X-Men: First Class & Last Class Chocolate

I did not prepare properly for this particular movie outing.  We had to purchase chocolate at the movie kiosk.  And, as noted previously, we've been showing up on cheap night Tuesdays, since there are so many on the list to see this summer.

Despite the glitches, we enjoyed X-Men:  First Class.  Although I'd seen the previews, I had no idea how it would go over.  Well, it didn't center around Wolverine (Hugh Jackman), so ... But I have to say that the movie pulled off presenting the backgrounds of Xavier (James McAvoy) and Magneto (Michael Fassbender).  Both characters came across as believable and their emotions reached through the screen to the audience, especially during their touching scene on the beach near the end.

Of course, I ended up on Team Magneto.  Xavier, even in college, when pursuing women, seemed such a pansy.  That's not a bad thing, but compared to the complex layers of Magneto, X was a lightweight.

Yeah, I know, it's a comic, but take the relationship between Magneto and Mystique (Jennifer Lawrence), for example.  She offers herself up to him and he reacts by agreeing, if she stays in her true form during the encounter.  That spoke much stronger than Xavier's lame pickup lines involving women's genetic quirks.

Now, that's not to say that others will be Team Magneto; somebody I went with totally disagreed.  She immediately took to the genuinely caring Xavier and stuck with him.  So either side is justified in the movie.

And onto the villains, featuring Sebastian Shaw (Kevin Bacon) and his sidekick, Emma Frost (January Jones).  Bacon did a great job playing a sadistic Nazi and transitioned nicely into a 1960s Bond-type bad guy.  Frost played the villainous vixen convincingly, and yes, she fit the 60s style Bond bad-girl wardrobe.

Of course, with such a movie, in contemporary times, there has to be CGI, especially for scenes where Magneto lifts whole submarines into the air.  Believable?  Not so much, but hey, it's presented much the same as in the other X-Men installments.  The human reflection and interactions balance it without smothering the audience.

And then there's the cameo with Wolverine.  Wow.  His time onscreen didn't last longer than say, twenty seconds, but the audience went nuts when they--er, we--saw him.  He had one line and that's all he needed.  Perfection.

Overall, the movie exceeded expectations (since I really didn't know what I was in for).  The Wolverine spot brought it over the edge.  From Bacon to Mystique and minor characters like Beast (Nicholas Hoult), the actors worked it.  Costuming and props also did a great job of working the 1940s/1960s vibe.

Ratings:

X-Men:  First Class - 8.5 / 10 - It's a good score, considering the movie doesn't focus on Wolverine (my favourite character).  My views of Magneto and Xavier really turned around.  I'm also looking forward to seeing more movies with Fassbender and Lawrence.  And nice to see Bacon back in form.

Junior Mints - 4.5 / 10 - I couldn't be bothered to them until now, when I have to rate them.  It's really been a long time since I've had to eat such sugar mints.  I've been spoiled on real cocoa chocolate and candies, that's for sure.  These bloody things (I can't really call them mints) burnt my mouth with the low-grade sugar assault.  Never again.  I must stick to smuggling real chocolate into the movies.

Chocolate Bonding

Over here in this part of the world, we are trying to get Spring to visit.  It's May already and yet we're still wearing sweaters and socks and shoes. 

To warm things up, a friend, whom I'll call Jack-O, suggested that we get together and cook up some authentic hot chocolate from the movie Chocolat.  

Naturally, I possess a copy of the cookbook, written by Joanne Harris and Fran Warde.  On a side note, Harris wrote the original novel, which the movie is loosely based on.  But never mind that, it's a post about how we went about making the recipe and whether it turned out.

Oh, the suspense!

First, we had to procure all the ingredients for the tasty delight.  Jack-O is a milk drinker, so she had that, and I like hot foods, so I brought the chili peppers.  The recipe also called for optional brown sugar so I substituted cane instead.  The vanilla, 70% cocoa chocolate, and whipping cream we found at a local drugstore, after finding the market closed.  Geez, you'd think they'd be open on the day we decide to make our treat...

Now, Jack-O, she didn't turn out to have the greatest kitchen supplies, so we improvised.  A vegetable peeler worked to shred the chocolate into small flakes for easy melting while two forks took the place of a whisk to turn the cream from liquid to fluffy goodness.  My arm is still numb.  

Pouring it into the mugs, we applied mountains of whipped cream to each.  The photograph in the book showed the prepared drink with a dribble of chocolate over top the cream - well, the recipe called for chocolate shavings.  Totally thrown off course, the discrepancy nearly cost us our friendship!  In the end, I agreed to put up with the shavings.  

Another thing that bothered us initially centered around the added chili. The recipe called for a whole one, seeded, and removed from the mix after the simmering process - we ended up using dried crushed pepper.  It worked.

Sipping on the hot chocolate left such an exquisite taste in our mouths.  The subtleness of hot pepper combined with real dark chocolate blew us away.  

I don't know if the combination of cocoa and chili peppers is legal in this country, but I will say that ingesting it leaves the mind in an altered state.  

Floating along, we found ourselves in a magical moment.  The damned cocoa-peppers got us drunk!  Regardless of the means, we were there, in the same state of mind--but without the presence of Johnny Depp...

The cups sat unfinished!  Foods made with real ingredients instead of processed syrups tend to curb the appetite.  That meant more for later.

Rating:  10 / 10 - excellent taste, smell, feel, and atmosphere.