Just finished my third attempt at expanding-food-lunches - this time substituting risotto rice for the lentils. The recipe was roughly: fry peppers until skin starts to blacken, add a little garlic and then douse with 2xTins tomatoes to stop 'em burning; add spices (this time Ras el Hanout - have to use it for something) and risotto rice. As the rice sucks up the liquid from the sauce, add in white wine (bought a box of vin de table just for this - it actually works a treat) and a healthy slug of vinegar and keep going until the rice goes soft. Finally, add a few handfuls of chopped baby spinach (don't hold off - it will look like you've added the same volume spinach as sauce, but it wilts down pretty quick). As a final measure, I added a few slugs of Olive Oil, which loosened it up a bit.

Verdict - I added the spinach a bit late, I think - which made it sometimes a little disappointing, although probably better for me. Also, the dish tastes slightly unpleasantly of rice-flour. Not sure what to do about this, short of washing the risotto rice before starting. Also, have turned my nose up at pitta breads, and gone for the slightly more awkward but much for satisfying tortilla wraps (removing the need to fuck about with cling film - better for environment, yay!) A few dashes of tabasco made a passable dinner. It seems that stewing overnight (or possibly nuking it for a few minutes at work) improved it somewhat.

No mustard this time, and still no experimenting with worcestershire sauce ('cos I haven't bought any), and I'm left with a slightly obnoxious aftertaste that seems to haunt most of my meals made with garlic and tinned toms. Will need to think of a way of altering (or at least covering) that taste.

Synecdoche, New York:

Went to see the new Charlie Kaufman flick tonight, with some trepidation. It has wandered across my mind over the last few weeks that the main reason Kaufman is the only writer people can nail a style to is that he wrote himself into Adaptation - a move which only narrowly escapes being arrogantly narcisstic by gratuitous use of self-deprecation and observational humour.

I also had to wonder whether Kaufman's directorial debut would owe more to Spike Jonze or Michel Gondry, and personally I think he came down on the Gondry side (although the film reminded me more of Science of Sleep than Eternal Sunshine) - which is a pity, because I'm not really Gondry's greatest fan. Of course, while I detect both Gondry and Jonze in this film, I do have to credit Kaufman with heading solidly off in his own direction. In fact, if I had to compare him to a single director, it'd probably be David Lynch - in terms of my gut reaction to this film, it reminded me most of Mulholland Drive. Again, this is a pity. I didn't like Mulholland Drive.

I really wanted to like this film, and the fact that I didn't makes me sad because I think it says something unflattering about me. It sounds shallow, but really I wanted this to be a funny film. And it's not - it's definitely absurd, dizzylingly so - but the introverted, relentless misery of the entirely unlikeable main character, punctuated as it is by moments of sweetness leaves it devoid of real humour. It is a film I suspect one could come to love, if one watched it several times. Much like Mulholland Drive. Alas, I don't have much time for films like that. Sorry Charlie.

Not that I hated it. It had moments of brilliance, that almost - almost made it all worthwhile - but it seemed to be surrounded by so much fluff that I couldn't penetrate or discern any meaning through. Perhaps I'm just stupid, and like my allegories a little more straightforward. Perhaps he was deliberately sowing the film with allegories that made no sense.

It almost seems to me that this film his character tried to write in Adaptation, only without intervention (interference?) from his fictional twin brother and Bob McKee - or, from a few exchanges in the film, the pressure to produce another Being John Malkovitch. It feels a little bit like he's desperately trying to escape the mould of being "the guy who makes those funny films" (an impulse he gently lampooned in Adaptation). It makes me a little sad to think that the role that I love him for is a role that he hates to play out.

A glimmer of hope on the horizon. I felt more or less the same way about No Country for Old Men, and the Coen Brothers followed it up with imo probably their best since Miller's Crossing, so I shall go to his next film with great expectation.

George Tiller is Dead:

George Tiller, a Doctor who practises late-term abortions (sometimes on post-viable foetuses - i.e. on babies which could potentially have survived if born). I'm not sure what to make of this (beyond the obvious; whichever side of the abortion debate you're on, murder is not an appropriate way forward). I strongly support the right to have abortions (as well as the right to have detailed, accurate family planning information and freely available contraception); but it does open up the issue of where the line should be drawn on when abortion is ethically acceptable. I'm not sure I agree that Tillers practise was ethically sound.

Blah. Can't form coherent argument. Must go work. Blah.