I ate at Jean Georges this weekend with my friend Adam, to celebrate our birthdays (mine was on Saturday, his is at the end of the month). It supposedly is one of the best restaurants in New York, and in fact this completes my "hat trick" in eating at the top three of Epicurious' best restaurants. The meal was really wonderful, creative, expertly prepared, and using the highest quality ingredients. Notable moments included a fizzy shot of sugar plum juice, sashimi with fresh wasabi ice, a wonderful crunchy-topped foie gras with strawberries, and homemade marshmallows at the end. Certainly one of the best meals I've ever had.
I saw Linklater's new movie, Before Sunset today, in Times Square. It was a really great movie, and part of what made it special is how good the first movie Before Sunrise was. I came into the movie already knowing, and caring about the characters. It is ten years later in movie time and in real life, and when the characters meet again, it's apparent how much they had to say to each other, and how much we as an audience were waiting to hear it. The movie didn't disappoint, the acting was incredible, the script was mature and amazing. Like the first movie, it has a lot to say, but, as the characters have aged, it says different things. While watching the movie, I was wondering how they would possibly end it, but the ending did not disappoint. It was at the same time exactly the same, and completely different than the ending to Before Sunrise.
The movie was utterly engrossing. Although it was just a long conversation, I didn't want to miss a word. I'd say that there should be more movies like this, but I honestly don't think that there are many other directors other than Linklater that can handle such a subtle script.
Strange, I just got a comment that was suspiciously off-topic and well-written, from a officer in Iraq detailing how they are helping people, etc. It was posted to my blog entry about Bush lying about the Iraq war. I've deleted the comment. However, I was suspicious about it, and did a search on it, and lo and behold, it appears everywhere! Evidently it is part of an old Republican form letter, that you can see fooled a lot of newspapers. Amazing that this is still going around, now electronically. I don't yet know if this is a new kind of spam, or else someone cut & pasted it after reading my blog.
This blog may be a shoddy work, but at least I can catch Republican form letters better than the average newspaper.
There's an interesting new emotion I've been experiencing in New York. It's an emotion that you feel when you exit the subway, and walk to your destination, and you've been walking for about 10 minutes, and you still notice that you are passing entrances to the same subway stop you got out on.