foodmuseumblog

"Bob's Burgers" Fan Here

Did I know there was a tv genre dubbed "workplace comedy?" Not really, but over the years I have noticed that most people in tv comedies rarely work, prepare food, or eat. To the rescue comes the new animated show from Fox, "Bob's Burgers," about a bizarre yet cohesive family of five, The Belchers, running an iffy burger joint in an unknown city. They work, they prepare food, they eat! ( And the restaurant's biggest competitor is Jimmy Pesto's Pizzeria.)

The humor is off-the-wall, unexpected, droll, low key. The NYTimes reviewer found "Bob's" vulgar. My, my. It does veer into 4th grade boy-land a few times, and poop jokes will probably be left, um, behind soon by the writers, but this show is worth a look. Maybe a second or third look. I admit I almost said no after Week 2, but I am glad I stuck with it. 

Yes, it's not entirely even. The show with the cow was great, the show with Bob faux-trapped in the walls, not so much. My favorite epi thus far was last week, where Bob's oldest hapless, drony daughter Tina gets a crush on a long-haired instructor of Capoeira, the Brazilian combo of martial arts, music and dance. Tina fails her Cap test and is crushed. Fatherly concern arises. Sweet.

The "drawing" itself is superb, each character well conveyed. Watching graceless Tina swinging herself back and forth like a metronome....Running gags feature things like The Cumin-Get-It Burger on signs posted at the counter.

BTW The Capoeira guy asked Bob for a veggie burger, can you believe?

"Pie in the Sky"--For Foodies Who Love Mysteries

Ever grateful for the endless treasure that is Netflix--I reserve it for the obscure, the old, the unheralded but good, rather than for the new--I stumbled upon this lovely Brit tv series written for the remarkable actor Richard Griffiths, whom I had most recently seen in the film The History Boys.

It's about an experienced Detective Inspector who is longing to retire so that he can run his own restaurant. Naturally, the series exists because "they" won't let Inspector  Henry Crabbe retire, but he also does open his business, so we see him both sleuthing and sauteeing. And talking with the hens in his new, utterly overpriced hen house, behind the store, as it were. Maggie Steed plays Crabbe's accountant wife, Margaret, who considers food as mere fuel, but strives to keep the Pie in the Sky Cafe on an even financial keel.

Crabbe has a gentle, insightful way with people, even the bad guys, and endures calmly the absurd ways of his immediate superior on the force. Possibly because Crabbe's mind is always on the next shipment of smoked Scottish salmon...

The series ran from 1994-1997.

"Julie and Julia," The Movie

Why isn't it titled "Julia and Julie," as without Julia Child there likely would have been no blog for Julie Powell, no book, no movie made from the book? Most likely because the blogger in question comes across as a whiny, self-absorbed twit, even with  Amy Adams' customary twinkle in operation.

Yes, this is a food ( and wine) film. And, yes, watching Meryl Streep unwrap and deliver Julia Child is the only reason one might want to rent the future DVD, just to see what she does and when and how she does it. Streep is an actor who uses her entire body in the creation of a persona,  from her feet  all the way up into her coif. ( But, of course, one is not supposed to be avidly scoping out the technical details of an actor's work while watching a film--one wants to be utterly absorbed in a place, a story.)

As a film, this melding of Julie and Julia does not work.  Julie is small and Julia is large. Julie complains and Julia rises above. The director/screen writer Nora Ephron could have made the Julie character more feisty and generous, but presumably the "real" Julie held sway.

And so, as my friend and I watched the film yesterday we were both fighting off sleep during the Julie bits, and rearing awake whenever Julia was on board. And we both recalled that our respective mothers cooked Julia's boeuf bourgignon, which, then as now, closely resembled the less glamorously dubbed  "pot roast," save for the addition of red wine to the former.

The movie will make you run out to buy more butter, and some decent red. And consider how well people back in the day dressed, even with the silly hats.

Mullet, Couscous, the Family, and All That

It was the best of movies, it was the worst of movies, and it certainly was one of the longest movies, ever.  Inexplicably titled  The Secret of the Grain in English, ( Le Graine et le Mullet in French,)  the film is set in southern France, in the pretty port of Sete, one of the many towns we explored in the course of writing our book about the food heritage of France. It revolves around a huge, dynamic Tunisian immigrant family  and their attempts to create a fish and couscous restaurant in an abandoned boat, starting with a huge party on board for the town's movers and shakers. Talk about long story short........while capturing the lively essence of this hard-working group of people, and the delights of couscous and mullet, the director, Abdellatif Kechiche, parks the camera inches from each characters' face.  It was painfully suffocating, as if I were sitting in the front row, and wearing the wrong glasses. He employs maybe 6 long shots, and few midrange shots, in this endless movie.

