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miércoles, 29 de diciembre de 2010

In the Rearview, a Year That Fizzled

ECONOMIC SCENE

In the Rearview, a Year That Fizzled

Published: December 28, 2010

REPRINTS

Washington

Minh Uong/The New York Times

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Economix Blog: The Recovery That Was - and Then Wasn't(December 29, 2010)

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It was the year that the economy started to recover and then slid back into a slump — only to offer reason for renewed hope in the final weeks.

When 2010 began, hiring and consumer spending were finally picking up. But then something changed in the spring — a combination of the debt troubles in Europe, the fading of stimulus spending and the usual caution by businesses and consumers after a financial crisis. By the summer, the unemployment rate was rising again, and Americans’ attitudes about the future were again souring.

Making matters worse, many of the economy’s long-term problems also became more severe this year. Health care costs continued to rise faster than inflation, and the number of uninsured continued to grow. The most recent climate data suggested 2010 would be the hottest or second-hottest year ever recorded; the 10 hottest have all occurred in the last 13 years, creating serious risks for the planet and its economy. The federal budget deficit ballooned further (though it should grow during an economic slump).

The reasons for optimism about 2011 come from both Washington and the private sector. The Federal Reserve and Congress have finally taken more action to lift economic growth, and the latest data — on consumer spending and jobless claims, among other things — has been good. The housing market remains weak, but sales and prices are no longer plunging.

On the longer-term issues, the recent work by President Obama’s bipartisan deficit commission suggested that Democrats and Republicans might eventually find some common ground on the issue. And the health care overhaul passed in March — assuming it survives legal challenges — is likely to cut the number of uninsured sharply and to reduce cost growth modestly. The one issue that offers little reason for optimism is climate change.

Among the big questions for 2011 are: How severe will state and local budget crises turn out to be? Will Europe’s debt troubles spread to Spain, Portugal or elsewhere? Will Congress and the White House manage to focus on the long-run causes of the deficit — or instead cut federal spending immediately and jeopardize the recovery? Will consumers continue to increase their spending and give businesses the confidence to hire?

To look back at 2010 and to look ahead, we have put together a series of charts. If there is an overall message, it’s that the economy still needs a whole lot of work.

E-mail: leonhardt@nytimes.com

A version of this article appeared in print on December 29, 2010, on page B1 of the New York edition.

Injustice, British and Otherwise

MOVIE REVIEW

Another Year

Simon Mein/Sony Pictures Classics

“Another Year”: Jim Broadbent and Ruth Sheen play a happy couple surrounded by less fulfilled souls in this film, which opens on Wednesday in Manhattan.

Injustice, British and Otherwise

By A. O. SCOTT

Published: December 28, 2010

Class consciousness has frequently played a role in Mike Leigh’s films, and not only because, as a storyteller whose native terrain is modern Britain, he can hardly hope to avoid it. And sure enough, the observant viewer of his splendidly rich and wise new feature, “Another Year,” will notice the shadows that an always-evolving system of social hierarchy casts over the passage of the seasons. (“We’re all graduates,” one character reminds another, with the prickly pride of belonging to the first generation to receive a university education in an era of expanded opportunity.)

More About This Movie

Times Topic: Mike Leigh

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Simon Mein/Sony Pictures Classics

Lesley Manville, above, plays a character who is needy, insecure and prone to drink too much.

But in this movie, as in its immediate precursor, “Happy-Go-Lucky,” Mr. Leigh is also after a more elusive and troubling form of injustice, one that is almost cosmically mysterious even as it penetrates, and sometimes threatens to poison, the relationships that make up everyday life.

Like “Happy-Go-Lucky,” though on a somewhat larger scale, “Another Year” is about the unequal distribution of happiness. Why do some people — like Tom and Gerri, the post-’60s 60-something couple at the center of this episodic story — seem to have an inexhaustible, even superabundant supply, while others seem unable to acquire even the smallest portion? Can happiness be borrowed, stolen or inherited? Is it earned by meritorious works or granted by the obscure operations of grace?

These may sound like silly, abstract questions, but they could hardly be more serious or more relevant. Here in America, after all, the pursuit of happiness has the status of a foundational right, coincident, but not quite identical, with material prosperity. In Britain, where dourness can seem to be as much a part of the stereotypical national character as bad food, foul weather and precise distinctions of status, the assertion of a right to be happy can seem almost revolutionary.

