Month: October 2015 (Page 6 of 11)

Drink of the Week: The Captain’s Blood

October 16, 2015 / Bob Westal

You’ve never heard of the Captain’s Blood and, until about 24 hours prior to when I began writing this, it didn’t register with me, either. I stumbled over this variation..I’m tempted to say “improvement”…on the classic daiquiri in Robert Hess’s trusty 2008 “The Essential Bartender’s Guide,” though this precise recipe is actually from Hess’s vlog.

It’s apparently a fairly old drink, and it’s name — quite probably drawn from the 1922 Rafael Sabatini pirate novel and/or its swashbuckling 1924 and 1935 film adaptations — suggests a prohibition or post-prohibition provenance. Yet, even among lost beverages, the Captain’s Blood is a bit of a dark horse. Among the better known cocktail tomes, it only appears to have shown up in David A. Embury’s 1948 “The Fine Art of Mixing Drinks.” The Embury recipe is severe indeed — the sweetest ingredient is dark rum. Fortunately, the Robert Hess version has just the right amount of sweetness.

The Captain’s Blood

1 1/2 ounces dark rum
1/4 ounce fresh lime juice
1/4 ounce simple syrup
1-2 dashes aromatic bitters
1 lemon twist (optional, but desirable, garnish)

Combine the rum, juice, syrup, and bitters in a cocktail shaker, add ice, and shake. (If you’re having a hard time measuring a mere quarter ounce, note that 1 and 1/2 teaspoons, i.e., half a tablespoon, is the same as 1/4 ounce.) Strain into a chilled, smallish cocktail glass and add your lemon twist if you’ve got it. Try not to drink this one too quickly, as it has a lovely aroma, but it tastes good enough that you might find it gone in about 45 seconds anyway.

****

My first night out, I tried this drink with several different premium brands — Bacardi 8 (Robert Hess’s choice), Gosling’s Black Seal, and my old pal Brugal 1888, and the results were consistently very, very good. Later selections were a bit less stellar. Papa Pilar’s absolutely delicious dark rum seemed to overpower the thing while, conversely, Flor de Cana dark rum seemed a wee bit dry.

And there’s no getting around the seafaring connotations of this drink which has made it an occasional offering at tiki themed bars, though mostly in highly adulterated versions, I suspect. You can find recipes online that call for super-sweet Rose’s Lime Juice or maraschino. Who knows, they might not be bad. On the whole, however, I’m not in any mood to mess with the Captain’s Blood.

Food & Drink, Lifestyle, Vices

Brugal 1888 cocktails dark rum Drink of the Week Gosling's Black Seal Rum Happy Hour the Captain's Blood the daiquiri

Is a More Traditional Approach to Storing Photos the Way Forward?

October 16, 2015 / Bullz-Eye Staff

Nowadays it’s pretty common for people not to print their photographs, unless it’s for something specific such as a framed picture for the home or a present for someone you love. Most of the time, pictures are either taken, saved, viewed or shared on phones, tablets and computers. But maybe this is something that’s going to change again.

This process certainly isn’t fail-safe. What if your device, with all your stored pictures, gets stolen? Or breaks? You’ll lose the photos forever. What if the digital storage system you use (such as Dropbox) has a blip? Or shuts down?

Lifestyle

Movie Review: “Bridge of Spies”

October 15, 2015 / David Medsker

Tom Hanks, Mark Rylance, Amy Ryan, Alan Alda, Austin Stowell

Steven Spielberg

Certain things go together. Peanut butter and chocolate. Jack and ginger (yes, ginger, not Coke. Try it). “Bridge of Spies,” on the other hand, is proof positive that Steven Spielberg (the film’s director), and Joel and Ethan Coen (the film’s co-screenwriters), absolutely do not go together. In fact, this would have been a much better movie had the Coens directed it themselves. There are these subtle, effective and surprisingly funny moments that are clearly the Coens’ work, and then Spielberg steps in and drowns everything else in syrup. That it remains a watchable movie is in spite of Spielberg’s efforts, not because of them.

It is the late ‘50s, and Cold War paranoia is at an all-time high. The FBI captures Brooklyn resident, and Russian spy, Rudolph Abel (Mark Rylance), and the government assigns a local law firm to represent him. The case is assigned to James Donovan (Tom Hanks), even though he is primarily an insurance lawyer. James quickly realizes that no one is interested in giving Rudolph a fair trial, which only leads James to fight even harder to get him one, regardless of the hardships that may mean for him and his family. He loses, but successfully lobbies to pardon Rudolph from getting the death penalty, arguing that the U.S. would be wise to keep him around as a bargaining chip.

