Sooooo many people on the weekends, the waiting queue was endless. Pear tart with Nutella $5 Surprisingly good! 😀 Very light and smooth. Blueberry Tart $4.5 Pretty good.
Tags: Dessert
December 5, 2004
6
Cafe Midi (La Brea)
By Freda in 09: Weho
Eat in? Take away? Both look sooooooo good~~~
Eat in. It’s the one that’s inside this trendy/expensive cloth + kitchenware store (with Dean and Deluca pots and stuffs). Last time the waitress boost to us how great their dessert is, how we can just come in solely for dessert…so we tried ^^;; We have to wait a bit but end up sitting at the counter anyway. At first I was a bit disappointed, ‘oh no dessert menu? only those plain looking tarts+pies displayed on counter top?” Then realized my silly biased ^^;; they’re very good ma~~~
Yeah, very hard to tell from the look alone! Also the shop probably uses seasonal fruits for the tarts and they change all the time so no menu maybe. Cake shops in Japan also don’t have menu usually.
btw, tomoko and I went to see Howl’s moving castle. Hmmmm….I think we were both a little bit disappointed. The first half was good, funny and lots of expectation on what comes next, but the second half it gets rather sappy and too much emphasis on magic and abstract fantasy ideas that the characters development went nowhere and too suddenly the main couple loved each other and tried to protect and save each other and happy end blah blah blah…also agreed with tomoko that too many scenes were too reminiscent of the director’s old work. tomoko reckoned that it could be deliberate to please his old fans. Anyway, I haven’t read the original but I read the author’s other two books and I can see that the story is her style – unfortunately too many description of magic which I don’t care much and too abstract sometimes that I kept wondering what was going on and after a while ended up not caring anymore. But the first half is very enjoyable though.
Ah too bad~ I better not have too much high expectation. I didn’t like his last one Spirited away, and I love “howl’s moving castle’ the book. As I remember the magic is kinda abstract like those “Illusionist” type of magic, I remember them kinda cool on text. Maybe it didn’t work as well as visual, as they’re not simple shooting out stuffs type of magic. How’s Kimutaku’s voice acting? I read that he’s kinda bad? That’s too bad coz his character is sooo funny and charming in the book. It might not be Miyazaki’s fault. One thing with Diana Wynn Jones’s books, they all started out great and promising but the crucial climatic part and ending are always so confusing and rush. How’re the audience reaction and general japanese press review? Do they love it?
Really??? Howl is funny and charming in the book??? Well he is not that in the movie…actually Sophie is the funniest. Kimutaku was not that bad I thought??? Not fantastic but not that bad either. Those firework magic look stupid and childish in the film…and actually at the happy end scene, some audience actually laughed out, when it was supposed to be a touching scene so I think it was a laugh in contempt…^^;;;; btw, you know Miwa Akihiro plays the fat witch, right? Sophie’s voice is played by a obasan too and she is really good. Yeah, I don’t expect any Hollywood-ish touching climax or whatever but the ending is just so anti-climax. What with Howl’s heart returning to his body and the war ending just like that…felt like I have missed 15 minutes of some crucial scenes or something…oh and that head witch(?) is so unimportant, why all the fuss introducing her is beyond me. And why Sophie had to take the fire evil(forgot his name) out of the castle and put it back puzzled me too. Maybe it explains more in the book?
Yeah Howl is sorta vain narcisstic lame-womanizer baffoon-ish, yet he’s actually “crouching tiger hidden tiger’ so his self-absorb vanity act was kinda endearing in the book ^^;; maybe in the movie they’re not handle with the right humourous tone? Sophie is funny and most endearing of course. I completely forgot the plot of the book already ^^:;; I only remember Sophie promised to free the fire devil in exchange of something (whch I forgot ^^;;) Though it’s Diana Wynne Jones, her books always ended in anti-climatic rush ending and utter lack of explanation, so I bet you what’s in the film is basically what’s already in the book ^^;;
Haha the ever-so-quiet audience actually laugh out loud (though at unintentional place) ^^;;;