When I started researching candidates for this category, one book came up over and over (plus some online friends recommended it): Red, White, and Royal Blue by Casey McQuiston, first published in 2019, and it's won a bunch of accolades including:
NYT bestseller
Goodreads choice award winner for Best Debut and Best Romance of 2019.
2020 Alex Award Winner
Best Book lists in 2019 for: Vogue, Vanity Fair, NPR, Bookpage, Kirkus, Shelf Awareness
Best Romance lists for 2019 for: Entertainment Weekly, Library Journal, She Reads
It's even been made into a movie, with a sequel in the works (see the note at the end for more on the movie).
The book proved well-written and a lot of fun. Imagine that in 2016, a woman was elected President of the United States (no, not Hilary Clinton; the fictional Ellen Claremont). Now imagine that her son Alex, the FSOTUS (Get it? First Son of the United States) falls in love with Prince Henry, the younger grandson of the Queen of England (no, not Elizabeth II; the fictional Queen Mary). And the love story takes place in the year leading up to Claremont's re-election in 2020.
The sex isn't especially explicit, instead focusing on love and intimacy and emotions, and there was a lot of joy and pain, and sometimes horror at what people will do for political ambition (the older I get, the more I realize I have zero interest in living my life in the public eye).
Would I read it again? No, I don't think so, for the same reasons that I find Frankenstein and the Hunger Games a little tiring - the main characters aren't grownups. While Alex and Henry are in their early 20s, it was like reading about emo adolescents. Think Dead Poets Society crossed with The West Wing. I do recommend it though - it's a lot of fun, and if you enjoy a heavy dose of bildungsroman with your love stories, you really should give this one a try.
Note:one thing I've learned is that if there's a movie based on a novel, I really should start with the movie because if I read the book first, the movie is nearly always disappointing by comparison. So, even though it would spoil the plot of the book, I tried watching the movie, but it kind of dragged, and I gave up on it after 30 minutes. But the acting/casting is good, so you might enjoy it more than I did.
As I mentioned in an earlier post, I've been making tortillas in various forms for nearly 15 years.
Coincidentally, it was twelve years ago today, that the very last bites of food my Dad ever ate were from a taco I made for him on a homemade tortilla. I will always remember seeing his eyes widen as he chewed and hearing his raspy, "Oh, it's good!" He died four days later of a long-term illness, and that dinner remains a treasured and bittersweet memory. But I digress.
So, anyway ... the hardest part of making tortillas (or any corn-based product) is grinding the corn. Turning partially-cooked corn into a meal is a lot of work. When I started experimenting with making tortillas from actual corn (instead using a dried corn flour product called Masa Harina) I immediately rejected using a metate - I just knew it would kill my back. Besides, where would I keep a very large stone mortar and pestle?
For those curious about metates, here's a longish video demonstration if you'd like to see it in use. Skip to about the 4-minute mark and watch for a few seconds to see the motion:
Pretty cool, huh? But definitely not for me.
For my first attempt at fresh masa, I milled the corn with my food processor, but it's a terrible way to grind masa - it dulls the blades and results in a wet concoction that is more batter than dough, and you have to amend it with masa harina to soak up all the excess water. That felt like defeating the purpose of making fresh masa, and I really wanted my food processor blade to remain sharper than a butter knife.
My next grinding tool was an inexpensiveVictoria Molino ($50) that I ended up using for the next six years. But hand-cranking partially cooked corn is enough work that it limited the amount of masa that I was willing to make. I tried out the Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe, and while it's a very nice dry grain mill, no amount of retrofitting makes it actually good for masa-making (it's even more work than the Victoria!).
Amazon has tons of electric wet mills for sale, but they were $200-$300 and had terrible reviews, so I doubted their durability. There were a few mills intended for dosa- and idli-making that looked like good products, but they had a very small capacity, requiring grinding in waves or produced a very wet dough requiring masa harina to dry it out.