Certainly Poppy, the antically joyful heroine of “Happy-Go-Lucky,” was a radically free spirit, almost violent in her expressions of good feeling. Tom and Gerri, played with uncanny subtlety and tremendous soul by Jim Broadbentand Ruth Sheen, are much more subdued but no less radiant, and just as extreme in their delight. Their long, comfortable marriage seems to have unfolded without serious friction or disappointment.

Tom is a geologist who lends his expertise to public works projects in London and abroad, and whose professional enthusiasm combines a craftsman’s pride in handiwork with a nerd’s glee at knowing stuff. Gerri is a therapist who counsels patients at a clinic, one of them a lower-middle-class housewife (played by Imelda Staunton, the star of Mr. Leigh’s“Vera Drake”), whose bottomless despair is the complete reverse of Gerri’s fulfillment.

The film’s more complicated and sustained contrast is between Gerri and Mary, her co-worker and longtime friend, played by Lesley Manville with the kind of wrenching, borderline-unbearable lack of self-protective actorly vanity that reminds you that, however gentle it may seem, this is still a Mike Leigh film. In other words, the spectacle of humiliation that takes place when uncomfortable self-consciousness turns into its opposite is never far away. Such mortal embarrassment stalks Mary, who is needy, insecure and prone to drink too much, and also Ken (Peter Wight), an old chum of Tom’s who packs the same traits into a large, shambling masculine frame.

In their company, Tom and Gerri are patient, kind and nonjudgmental, offering advice and encouragement and overlooking behavior that might make less generous spirits cringe. But their goodness is so thorough that it may inspire some unkind thoughts. Do they associate with Mary and Ken out of genuine affection, or because spending time with such miserable types makes them feel (and look) better? Is their tolerant solicitude a form of complacency? And is “Another Year” therefore not a loving portrait of the modern liberal temperament but rather a quietly seething indictment of its nose-in-the-air narcissism?

Dishes That Earned Their Stars

CRITIC’S NOTEBOOK

Dishes That Earned Their Stars

Phil Kline for The New York Times

Arroz con pato at Nuela.

By SAM SIFTON

Published: December 28, 2010

REPRINTS

I MADE a list of the 15 best things I ate in New York City in the past year of reviewing restaurants for The New York Times. It is an accounting that comprises restaurant dishes of uncommon excellence and flavor. Together they underscore New York’s place as one of the planet’s best cities in which to dine out.

A New Sifty Fifty

Sam Sifton’s current fifty favorite restaurants have been updated for fall. See the list on The Scoop, The Times’s iPhone guide on what to eat, drink and do in New York.

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Julie Glassberg for The New York Times

The smoked crab laksa at Fatty ‘Cue.

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Kirsten Luce for The New York Times

Guacamole frutas at Toloache.

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Theo Morrison for The New York Times

The hete bliksem at Vandaag.

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Robert Wright for The New York Times

The cavatelli con vongole at Lincoln.

And we’ll get to them soon enough.

But these dishes make up just one part of a year’s meals taken at the professional table, one sleeve in the accordion folder marked “2010 Delicious.” Add meals I ate out of town on assignment or off the clock or on the way to the clock, and the catalog swells. There is, for example, the sandwich of deep-fried oysters and house-made bacon I had this year at Cochon in New Orleans, served on white Pullman bread with a chili-spiked mayonnaise. And the black vinegar spare ribs with pine nuts served at Shanghai River in Vancouver, British Columbia.

Hoarsely I sing to the poached egg, potato mousseline and chorizo crumble I inhaled at LudoBites 5.0, in downtown Los Angeles. Also to the rabbit parfait with rabbit rillettes and a cinnamon-scented rabbit consommé at Alinea in Chicago (whoa, now!).

Closer to home, there were the Shanghai-style dumplings from Chui Hong Yuan in Bath Beach, Brooklyn, and lunchtime salads from Yemen Café near Brooklyn Heights, and midafternoon pickled veal tongue at M. Wells in Long Island City, Queens, and, always, plates of oxtail gravy over rice and peas from the Golden Krust on Eighth Avenue in Midtown.

For breakfast, there was the grapefruit at Pulino’s in SoHo, not really a dish so much as a magic trick, the fruit covered with muscovado sugar and mint, then cooked into caramel. (A recipe for it and a few other dishes appear here.)

