Originally we only had one movie on Thursday so we decided to make Thursday our big night for dinner out. First I’ll tell you about the movies, then the food.
We really wanted All the Light We Cannot See, because we both liked the book. Mark remembered but I forgot that what was showing here at TIFF was the first two episodes of a 4-episode series. Which makes sense because the mini series format gives the director more time to adapt the roughly 500-page book. Naturally it ended with a cliffhanger, but fortunately it will come out on Netflix November 2, so we can watch the rest then. And the series is very beautifully shot so it was nice to see it on the big screen.
We were hoping to add Taika Waititi’s Next Goal Wins, but couldn’t get it – and maybe it’s just as well because The Guardian just called it “strikingly unfunny”. We would’ve had to change the dinner reserves, too. Instead we added a Korean gangster movie, Smugglers, set in the 1970s, because we still fondly remember another fast paced Korean action movie we saw in 2012, The Thieves. The earlier one had some tough women criminals in it but Smugglers is even more feminist – the women win. It was a nice fill in before we headed off for dinner, and we didn’t have to change the reserves after all.
We went to Pink Sky, which, like Figo, where we had lunch Monday, is one of the restaurants that are part of INK Entertainment Group. One of Al’s friends from high school who did the culinary program at MATC, oh whoops Madison College, is an executive chef there, and he remembers coming home at lunch time with Al and eating my food for a lot of high school. So, we got pretty special treatment – they brought us two free flutes of Prosecco as soon as we sat down, and we also got white fish mousse and some roasted broccoli rabe, and finished with a sampler of all four desserts: banoffee pie, sticky toffee pudding, olive oil chocolate cake, and cheesecake with apple compote. When I read the menu, I thought I’d like the sticky toffee pudding the best but in reality the chocolate cake with almond ice cream was my favorite. And to me the most impressive thing was that Al’s friend, Chef Zach, came and sat at our table to visit – and wasn’t even working that day. He just Uber-ed over and stopped by to say hi. Pics start with our starters, the wedge salad with honey butter rolls – the salad was really nice with a buttermilk dressing and lots of fresh herbs. My main, lobster spaghetti. Our groaning board with everything: Mark’s cioppino, kind of cut off, side of fries, the whitefish and broccoli, and my spaghetti. More focused on the gratis extras, and finally the dessert board in various stages of being consumed.
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- starters
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- close up of the rolls
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- desserts
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- desserts
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- desserts
So that was Thursday.
We had figured out that a diner we visited in 2013, the Lakeview Restaurant, was still in business so we decided to start our Friday there. We rode the street car out and enjoyed our meal. Mark had BLT benny and an apple pie milkshake (as featured on Diners, Drive-ins, and Dives) and I had the breakfast special. My challah toast was a bit burnt – the cook put the good sides out in this photo – but I sent it back and got a more lightly toasted set. I mean I probably wouldn’t have sent it back if they didn’t put the good side out – but they did, so they knew it was burnt.
Friday’s movies were The New Boy, Fingernails, and Pain Hustlers. We came back to the apartment after the Lakeview, and biked and walked to the first two movies. The plan was that after Fngernails, about 7:30, I’d strap on my lights and bike back, and Mark would walk. We’d grab a bite and subway back for Pain Hustlers. Which meant no observance of Rosh Hashanah of us this year, although I think I might make a honey cake next week for a Dane County Farmers Market cookbook event.
In The New Boy, Cate Blanchett is a nun at a residential school for indigenous kids somewhere in the outback of Australia, during WWII. It seems like the priest who ran the place has died and Sister Eileen has taken over. An aboriginal boy who has supernatural powers for healing is brought there. The cruelness of the residential schools is not very overt here – the kids have to work hard but there’s plenty of food, and there doesn’t seem to be a lot of indoctrination. The main thing is that as soon as they baptize the boy, near the end of the movie, his powers go away. I was baffled by it, mostly.
Next was Fingernails, kind of a sci-fi romance where couples can get a test done that determines if they are really in love, although this requires getting a fingernail from each member of the couple yanked out to go in the machine. The machine analyzes the samples – and smokes a bit – and displays in grey & white glory on a tiny screen that looks more like a microwave than a modern computer, whether the couple is 0%, 50%, or 100% in love. We liked it, especially Mark, but the Guardian did not. Jessie Buckley was great as obsessive Anna, and Jeremy Allen White, who usually has an aura of coolness about him albeit a bit wounded, like in the Bear and as Lip in Shameless, was really good as her dweeby boyfriend.
We finished up with Pain Hustlers, Chris Evans and Emily Blunt selling a spray version of fentanyl that’s supposed to be for cancer pain but ends up getting prescribed for everything. It’s based on a non-fiction book of the same name, by Evan Hughes, that details the story of pharmaceutical start-up Insys Therapeutics, founded by John Kapoor in the early 2010s. Well-made, and but most of the reviews say it’s kind of a miss. Not hard enough on big pharma, not quite the right casting, and so on.
Whew. That’s got us up to Friday. I think I’ll have to tell you about Saturday and Sunday, our last two days of TIFF, after I get home.