Licorice Pizza (2021)

The director, who is nominated for an Academy Award for this film, returns to the San Fernando Valley of his youth. The film is set in the 1970's and begins on an upbeat note, with a traveling shot following Alana down a line of high school students waiting to have their yearbook photographs taken, offering a mirror for last-minute primping. She catches the eye of 15-year-old Gary, played by Cooper Hoffman, who approaches her with an unnerving mix of puppyish adoration and glib confidence. The fact that she’s 25 has zero bearing on his resolve: He invites her to join him that evening at his regular place, the famous Valley watering hole Tail o’ the Cock. He is preternaturally mature, and she, in contrast, is stuck in a dead end job with no future and no idea of what she wants to do and who she wants to be. In a way, she is younger than him in all aspects except age. She also does not have a creepy predatory bent to her, and so there is none of that in their relationship, which is at heart romantic, but not terribly sexual. There are a lot of screwball comedy moments and Alana is accompanied on screen by her realife sisters and parents, all of which pays off beautifully in a hilarious, Friday-night shabbat dinner scene. The cherry on top is the cameo roles that an unrecognizable Bradley Cooper, and the quite familiar Sean Penn play that adds texture to this surprisingly sweet story.

The Lincoln Highway by Amor Towles

The only other book I have read by this author is A Gentleman in Moscow. It is a book that revolves around similar themes as his last--right and wrong, good and bad, and how to decide which is which. While the former is a claustrophobic book set in post Russian Revolution Moscow with an aristocrat under lockdown in a luxury hotel and might be seen to channel Tolstoy, this one has shades of Steinbeck with a road trip across America on the newly christened Lincoln Highway. The highway stretches from Time Square in New York City all the way to San Francisco and opened up the minds of Americans to adventure. My grandparents drove their brand new Cadillac on this route about the same time as this. It is 1954, and 18-year-old Emmett Watson has just finished a spell at the Kansas work farm where he was sent after accidentally killing a bully. His father has died and left a mass of debt, and his little brother, Billy, is keen for the two of them to head to California in search of their mother, who walked out eight years ago. But there’s a problem-- Emmett’s car has been boosted by a couple of boys, Duchess and Woolly, on the run from the law. As you might imagine, incarceration wasn't good for any of them. They are driving the car to New York City to raid Woolly’s trust fund and settle a few scores. Duchess, though not unlikable, is untrustworthy. He leads everyone astray and they struggle in their own ways to keep up and not get burned.

Ascension (2021)

This film is nominated for the Academy Award for Best Documentary in a field that has a lot of great movies--which is typical, of course. It is set in modern China, and is an unsettling look at their facotry-based economy. it was originally envisioned as three short documentaries, one for production, one for consumption, and the last one for the waste, but has been melded into one movie with all three components, without much in the way of narration, so the viewer is left to figure it out by watching. There is a Koyaanisquatsi-esque experience that in the end is both overwhelming and mesmerizing. The take home message for me is that China is a nation of strivers, with hearts set on achieving what might be called the new Chinese Dream: wealth and success, in the world’s second largest economy. The rest of us need to take notice.

The End of Bias: A Beginning by Jessica Nordell

The subtitle is The Science and Practice of Overcoming Unconscious Bias. The author has a bit of an uphill battle here and I think she does a successful job. Bias is often things we can more easily identify in others than in ourselves, and her mission here is to get us to see it in ourselves, and then offers ways to identify it and to combat it. I found myself cruising through the first third of the book feeling like what she was presenting was information that I was familiar with, but by the second third she had my attention, that there were things that I could be doing better, and by the end I found myself taking the lessons learned here and applying them to the interactions I was part of or witnessed at work, and already, just one week after finishing the book, I pointed expressed bias out to a co-worker. The thing I took away here was two-fold, one is the seeing of the bias, which is for me an easier step, and the second is to make it transparent to others in a way that doesn't hurt or harm others, and that piece will take more work--but it is work worth doing.

tick, tick, Boom (2021)

This is part musical and part docudrama about making a musical. It is based on an autobiographical one-man show of the same name by Jonathan Larson, the astonishingly talented writer/composer of the fabulously successful Broadway show “Rent”. He is played by Andrew Garfield, an amazingly versatile actor in his own right. It is also a tribute, and an expression of gratitude, for the almost baton-like passage of support from those who Larson describes as a vanishing species, the creators of musical theater. Larson’s thanks include the foremost musical theater artist of the 20th century, Stephen Sondheim, an early mentor. One review that I read stated that Sondheim was passing along the help he received from another Broadway titan, Oscar Hammerstein. The movie is also a thanks to Larson from director Lin-Manuel Miranda, who might be seen as his successor. Miranda, who starred as Larson in a theatrical performance of this play, directs the film with a deep understanding of the passion, struggle, and ebullience of an artist committed to an art form that requires a lot of money and a lot of other people to be brought to life. This film is explicitly theatrical, going back and forth between Larson’s story and his one-man show telling the story, which tragically ended with his preventable death right before his Broadway debut.