The next step up was the Nixtamatic. One thing I liked about that unit was that it was specifically designed for masa. It was just expensive enough at $500 that I questioned whether it was a good idea for a hobbyist like myself. Plus there were no US-based distributors, so I would have to import it myself by purchasing it directly from the company and having them ship to me. But, due to the distance and language barrier, support for the product would be limited and expensive. But they've been in business for many years, so if I do need support, it's there. But the price was high enough that I hesitated, and kept making do with the Victoria.
Then my beloved Masienda released the Molinito, an $1800 grinder with stone burrs. The damn thing weighs 100 pounds (45 kg) and is about the size of a really large microwave, but taller. I really wanted one, but that was just a huge amount of money, and really out of our budget, and I'd have to give up a lot of counter space. And, the shipping from Los Angeles to Minnesota was pretty expensive - about $200 all by itself. Here's a little video (skip to about 7:00 to see it in action):
The Molinito is rated for commercial use, so ... overkill. I could sell it if I didn't end up using it, but still... it was huge. And heavy. And expensive. I hesitated even more than with the Nixtamatic, and years slipped by while I continued to use my Victoria.
Then came time for this year's bonus, and I suggested using it to upgrade the Victoria. My husband also likes masa-based food, so we decided to go for it, and I started researching molinos yet again. I found out that Masienda was discontinuing the Molinito, and I had strong misgivings about buying an expensive discontinued product - how would they support it once they ran out of replacement milling stones, for example?
I decided that the Molinito was not in my future, and went back to the Nixtamatic. There are very few of them in the United States, and the reviews are mixed. Steve Sando (of Ranch Gordo beans) got one back in 2008, but says he doesn't use it much anymore. At least two guys on Reddit deemed it crude, and stated that the grinding burrs were made of badly-cast aluminum (they are wrong - more on this later). Others complain that it doesn't grind finely enough.
Some people seem to like it, but no one is raving about it. But it's been around for at least 20 years (if not much longer), and it's still being made and sold, so it's probably a decent product, right? It's also a mere 31 pounds (14 kg), so if I need to move it myself, I can.
So, I ordered one. The shipping was painfully expensive (almost as much as the unit itself) because transporting a 40-pound (18 kg) package from Southern Mexico to the Northern US is just not cheap. UPS got it to me in only two days, and I don't have an unboxing video, but Nixtamatic did a GREAT job packing it - it was double-boxed, with sturdy baffles between the layers of cardboard.
Now, let's talk about what it is, so any of my readers who are considering one have their expectations set appropriately: it's basically a Victoria Molino, but with POWER. If the Victoria is a 1-speed bicycle, the Nixtamatic is a Ford F150. It has a hopper with an aggressive auger ("worm") that pushes the corn between two grinding plates, and the output is exactly the same quality as what comes out of the Victoria. If you want it more finely ground, you must put the masa through again, and you have to kind of push it through that second time. It's easier to clean than the Victoria, and it's FAST. It grinds 2 pounds (about a kilo) of nixtamal in less than ONE MINUTE. Holy sh-t.
Yes, the hopper is made of sand-cast aluminum, but that's not a bad thing - it's massive and would be very heavy if it were steel or iron. But the grinding plates themselves are made from cast iron (a magnet sticks nicely to it). I'm not going out on much of a limb when I assert that they've always been made from cast iron. No one would ever use aluminum to grind, well, anything - it simply isn't durable enough.
It lives on a wheeled stainless-steel table. Out of the way when not in use, easy to get it to an electrical outlet when it is.
You can make tortillas with one pass of the Nixtamatic, but you'll get a puffier tortilla that has more pliability upon reheating if you grind the masa a second time. But if all of the tortillas will be eaten in one sitting, I wouldn't bother running it through again. A single grind results in tortillas that are delicious and pliable enough to not break when served immediately.
Here's a short video we made showing it in use. Yes, it's just as loud as it seems in the video (though you can keep the sound off if you like):
One of the benefits of easy nixtamal-grinding is that I'm making a lot more masa-based recipes. In the month we've had the Nixtamatic, we've made tamales, tetelas, empenadas, tortillas, and arepas. Before we got that beast, I made tortillas maybe once a month. Now I'm grinding corn every week.
And yeah, I love it.
