Tom Hanks as Jimmy Stewart

Last night I went out for a movie and dinner with Brandy and Christina.  Caught the Coen Brothers/Stephen Spielberg Bridge of Spies.  Most of it was nicely underplayed, with Tom Hanks a quietly principled American lawyer charged with defending the most disliked villain in the Cold War, Rudolf Abel.  (Abel is well played by Mark Rylance as a low-key, deliberately colorless cipher, which I take it is true of actual successful spies.)

That story is nicely balanced with the one about Gary Powers, the American spy pilot who was shot down over Communist territory, and suffers through the Soviet jurisprudential system in parallel to Abel's trial.  The one action scene, when Powers's jet is shot down, is short and convincing, with good SFX.

Most of the story is about Hanks trying to negotiate an exchange between Abel and Powers.

I think the writers and directors did a truly masterful job with a plot about as complex as a political movie can get.  Hanks is perfect for his role, the stubbornly good man (I could just see the role played by Jimmy Stewart in another era), and the supporting cast is strong, too. 

After the movie we went to a new restaurant, Blaze, an Italian place with a do-it-yourself twist.  You build your own pizza as you walk down a cafeteria-style line, minions piling on as much of everything as you want onto the kind of crust you want, and then they pop it into the oven while you get your drinks and wait a few minutes at your table.  Delicious food but zero ambience, the dining area an acoustic nightmare.  Definitely on my list as a pig-out palace, though.  Medium pizza piled high with everything – four kinds of cheese, four kinds of meat, three kinds of olives! --  for eight bucks.

Gainesville! City of Alligators and Pig-out Pizzas!  And the occasional sports team.

Joe