I grew up with movies and I used to love going to see them.  If you think about it, my parents survived the Great Depression and films were a way for the public to escape the doldrums of the time.  They in turn discovered all of their old movies when television invaded their living rooms and of course their children also discovered those movies, plus all the movies that were continually being made after World War II.  There was a glamor to the old films and Movie Stars were distinct and they were emulated and immortalized.  We stayed up to watch the Academy Awards and they were fun and enjoyable.  Somewhere and somehow the films lost their glamor, maybe because acting has taken a back seat to special effects, films were good overcoming evil and now movies and even cartoons have agendas.  Is it any wonder that the Academy Awards has such dismal viewership?  My Bride and I no longer just go to see a movie, and she will pick one movie and I will pick the next, sometimes one of us falls asleep, sometimes both of us fall asleep and if we are really lucky, we both actually watch the movie. 

I guess it was my turn to select a movie, truth be told my first choice she had already seen with our grandson and then she saw it again with one of her girlfriends, so I went with what sounded like a decent movie.  The so-called critics did not pan it, nor did they make a fuss about it, but it had a couple of actors that can act, if the script requires it.  We went to see The Gentlemen, a film about an American marijuana dealer in Great Britain who has decided on retiring and is attempting to sell his business.  One of the great revelations is how the Gentleman has set up his marijuana farms in Great Britain where all of the land is basically accounted for; it shows how the socialists have basically attempted to ruin the old guard families. The brutal scenes were done very stylistically compared to the old days of realism in film.  The clothing which always interests me, from my past life, struck me as what a millennial would think an Englishman would wear and patterns and coordination and colors be damned.  The film was fun though and we did enjoy it and then we went out for dinner.  My Bride went for her usual Thai Crunch Salad of veggies, cilantro and chicken with peanuts, wontons and rice sticks tossed in a peanut dressing.  I stayed true to form, and had the Jambalaya Linguini with blackened chicken and shrimp, crawfish, Andouille sausage and Tasso ham in a creamy Cajun sauce. 

I ordered the Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards Russian River Ranches Chardonnay 2017 from the Sonoma Coast and that is a far and away better than what is normally offered in most popular priced restaurants of this nature.  Sonoma-Cutrer Vineyards was founded in 1973 by Brice Cutrer Jones and the main estate vineyard is two-hundred-fifty acres planted with Pinot Noir and Chardonnay.  They have several other vineyards in the Sonoma region and they produce five different Chardonnay and four different Pinot Noir wines, all in the Continental style.  This particular wine is a blend of maybe a dozen different vineyards.  The wine is pressed whole-cluster and the juice is free-run and stored in a tank for a few days, before being aged in either new French Oak and neutral French Oak sur-lie and Stainless Steel for the balance; and aged for eight months.  We are partial to this wine and this vintage offered aromas of pear and apple, with some balanced acidity and a nice finish mixing in some smooth buttery notes without being overpowering.  We always try to make the most of our dates.