Search
TEN SECOND BUZZ
- More Campus Palestine Protests, More Arrests, More Viral VideoApril 23, 2024No Comments
- Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024April 22, 202426 Comments
- Open Mic for the week of 4/15/2024April 15, 2024232 Comments
- OJ Simpson: Football Great, Murder Suspect, and Convicted Felon, Dead at 76April 11, 2024115 Comments
- Open Mic for the week of 4/8/2024April 8, 2024158 Comments
Features
Hot Posts
A Message From Devcat
We have been experiencing some system resource issues. We believe the problem may be resolved, but if it is not please bear with us.
Recent Comments
- Jaybird in reply to Reformed Republican on Saturday Morning Gaming: Psychonauts is on sale!I was planning on beating Psychonauts and New Vegas and then playing Psychonauts 2. But I have been…
- Jaybird in reply to Marchmaine on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024That was definitely an "m" he was going for. And now we have a Rorschach test. "He was going for 'mi…
- Jaybird in reply to Dark Matter on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024If we want to move "never again" to a weaker version of "okay, sometimes you just have to commit a l…
- Marchmaine in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024Heh, the reporter stopped him from the payoff word(s). Being what? Now the listener/reader gets to i…
- Reformed Republican on Saturday Morning Gaming: Psychonauts is on sale!I finished Psychonauts 2 not that long ago. It was a lot of fun. It has probably been 20 years since…
- Dark Matter in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024Realities of war are hard to stomach and lend themselves to wishful thinking. We insisted that Israe…
- Saul Degraw in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024On the one hand, there are many examples of this. On the other hand, Sophie is a rando on twitter an…
- Jaybird in reply to LeeEsq on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024I imagine that most people looking at the issue are torn because, on the one hand, it's very easy to…
- Mike G in reply to Dark Matter on Embassies, Attacks, and IranI remember you complaining on the old blog years ago that 40 billion was a waste for a border wall,…
- Burt Likko on The Trump TaxThanks for bringing the receipts, David.
Comics
-
April 23, 2024
-
Friend Husband At The Ballpark
April 22, 2024
-
Good Morning! Are You An Amateur?
April 21, 2024
-
On the Way To The Dressing Room After The Game
April 20, 2024
More Comments
- Dark Matter in reply to Mike G on Embassies, Attacks, and Iran
- Mike G in reply to Dark Matter on Embassies, Attacks, and Iran
- LeeEsq on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- LeeEsq in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- North on The Trump Tax
- DensityDuck in reply to Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- Pinky in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- Chip Daniels in reply to Pinky on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- DensityDuck in reply to Slade the Leveller on The Trump Tax
- Saul Degraw in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- Saul Degraw on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- Slade the Leveller in reply to DensityDuck on The Trump Tax
- Jaybird in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
- Pinky in reply to Jaybird on Open Mic for the week of 4/22/2024
Does Alive qualify as a food movie?Report
Sure, remember the chocolate bars?Report
Also
Soylent Green
Ravenous
Cannibal Holocaust
Monty Python’s The Meaning of Life
Eating Raoul
C.H.U.D.
Silence of the Lambs etc.Report
Don’t forget about Jesus Christ Superstar.Report
But I’ve tried so hard to!Report
Or really any movie where Roman Catholics take communion.Report
And if there’s ever a movie of Stranger in a Strange Land. Or Farnham’s Freehold.Report
This immediately (if predictably) took a bad turn — too much discussion in the OP of Cook, Thief, Wife, Lover.Report
Movies about chefs seem to be like movies about other artists but safer for the producers. The big problem about making movies about fictional artists is that your going to have to demonstrate some of the artist’s work to the audience. Creating something that could pass as a masterpiece, especially a musical composition, is difficult work and the person responsible often fails in such a spectacular manner that even lay people can recognize how bad or trite the fictional masterpiece is. The titular opus in Mr. Holland’s Opus comes to mind. Movie audiences can not taste the meals created by a fictional chef so the creative staff only needs to make sure that the meals look good and appropriately impressive kitchen and food lingo is used.
