Screening Susanne Bier’s beautiful In a Better World did not come without a certain amount of stress. My Danish DVD of Haevnen (the original title, meaning “Revenge”) came with subtitles in Danish, Swedish, and Norwegian… obviously not much of a MovieNight audience magnet. I managed to find great subtitles in English (I only had to change one line; it seemed to me that “Put down I.V.” must have really been “Put her on I.V.”. I hope I did the right thing. In any case, after 3 days of trying to create a new DVD with English subtitles produced less than ideal results, I decided that the only thing to do was project from the computer with the new subtitles being previewed. (Should I have consulted Igor?).

Ms. Bier had been on Fresh Air with Terry Gross earlier in the afternoon, talking about In a Better World, so the pressure was on, to show her movie in the best quality available. Aside from a couple of momentary audio source selection screw-ups (I think the house forgave me…?) the screening was absolutely beautiful and captivating. Love, love, love.

What with all this DVD processing and fricking around, I forgot to further test the Bloody Marytini, and was caught off guard when one of last week’s early adapters requested one. It took me several minutes to: a) remember how to make it, b) find the ingredients, c) deliver the order. I’m told that it exceeded expectations. Recipe to follow soon (he promised once more).

More about this film on IMDb