A movie and dinner

"Arrival" is a recently-released sci-fi movie about the great success of heroine Louise Banks, a linguist who has to help the army fight against an invasion of "heptapods" who land worldwide in sleek black flying saucers. We saw it this afternoon and quite enjoyed it. As you can kind of see in the above screen shot from the trailer (on Youtube here), the alien invaders are octopus-like, or to be more exact, they seem to resemble Cthulhu, the terrifying monster from the stories of H.P. Lovecraft. The resemblance is only physical, though -- but no more spoilers here.

I wanted to see "Arrival" because of rather unusual interest from the writers at the blog Language Log; linguist Ben Zimmer wrote there: "I'd heartily recommend it to all Language Log readers. The film, despite its science-fiction trappings, does a remarkably good job of depicting how a linguist goes about her work." (link here)

After the movie we went to dinner at Metzger's German restaurant. It's exactly like we remember it throughout all the years we've been in Ann Arbor, and probably has changed little since its founding in 1928. The owner and chef belong to the third and fourth generation of the founding family. Only difference: it moved from downtown to a shopping center out near the movie theater, where we seldom go. Metzger's serve Swabian food including real veal bratwurst, German potato salad, German meat patties, schnitzel, Zwiebel Kuchen (described as "onion pie -- a heaping serving of baked sweet onions with spices and eggs, cream cheese, and a puffed pastry crust"), and so on -- I ordered German chicken livers with German potato salad and red cabbage. Lots of beer steins on the bar and other kitschy decorations everywhere.

Badly lit photo of my dessert: Metzger's apple strudel with ice cream.