Casa Maria is a solid Mexican-American restaurant with a nice patio, a really good salsa to start with, and a familiar flavor profile. You’d almost think you’d unwrapped a Patio frozen dinner, except it’s fresh made and heated through. I know this might sound like faint praise but it’s not. Every meal doesn’t have to be on the edges of the gastronomic frontier. Sometimes safe and familiar is just what you need. Comfort food. The wall art is nice, the staff friendly, and the Combinaciones will definitely remind you of Patio dinners. I went for the Plato de San Juan, a tamale, an enchilada, and a taco with rice and beans.
Everything is exactly what you would expect. Well executed. Very tasty. Now, why was I at Casa Maria in the first place? I love Saturday morning show times at the AMC 15 down the street at the Mall of Louisana. Especially films in IMAX 3D. This week I went to see Alita: Battle Angel, a flick I’ve been looking forward to since I saw the preview at The Last Jedi. But even with a huge bucket of popcorn and a massive coke, a 10:30 am showtime means a late lunch, preferably somewhere nearby.
Alita was all that. I’ve been fascinated since I was a kid watching Rudolph the Red Nosed Reindeer on tv by how the technicians could transform human expressions onto stuffed animals. That universal understanding of facial expression that transcends language and culture comes full circle in Alita as they make a CG cyborg with anime eyes look fully human. This fantasy version of Rosa Salazar is compelling in every scene. I was also amused by how much James Cameron stole from other classics. The reincarnation of Rollerball is fantastic with the high speed cyborg characters. The fallen earth city below the last remaining sky city of Zalem looks almost exactly like Jedha City, and when Alita goes off in the bounty hunter bar I think she copies all the moves of River Tam going off in her Serenity bar fight. And the childlike enthusiasm that follows the rebirth of the warrior is infectious. Alita is reborn into a shit show that is the direct result of her previous life, but without preconceptions, the first thing she wants to do is learn how to play Motoball.
I’ve been enamored of IMAX 3D since it happened. I’ve never had good eyesight. Before I got my first pair of glasses in the fourth grade, I would have to walk to the front of the classroom to read the chalkboard, since I was one of the taller kids and sat in the back of the class. Got used to being stared at, thought of as different, and the whole exercise really improved my memory skills, since that reduced the number of trips I had to make to examine the problem or instructions. Even now, I don’t see or hear the natural world as well as I do anything depicted in an IMAX theater. I get the same feeling I got when I walked outside for the first time with the glasses on and could see individual leaves at the top of the trees. I probably made a face like Alita did when when she ate an orange for the first time once she was reborn. The ability of the director, the cinematographer, the actors, hell, everyone on the set and in the cutting room to capture and convey that feeling of pure joy and discovery is why we are alive, or at least it’s what we call feeling alive. The film Alita: Battle Angel delivers that feeling to us like so many other art works both contemporary and historical, I’m constantly going on and on about the two things I consider to be the greatest attributes of this age we are currently living in. The first is instant access to almost any music ever recorded for just pennies a day. The second is the unbelievable accomplishment of the film industry to bring something so fantastical as comic books to the very edge of reality. I hope I live long enough for the hologram projectors to be perfected so you can be even more immersive in the stories they tell. Until then its IMAX 3D at AMC 15 on Saturday mornings and a late lunch close by. Maybe I’ll hit Ava Street Cafe when I go see Captain Marvel in March. Or maybe Antojitos y Taqueria Franko’s on Perkins. Decisions, decisions.