Cold Brew cocktail – Cinema Sips

Image credit: *Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom*, 1984

A much-anticipated trip to experience the Indiana Jones Adventure at Disneyland prompted this week’s watch; the second installment of Spielberg’s Indy trilogy that I’ve always referred to as “the gross one”: Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom (Disc/Download). As a child, I couldn’t get past the monkey brain scene, but as an adult, I made it all the way through pits of fire and creepy crawlies, and a sprawling underground city of child slave labor. When I tell you I have earned that trip to Disneyland, believe it.

Although my favorite Indiana Jones movie will always be Last Crusade, the sheer weirdness of Temple of Doom bumps it up to second place in my eyes. Imagine, you create a character that looks like he came straight from the Golden Age of Cinema, a hero adults and children can all rally around, and then you… send him into a whirlpool of black magic and voodoo cults. You serve him eyeball soup and raw beetles. You give him a heroine who, while stylish and beautiful, is fairly annoying throughout the entirety of the film. If not for Short Round and the fabulous production design, there wouldn’t be much to recommend in this movie. However, the relationship between adventurer and precocious child is every bit as fun as the one between adventurer and precocious old man in Last Crusade. This movie takes the viewer on a circuitous, bizarre ride, but it manages to keep Harrison sweaty and shirtless for a satisfactory amount of time. And at this particular moment in my life, that’s enough for me.

Make no mistake, the banquet scene is still gross. It helps if you have a cocktail and a blindfold, and preferably an empty stomach. While watching Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom, I recommend drinking this Temple ‘Tini.

Temple ‘Tini

1 1/2 oz Dark Spiced Rum

1/4 oz Banana Liqueur

1/4 oz Vanilla syrup

3/4 oz Cold Brew

3 dashes Ginger Bitters

Gummy snake (garnish)

Combine ingredients in a shaker with ice. Shake to chill, then strain into a chilled coupe glass. Garnish with a gummy snake.

Although the Disney Imagineers built a ride inspired by the production design of Temple of Doom, I really wish they had instead focused on the Shanghai nightclub where this story begins. Like Rick’s Café, Club Obi Wan looks like the perfect place to sip a cocktail amid the chaos of war, or crowds of screaming children. A missed opportunity, Disney. Cheers!

Unlike Doctor Zhivago’s runtime, the following post will be brief. I had enormously high hopes for this film (Disc/Download), thinking it would be hot men in the snow, meets three-and-a-half hours of Julie Christie looking sad and gorgeous. I took advantage of the orchestral overture to mix a cocktail and settled in to be transported to glamorous Moscow. Expecting snow-covered romance and emotional angst, imagine my shock upon realizing I’d committed to watching an extremely tedious episode of Little Kremlin on the Prairie.

I won’t bore you with all the reasons why this movie failed me. As any writer of romance can affirm, we’re told to show, not tell. Well, I was told that Omar Sharif and Julie Christie were hopelessly in love with each other; I just wasn’t shown it. Every time even a whisper of passion came across the screen, the film made an abrupt cut. I couldn’t understand why poet/physician Zhivago would wander through the barren frozen wasteland of Russia in search of his former nurse (and patient?) Lara, when they’d shared only about 20 minutes of screen time thus far. Was it just that she was so beautiful? I’m honestly still confused.

The one bright spot in my three-and-a-half hour trip to Cinema Siberia was the cocktail pairing I chose. As previously mentioned, grand epics are tailor-made for drinkers because the lengthy overture and intermission give you plenty of time for mixing. While watching Doctor Zhivago, replicate the feeling of walking through snow and ice to kiss a girl you kinda, sorta once knew with this Russian Frostbite cocktail.

Russian Frostbite

1½ oz Vodka

¾ oz Brandy

1 oz Coffee Liqueur

1 oz Cold Brew Coffee

1 oz Rumchata

1 ½ oz Half-and-Half

Combine all ingredients in a shaker filled with ice, and shake until mixed and chilled. Strain into a glass filled with fresh ice.

Frostbite

It’s not a coincidence that this cocktail has coffee in it; you’ll need it to stay awake. While I loved the visuals of an ice-covered onion dome, Julie Christie’s shiny coif, and Omar Sharif’s forearms (!!!), Doctor Zhivago ultimately didn’t move me. It didn’t even nudge me. In the future, if I ever find myself in the mood for impossible love in the middle of a communist revolution, I’ll stick with the book. Cheers!

	We’re No Angel… on Donovan’s Reef
	Concluding thoughts… on Ocean’s 11 (1960)
	The Blue Gardenia… on The Goonies