Red Comet by Heather Clark

Wow. The subtitle is The Short Life and Blazing Art of Sylvia Plath. Sylvia Plath did not live an unexamined life, but the author of this so-heavy-you-can-barely-lift-it biography had access to materials from both the Plath and the Hughes family, and meticulously goes over every square inch of the poet's life. She was a gifted poet and a talented editor who was hampered by the time she lived in and the man that she married. The tipping point for her seems to have been her husband becoming publicly involved with another woman, and so he bore the brunt of the outcry when she killed herself--nothing in this tome lifts the blame off his shoulders. Plath had either major depression or possibly bipolar disorder, and tragically, had she lived another decade she would have had treatment options that were far more advanced than what was available in the 1950's and 60's, so it is all just a terrible shame. Her life and her work highlight the misogyny of her time, the limitations that placed on her in terms of options, and just how far psychiatry and the treatment of mental illness has come. No longer can you be locked up for not wanting to be a wife and a mother.

Lunana: A Yak In The Classroom (2021)

There is so much to love about this movie from Bhutan, nominated in the Best International Film caategory for the Oscars this year. It is filmed in Lunana, which really is the eight day journey on foot that is depicted in the movie and spectacularly beautiful. The actors are largely cast by the fact that they live there than by their having trained as actors. One review I read said that the kids who are in it had never seen a camera before the filming. The story goes like this. Ugyen is a selfish and not impressively talented singer young man who is 4 years into a 5 year government teaching obligation. He is phoning it in, making no effort to disguise his lack of engagement, so his supervisor decides to punish him, to send him to the most remote school in Bhutan for his final year. Upon his arrival he is desperate to go home, but the longer he stays, the more he fits in and the villagers actually get him. He gives to them and they give back. There are a few twists but it is largely a coming of age story with a heaping dollop of cultural context. Spctacularly good.

The Book of Form & Emptiness by Ruth Ozeki

Benny Oh is still a boy when his father Kenji, a Korean-American jazz musician at the time a little the worse for wear from drink, is run over by a chicken truck in an alley behind their house on the edge of Chinatown. Benny and his mother Anabelle both break down in very different ways. Benny ends up spinnning quite publicly out of control, gets hospitalized, hears voices, and seeks refuge within himself. Anabelle’s crisis is more of a private one. SHe too is paralyzed by grief for her dead husband and fear of losing her job, Benny, and her home. Her hoarding things holds a lot of meanings, and while the novel maybe tries to put too many together at once, with too many outside voices, there is a lot of truth about the craziness that gief induces to be learned from it.