If you want to acquire a Nixtamatic of your own and don't live in Mexico, reach out to the company directly and fill out their online contact form here: https://www.nixtamatic.com.mx/contacto.php. They will provide the price and shipping estimate (based on your zipcode). I paid via PayPal, though they may be take other payment methods. You can also call them directly, but if you are calling from within the US, you will need to append "011-52-" in front of the phone number listed on their site. If you don't speak Spanish, when they pick up, say "Buenos días. ¿Hablas inglés, por favor?" and they will transfer your call to someone who speaks English.
For aficionados of corn tortillas, I offer this analogy: eating a grocery store tortilla is a bit like driving a Chevette*. It'll get you where you are going, but it's uncomfortable and not much fun to drive. And here's the weird part - people are driving Chevettes around but think they are behind the wheel of a BMW.
I've been making my own tortillas for nearly fifteen years, and early on, I used masa harina (corn flour made from nixtamalized corn that has been dried and milled to a very fine consistency) to make the dough, and tortillas made from masa harina offer quite an upgrade over commercial corn tortillas (think a nice new Toyota Camry, reliable and pleasant to drive, but not exactly fun).
But tortillas made from fresh masa, now that's the true BMW of the tortilla world. They are pliable (you can crumple them in your fist, and when you let go, they flop open again without splitting), and if they are made right they are pliable even when reheated. They also have a wonderfully strong corn flavor and aroma. But making them is undeniably a lot of work, particularly if you don't have the setup for it.
I started making my own masa about 6 years ago, after my daughter got back from a school trip to Costa Rica and had tortillas made from fresh masa during a homestay with a Costa Rican family. She urged us to try making them, because they were justso good (she was right).
You start by nixtamalizing the corn, and that part's easy - you just cook the dried corn in an alkaline bath (about 1:3 corn to water by weight, plus a couple of heaping teaspoons of cal/pickling lime) for 30-45 minutes, then let it sit overnight.
Then you grind it. That's the hard part.
Over the years, I used the following methods:
The food processor (terrible - it can be used, but it dulls the blades, and to get the masa finely ground enough, you have to add a lot of water, and that results in a watery dough more akin to oatmeal in consistency. To turn it into dough, you have to add masa harina to soak up the additional water.
An inexpensive Victoria molino (Spanish for mill). This has been my workhorse for the last six years. It's been around forever, and was designed specifically for making masa.
Wonder Mill Junior Deluxe, a very nice hand-cranked mill designed for dry grain that claims to handle masa, but it really doesn't work well for wet corn. Yeah, you can swap out the auger for one designed for masa, but the gloopy, cooked corn clogs the narrow throat, and you have to really shove the corn through. It produces a nice enough masa, but it's much slower and far harder to crank than the Victoria. Do yourself a favor, and if you want to make masa but don't want to spring for an electric mill, skip the WMJD and just get the Victoria, which is much cheaper anyway.
The electric Nixtamatic molino, which I ordered from Mexico. It's basically just like the Victoria but with POWER, and after 6 years of using hand-cranked mills this thing is a (very loud) delight to use.
Once the partially-cooked corn is ground, you add water to the masa until it's the consistency of play dough, then you roll it into balls, squish it flat and cook it. Make a stack of them and keep them wrapped in a dishtowel so they can steam a bit, then you are ready for Taco Tuesday.
Anyway, not long after I started making masa from scratch, we did a taste test: I bought a pack of grocery store tortillas, made a small batch of tortillas from a masa-harina-based dough, and also made some from masa, and the difference was startling.
I once heard that the James Beard award-winning chef Ann Kim tasted masa-from-scratch tortillas that were so good they made her cry, and I believe it. And here's the weird part: I was one of the people driving a Chevette but thinking it was a BMW. Even the very best grocery store tortillas, which I loved for so many years, now taste like cardboard - but if you look at the ingredients, they have very nearly the same list as my from-scratch tortillas: Corn, lime, water (plus some preservatives and gums that I don't use).
* Yes, my first car was indeed a Chevette. It had a four-speed manual transmission and no air conditioning.
