Then behold! Caffé Art Java opened its pearly gates in 2005, introducing caffeine addicts to the glories of finely wrought espresso with fancy microfoamed milk patterns. Art Java has now been surpassed, and the new firmament’s stars include downtown’s superb and by now well-established Myriade, Mile End’s Caffè in Gamba and progeny Torréfacteur Saint-Henri, and the Plateau’s Névé and seed Flocon.

And so Myriade begat Le Couteau. Chris Capell started his pro barista career at Myriade, biding his time before finding the right location on the sunny side of Saint-Denis to open his own shop just over a month ago. Look for the terrasse and the pictorial sign of a knife.

Upon entering, I first noticed the low benches and tables. Sure, there are regular tables with spots to plug in your computer, but most of the seating is designed for actually interacting. Remember when going out for coffee meant talking with other people? You’d need to be Methuselah’s age to have attended London’s first coffeehouses in the mid-17th century, but they were intended as places for discourse and public interaction, not staring at small-screened gadgets. (Paris followed suit two decades later with its first coffeehouse.)

Capell uses beans from Burnaby, B.C.’s 49th Parallel and will introduce other roasters as business picks up. Pastries (including gluten-free brownies) and Camellia sinensis tea round out the offerings.

And, near Victoria Square, Névé begat Café Différance. Half owned by the Névé team, and managed and half owned by Daniel Alvarez, this smooth joint has yet to be fully discovered and appreciated by the Old Montreal work force.

Alvarez uses beans from the roasters Madcap and Barismo, offers tea, terrific brownies, and has all the good magazines you’d want to peruse on a counter by the wall. If you’ve no one to discourse with directly, turn to the latest issues of The New Yorker, Bomb, Maisonneuve, food mag Lucky Peach, Walrus or the Economist.

Différance offers coffee classes on weekends, check their website for details and a peek into the quirky affections of Alvarez, architecture and bicycles being an obvious love.

Capell believes Montreal has benefited from the relatively late start to serious coffee. Those who are opening now are doing so with consideration, not just jumping on a trend in a glutted market. Finally, this city is getting the coffee it deserves.

Le Couteau
4627 St-Denis; 514-940-0444
www.lecouteau.ca

Café Différance
449 Viger West; 514-419-5415
www.cafedifferance.ca

For the first time in his career, it was an actress, Michelle Yeoh, who offered him a project – to tell the story of Aung San Suu Kyi, a Burmese activist opposed to the military dictatorship in her country. "I felt invested with a mission," remembers the French filmmaker over the phone. "There was no hope, when we began filming, to ever see her free. She had been detained in her house for 11 years, we had no way to contact her, she was under a very, very tough military regime. We had a mission to be honest, to try to respect the truth without having access to it. We had to constantly be vigilant."

Despite the political role occupied since the end of the 1980s by Suu Kyi, who was released during the shoot, The Lady mostly focuses on her personal life. "It’s a great love story first and foremost. We know Aung San Suu Kyi as a political leader, a strong and rather tough woman, but few people know how she became the woman that she is today. What interested me was to understand her emotionally."

A climate of violence surrounded the one called The Lady by her fellow citizens while she was under house arrest, but little of it is shown in the film. "It hasn’t been toned down," assures Besson. "What mattered to me was showing that the Burmese junta was violent, so it can be seen in a few scenes. But the film is really about Aung San Suu Kyi, so we didn’t have to overdo it. Otherwise we would have risked being accused of partisanship. We had to find the right balance."

The filming of The Lady, which took place in England and Thailand, wasn’t a holiday for Besson and his crew. "During the shoot, I was convinced that one day or another, we’d learn she had died. At the same time, I think she’s immortal, like her father [General Aung San]. It’s good that we made the film, which is circulating around the world and holds the record for piracy in Burma."

The Lady

"My first reaction was to try to talk Joss out of casting me," Ruffalo recalls of the moment director Joss Whedon told him he wanted him to replace Edward Norton as the Hulk in this summer’s mammoth comic book movie, The Avengers. "Then I started to think, if I can get past all of the baggage of the part, I could maybe do something different and cool with it."

Still, Ruffalo’s time on set was a challenge at first. "I was really nervous. My overall feeling on the set was probably not so dissimilar to Banner’s in the film. What am I doing here? Do I belong here? Look at how cool all these guys are!"

Ruffalo may now be one of the cool kids, which also includes Robert Downey Jr. as Iron Man, Chris Hemsworth as Thor and Chris Evans as Captain America, but the Hulk has always been hit or miss, mostly miss, with film audiences. Ruffalo’s take, though, is resonating so much with fans that Marvel is now considering another standalone Hulk movie in the future.

The success of the character is something Ruffalo attributes to working with Whedon. "My first rehearsal with Joss was literally an hour in a room just wrestling," Ruffalo explains of Whedon’s unorthodox approach to bringing out the beast in the man. "Joss and I definitely felt that this was a continuation of the last Hulk movie, with this idea that he might have some control over it. This next version of Banner has been on the run for another three or four years, is getting into his 40s, getting tired, longing for a life, maybe a family, and has a sense of humour about himself and a level of acceptance for this side of himself. Maybe he can finally face himself."

That’s an awful lot of depth for a character who is most famous for smashing things.

Ruffalo has signed a six-picture deal with Marvel to appear as the Hulk on screen. While thrilled at the possibilities, Ruffalo, who used to read Marvel comics as a boy, is also a realist. "I mean, how much longer can I play the Hulk? If it takes three years to make the next Avengers and then another three years to make a Hulk, I’ll be in my 50s," Ruffalo, now 44, admits. "At some point, there is an obsolescence to a six-picture deal. I’ll be happy if I end up just doing three."

In the meantime, Ruffalo finally has a movie he can watch with the three kids he has with his wife of 12 years, Sunrise Coigney. "I do realize that most of the movies I’ve made, my kids won’t be able to see until they’re in their teens," Ruffalo quips. "This is something I felt like they could see. It interests me; it isn’t dumb; it doesn’t glorify violence just for the thrill of it. And at the same time, I don’t feel like I’ve compromised my artistic integrity. So it kind of just fit all the right boxes."

Perhaps Ruffalo’s integrity is intact because The Avengers is not just mindless popcorn fluff, but rather a genuine smash of a film. "Everything was grounded in character and in a reality that you really wouldn’t expect from this movie," Ruffalo states with evident pride and satisfaction in the project. "If you can bring something real and naturalistic to this totally fantastical, unnatural world, then you stand out from the rest."

The Avengers