Video Note:
Charcuterie
26 July 2018

¶ Having enjoyed my default home-alone dinner of spaghetti alla carbonara last night, I struck out in a different, if certainly no healthier, direction this evening: coins of dried salami, Camembert on toast, and ice-cold radishes with a dish of sea salt. I ate all but a few of the coins and about half the radishes. When I was done with the Camembert, it looked pretty mouse-eaten. 

That may have been because my attention was divided between dinner and a show. The movie was Inside Man, Spike Lee’s meta-heist movie. Shot in and around 20 Exchange Place, one of the most stylish buildings in Wall Street, Inside Man starts out conventionally but soon begins to diverge from expectations. The shift is subtle; the story goes on looking like a bank-robbery-with-hostages long after we know that it isn’t one, largely because that’s how the police, brilliantly misled, keep treating it. Before the detectives get wise, there’s a real danger that the men in blue will “over-react.” They’re the scary guys. 

There’s a fixer in the works, a woman who proposes to play negotiator between the cops and the robbers. It’s an interesting role, played by an actress who has never looked lovelier — but with more bravado, I fear, than conviction. She saves her performance with some curls of disgust in a barber-shop interview with the actual villain, who for his equally illustrious part is entirely convincing.  

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