Sure enough, James proves to be right, as American pilot Gary Powers (Austin Stowell) is captured after his U-2 spy plane is bombed out of the sky by the Russians, and he is sentenced to hard labor in a Russian prison. The U.S. government asks James if he can negotiate an unofficial trade with the Russians to swap Rudolph for Powers. James is game, but he wants to sweeten the deal by also getting the Russians to convince the German Democratic Republic – who are building the wall between East Berlin and West Berlin as these events are taking place – to also release Frederic Pryor (Will Rogers), an economics student that the GDR has falsely accused of espionage in the hopes that they will get invited to the political big boy table.

Entertainment, Movie Reviews, Movies

Bridge of Spies Steven Spielberg Tom Hanks

Movie Review: “Crimson Peak”

October 15, 2015 / Jason Zingale

Mia Wasikowska, Tom Hiddleston, Jessica Chastain, Charlie Hunnam

Guillermo del Toro

It’s no secret that Guillermo del Toro has a slightly deranged imagination, as witnessed by the twisted fantasy worlds and creatures from “Pan’s Labyrinth” and the “Hellboy” films, but there’s a beauty to his madness that flows through all of the director’s movies, perhaps none more so than his latest project. A gothic romance that’s equal parts Edgar Allen Poe and Emily Brontë, “Crimson Peak” feels like a nostalgic throwback to the kind of films that Hammer made in its prime. Though the movie’s supernatural elements aren’t as prominent as the marketing campaign would lead you to believe, “Crimson Peak” is a sumptuously designed genre flick that delivers a different kind of horror from the typical ghosts-and-ghouls haunted house story.

Set during the turn of the 20th century, the film stars Mia Wasikowska as young American heiress Edith Cushing, an aspiring author who has no interest in romance, whether in real life or her stories, despite the fact that childhood friend-turned-physician Alan McMichael (Charlie Hunnam) clearly fancies her. When English baronet Thomas Sharpe (Tom Hiddleston) arrives in town seeking financing for a clay-mining machine that will help return his family’s business to its former glory, he’s turned away by Edith’s father (Jim Beaver), a self-made industrialist who sees right through Thomas’ façade. That doesn’t stop Edith from falling in love with the penniless aristocrat, however, and after her father is tragically murdered (although it’s covered up to look like an accident), Thomas whisks her away to England to live with him and his ice-cold sister, Lady Lucille Sharpe (Jessica Chastain), in their ancestral home of Allerdale Hall, a crumbling mansion that’s literally sinking into the ground due to the red clay mines below it. But when Edith begins to encounter tortured apparitions that haunt her new home, she uncovers terrible secrets about the Sharpe family history that threaten Thomas and Lucille’s ulterior motives.

Entertainment, Movie Reviews, Movies

Guillermo del Toro Jessica Chastain Mia Wasikowska Tom Hiddleston

Movie Review: “Goosebumps”

October 15, 2015 / Jason Zingale

Jack Black, Dylan Minnette, Odeya Rush, Ryan Lee, Amy Ryan

Rob Letterman

If you were a child of the ‘90s, or a parent of school-age children during that decade, you’re probably familiar with R.L. Stine’s “Goosebumps,” the best-selling series of kid-friendly horror novellas that captured a generation of young readers. In fact, the astonishingly prolific Stine is still publishing new books to this day – a sign of the series’ continued popularity that suggests a “Goosebumps” movie has been long overdue. Though this isn’t the first attempt at bringing the YA horror series to the big screen (Tim Burton was attached to produce a film version in 1998 that never came to fruition), it’s a harmless slice of family entertainment that evokes the goofy humor and PG-rated scares of other Halloween classics like “Hocus Pocus.”

One year after his father’s death, mopey teenager Zach (Dylan Minnette) relocates from New York City to Madison, Delaware with his mother (Amy Ryan) when she accepts a job as the vice principal at the local high school. Zach quickly makes friends with the charismatic girl next door, Hannah (Odeya Rush), but when he suspects that her creepy, overbearing father (Jack Black) is harming her, he breaks into the house with new schoolmate Champ (Ryan Lee) to investigate. Once inside, they discover a bookshelf filled with “Goosebumps” manuscripts that have been mysteriously sealed with a lock, and after Zach unwittingly opens one titled “The Abominable Snowman of Pasadena,” the eponymous monster magically leaps from the pages into the real world. As it turns out, Zach’s neighbor is R.L. Stine himself, whose imaginary creations actually exist and must be contained under lock and key. But when another book is opened amid the chaos of the Abominable Snowman’s escape and evil ventriloquist doll Slappy the Dummy (voiced by Black) is released, he steals the remaining manuscripts in order to free his fellow monsters from their hardbound prisons and wreak havoc on the entire town.

Entertainment, Movie Reviews, Movies

Jack Black