We also need to define what constitutes a food movie. I’d argue that simply being a movie about a chef or heavily featuring food in some way is not enough to make a movie a food movie. Tampopo, a truly wonderful film, is a true food movie because people’s relationship to food, in particular ramen, takes center stage more than any other relationship in the movie. Learning how to become a master ramen chef is so important for the main female character that it over shadows the budding romantic relationship with the trucker. Eat, Drink, Man, Woman might feature a chef as the main character and food might feature a prominent place in the movie but the various familial and romantic relationships are much more prominent than the relationship to food. For something to be a true food movie, food and human’s relationship to it must be paramont.Report
I propose calling this the Aaron Sorkin Problem. And this phenomenon perfectly explains why The West Wing could be such a hugely popular show (the show didn’t have to deal with any of the actual outcomes of Josiah Bartlett’s policies, only assert their superiority) while Studio 60 on the Sunset Strip struggled (people could see for themselves that the sketches were garbage).Report
On 30 Rock the fact that the sketches were garbage was part of the joke.Report
That is an interesting observation. Mr. Holland’s Opus does seem like a good candidate, though I wasn’t aware enough to identify that as a problem when I first saw it.
Of course it actually does work if you are making a movie like Immortal Beloved, which is very loosely based on Beethoven. There, they got to pull out the 9th symphony at the end.Report
If only you knew what goes on in filming food. . . the heat from lights, etc., is not kind to food, and it doesn’t make the food glow and shine the way we think delicious food should. What does that mean? According to my sweetie’s aunt, a home-economist who made a career of preparing ‘food’ that’s film and photography worthy, stuff like using watered-down elmers glue instead of milk (think that bowl of cheerios on the box cover is in milk?), and often, spraying the stuff with high-gloss acrylic spray, etc.
So while one might salivate over the beautiful food in these movies; I’d suggest care in actually eating most of it.Report
I guess that none of you have seen the Chinese movie “Dumplings”
Also, “Chef” and “The Hundred Foot Journey”Report
RE: Dumplings, I saw the original short that was in Three Extremes, but not the full-length expansion.Report
I see now that “100 ft journey” was mentioned in OP…that’s what I get for skimming.
The full-length version of “Dumplings” is worth a viewing if you…appreciated…the shortReport
I’ve seen dumplings. I don’t think of it as a food movie, though, in the same way I don’t think of the original Texas Chainsaw a food movie despite it’s revolving around BBQ.
I haven’t seen Chef, but 100 Foot actually won one of that categories here.Report
I would love to eat the Sunday Dinner in Eat, Drink and the Louis Prima dinner in Big Night.
As an honorary mention, I will add Kore-eda Hirokazu’s Still Walking which involves a lot of food and cooking but is not necessarily a food movie.Report
@saul-degraw Similarly, The Trip.Report
I have yet to see the Trip.Report
The Trip is fantastic, especially if you liked Winterbottom’s other films with Coogan such as Tristram Shandy. It’s definitely set up like a food movie – furious shots of the kitchen, close-ups on plating, etc. – but it’s really about the way a good meal can create an atmosphere for people to bond. The leads could be chowing down on the Generic Sliced Peaches from Repo Man and the movie wouldn’t be any different. The wife and have been working through the sequel (The Trip To Italy), but the realness of it is almost too much. Somehow the prospect of sitting down to dinner with two hilarious but extremely depressing friends is no longer appealing after a long day of work.
BTW, does Do The Right Thing count as a food movie?Report
Shout out to Vikram for winning the thread with the first comment.Report
Thanks!
Though Glyph’s reply makes me wish I had submitted it for a Mount Rushmore post. I hadn’t realized there were so many movies about eating people.Report
There was a movie where Amy Adams was a cooking blogger. It had Amy Adams in it. Some stuff happened. It had Amy Adams in it.Report
I take it you have a bit of crush on Amy Adams.Report
I’m sorry, did you say something? Amy Adams.Report
Julie and Julia… with Meryl Streep in an inspired performance as Julia Child. Worth watching, IMHOReport
I haven’t seen many food movies or paid attention to them as a distinct category. But a few that I enjoyed occur to me when I think about it:
Chef (which I thought was the best food movie I ever saw when I saw it, but again, I never gave the category much thought); Ratatouille; Chocolat; Como Agua Para Chocolate.Report