How To Train Your Dragon

What a delightful movie!  I'd kind of lost track of animated movies.  There were those years where we had seen all the animated movies--good and bad--innumerable times.  In the interest of watching movies the whole family could all enjoy, animated movies dropped from the list.  Frankly, in the past few years there weren't a whole lot that I even thought I might like to see.  Cars?  A movie about talking cars?  Not if I don't have to.  I fell asleep during Wall-E.  I hear it's great (and picks up in the second half) and maybe I'll finish watching it sometime.  And how many movies about penguins were there?  But lately?  What great movies, especially Up (one of my all-time favorites) and Toy Story 3 (sob!  Andy goes to college!  More about that later...), and I really want to see Tangled.  As for How To Train Your Dragon, I read a good review and tucked it away that I wanted to see it.  The story is simple:  Young Viking Hiccup wants to fight dragons like the rest of his village.  His father, however, doesn't think he has the right stuff, so to speak.  Hiccup, determined to prove him wrong, wings a dragon and from there begins a relationship that changes them all.  It's not complicated, obviously, but it is very funny and heartfelt.  I laughed.  I cried.  The family laughed at me for crying, but I think they enjoyed it just as much as I did.  Don't let this one slip past you.  A real gem for boys and girls, kids and adults.

Babbitt, Sinclair Lewis

This was on my son's summer reading list last year.  He wasn't enamored of it, and I'm not sure he even finished it.  I feel compelled to finish reading books, even if I don't like them.  Perhaps I felt sorry for poor Babbitt, with it's bookmark stuck 73 pages from the end, and that's why I picked it up.  Whatever the reason, I'm glad I did.  It was written in 1922 but still feels relevant today.  Businessman George Babbitt wants to get ahead, and he's willing to bend the rules a bit -- that's just how business runs, he justifies -- to succeed.  As Lewis states, "He serenely believed that the one purpose of the real-estate business was to make money for George F. Babbitt."  Style is preferred to substance, and success is measured in money and social capital.  George is no deep thinker, but he does notice the emptiness that lurks about him and his life.  Babbitt has a poor understanding of the reasons for his unease but an all too keen perception of its effects. Stepping even just an inch outside the norm is a societal taboo.  In Zenith, "they all had the same ideas and expressed them always with the same ponderous and brassy assurance."  To be conventional is to be accepted.  To think or act differently is to invite suspicion and, heaven forbid, ostracism.  Babbitt is ridiculous but pitiable, but Lewis allows the reader to sympathize with George and root for him, turning the farce of George's life into a touching story.

Babbitt snuck up on me, and I was surprised to find how much I was enjoying it.  I understood George, the emptiness he felt, and also the fear of stepping outside the established bounds.  I understood, also, why he made the choices he did.  Lewis captures his time but also manages to capture our own as well.

On a side note, I highly recommend the film adaptations of two of his works:  Dodsworth, one of my favorite movies and showcasing a fantastic performance by Walter Huston, and Elmer Gantry, which has great performances by Burt Lancaster.

Beef and Snow Peas with Pan-Fried Noodles

This is another Epicurious recipe.  It's easy, flavorful, and different.  The recipe is a basic stir-fry of flank steak and snow peas.  What makes this different is you pan fry the noodles on both sides, pressing into a kind of cake.  The first time we made this, the flipping was problematic.  The second time, we pressed more and it was much easier.  You then transfer the noodle cake to a cutting board and cut into wedges, serving the beef and snow peas on top.   I thought of serving this with an wonton soup, maybe, but it didn't happen.  It was a stand-alone dish and quite filling on its own.

*Note:  Obviously photography isn't my calling.  The dish looked much more appetizing than it does in the picture.  I'll try to stick to images I find on the web.

Avatar

I think most everyone has seen this, so I won't say too much.  Just like everyone else, I thought the effects were great.  I really did lose sight of the fact that I was not watching real people.  Unfortunately, there was dialogue such as: 

Look, at first, it was just orders, and then, everything changed. Okay? I fell in love. I fell in love with the - with the forest, with the Omaticaya people... with you... with you...

GROAN.  The story was predictable (Pocahontas anyone?), and the dialogue actually hurt to listen to.  But, hey, isn't it good to see Sigourney Weaver working?!  And...and...weren't the effects great?!

