure I've been to a movie alone since I came back from Paris. But I can think of 5 right now that I saw alone, and there were likely a few more thrown in there too. Paris in general is one of the best cities for movie going in the world. (Another great city for movies, unsurprisingly, is LA. S. and I especially like the Arclight Cinema in Hollywood.) There are hundreds of movie theatres there (see picture below), and they show a wide variety of French, European and Hollywood movies. Plus, movies start as early as 9 am there while in Toronto, I feel like the earliest movies start is 11:30 am. They should start earlier!



This post has really been about going to the movies but I have to just quickly say that renting movies is pretty great too. S. and D. are tied for my favourite people to watch rented movies with (and it's not just because I've watched the most movies with one or the other of them.) While there is definitely something special and fun about going to the movies and watching a movie on the big screen, there is something equally special about watching a movie at home on my laptop from the comfort of my bed. Since we graduated Berkeley and stopped living in the same place, S. and I have spent many subsequent visits in Salt Lake City, LA, Moab, and Mont Tremblant lying on comfortable beds or couches watching movie after movie (there's always so many to watch and we never can choose just one!). Our movie watching marathons started in November 2007 when I visited S. in Salt Lake City. I missed her so much, didn't like Austin, and didn't want to go back there early Monday morning. On Sunday we woke up to lots of rain. I needed to watch The Battle of Algiers for a class I was taking and S. said she'd watch it again. I had rented it and brought it with me before leaving but given the terrible weather, we thought it'd be fun to rent some other movies too. So we braved the rain, drove to Blockbuster, rented 13 Going on 30 and Center Stage and bought some chocolate at the drug store next door. We then spent the whole day on her bed next to the window with the rain incessantly falling outside but us warm and cozy inside watching 3 movies in a row and eating lots of chocolate. I could have stayed like that for at least a week :)



To close, watching movies is always fun, whether at home or in theatres. I also like that you can go to a movie in different countries and cities all around the world and the experience is usually going to be pretty similar. So yeah for movies, and let's hope I find a new one to love so much I want to see it in theatres and/or on planes multiple times soon!

Peace Love Cupcakes

This post is my third and final one about baking. It's going to be all about cupcakes because there was just too much to say about them in the post about cake. My earliest cupcake memories are from elementary school when I seemingly got to eat cupcakes regularly as whoever's birthday it was always brought in cupcakes that day for everyone in the class. Along with those Duncan Hines Fudge Marble cake mixes I used to love baking, I also made vanilla cupcakes from cake mixes a lot too. I have happy memories of repeated cupcake baking phases in my life. Throughout March 2006, when I lived on Hilgard, I was in a (cake mix) cupcake baking craze and made multiple batches, listening to Mazzy Star the whole time. The year I lived at home in Toronto between Austin and Montreal, I used to make cupcakes for my parents (and myself) all the time, this time from scratch, usually on Thursdays. I didn't teach those days and just worked from home, so in the afternoons I would take a break to bake cupcakes. Then I'd go to a step class and when I'd come home, I'd eat dinner and have a cupcake.

I make 4 different kinds of cupcakes: 1. vanilla cupcakes using a recipe I found online but which is supposedly from the Magnolia Bakery in NYC. (Side note: In December 2009 when L. and I were in NYC for the weekend we went to Magnolia Bakery and the cupcakes were delicious. The cupcakes I make are delicious too but I doubt they are the exact recipe they use in the bakery. In June 2011, L. and I were in NYC together again. This time we stayed with J. in Brooklyn. One day we all went to this cupcake store called Cupcake Land whose tagline was "Where cupcakes rule." I don't remember much about the actual cupcake - I think it was pretty good - but I think the tag line is so cute!) 2. These Mexican Chocolate cupcakes (Mexican because they call for a bit of cayenne pepper; so not exactly hardcore Mexican) I got out of this amazing cookbook L. (a different L. than above) gave me. They are delicious too. 3. Chocolate cupcakes I got from Martha Stewart's website. These are especially moist and delicious, perhaps because of the buttermilk? and 4. Red Velvet cupcakes I got from a recipe printed in the Toronto Star. These ones are fabulous... I think because they contain my favourite baking ingredient: sour cream!

