Tropical Snow

Man, was it hot last Saturday. But you know my solution to that, right? Frozen cocktails!

I've mentioned the concept of a neige before (although I spelled it "nieve", because I don't know French or maybe I thought it was Spanish) - as far as I can tell, this culinary terminology was invented by me, but not the technique. Basically, you freeze a sweetened liquid, "fluffing" it to break up the ice crystals every now and then. The sugar prevents it from freezing hard as well. The results is a light, dry, fluffy cloud of goodness.

I made this batch by mixing 1/2 pineapple, 1/2 mango juice, filling a clean plastic yogurt container about 1/2 full. I stuck it in the freezer and every now and then stirred it with a fork. The first time, there was barely any ice. The next time, it was about 1/3 frozen. Then left it overnight and in the morning it was pretty frozen. So I dug the fork in and stirred it all around.

I've done this before, and found a solid, un-fluffable block of ice. I think using extra-sweet juice helps - the sugar retards ice crystal formation. This time it came out perfect.

So I had some pineapple/mango snow. I spooned some into a martini glass and added:

• Rum and a little mac nut liqueur for a kind of mai-tai
• Tequila, triple sec and lime for a kind of margarita
• Gin, Cherry Heering and Benedictine for a Singapore Sling
  
• Malibu rum and St. Germain with a little lime for a tropical fantasy

This is a very different effect than blending with icecubes or even running frozen juice through a blender. A bit more sophisticated, and stronger. Try some next time the weather gets hot.

Three Plus One

We enjoyed all of the "3 women" movies we've been watching, so we queued up the classic Three on a Match on a double bill with Female.

Three on a Match was directed by Mervyn LeRoy (Little Caesar, I Was a Fugitive from the Chain Gang) in 1932, starring:

• Betty Davis, as the smartest girl from PS32
• Ann Dvorak, as the prettiest
• Joan Blondell, as the bad girl

We see them in school, then 10 years pass. One day, they all meet up again. Blondell is out of reform school, and working on the stage. Davis is eking out a living as a stenographer. And Dvorak has a rich lawyer for a husband, a chauffeur and a child. Yet, she isn't truly happy. And, yes, this is the scene where they light three cigarettes with one match. Bad luck, or a scheme to sell more matches?

We had assumed we would see the trials and troubles of all three women, but actually, this is mainly Dvorak's show. She leaves her husband and takes up with a gambler, drinking and neglecting her son. Her friends take the son back to her rich husband (Warren William, Satan Met a Lady) and Blondell starts romancing him, while Davis starts working for him as secretary/governess. So, everybody's happy?

No, Dvorak's boyfriend (Lyle Talbot) is involved with gangsters Edward Arnold and Humphrey Bogart. Dvorak seems to be doing dope. Things will not end well for her.

Dvorak is very good in this. She goes downhill fast, and looks terrible in the last scenes, very realistic. Blondell plays her usual wisecracker, and Davis is almost absent, only reacting to the others, and not much of that. That's fine, she's never been my favorite.

Then, Female, 1933, directed by Michael Curtiz (yes, Casablanca's Curtiz). It stars Ruth Chatterton as the owner of a large automobile manufacturer. She works hard, talks fast, and invites attractive young workers up to her place for dinner - to "discuss their ideas". Afterwards, if they try to take advantage of their relationship to the boss, they are transferred to Montreal.

Naturally, she will fall for the guy who resists her advances, and give up her position to raise a family. However, she manages to do it with her dignity intact, and make it look like she got what she wanted. A fun movie.

In conclusion, two "women's pictures" by big name directors that have more guts, humor and style than we had a right to expect.

Big Three

From a 70's parody to the real thing: Mother, Jugs and Speed. Actually, I think this selection was inspired by the ambulance in Cannonball Run.

Mother is Bill Cosby, the kindly goofball driver at an independent LA ambulance company. Jugs is, of course, Raquel Welch, the secretary/dispatcher who wants to be more. Speed is a newcomer, played by a young Harvey Keitel. He was a cop until he was accused of dealing speed. While on suspension, he joins the ambulance crew.

The presence of the Cos may lead you to suspect a light-hearted romp, say, like Cannonball Run. That's true in a way, but this is an ambulance company. There is a serious body count in this movie. They seem to be hauling more cold than warm meat, and it shows on their temperament. The comedy is pretty black.

That said, it is also pretty funny. It is also very 70's - 1976, to be specific, although it feels a little older, due to the drugs and racial themes. When slimeball driver Larry Hagman offers to take Jugs to a Cat Stevens concert, I thought we were in a parody of the period. Maybe were, but it is a contemporary parody.

Mezcal and Maximillian

It's great to have friends, especially friends who call up and invite us over for mezcal. He is a master of old movies, especially terrible horror (he was calling to see if we had Giant Spider Invasion - but of course). She likes banda music and mezcal.

You may know that mezcal is a more rustic variety of tequila. While they are both made from the sap of the agave piña, the piñas are steamed for tequila, but roasted in a smokey firepit for mezcal. As a result, mezcal has a serious smokey flavor, more pronounced than a smokey scotch. In addition, mezcal is usually rougher than tequila. But that didn't stop us from using it for fancy cocktails.

