Tipping Point: Our picks and pans
MOVIE TIP
My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3
Can a movie be perfectly pleasant and also not particularly good? Well, yes, as “My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3” proves. This latest sequel to the 2002 mega-hit is written and directed by star Nia Vardalos. In it, after Toula’s father dies, her big, boisterous Greek-American family heads to the homeland. She had promised to bring her father’s journal to his old friends back in the Greek village where he grew up. But when she gets there, she realizes she has to FIND those friends, because they have moved to other places. The acting is meh, although, as the overbearing aunt, Andrea Martin somehow sprinkles every line of dialogue with a little comic gold dust. What else really shines here is the gorgeous scenery. You will want to book a trip to Greece as soon as you leave the theater.
— Kristina Dorsey
FOOD TIP
Louisiana Country Bread Pudding
The Bayou, New London
All I know about the construction of bread pudding is that it theoretically (and thriftily) utilizes day-old bread. Out of that, the Puddingists then conjure a semi-chewy, spongy, sorta gooey mixture and then improv in whatever way feeds their creativity. Chef Brian Brother at New London’s Bayou Bar & Grill adheres to the Southern tradition, keeping the pudding sweetly simple and tasty and saving the fireworks for an insanely good hot caramel sauce that gushes over the dish and white-waters its way into every available space. I know, $28 sounds like a lot, but that’s because I get FOUR ORDERS. Otherwise, a plentiful single serving is well worth the $7 price tag.
— Rick Koster
BOOK TIP
Tomorrow, and Tomorrow, and Tomorrow
Gabrielle Zevin
Nope, not a “Macbeth” parody. This novel revolves around a boy and girl we meet as kids who then become young game developers in the 1990s. Sam was in a tragic accident that killed his mother and seriously damaged his foot, and Sadie, while visiting her cancer-stricken sister in the same hospital where Sam is, connects with Sam when they play video games together. After a falling out, they reconnect in college — he’s at Harvard, she’s at MIT — and develop a game that becomes a huge hit. Another rift develops when Sadie falls for a mutual friend and business partner. Sam and Sadie’s relationship remains platonic, despite his feelings for her, and it somehow is deeper than a romance. Perhaps it’s not surprising, but the relationships here are more interesting than the virtual world-building. As for that title, Zevin writes that, in games, there is the “possibility of infinite rebirth, infinite redemption.” An enticing thought, no doubt.
— Kristina Dorsey
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