And where he could have taken 1 minute to establish that an element of the feast was missing, the director lingered 10, maybe 15 minutes, with each character repeatedly saying the same lines.

And yet....the couscous and the mullet, the interrelationships, the performance of one young woman who makes the project happen, are worth renting the DVD for.  You can fast forward! Think of that. Perhaps in his next film, Kechiche will discover the joys of editing.

This line about the movie from NY Times critic A.O. Scott  does zero in on the key element for those of us who relish food in film.

"And the richness of “The Secret of the Grain” — the secret, as it were, of its deep and complex flavor — lies in the close, tireless, enthusiastic attention it pays to the most mundane daily tasks, especially those involving food."

The French Do It Again!

Damned if there isn't a lovely scene of people sitting around a table eating a meal together within minutes of the start of Kristen Scott-Thomas'  flick  Il y a longtemps que je t'aime  ( I've Loved You So Long.)  And, in fact, the characters, young and old alike, are shown eating more than once in the course of the film---maybe even three times a day! ( And preparing food....OMG.)

Now-- the movie is a tour de force for Ms S-T, and I wallowed in the interiors, the eating, etc., but at the end, when you comprehend what the entire film has been based on, you think "Please!"

That said, I was trying to recall the last American film where I noted  anyone fueling up. Maybe the Wild West saga, Appaloosa, directed by Ed Harris. A few of the characters had breakfast in their hotel together, not that I really took in if or what they were eating. I was too distracted by the exorbitant cheeks of Renee Zellweger---she likely ate nothing, so filled were her pouches with nuts--and besides, her lips are always pursed to such an extent that I imagine it is with great effort that she speaks, let alone eats. 

( I know, that was mean. I was truly impressed with the work RZ put into song and dance for her role in Chicago.)

Oh--there was a bag of dog food in Bolt, methinks. ( I never finished watching this--once I learned the dog was being lied to, that was that!)

Soon I will be taking a look at Brooklyn Lobster, a 2006 movie about a threatened family business that must, please, involve some crustacean-nibbling. Maybe even drawn butter.

"Food Insecure" Americans and Other Food News

• Apparently if Americans cannot buy enough food for themselves or their families, according to the USDA, they are "food insecure" rather than "hungry." The USDA recently released a lengthy report that contained these items, among many others:  ---About 4.7 million of the 13 million food insecure households in 2007 had very low food security, with household members skipping meals or taking other steps to reduce the amount they ate because of a lack of resources. The size of this group and its share of the overall population have risen steadily over the past decade.
    ---The number of children with very low food security rose by over 60 percent, to 691,000.
  
  ---The number of food insecure seniors living alone rose by 26 percent, to 783,000.
• Farmers in Platteville,  Colorado opened their 600 acre spread to "gleaners" this season expecting maybe 5000-10,000 visitors--40,000 people showed up and went away with 600,000 pounds of free potatoes, carrots and leeks.  The Miller family was astonished by the numbers but frankly I was amazed that there was that much veggie material left after the harvest.
• Meanwhile, foodies are aquiver over who the Obamas will name as head chef for the White House. ( Most likely NOT Gordon Ramsey...)   Chef Cristeta Comerford will probably keep her position in the near term.
• Have I raved as yet about the film Dinner Rush?  OK, it's "old," from 2000, but I picked it up at my local library for free, so just relax. Most of the action takes place in an actual restaurant owned by the director, Bob Giraldi, so the feel of the flick is garlic, olive oil and wine saturated. The filmic restaurant is owned by a bookie, the plot thickens, and ends with a twist.  Recommended both as a foodie treat, and as a low-key thriller.

Food Entrepreneur Newman Slips Off Planet

Paul Newman, the actor who died this weekend, was also the founder of the Newman's Own brand of food products, begun as a lark, that has donated $200 million to charity. It started with salad dressing, brewed up with  writer pal A.E. Hotchner for Christmas gift-giving to family and friends, and now, in its organic configuration, Newman's Own Organics, even produces decent quality pet foods. 

