The big bird currently baking and basting in the oven will, if of an average turkey size, take about four hours to go from pasty pale to golden brown. There are a lot of things motivated cooks might busy themselves with in that time. There are potatoes to be mashed, cranberries to be sauced and pumpkins to be pied.
That would be the responsible thing to do. But if I were you, I'd just watch a movie. A really long movie.
Although the average Hollywood feature runs about two hours, there are movies that will occupy the entire turkey-baking time. Studios usually frown on the four-hour film, citing audience impatience, but there are a few that, despite the inevitable naysaying, are quality ways to spend an afternoon. Or the time it takes a turkey to cook. Here are a few favorites.
LAGAAN: ONCE UPON A TIME IN INDIA (2001): Set in colonial India, this musical is centered on a life-and-death cricket match between a suffering Indian village and the British government. An interesting and entertaining look at the Indian caste system, the British class system and the will and reason to rise above.
JEAN DE FLORETTE/MANON DES SOURCES (1986): Although released a few months apart as separate movies, these two French treasures were actually shot as a single four-hour film. The first deals with a flower farmer whose ambitions destroy his neighbor and friend. The second, which takes place 10 years later, examines the toll his treachery takes. Beautiful and tragic.
LAWRENCE OF ARABIA (1962): A film as vast as its desert backdrop, Lawrence tells the mostly true tale of T.E. Lawrence, the British officer who organized an Arab revolt against the Turks during World War I. It's a cast-of-thousands film that would not - probably could not - be made today.
HEAVEN'S GATE (1980): Often cited as the flop that all but sank United Artists, this revisionist Western is actually a pretty good film that gets a really bad rap. Though it's true that the significantly edited version the studio released was a disaster, the far longer director's cut, which clocks in at just under four hours, is a bold and beautiful portrait of the American frontier.
ONCE UPON A TIME IN AMERICA (1984): Like Heaven's Gate, Once Upon a Time was released with studio-mandated cuts that excised much of the period piece's plot. Fortunately, very few copies of that version remain today, and most viewers are treated to a sprawling, but still specific, gangster fable that's as much about the American psyche as a crime cartel.
Reach Steven Uhles at (706) 823-3626 or steven.uhles@augustachronicle.com.
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