My weakness when it comes to baking in general, and cupcakes in particular, is the icing. I'm not very good at making icing both consistency and quantity wise. The icing I make always tastes good but my cupcakes never look that good and I can never master getting either the right amount of icing or the correct thickness. Improving my icing skills should really be a goal, but somehow it doesn't seem like a goal I'll likely succeed in. I'm always so impatient to just eat the cupcakes that making them look pretty and doing a good job with the icing is less of a pressing concern when I have a batch of freshly baked cupcakes in front of me ready to be eaten.

It's interesting to me how over the past ten years or so cupcakes have become so popular. I've lost count of the number of cupcake stores in Toronto, and they exist everywhere in North America. Three years ago when S. and I drove from Austin to Nashville via New Orleans we saw (but only stopped at one) multiple cupcake stores in all three cities. It was definitely during the winter/spring of 2009, and my last in Austin, that I got a lot more into cupcakes. I went fairly regularly to this cupcake truck there called Hey Cupcake! (whose cupcakes were really good) and I started baking cupcakes from scratch then too. It was so much fun to seek out new cupcake recipes and start trying them. A further indication of cupcakes' popularity/dominance is that at the last two weddings (out of a grand total of 3 :) ) I've been to, my brother A. and his wife L.'s in September 2008, and L. and K.'s last September, cupcakes were served instead of wedding cake. The cupcakes at both weddings were delicious, and I think having cupcakes in lieu of cake is a great idea. It's much easier for guests to just eat a cupcake whenever they feel like it throughout the night (and easier to go back for seconds :) ) than it is to have a formal wedding cake with plates and forks, etc. At both weddings there were lots of varieties of cupcakes too which is important and another advantage over cake, since there you can really only have one flavour.

During the year I lived at home between Austin and Montreal, not only was I in a permanent cupcake baking phase, but I was also determined to visit and try out as many cupcake shops around Toronto as possible. I must have gone to about 12 or possibly more... but throughout the year of course. To be honest, they've all blended together in my head. Overall, each store was good, which I guess isn't too surprising since it's pretty hard to mess up a cupcake, especially if you have a whole bakery devoted to them. One store which I actually do remember clearly is called Prairie Girl (its tagline is: "Live life one cupcake at a time" which I think is a very good one.) It first came to my attention just after it opened in April 2011 when I was home for a weekend and had dinner at L.'s house. She had picked some up because the store is located right downtown near her office. My cupcake was good. Then funnily enough a little while later, my dad who works in the same building as L., also saw Prairie Girl and bought some. For a while my parents were really into them and were getting them fairly regularly. I did like them but mostly I remember that there was just way too much icing on them. Icing is the hardest part with cupcakes! The ones I buy in bakeries always seem to have too much, while the ones I make myself have way too little. I need to find the perfect amount... But back to Prairie Girl, in early May I read an article in the Toronto Star which found that a Prairie Girl cupcake had 678 calories and 30 grams of fat. I couldn't believe they had that many calories. That's way too many! It was a good reminder that cupcakes should be eaten in moderation. I also think it's a reason to go homemade as I'm pretty sure my cupcakes don't have that many calories. I think it again ties in to the excessive amounts of icing.

To be honest, I am not as excited about or as into cupcakes as I used to be. I think these things just go in phases though... Montreal is just not as cupcake friendly a place as Toronto is. Cupcakes aren't as popular there. Cupcakes also aren't as easy to transport as cookies and I've been so obsessed with that coffee cake the past few months which explains why I haven't been baking them as much. I should bake some soon though. I will always love cupcakes though, and feel certain that sooner or later, I'll be back in a cupcake baking craze. Until then, I should just enjoy whichever other sweets I happen to be particularly into.