There is the fist of bluefin I got this summer from the fishing guide Brendan McCarthy, who killed a tuna off Cape Cod after a long slog east from Montauk in the wind. I ate part of it raw, with soy sauce, and cooked the rest for the children, who ate it as if it were cake.

And I want to remember forever the martini I drank at the Carlyle before hearing John Pizzarelli and his wife, Jessica Molaskey, sing, with Mr. Pizzarelli’s father, Bucky, in the audience. (I waved to him before the show. “Who’s playing tonight?” he asked, and laughed.)

Also: the barbecue chicken I got from a guy cooking out of a trailer in the parking lot of a Tractor Supply Company in rural Delaware. And a plate of topneck clams from Randazzo’s in Sheepshead Bay, Brooklyn. And the fish tacos I crushed on the sidewalk in front of Juanita’s Taco Shop in Encinitas, Calif. Them, too.

But the following list, which is presented in no particular order, reflects my professional experience over the course of 12 months dining out specifically in New York City restaurants, hoping each night to be surprised, yearning to be delighted, always hungry for the next great bite.

CODFISH FRITTERS WITH LAMB-SAUSAGE RAGÙ AT RECETTE Jesse Schenker, the extravagantly tattooed chef and owner of this estimable West Village restaurant, makes a classic salt-cod bacalao, then deep-fries small balls of it. Paired with a fiery little lamb Bolognese with hints of smoked paprika and vinegar, and served beneath a drizzle of curried mayonnaise, it is an immensely flavorful introduction to his studied, intricate and soulful cooking. 328 West 12th Street (Greenwich Street), Greenwich Village; (212) 414-3000, recettenyc.com.

‘SIMPLY COOKED’ SCALLOPS AT THE MARK RESTAURANT BY JEAN-GEORGES Four scallops the color of gold, adorned only with salt and pepper, sitting on a white plate in the manner of a gift. Jean-Georges Vongerichten, who opened this restaurant in the Mark Hotel this year with Pierre Schutz in the kitchen, pairs the shellfish with a small bowl of sauce: a pink-hued, sriracha-enhanced mixture of egg yolks, grapeseed oil, kombu seaweed water and orange and lime juice. Mayonnaise for the celestial set. 25 East 77th Street, Upper East Side; (212) 606-3030, themarkrestaurantnyc.com.

BURGUNDY SNAILS AT M Á P Ê CHE These tender little nuggets, garlicky and sweet, are as pure an example of old-school French cooking as you’re ever likely to find at a David Chang restaurant, outside of the way the cooks bathe fish in hot butter at Momofuku Ko. Tien Ho, Má Pêche’s chef, combines the snails with a fat pork sausage in a sticky, almost unctuous sauce, suitable for mopping and mopping and mopping up with a crisp piece of baguette. 15 West 56th Street, Midtown; (212) 757-5878,momofuku.com/ma-peche/.

WHOLE WHEAT TONARELLI WITH SPICY CICERCHIE, ROSEMARY AND SHAVED BONITO AT DEL POSTO It sounds like hippie spaghetti with chickpeas, I know. But Mark Ladner, whose brilliance in the kitchen helped elevate Del Posto into the thin air of four-star restaurants this year, takes a rich, toothsome pasta and combines it with the earthy flavor of chickpeas and the piney scent of rosemary to create something that evokes nothing so much as a coastal forest. As the bonito flakes wilt and shrivel in the heat of the finished dish, they release a briny pungency into the air, completing the mental image. It’s crazy: this was just supposed to be dinner. 85 10th Avenue (16th Street); (212) 497-8090, delposto.com.

SMOKED CRAB LAKSA AT FATTY ’CUE A funky smokiness runs along like a bass line in this luscious bowl of soft, thick lai fun noodles, with a melody made up of cold-smoked lump crab meat, tiny anchovies, maitake and shiitake mushrooms, grated daikon, brown-rice vinegar, unrefined palm syrup and fiery chili heat, addictive as Marlboros. 91 South Sixth Street (Bedford Avenue), Williamsburg, Brooklyn; (718) 599-3090,fattycue.com.

BLACK SEA BASS WITH CHILIES, HERBS, RED BLISS POTATOES AND SPINACH AT ABC KITCHEN Spa food doesn’t come much better than this herb- and jalapeño-scented roast fish served at the second restaurant Mr. Vongerichten opened in Manhattan this year, with Dan Kluger in the kitchen. Soft potatoes accompany the plate, with wilted spinach hit up with sweet lemon confit. Oh, man. 35 East 18th Street, ground floor of ABC Carpet & Home; (212) 475-5829, abckitchennyc.com.