Prompt - The Bridge (2–30 minutes): Two people are walking together across a bridge. Have one of them recount a story to the other, starting at the foot of the bridge and ending as they step off the bridge. Imagine the length of the bridge and how long it might take to walk across. Write your story in the time it would take to cross the bridge. A small footbridge – over in a couple of minutes. The Golden Gate bridge – 30 minutes. It may be wise to avoid the 100-mile Danyang-Kunshan Grand Bridge in China, but the choice is yours!
***
Kivi and I parked next to the Minnesota River in the little state park outside Jordan. The river was swollen from the spring thaw but hadn’t yet washed out the bridge. Instead of taking the trail, though, I led her back up to the Jonathan Carver Parkway and started walking across the bridge.
“Mom, where are we going?”
“I thought you’d like to see the giant whirlpools.”
“I’ve seen them.”
“Yeah, but it’s been a long time since you saw them up close,” I responded.
“Ok…” Her voice made it clear she thought I was being a little silly but that she was planning to humor me.
“So, the first time I saw them was back when I was teaching at Chaska, and I was driving this way every day. I told you and your dad about them, and then when we had a chance, I made us stop and take a look. They were enormous - maybe 4’ across, and I’d never seen anything like them.”
“I remember.”
“You were eight or so and not terribly foolhardy, but I tried to make it clear to you that if you fell in, it probably meant you’d die. You’d get sucked in, and if you were lucky, you’d go shooting through the culvert, but more likely, you’d be pinned across it, and we wouldn’t be able to get you out.”
“Mom, I’ve told you for years that I didn’t have any intention of going in.”
I shrugged, “I know. But you were edging really close. And you may not have planned to go in, but you might have fallen in accidentally. Remember how I used to take an extra change of clothes for you whenever we went up to Lake Superior?”
Kivi laughed. “Yeah, and I usually did get wet.”
“So, I insisted on holding your hand despite your objections.”
“That made me kind of mad, I won’t lie. I thought you didn’t trust me.”
I shrugged a second time, “I know - and you were right. I didn’t. But I was less interested in soothing your feelings than in making absolutely sure you didn’t fall in.”
We stepped off the far side of the bridge and continued alongside JC Parkway on our way to see the giant whirlpools again.
--April 26, 2020
***
Note: This is a blend of fiction and non-fiction. The scene is set in the present, and the conversation between my daughter and me is made up, but in the imagined conversation, I described a real event (taking her 8-year-old self to see the whirlpools created by drainage culverts connecting one side of the road to the other).
There will always be movies nominated where I think, "What was the academy thinking?!? How can anyone think this movie is the best of the year?" (2023's Triangle of Sadness, I'm looking at you). I have mixed feelings about this year's slate of nominees, as it was considerably weaker than last year's. Last year, the top eight movies were all worthy contenders, and even with the bottom two, I can see why they were nominated, even though I myself didn't like them.
This year, the best movies were only very good, and most didn't rise to great. The slate was characterized by wasted potential and the failure to kill the director's darlings:
The Substance was on track to be the best movie of the year and perhaps the best horror movie of all time. It built the suspense and dread through the first 3/4 of the movie until it fell down in the final act, with its blood-drenched crescendo that suddenly and massively violated suspension of disbelief.
Nickel Boys took a great story about good kids but ruined it with experimental and distracting film techniques and head-hopping.
The Brutalist needs to cut at least 30 minutes but perhaps as much as an hour, particularly if can't be bothered to close its plot holes. What happened to Van Buren? How did Laszlo rebuild his career after the fiasco depicted in the movie? When did his niece overcome her trauma? The list goes on.
Anora failed to make me care about any of the characters. The character I liked best and identified with, was hired muscle who inadvertently assaults the main character (though she was so annoying, who can blame him?)
Emilia Pérez was actually a pretty good movie, but the director's lack of research was kind of insulting and played on everyone else's ignorance of the difference between Spain and Mexico.
Wicked was imaginative, but like Anora, failed to make me care about the characters. Worse, it was a musicalwith not very good sound design.
The only movies that didn't disappoint me in some way were Conclave, Dune 2, and A Complete Unknown (I haven't seen I'm Still Here, which hasn't yet come to streaming and is unlikely to before the award ceremony).