Ice Cream Sandwiches

My husband made these with our grandchildren in mind. It is on the Seriuous Wats website, but is also in Stella Park's cookbook of iconic American desserts, Bravetart. These are intense! 4 ounces unsalted butter, room temperature 5 ounces sugar 2 ounces brown sugar 1 1/2 teaspoons salt 1/2 teaspoon baking powder 1/8 teaspoon baking soda 1 1/2 teaspoons instant espresso powder 2 teaspoons vanilla extract 4 egg yolks 5 1/4 ounces all purpose flour, sifted (use rice flour for gluten free) 4 ounces cocoa powder, sifted 6 ounces hot coffee 2 quarts vanilla ice cream, store bought or homemade Optional: a few tablespoons of neutral oil like safflower or coconut Directions Make the chocolate wafers: Preheat oven to 350° and line 2 sheet pans with parchment paper. With a hand or stand mixer, cream together butter, sugars, salt, baking soda, powder, espresso, and vanilla on medium speed. Mix for about two minutes, just until combined. Then (with the machine still running) add in the yolks, one at a time. During this process, shut off the mixer and scrape the bowl down with a rubber spatula once or twice. Reduce mixing speed to low and dump in the flour and cocoa all at once. Mix until the dry ingredients have fully incorporated. With the mixer still running on low, drizzle in the hot coffee a little at a time. About halfway through, stop the mixer and scrape the bowl down. Continue drizzling in the coffee to transform the dough into a paste. In the end, it should have a smooth cake-batter like consistency. If you notice any lumps, crank up the mixer speed to medium and beat until the lumps have disappeared. If a few remain, don't worry; they'll bake out. Divide the batter evenly between the two sheet pans (roughly 15 ounces each). Use an offset spatula or the back of a spoon to spread the batter into a thin layer; you don't need the batter to reach to the very corners, it only needs to cover a 10" by 14" area. Rap the sheet pans against the counter to help level the batter. Bake for about 7-10 minutes, or until the cookie-sheets have puffed up and become firm to the touch. Cool thoroughly. For greatest ease of handling, refrigerate or freeze the wafers before proceeding. If you're quite careful, it's not necessary, but it does make the process easier. Prepare the wafers: Line a 9" x 13" brownie pan with parchment paper. The paper should overhang the long sides by 4 inches or so. Use a knife to cut the two cooled chocolate wafers into 9 x 13" rectangles. Set aside the excess scraps. Fit one of these giant wafers, shiny side down, into the bottom of the parchment lined brownie pan. Once you've fitted it in, peel off the parchment paper stuck to the bottom. If the wafer cracks or breaks in any place, use some of the trimmings to patch up the hole. The wafers will meld together nicely just by pressing two pieces together firmly. Store the pan and remaining chocolate wafer in the freezer until needed. Fill the ice cream sandwich: If you're opting for homemade ice cream, you will want to use it immediately after it's finished churning in your ice cream maker. If you're using store bought, store it in the refrigerator for 30 minutes or until it has become soft and spreadable. In either case, spread the ice cream into the brownie pan, atop the first chocolate layer. Use a spoon or offset spatula to push the ice cream up into the corners of the pan, and to distribute it evenly. Invert the remaining frozen chocolate wafer onto a cutting board. Peel of the parchment paper and then place it shiny side up on top of the ice cream. Cover the wafer with a piece of parchment or plastic wrap, then use your hands to gently press the top wafer down and seal it against the ice cream. If you notice there are any thin or uneven places, gently push on the chocolate wafer to redistribute the ice cream below. Return the pan to the freezer and allow it to freeze for at least 12 hours before proceeding. Make your own waxed foil: Of course, you don't have to make wrappers. But it's fun and easy. Simply take a sheet of tin foil, shiny side up, and use a pastry brush or paper towel to coat it lightly with oil. Then press a sheet of parchment paper against the oiled surface of the foil. Use your fingers to smooth the parchment down, pressing out any air bubbles. If you have a bench scraper, that's also a good tool for removing air bubbles. Cut the newly formed wax/foil into 7" squares with scissors or an xacto knife. Repeat until you have 12 squares altogether. Set aside until needed. Cut the ice cream sandwiches: Pull the brownie pan from the freezer. Run a knife around the edges to loosen, then take hold of the overhanging parchment and lift the whole thing out. It may take a bit of tugging on one side, then the other. Transfer this giant ice cream sandwich to a cutting board. Use a large chef's knife to cut it into 12 pieces. It's easiest to first cut it into quarters, then to cut each quarter into three pieces. Wipe your knife clean with a hot, wet towel between slices for the cleanest cut. Store the sandwiches in an airtight container or, to make the most out of your ice cream sandwich nostalgia, wrap each in the prepared foil. Wrap the ice cream sandwiches: Remove half of the ice cream sandwiches from the freezer. Place each on the center of the foil or parchment square. Wrap much like you would a Christmas present: fold the long sides to the middle. Then at each edge, fold the short sides to the middle. Then fold the long sides. The foil will crease and stay in place without tape. Return to the freezer, and repeat with the other half.

When We Cease to Understand the World by Benjamín Labatut

This book had a lot of critical acclaim, including being on the Booker International book shortlist and amongst the New York Times best books of 2021, but it is an oddity, somewhere between a journal review article and a musing on the the state of the universe. I think the title refers to the uncertainty that Einstein brought to the table in the early 20th century and then Heisenberg cemented with the uncertainty principle, which Einstein at first refused to believe was possibly correct and then came to at least agree he couldn't find evidence that it wasn't correct. Why? Well, while god may not play dice with the world, as Albert Einstein famously declared, the author might retort: perhaps not – but the devil does. In fact, Einstein himself had a lifelong niggle of doubt about mathematics, the discipline that we suppose keeps the Lord away from the gaming tables. How is it, he wondered, that an intellectual tool invented by humans can comprehend, account for and even manipulate so much of objective reality? That the physical world should be amenable to something we made up seemed to him suspect. THe book fairly clearly and very patiently takes the reader through the amazing physical science of the last 100 plus years, and then leaves us to contemplate where in fact that leaves us. It is an unsettling and yet enjoyable read.