Thursday morning, we had a little yogurt and fruit for breakfast again (or maybe Thursday was the toast and fruit day?), and worked, and our first movie of the day was I Smile Back, with Sarah Silverman as a suburban housewife who’s just about to not be able to cover up her reckless escapades into boozing and drugs and sex with one of the other husbands in her circle of friends, and the occasional random stranger in the back room of a bar. Prince Humperdinck played her estranged father, Thomas Sadowski as that other husband, her most sympathetic drugging & fuck buddy, and Josh Charles, who we also saw in Freeheld, as her husband. We thought the film ended at a kind of different point for an addict story – while the addict is still on the way down – before they hit bottom and have a chance to come back. It was in the Wintergarden – the smaller theater with the leaves in the ceiling.
Movie #2 was Forsaken, a traditional Western with both generations of Sutherlands. It was also nicely done for its genre – I especially liked that the gunslingers, played by Kiefer Sutherland and Michael Wincott were gentlemen – men of honor.
Our third and final movie of the day was James White, with Christopher Abbot playing a 20-something fuck-up (stark contrast to the role we all saw him in, as Charlie, Marnie’s boyfriend on Girls, who had a successful startup by the end of season two, when he left the show) trying to take care of his mom (Cynthia Nixon) who’s dying from cancer. Probably my favorite movie of the fest. I liked the NYC apartment interiors, and I felt like I knew all the characters. I liked the subtle way the mom’s illness was introduced – early in the movie, while people are gathered at her apartment to sit Shiva for her ex-husband, she looks at herself in the mirror, and very delicately, straightens her wig.
We stopped for pizza and salad on the way back to the airbnb, a place Mark tried his first night in Toronto, about 2 blocks away. They make skinny rectangular pizzas, you pass by the toppings bar and they add what you want, then run the pizza through a conveyor belt oven. All toppings same price. We had fennel sausage and goat cheese and caramelized onions, on top of a white crust and a nice spicey tomato sauce. With arugula and Parmesan to finish, and Mark asked for a drizzle of olive oil, too, which I would not’ve done, thinking no need to add oil on top of sausage, but it was good. We had their fattoush salad, which I thought meant bread, toasted pita, IN the salad, but in this case was lemon marinated garbanzos on top of romaine and red peppers. It was a nice place but I kind of felt like it was an example of the next food revolution that Ruth Reichl spoke about in Madison in June – we have more places serving farm to table, well-made food with interesting ingredients – but they’re not that comfortable. They don’t take reservations, they’re too noisy, everything is served on disposables. And we’re going to start demanding a more comfortable, grown up experience.