The Passage, Justin Cronin

A government experiment goes badly awry and virals (vampire-ish creatures) are released into an unsuspecting world, creating havoc to say the least.  Is there a hero that saves the world?  Most everyone left alive is too focused on merely staying alive.  Well, there is a little girl.  As Justin Cronin begins:

Before she became the Girl from Nowhere--the One Who Walked In, the First and Last and Only, who lived a thousand years--she was just a little girl in Iowa, named Amy.

 Amy, you see, was one of the subjects of the experiment.  She's a strange and vulnerable little girl who for some reason wasn't destroyed or disfigured like the others.  The first half of the novel is destruction.  The second half is the realization that the status quo is unsustainable.  There is continuous juxtaposition between journeys and imprisonment.  What is safe?  Where is safe?  Can safety be counted on when the barbarians are always at the gate?

The Passage was heavily promoted this past summer, and I bought into the hype (I'm so weak) and ran out and bought a copy.  Am I glad I did?  Ye-es.  I missed the whole dragon tattoo craze (and I have no intention of catching up), so I thought I'd get ahead of the game with The Passage before the movie comes out (the rights have been sold already).  It's a long book, and I read it over a long weekend.  I was sick at the time so perhaps I didn't appreciate it as much as I might have if I were feeling more like myself.  That being said, it was a good story and Cronin is a good storyteller.  There was only one point - during an "is he dead or not" section - that I thought a good editor should have suggested that Cronin make some changes because he and the story are better than what's on the page.  It's a quibble only.  I do have a heads up, though.  This book is reported to be the first of a trilogy, which I didn't know until the last page, and then I wanted to throw the book across the room.  It's not exactly a cliffhanger, but the end is a shocker.  Chances are pretty good I'll be back for part two.

Oven-Fried Panko Chicken

Yesterday was hectic.  We were out of town, so we are behind in a lot of tasks.  Trying to catch up, we had a ton of chores and errands to complete before the Steelers game at 8:15.  I did not have the time or energy for an elaborate meal, but after such a busy and cold day, a good meal was in order.  We decided on one of our fall-back favorites, Oven-Fried Panko Chicken.  It's super-easy, juicy, and tasty:  chicken (I used boneless breasts) dipped in butter and coated in panko with salt, pepper, and cayenne and baked at 450 degrees for 30-40 minutes.  I chopped a few potatoes (left the peels on) and coated them with olive oil, salt, pepper, and rosemary and put that in the oven along with the chicken.  The potatoes came out crispy on the outside, tender on the inside.  The rosemary wasn't a great complement to the panko/cayenne chicken, but it was okay.  I also steamed a big bunch of fresh broccoli to offset some of that butter in the chicken.

I served a 2007 Cambria Katherine's Vineyard Chardonnay with dinner.  The prep was maybe fifteen minutes, and I was able to run to Wal-Mart while dinner was in the oven.  It was a satisfying meal leading to a satisfying Steelers win!

Iron Man 2

This is not a bad sequel.  It certainly doesn't replicate the fun of the first one, but it's not an awful way to spend some time, especially if it's a slow night and there's not much else going on.  I liked it, but I also finished a crossword puzzle during the movie so obviously I wasn't glued to the television during it.  Robert Downey, Jr., is a kick again as Tony Stark, I think Gwyneth Paltrow was sick throughout filming, Scarlet Johansson looked great, and Don Cheadle didn't make me miss Terrence Howard, slipping seamlessly into the role of Stark friend Jim Rhodes.  Mickey Rourke was good, as were the effects.  I hoped for more, but the original would have been hard to match for sheer enjoyment.

Bad Things Happen, Harry Dolan

At the start of Bad Things Happen, Harry Dolan introduces David Loogan by telling us he "looks nothing at all like a man heading off to dig a grave."  We're not sure exactly who David Loogan is, but we want to find out.  As the story begins, Loogan submits a story to a mystery magazine and is subsequently given a job as an editor and befriends the publisher.  There's a murder, and David is a suspect, along with several other people.  In this literate, well-told tale--which had me stopping frequently to marvel over a well-crafted sentence or phrase--police detective Elizabeth Waishkey tries to discover the murderer and the unravel the mystery of David Loogan.  I don't know that I was very surprised at outcome, but I absolutely enjoyed the journey.  I don't often read mysteries, but I highly recommend this book.