GARGANELLI WITH CREAM, TRUFFLE BUTTER AND PROSCIUTTO ATOSTERIA MORINI These beautifully shaped and cooked quills of pasta swim in heavy cream and truffle-scented butter, alongside wisps of smooth, salty prosciutto. The food of Emilia-Romagna is the point of this pretty new restaurant from Michael White, and if it’s richer and silkier than the genuine article, that is all to the good: Intensity is at the center of his Italian love affair. 218 Lafayette Street (Spring Street), SoHo; (212) 965-8777,osteriamorini.com.

GUACAMOLE FRUTAS AT TOLOACHE It is one of the great treats of the theater district, up there with bumping into Laura Benanti in front of Joe Allen: the chunky guacamole with apple, pear and jalapeño that the chef Julian Medina serves at his marvelous little Mexican joint on 50th Street. Just add margaritas. 251 West 50th Street, Clinton; (212) 581-1818, toloachenyc.com.

CHILI LOBSTER AT MARC FORGIONE An upscale take on the classic Singaporean dish of chili crab, Marc Forgione’s appetizer (at his rustic and comfortable TriBeCa restaurant) offers cull lobster in a fiery sea of butter and sriracha, ginger, soy and lobster stock, with a faint note of lime acidity on top. Big hunks of Texas toast come along with, in place of steamed buns. 134 Reade Street (Hudson Street), TriBeCa; (212) 941-9401,marcforgione.com.

DEVIL’S CHICKEN AT TORRISI ITALIAN SPECIALTIES There is a new menu virtually every night at the tiny restaurant that Rich Torrisi and Mario Carbone run out of their Little Italy storefront (at which, at lunchtime, you can reliably find the city’s best turkey sandwich). Dozens of dishes have graced them. But the devil’s chicken, a smoky-hot version of the classic pollo alla diavola, with crackling skin and a swab of tangy local yogurt, remains a highlight. 250 Mulberry Street (Prince Street), Little Italy; (212) 965-0955, piginahat.com.

BUTTER-POACHED OYSTERS WITH CELERY ROOT AT COLICCHIO & SONS In a restaurant that offers both the casual ease of its tap room and the more formalized experience of a tasting menu in its main dining room, these sweet little fatties from the à la carte menu were a brilliant demilitarized zone, with celery root that had been cooked and cut into a vegetable rendition of tagliatelle pasta, and a large smack of American caviar on top for seasoning and texture. 85 10th Avenue (15th Street), Chelsea; (212) 400-6699, colicchioandsons.com.

ARROZ CON PATO AT NUELA Giant, shareable dishes are the chef Adam Schop’s great strength at this nightclubby Latinate restaurant. And nowhere is his skill more apparent than with this big duck paella, served with foie gras, duck confit, seared breast, a pile of gizzards and a massive fried duck egg on a plate the size of a manhole cover: grandiose peasant food in a nightclub restaurant in the greatest city on earth. 43 West 24th Street, Flatiron district; (212) 929-1200, nuelany.com.

HETE BLIKSEM AT VANDAAG Phillip Kirschen-Clark, the chef at this spare and elegant Netherlandish restaurant, brings a firm understanding of the intersection between sweet and savory to this side dish to lunchtime sandwiches and evening hen. “Hot lightning” is how the words translate from the Dutch: little fried fingerling potatoes combined with smoked bacon and a tiny dice of tart apples, all of it glossed in stroop, a velvety syrup made of sugar, butter, cream and molasses, then flavored with juniper, nutmeg, mace and cinnamon. 103 Second Avenue (Sixth Street), East Village; (212) 253-0470, vandaagnyc.com.

CAVATELLI CON VONGOLE AT LINCOLN Opinions abound about whether there should be a $20 million new restaurant on the Lincoln Center campus and, if so, what it should be like and whom it should serve and what they should pay. While you’re discussing that, eat the chef Jonathan Benno’s cavatelli with razor clams, a warm bowl of beautifully prepared pasta the same size as the perfectly cooked clams, with sweet peppers to match and lemon thyme and butter for flavor. The dish leaves people moving their arms as if they were Alan Gilbert at the Philharmonic, calling in the bassoons. Lincoln Center, 142 West 65th Street, Upper West Side; (212) 359-6500, lincolnristorante.com.

