Green Card (1990)

Green Card is a 1990 American/Australian/French romantic comedy film written, produced, and directed by Peter Weir. The screenplay focuses on an American woman who enters into a marriage of convenience with a Frenchman so he can obtain a green card and remain in the United States.

Plot

Brontë Mitchell is a horticulturalist and an environmentalist devoted to the creation of urban gardens and parks on vacant lots. She is anxious to rent an apartment with a greenhouse, but the board of trustees would prefer a married couple as tenants. Her friend Antoine suggests she marry French immigrant Georges Fauré, who needs a green card in order to remain in the country. The two meet at a cafe in downtown Manhattan and after a brief conversation are wed in a quick ceremony at the nearby courthouse.

As a married woman, Brontë qualifies for the apartment of her dreams and, after moving in, she tells the doorman and neighbors her spouse is doing musical research in Africa. When she is contacted by the Immigration and Naturalization Service to arrange an interview to determine her marriage is legitimate, she tracks down Georges, who is working as a waiter. Although the two have little time to get their facts straight, the agents who question them appear to be satisfied with their answers. Georges and Brontë It's only when one of them asks to use the bathroom and Georges directs him to a closet that their suspicions are aroused, and they schedule a full and formal interview to be conducted two weeks later at their office.

Brontë consults an attorney, who advises her she could be charged with a crime if the authorities learn the truth about her marriage. She invites Georges to move in with her to enable them to learn about each other's past and their quirks and habits, and they quickly learn they can barely tolerate each other. Georges is a gregarious slob and heavy smoker who prefers red meat to healthy food, while Brontë is a strait-laced clean freak obsessed with her plants. When her parents arrive at the apartment for an unannounced visit, Georges pretends to be the handyman.

 

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Memento (2000)

Memento is a 2000 American neo-noir mystery thriller film written and directed by Christopher Nolan, and produced by Suzanne and Jennifer Todd.

The film's script was based on a pitch by Nolan's brother Jonathan, who wrote the 2001 story "Memento Mori" from the concept. Guy Pearce stars as Leonard Shelby, a man who suffers from anterograde amnesia, resulting in short-term memory loss and the inability to form new memories. He is searching for the people who attacked him and killed his wife, using an intricate system of Polaroid photographs and tattoos to track information he cannot remember. Carrie-Anne Moss and Joe Pantoliano co-star.

The film's nonlinear narrative is presented as two different sequences of scenes interspersed during the film: a series in black-and-white that is shown chronologically, and a series of color sequences shown in reverse order (simulating for the audience the mental state of the protagonist). The two sequences meet at the end of the film, producing one complete and cohesive narrative.

Memento premiered at the 57th Venice International Film Festival on September 5, 2000, and was released in the United States on March 16, 2001. It was acclaimed by critics, who praised its nonlinear structure and motifs of memory, perception, grief, and self-deception, and it earned $40 million over its $9 million budget. Memento received numerous accolades, including Oscar nominations for Best Original Screenplay and Best Film Editing. The film is now widely regarded as one of Nolan's finest works and one of the best films of the 2000s. In 2017, the United States Library of Congress deemed the film "culturally, historically, or aesthetically significant" and selected it for preservation in the National Film Registry.

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Spezzatino Reale!

With the help of my aunt, here we are, finally, with our home made spezzatino, the stew. Why reale?  Because this perparation is very tasty and.... simply royal!

Also here there are different variations and different tricks, habits, tastes that brings to different results in the preparation of this recipe.   And also here I'll show you my mother's version, made possible with the help of my aunt, my mother's sister.

Both very good at cooking, they used to prepare certain recipes in a way that really lookded identical...

The stew is one of them, but there are other recipes that I will prepare and show on here.

What is very good about this dish is that once the spezzatino is ready, you can let it cool off and put it in the freezer. When you'll want to taste the spezzatino again, it will be enough to take it out of the freezer, defrost it and cook it for another little bit... Not only the flavour will remain the same, but the further cooking will make it even tastier.  Do NOT freeze the potatoes though, only the meat.

This happened to me quite often when I used to live on my own : my mum would prepare dishes like this and stuff my freezer with them. That would give me weeks of autonomy from fast foods and chinese take away restaurants.

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Russian Doll

Russian Doll is an American comedy-drama television series, created by Natasha Lyonne, Leslye Headland, and Amy Poehler, that premiered on Netflix on February 1, 2019. The series follows Nadia Vulvokov (Lyonne), a game developer who repeatedly dies and relives the same night in an ongoing time loop and tries to solve it, leading to her finding Alan Zaveri (Charlie Barnett) in the same situation. It also stars Greta Lee, Yul Vazquez, Elizabeth Ashley, and Chloë Sevigny.

Its first season received four Primetime Emmy Award nominations, including Outstanding Comedy Series and Outstanding Lead Actress in a Comedy Series for Lyonne. In June 2019, the series was renewed for a second season, which premiered on April 20, 2022.

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