So, here's how Chris's and my ranking of the movies fall out:
Interestingly, except for Anora and Nickel Boys, we remained in perfect lock-step. That's pretty rare, as we are both pretty opinionated.
I also try to draw conclusions about interesting cross-movie themes:
Four movies take place in modern times (The Substance, Anora, Conclave, Emilia Pérez)
Four movies are historical period pieces (The Brutalist 1947-1960-ish; A Complete Unknown 1961-1965; I'm Still Here, 1971; Nickel Boys, 1964).
Two movies take place out of time (Dune 2, Wicked)
One movie deals with genocide, or more accurately, its aftermath (The Brutalist).
Six movies contain a language other than English. Two were mostly or entirely not in English (Emilia Pérez, Spanish; I'm Still Here, Portuguese). The others were mostly or almost entirely in English but contained other languages as well (Conclave, with Spanish, Italian, and Latin; Dune 2, Fremen and sign language; Anora, Russian; The Brutalist, Hungarian and Italian).
One actor (Timothée Chalamet) starred in two of the nominated movies (A Complete Unknown, Dune 2).
I'm hesitant to offer predictions or opinions for other categories because I haven't seen all of the performances, but here are my opinions in spite of my ignorance. I underlined the one that I thought should win. Bold indicates the winner.
Note: There should be five nominees per category. If I don't mention a nominee (or indicate a winner), it's because I haven't seen the performance. If I didn't mention a category, it's because I have no opinion.
Best Dirctor: Coralie Fargeat/The Substance, James Mangold/A Complete Unknown, Jacques Audiard/Emilia Pérez, Brady Corbet/The Brutalist, andSean Baker/Anora.
Best Actor: Timothée Chalamet (for his Bob Dylan role), Adrien Brody, and Ralph Fiennes. Fiennes successfully made me sympathize with a Catholic cardinal, a person I have zero in common with.
Best Actress: Cynthia Erivo, Karla Sofía Gascón, Mikey Madison, and Demi Moore. No question -- Moore's performance in The Substance was fantastic.
Best Supporting Actress: Monica Barbaro, Ariana Grande, Felicity Jones, Isabella Rossellini, and Zoe Saldaña. Saldaña held Emilia Pérez together.
Best Supporting Actor: Guy Pearce, Edward Norton, and Yura Borisov. He is the ONLY person I sympathized with in Anora. I also loved Ed Norton's turn as Pete Seeger.
Best Writing (original screenplay): The Brutalist, Anora, andThe Substance. Extra kudos for it having been written in French and perfectly translated to English.
Best Writing (adapted screenplay):A Complete Unknown, Conclave, Emilia Pérez, and Nickel Boys.
Best Sound:A Complete Unknown, Dune 2, Emilia Pérez, and Wicked.
Best Production Design:The Brutalist, Conclave, Dune 2, andWicked.
Best Cinematography: Dune 2, Emilia Pérez, andThe Brutalist.
Best Makeup and Hairstyling: Emilia Pérez, The Substance, and Wicked.
Best Costume Design:A Complete Unknown, Conclave, and Wicked.
For me, the only disappointing thing about this movie was that it opened after Bob Dylan left Minnesota. It would have been awesome if we saw some of his life in Duluth or Minneapolis. But it's not about a local boy who makes it big, it's about how the only songwriter to ever win the Nobel Prize in literature (which he didn't attend) gets his big break and stretches his wings.
I tend to enjoy movies about famous musicians - I loved Walk the Line, Elvis, and La Bamba - but this movie seemed tailor-made for my husband and me. Chris and I both grew up listening to our mothers' music, and in fact, I've been to a Peter, Paul, and Mary concert with my husband, mom, and mom-in-law at Jesse Auditorium at the University of Missouri-Columbia, and Mom and I have been to see Joan Baez at The Blue Note (also in Columbia). Chris and I both connected instantly with the characters, perhaps because we know and love their music. My daughter, on the other hand, didn't care about the people, rightly labeled Dylan a jerk, and was appalled by Dylan's singing (also fair - I've always preferred Dylan's songs when they are sung by other people).