Our hostess had a secret recipe - mezcal and Fresca. It was... interesting. A quick look online showed some interesting recipes, with many strange tangents. One direction a lot of recipes took was Vietnamese! For ex: Vietnamese drip coffee with condensed milk and mezcal.

The direction we took was elderflower. Elderflower is a current cocktail taste craze. When trendy bartenders aren't making their own elderflower syrup, they use a new French liqueur, St. Germain. This stuff is brilliant - it has a floral, perfumey flavor, but is really more reminiscent of towards tropical fruit, like lychee. You might detect a note of pear, which is more in keeping with its Alpine French origin. It is quite sweet, yet complex and sophisticated. I used the occasion to buy a bottle.

We mixed up two cocktails: mezcal, St. Germain and grapefruit Izze soda (substituting for Fresca). I've told you my theories on tequila and grapefruit: their bitterness makes them natural partners. The St. Germain takes the rough edges down and sweetens and deepens the flavor. Use just a splash, no more than an oz.

For those who like something stronger and not so sweet: mezcal, St. Germain and a squeeze of lemon.

I haven't named these cocktails - they are still works in progress. But the online mezcal/St. Germain cocktails usually refer to Maximillian (Maximillian's Revenge, etc). It took me a while to remember that he was the French (like St. Germain) emperor of Mexico. Very clever.

Mezcal is very difficult to find in the US (at least around here). You may have also heard that there is a worm in the bottle, and you should eat the worm, and that you will get messed up. That may be true, but it's strictly for tourists.

Three of a Kind

The Heroic Trio is pretty easy to sum up: Michelle Yeoh, Maggie Cheung, Anita Mui. To be specific:

• Anita Mui, the "funny-looking Madonna", is the wife of a policeman, but secretly a superhero: Wonderwoman or Shadow Fox, depending on the translation.
  
• Michelle Yeoh is supervillain who is stealing babies for an evil sorcerer. Her scientist boyfriend has given her a cloak of invisibility. Anita and her husband are on her trail.
  
• Maggie Cheung is Mercy, short for Mercenary. Dressed in leather bustiers and knee pads, she fights for the highest bidder with a motorcycle and a fistful of dynamite.

Director Johnny To keeps things stylish, with wafting smoke, shafts of light through the dusty air, and blizzards of blowing leaves, petals, paper, or birdcages full of babies, often in slow motion. The fight scenes a mostly wired, but exciting nonetheless. None of the women are martial artists - Yeoh was a dancer, Mui a popstar - but they can kick over their heads, and stunt doubles can handle the hard stuff.

If you've seen Irma Vep, you've seen some clips from this.

We had so much fun with this, I went back to re-watch So Close. It's hard to beat Corey Yuen's choreography, but my question is: Yeoh/Cheung/Mui or Shu Qi/Zhao Wei/Karen Mok?

Burn Notice

We bring to a close our festival of the clever, thought-provoking thrillers with the Coen Bros. Burn After Reading. It begins with a shaven-headed John Malkovich, looking a lot like James Carville, as an alcoholic, rage-filled CIA analyst who has just lost his job. A nasty confrontation with his vicious wife Tilda Swinton gets him thinking about writing a tell-all memoir.

A disc of the draft of the memoir falls into the hands of Brad Pitt, an idiot working at Hard Bodies gym, and Frances MacDormand, his co-worker who needs a lot of money for plastic surgery. They decide to blackmail Malkovich, or failing that, sell the disc to the Russians. Only, Swinton has cleaned out his bank account in a divorce move, and the Russians don't care.

Meanwhile, Swinton is getting it on with George Clooney, still in full Paul Krugman drag (he even works in Treasury). Clooney is a gun-toting narcissistic womanizer, whose wife, a children's book author, is on tour, leaving the field open for ...

Since this is a clever, thought-provoking thriller, things get complicated, and not everything gets explained. Since it is Coen Bros., most of the characters are more or less idiots, self-deluded and often, doomed. These antics are watched over by CIA execs JK Simmons (JJ Jameson) and David Rasche (Sledge Hammer!). They make sure everything is tidy in the end, and pronounce the moral, "I'm fucked if I know what we did."

A Maze of Twisty Passages

After watching Inside Man and The International, I figured we should really ratchet up the convoluted thoughtful thriller level with Syriana. I think I have it all figured out, except why George Clooney is made up to look like Paul Krugman.

Syriana is loosely structured around the merger of an American and a Middle Eastern oil company. It tells the story of Clooney, an American undercover operative doing some shady arms dealing, Matt Damon, a development consultant to a young idealistic sheik, Jeffrey Wright, a lawyer trying to make sure the merger is clean of corruption, and a Pakistani oilworker who loses his job and becomes radicalized, plus a few more threads. These stories are allowed to develop slowly, overlap and intertwine, but only to become partly clear.

There is some action, but mostly behind the scenes skullduggery - Christopher Plummer is one of the string-pullers, like he was in Inside Man. It takes place all over the world, like The International. And when it all comes together, well, you may or may not get it all. But it will be worth it.

But why Paul Krugman?