The Talented Mr. Ripley: Hell’s Belles – Mezcal Negroni Cocktail Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁1/2

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The Talented Mr. Ripley: Hell’s Belles – Mezcal Negroni Cocktail Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁1/2

This 1999 flick still packs a wallop. Matt Damon as we seldom see him, a nerdy misfit, “the inverse of The Great Gatsby, a social outsider who beats the wealthy at their own game.” Stir in a fabulous, radiant Jennifer Paltrow and a stunningly handsome Jude Law, who seems born to play the part of an indolent playboy, and we have a luscious and lethal cocktail, a would be menage a trois that sours before it is even poured.

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Letters to Juliet: Tuscan Bruschetta Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁

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In 2010 I found an undiscovered gem. The plot is a gentle drive down rambling country roads, not the roller coaster ride with stomach dropping thrills or tortuous twists we’ve come to expect too often. Its destination is not unexpected, but just as sweet nonetheless, and it recalls something from another era, a sense of grace.

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Red River: Cowboy Coffee and Chuck Wagon Recipes: 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

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Red River: Cowboy Coffee and Chuck Wagon Recipes: 🥁🥁🥁🥁🥁

In his first Western Director Howard Hawks captures the Wild West in a profound way. It’s not shootouts at the OK corral, but a desperate Texas cattle baron who will do whatever it takes to survive. If that means branding over a neighbor’s cows, shooting gunslingers who dispute his right to the land, or even horsewhipping his own cowboys and threatening to hang deserters, then so be it.

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Charlotte Gray: Soupe au Pistou Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁

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I think it is time to give this 2001 World War II film a second look even though the critics and general public were not so impressed with it when it came out. Cate Blanchett is marvelous in the title role as a Scottish girl working with the French Resistance in Vichy France, giving us a woman’s perspective on that hellish time and place.

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Sherlock Holmes: Brandied Foie de Gras Pie Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁

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Sherlock Holmes: Brandied Foie de Gras Pie Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁

James Bond goes Victorian. At least that’s what the trailers would have you believe, what with the cerebral detective’s swan dive into the Thames from the high recesses of Parliament, some bloody and brutal fistfights, an errant explosion or two, not to mention Irene Adler as his very own Bond -- or should we say bondage -- girl thrown in for good measure.

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J. Edgar: Elegant Oyster Soup Recipe 🥁🥁🥁1/2

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J. Edgar: Elegant Oyster Soup Recipe 🥁🥁🥁1/2
If one is willing to accept a narrative that plays fast and loose with the facts, fleshing out rumored skeletons in the closet with careless abandon, then, in fact, one might call this film an artistic triumph. It certainly succeeds in portraying American icon J. Edgar Hoover as all too human; indeed, as an eccentric driven by a lust for power.
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Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: Sound of the Ring Cocktail from Vienna Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁

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Mission Impossible: Rogue Nation: Sound of the Ring Cocktail from Vienna Recipe 🥁🥁🥁🥁
Just when America’s pundits and politicians urge us to give it all up and manage the decline, a half century old franchise reminds us of the risk-taking boldness that founded this country. That title, borrowed from the 60s television series, says it all. Bring it on. The worse the odds, the better we like them.

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