Desperately Seeking Salem

Nothing like food masquerading as high art and a deeply disturbing but ultimately uplifting Oscar best-picture winner to set those flames afire!

Boosted by its recent Oscar wins, Slumdog is still playing at the Salem Cinema — 11 weeks after it started its run there. At this rate, the just movie might have a chance to beat the local theater’s record run of My Big Fat Greek Wedding, which screened for  six months in 2002/3. And paired with a preshow stop at Fuji Ricetime’s  sushi bar, it’s a perfect date.

We’ve been slowly eating our way through Salem’s food scene while trying to maintain our rockin bods (anyone whose been recently married will tell you that happiness is a great meal shared by two). So our date a while back was our first attempt at sushi in Salem.

I’m generally a sushi purist, opting for tuna sashimi and a requisite avacado roll, but I was a little more adventurous this time, testing my tolerance for experimentation on the Fuiji Ricetime High Street Roll, which is a California Roll covered with garlic-sauted scallops, plum tomatoes, and mushrooms. Taken together, too many flavors competed for attention, but you can’t beat the cold/warm contrast to make sushi feel like a meal. As we finished eating, one of the sushi shefs slipped us some sashimi tuna salad to taste.

Lesson: Sit at the bar.

As for Slumdog, the movie’s narrative structure is what really got me. The fake drama of a game show set against the real-life drama of life in India’s worst slums, told in a story that actually shows the way our lives acrue wisdom. That’s just brilliant. I did feel strangely untouched while Salim was being tortured, wondering at one point how it was possible to feel more tortured by the scenes of his childhood than by a seen of his torture at the hands of the Indian police force.

As much as I would love to see what the Salem Cinema brings next, I hope the movie stays there long enough for the last, lowly once-a-year moviegoer finally gives in and says, yeah, let’s check it out.

It was written.