WFC Mali: Bamako

This is a very unusual film. It starts off with a trial of sorts that turns out to be more of a hearing into African debt, globalism and migration. And it takes place in the backyard of a private house, so there are children and animals running around amongst the judges and witnesses.

Very interesting.

And just when you think it’s all going to be serious and stuff, suddenly there’s a Western movie inside the film starring Danny Glover! (Who was one of the producers.)

Quirky! And some of the actors are great, especially Aïssa Maïga and William Bourdon.

But some of the witnesses kinda go on. And on.

Bamako. Abderrahmane Sissako. 2006. Mali.

Mali Cooler

  • 4 parts gin
  • 4 parts orange juice
  • 2 parts Dubonnet
  • 1 part grenadine
  • 1 part sour mix

Shake with ice and strain into a cocktail glass. Garnish with a slice of kiwi.

This doesn’t really sound like a very genuinly Malinese (is that a word?) cocktail, but it’s the only one I found on dar intertubes.

Man. Monin’s Grenadine is good! The one I tried last year, from Rose’s, was horrible!

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

WFC Taiwan: 最好的時光

This is yet another very languid film. I mean, very little happens. But the actors here are very good, so it’s enjoyable to watch.

And it’s cute and playful.

The second part (which is a “silent film” from 1910-ish) is a bit of a drag, though.

Three Times. Hsiao-Hsien Hou. 2005. Taiwan.

Zegroni

  • 10 parts Zacapa 23 rum
  • 4 parts Dubonnet
  • 3 parts Campari

Stir with ice and strain into a glass. Squeeze an orange peel over the surface. Garnish with a vanilla bean.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

WFC Greece: Τριλογία: Το λιβάδι που δακρύζει

Stella!  STELLA!!!

Geez. An interlaced DVD. That reduces the vertical resolution to a half. But I guess I can see why they did it — it’s 6GB as it (it’s quite long), and they’d have to go to double sided to get it over 9GB…

Which I would have preferred.

Anyway!

It’s a very languid film. I usually love this kind of stuff, but I’m not quite convinced… There’s a whiff of melodrama. And not the good kind where you really go for it (like Douglas Sirk), but the kind where you think you’re making a drama, and you aren’t.

To carry off a film like this, you need really great actors. And there are very few of them here. So it mosly just sits there, expecting you to do all the work.

But there were scenes I enjoyed. And it would probably have been a whole lot more enjoyable on bluray. Because it looks like it might have been very pretty.

The Weeping Meadow. Theodoros Angelopoulos. 2004. Greece.

Skinos Fresh

  • 8 parts Skinos
  • 4 parts gin
  • 2 parts fresh lemon juice
  • 1 part simple syrup
  • 1 dash Angostura bitters
  • A quarter cucumber without skin or seeds

Muddle cucumber in shaker. Add the other ingredients and ice. Shake. Strain into a cocktail glass and garnish with a slice of cucumber.

I had Skinos in a Greek restaurant in… Melbourne? Yeah. That sounds right. It’s quite interesting. It really reeks of pine resin, so you think it’s going to taste harsh. But it doesn’t. It’s smooth.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.

Google GeoChart

I wanted to have some maps in my World of Films and Cocktails series.  Like this:

I tried various mapping services, but nothing was flexible enought to do what I wanted.  I wanted more recently “visited” countries to be brighter, I wanted it to be scriptable, I wanted it to be easy to take unassisted “screenshots”, and I wanted an interactive version where you could click on the countries to get some information.

Then I found Google GeoChart. It’s really kinda geared towards displaying numerical data per country, but it’s flexible enough that you can disable almost all of the distracting, ugly elements.  And, as a bonus, it generates SVG images, so whatever you can’t disable with the features provided, you can just alter by inspecting the DOM after the image has been generated.

Kudos to Google.  It’s very neat.  I managed to make the maps look exactly like I had envisioned.

You can see the interactive version here, and the source code is on github. It’s totally trivial.  It just sets a bunch of defaults, and then (after inspecting the DOM a bit), it removes some textures.  And adds events that pop up lightboxes that point back to the films.

To create the snapshots of the charts, I use PhantomJS. It allows rendering web pages headless, and generates a PNG as the result.  It’s really neat and easy to work with.  With all this in the tool chain, I can generate the WFC entries automatically without human intervention.

Well.  Somebody has to make the cocktails.  And drink them.  And edit out the boring screenshots.

shot0023 png2

Yes!  I do that!  The nerve of some people…

WFC Australia: Prisoner Queen: Mindless Music & Mirrorballs

This is a very low budget film. It does have charm and an insane plot going for it, but it’s so, so awkward.

A million kudos for casting Noeline Bourke (Jude Kuring) from Prisoner: Cell Block H, my favourite soap ever. (And all the other actors from that series.) Well. The only soap worth watching. When I get elder, I’m going to watch all 692 episodes all over again.

You can see how much fun everybody had making it, and I really enjoyed watching it, but it’s… not… whatchamacall it… good.

The Joan Ferguson bits are awesome.

Prisoner Queen. Timothy Spanos. 2003. Australia.

Australia

Adios Motherfucker

  • 2 parts vodka
  • 2 parts rum
  • 2 parts tequila
  • 2 parts gin
  • 2 parts blue curacao
  • 1 part lime juice
  • 1 part lemon juice
  • 1 part simple syrup
  • 4 parts lemonade

Pour into ice filled glass and stir.

This post is part of the World of Films and Cocktails series. Explore the map.