SFERA DI CAPRINO, CELERY AND FIG AGRODOLCE AND CELERY SORBET AT DEL POSTO Brooks Headley, the pastry chef at Del Posto, has the appearance of a rock drummer who just fell off the couch. (Until he started cooking, in fact, that was his job.) But he makes dessert like a beautiful demon, and his little goat-cheesecake spheres, rolled in salted bread crumbs made slick with olive oil, with a sweet-and-sour mixture of celery and figs, and a football of celery sorbet, were hands-down the best dessert I ate this year. Check, please! 85 10th Avenue (16th Street); (212) 497-8090;delposto.com.

A version of this article appeared in print on December 29, 2010, on page D1 of the New York edition.

En este día...

	Wednesday, December 29th The 363rd day of 2010. There are 2 days left in the year. Go to a previous date.

Today's Highlights in History
See a larger version of this front page.		On Dec. 29, On Dec. 29, 1940, during World War II, Germany began dropping incendiary bombs on London. (Go to article.)On Dec. 29, 1808, Andrew Johnson,the 17th president of the United States and the first American president to be impeached, was born.Following his death on July 31, 1875,his obituary appeared in The Times.(Go to obit. \| Other Birthdays)
		On December 29, 1906, Harper's Weekly featured a cartoon about President Theodore Roosevelt's appointment of Attorney General William Moody to the U.S. Supreme Court. (See the cartoon and read an explanation.)

On this date in:
1170	Archbishop Thomas Becket was murdered in Canterbury Cathedral in England.
1808	Andrew Johnson, the 17th president of the United States, was born in Raleigh, N.C.
1845	Texas was admitted to the union as the 28th state.
1851	The first American Young Men's Christian Association was organized, in Boston.
1890	U.S. troops killed as many as 400 Sioux Indians at Wounded Knee, S.D.
1916	Gregory Rasputin, the monk who had wielded powerful influence over the Russian court, was murdered by a group of noblemen.
1989	Playwright Vaclav Havel was elected president of Czechoslovakia by the country's Federal Assembly, becoming the first non-Communist to hold the post in more than four decades.
1996	War-weary guerrilla and government leaders in Guatemala signed an accord ending 36 years of civil conflict.
1998	Khmer Rouge leaders apologized for the 1970s genocide in Cambodia that claimed 1 million lives.
1999	The Nasdaq composite index closed above 4,000 for the first time, ending the day at 4,041.46.
2007	The New England Patriots became the first NFL team in 35 years to finish the regular season undefeated when they beat the New York Giants 38-35 to go 16-0.

Current Birthdays

Patricia Clarkson turns 51years old today.

AP Photo/Dan Steinberg Actress Patricia Clarkson turns 51 years old today.

78	Inga Swenson Actress ("Benson")
76	Tom Jarriel Broadcast journalist
74	Mary Tyler Moore Actress
72	Jon Voight Actor
64	Marianne Faithfull Rock singer
63	Ted Danson Actor ("Cheers")
51	Paula Poundstone Comedian
47	Sean Payton Football coach
43	Andy Wachowski Director ("Matrix" films)
38	Jude Law Actor
36	Mekhi Phifer Actor ("ER")
33	Laveranues Coles Football player
31	Diego Luna Actor

Historic Birthdays
Andrew Johnson
12/29/1808 - 7/31/1875 17th President of the United States (1865-69) (Go to obit.)

75	William Gaddis 12/29/1922 - 12/16/1998 American novelist
76	Klaus Fuchs 12/29/1911 - 1/28/1988 German-born American physicist and spy
86	Jess Willard 12/29/1881 - 12/15/1968 American prizefighter
56	William Mitchell 12/29/1879 - 2/19/1936 U.S. Army officer and early advocate of a separate air force
96	Pablo Casals 12/29/1876 - 10/22/1973 Spanish cellist and conductor
88	William Gladstone 12/29/1809 - 5/19/1898 English statesman and four-time prime minister (1868-74, 1880-85, 1886, 1892-94)
59	Charles Goodyear 12/29/1800 - 7/1/1860 American inventor; pioneered commercial use of rubber
76	Charles Macintosh 12/29/1766 - 7/25/1843 Scottish chemist and inventor
42	Jeanne-Antoinette Pompadour 12/29/1721 - 4/15/1764 French mistress of Louis XV