So I don't know if I'm seeing the movie with clear eyes or not, but I loved A Complete Unknown. I loved seeing how that boy from Minnesota lost his innocence, developed as an artist, and went his own way. I loved seeing how the political crises that happened before I was born (but I grew up hearing about so they feel contemporary) shaped him. I loved his relationships with Baez, Pete Seeger, Woody Guthrie, and his girlfriend, Suze Rotolo (called Sylvie Russo in the movie).
The casting and acting were brilliant, and all the actors did their own singing. Timothée Chalamet looks just enough like the real Bob Dylan, and is a good enough actor that I was never pulled out of the world of the movie. Ed Norton was excellent as Pete Seeger, and I'm astounded that the same man played both the vicious Derek Vineyard (the neo-Nazi from American History X) and the gentle Seeger with equal believability. Elle Fanning captured just how difficult it would be to be a famous artist's lover, for it seems to be a truism that great artists are great because they are willing to be self-centered and neglect the people who love them. And Monica Barbaro captured my beloved Joan very well, singing in a clear soprano voice (with perhaps less vibrato than the real Joan uses), and she delivers my favorite line of the movie with a perfect blend of I-just-figured-this-out and blunt matter-of-factness:
Bob: Your songs are like an oil painting at the dentist's office. Joan: You know, you're kind of an asshole, Bob. Bob: Yeah, I guess.
The Brutalist is a very long and strange movie, with moments of brilliance, moments of confusion (usually when the protagonist is strung out on heroin) and then it resolves with a surprisingly satisfying conclusion.
The 3 1/2 hour movie has an actual intermission with a neat countdown clock (evidently in theaters, it was a 15-minute intermission, but at home it was only one minute). And fortunately, for such a long movie, it wasn't boring, though it was occasionally slower than I'd like.
It does make the mistake of occasionally trying to immerse the viewer into the confusion and disorientation of the main character's drug-addled state, but confusing visual storytelling just causes a confused viewer, and I was pulled out of the movie in two key scenes, where I was left wondering what the heck was going on.
The movie has an odd tendency to not resolve plot points, something I find just incredibly annoying. Did the rich guy's son assault the girl or not? (I don't know). Did the main character go to Israel with his wife or not? How was he able to rebuild his career after the fiasco depicted at the climax of the film? When and how did the traumatized girl start speaking? Where did the rich guy go? Interestingly, Chris and I disagreed on that point - he thought that not explaining was a playful and artistic move on the part of the filmmakers.
Speaking of playful and artistic - one of the most beautiful scenes in the movie was filmed in Carrara, Italy, in the same marble quarry where Michelangelo carved the sublime La Pietà. Interestingly, the statue was vandalized in 1972 by a Hungarian Catholic named Laszlo Toth, who believed he was God, and the main character of the movie was named after him. I'm not sure of the symbolism of that. Was it intended to show that the protagonist was crazy and hubristic? Maybe it was to show that he wasn't a fan of marble? (He did prefer cement to stone.)
One thing I though was brilliant was how they mostly didn't show the Holocaust (and it's not a Holocaust movie), but it still formed a shadowy backbone to the movie, creating a marvelous sense of unease and dread. The trauma it caused in the main character, his wife, and his niece was key to many of the later scenes in the movie and in the surprisingly satisfying resolution.
Overall, I thought the movie was pretty good (but not great), and it was well-acted and well-cast. The cinematography was solid and bare (rather like the titular architectural movement), and even the credits were designed to look brutalist (though I've read the actual architecture depicted mostly wasn't) which was a nice touch.
(Pithy Reviews; and Rankings* out of 10 nominees):
Conclave (Absorbing conspiracy at the Vatican; Cathy: 1, Chris: 1)
Emilia Pérez (Stereotypes, redemption, and transition; Cathy: 2, Chris: 2)
Dune: Part Two (Best rendition of a classic SF novel: Cathy: 3, Chris: 3)
The Substance (Excellent horror movie ruined by ending; Cathy: 4, Chris: 4)
The Brutalist(Troubled architect explores the pitfalls of patronage; Cathy: 5, Chris: 5)
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