Reviews – Page 3

Kanal

Sunday I watched a second movie in the Andrej Wajda Criterion Collection, Kanal. Really good film. I liked it even more than Ashes and Diamonds. It’s even more depressing, but I didn’t like it for that.

Set during the Warsaw Uprising, Kanal tells the story of a 40+ man unit of the Polish resistance. At first they take over an apartment building where they intend to rest for a bit before fighting the German army. Several of the men have lovers, including one who is somewhat part of the unit. The Germans attack, and the unit loses half it’s men. Afterward, they are ordered to travel to downtown Warsaw via the sewers to reinforce the rest of the Polish resistance there. The largest part of the movie is them crawling through filth in the sewers, trying to find the proper way out. Wouldn’t want to come up amid a German army encampment.

My favorite thing about the movie? Teresa Iżewska’s character Stokrotka. She’s a blond who’s schtupping Tadeusz Janczar’s Lieutenant Jacek. She doesn’t exactly travel with the men, but travels through the sewers out of downtown Warsaw to meet up with them. During the first battle scene though, Jacek gets himself shot while disabling German mini-tank. Stokrotka accompanies him as the unit heads back through the sewers to Warsaw. Being injured, Jacek can’t keep up, but Stokrotka knows the way, so it isn’t quite the problem you’d expect. The irony about the whole thing is that while the men almost uniformly treat the women as lesser-than, Stokrotka is by far the strongest of the entire group. They get freaked out by the sewers and filth, but she’s the one bravely soldiering on, telling them it ain’t so bad, that they’ll make it through. She more or less carries Jacek through when he starts becoming delusional from his wounds. The tragedy is that she’s in love with the oblivious Jacek, who thinks she’s so tough that she’d never fall in love with anyone. He’s too bull-headed to see what’s in front of him.

Obviously, there’s a lot more to the film than that, but that’s the reason to watch it. Oh, for sure it’s a good depressing Polish war movie. If you are into that. But Teresa Iżewska is a terrific actor playing an awesome role. That’s the best.

Taphouse Grill

A friend of mine, formerly of Seattle, was back in town last night to visit. To celebrate, a number of us had dinner at Taphouse Grill in downtown Seattle. Unfortunately, the experience wasn’t particularly thrilling.

The first issue is one most people have dealt with: the bill. After collecting money, we were short $100 on the bill. I think the primary cause of that was all the beer our table drank. Taphouse Grill’s gimmick is having 160 beers on tap. But the beer isn’t cheap, and people (at least in our group) don’t keep track of how many they drink. I’m a non-drinker, so I have a pretty easy time of keeping track of my alcoholic intake. We made everyone pitch in again and got it all covered.

The second part of the suboptimal experience was the atmosphere. The bar has a nice mixture of locals and downtown hotel tourists, which makes for good conversation. At least if you are sitting at the bar and want to make conversation. However, the cavernous ceilings at Taphouse Grill cause a lot of echoing. I had a pretty hard time hearing.

And lastly my food was very undistinguished. I had Garlic Chicken Penne. Outside of the garlic, it would be a normal run-of-the-mill chicken penne dish. Nothing special, nothing bad. But I could barely taste the garlic in the mixture. In fact, when I picked out a roasted garlic clove or two and bit into them, I could still barely taste the garlic. Somehow the palce is picking the most unflavorful garlic ever, or they are somehow leaching out all the garlic flavor before using it in the food.

Now I don’t want to say this was a bad experience because it wasn’t. These things are all typical for having dinner in a restaurant. I’m of the opinion that a restaurant should be giving me something I can’t get at home for the money I pay, no matter what items on the menu I choose. Even if I’m not drinking, the remaining menu should still be better than a boxed Lean Cuisine dish. And it wasn’t.

Ashes and Diamonds

I forgot to write this up the other day, but Michelle brought over a three DVD collection of Andrej Wajda. I know very little of him, other than he’s an obscure Polish filmmaker. Perhaps not so obscure to the film elite, but obscure to me. This is part of the Criterion Collection for Wajda, so someone thinks he’s important. (A quick read of his Wikipedia entry shows he’s a fairly big deal. I’m just too provincial I guess.)

We watched Ashes and Diamonds, set in post war Poland. The communists are in control, but haven’t completely solidified their dominance. Several members of the underground are assigned to kill an important regional communist official, but they shoot the wrong people. Before they can correct their mistake, one of the young men falls in love with a bartender while staking out the official. He wants to get out and go do schmoopy things possibly before he even finishes the job. The film is mostly about his conflicted decision. As best I can tell, that is.

The movie is kind of depressing, but I enjoyed it. Lots of symbolism, most of which I didn’t get. Stuff like lit glasses of alcohol symbolizing youthful optimism. I think the ending is supposed signify the futility of idealism, but the manner in which the ending happened seemed so abrupt and disconnected from the rest of the story that it detracted. In other words, if this idealism is futile, why not have the idealism lead to the depressing ending? But it doesn’t. The depressing ending is actually pretty random. Maybe I just missed something.

Better connected all around was the story of the communist official. One of the sub-plots is one where his son, raised by estranged family, has joined the underground. The depressing ending for the communist official is much more connected to his relationship with his son.

I have two others in the collection that I need to watch.

Quinn’s Pub

To start off the new blog, I will give a short review of Quinn’s Pub on Capitol Hill.

I arrived around 5 p.m. today. Even at that time, the noise level was fairly high. I have problems hearing over background noise, so I do favor slightly quieter restaurants. However, the table was narrow enough that I could hear my dinner companions, so I wasn’t too put out. By 8 p.m., I was straining a bit to hear.

Our server left a little to be desired too. One of our party hemmed and hawed a bit while ordering drinks, and the server just walked away without so much as an I’ll give you a couple of minutes to think about it. He also walked away without getting orders from everyone at the table more than once. He was quite cheerful. Overall the service was satisfactory, just not ideal.

The strong part was the food. I had a Sloppy Joe as an appetizer, and it was quite tasty. The meat in this sandwich is boar meat, which made for something different. I ate the house-made sausage plate with mashed potatoes for my main course, and that was one of the best sausages I’ve ever had. Rather than a strong overwhelming flavor, theirs is subtle and not too spicy, which allowed me to taste the flavor of the meat.

I would definitely go back.