Dare we call Newman a "foodie?" Perhaps, more accurately, a guy who liked decent eats.
According to a piece in the Hartford Courant by Linda Giuca, "He really loved good food, so he was really involved in the business," said Kirsten McKamy, who worked for Newman's Own for eight years. "He wasn't just a figurehead; he came up with ideas."

In 2006 Newman cconceived of another foodish notion--he partnered with chef Michel Nischan to create The Dressing Room restaurant next to the Westport Playhouse in, Westport, Connecticut. The restaurant celebrates regional American food and serves up local produce and meats.

Even Newman's last cinematic endeavor had a food theme-- he provided the narration for a documentary film called The Price of Sugar-- the movie explores the story of Haitian workers brought across the border into the Dominican Republic to labor in the sugar cane fields. Not surprisingly, they are housed in poor conditions, they toil 7 days a week, 14 hours a day, and are expected to be grateful. The Spanish priest who attempts to improve their lives has some success, then is reassigned to a post in Ethiopia.  ( Alas,  apparently there is no oil on the island of Hispaniola.)

At the end of the NYTimes obituary by Aljean Harmetz,  Newman is quoted: “We are such spendthrifts with our lives,” Mr. Newman once told a reporter. “The trick of living is to slip on and off the planet with the least fuss you can muster. I’m not running for sainthood. I just happen to think that in life we need to be a little like the farmer, who puts back into the soil what he takes out.”

( Newman eats multiple hard-boiled eggs in the 1967 flick, Cool Hand Luke.)

People Both Cook and Eat in Foreign Films!

Deliberately paced, filmed without a musical score, the 2007 Belgian movie Private Property starring Isabelle Huppert delighted us recently. The story of a divorced woman living amidst tension with her two lazy adult sons features people both eating--numerous times--and cooking, amazingly enough! Think back through most American films you've seen, however, and doesn't it become apparent the characters live on air and have no kitchens? Many non -US flicks include daily nurturance as a matter of course, on the other hand.  (Off topic, but---For years every French film we watched seemed to include a scene shot through flapping windshield wipers inadequate to handle northern European rainfall.)

Beyond food scenes, look for two remarkable long shots that move the story along from a distance.

Another bonus to us: shot in Belgium in an area where we lived for several years, the movie contains not only views of utter familiarity, but the script references the very real condescension of some  French-speaking Belgians towards their Flemish (Dutch)-speaking neighbors.
( Still from "Private Property", orginally "Nue Propriete," thanks to http://www.dvdbeaver.com/film2/DVDReviews32/private_property.htm)

"The Amazing Mrs.Pritchard"

Masterpiece Theatre once again has doled out a (tiny)  food dollop in its new presentation starring Joan Horrocks, about the manager of a supermarket in Leeds who decides to run for Parliament.  She runs as an independent, rallies the nation, and, faster than a runaway shopping trolley, becomes Prime Minister,  all the while being shown peeling carrots, and ( we think) doing something with spuds. And, of course, the first episode opens with her zipping around her store, Greengages Supermarket,  efficient, friendly and ever on the alert.

( Don't turn this on for the food, however, but for the tight writing and fine acting. Dilys Laye has a brief, gemlike scene as QE II--brilliant, worth the price of Public Broadcasting membership.  )

Pixar's Take On Animated Food--"Ratatouille"

So There's This Evil Eggplant, See...

Scanning the offerings at Netflix the other day, I fell victim to this title: Oranges: Revenge of the Eggplant. Huh?

Well. I began watching, and knew I had stumbled into a bizarre  world of doodled on fruits, playhouse sets,  and awkward voice overs. Plus, violence prevailed. Toy tanks!  Death squads! ( This orange, like, exploded?)  Bananas in burka-like coverings...

I hopped forward through the entire affair, with Dr. Sunkist and the Evil Eggplant et al. I suppose this animated flick has a cult following---it's not the only one with the Oranges. The first, apparently, was created for a high school art class.

Rent it, readers. See for yourselves. ( Perfect date flick.) Orange yuh gonna?

"West Bank Story" Redux

Finally saw the Academy Award winner in the Short Live Action Film category, West Bank Story--I blogged about this battle of the falafel joints on February 27--and it's a gem.   Full of wit, lively music, un PC jokes, and sight gags, as well as bits stolen from West Side Story, the flick portrays the ( absurd) battle between the Kosher King Jewish deli and its rival Hummus Hut, both on the West Bank. ( Duh.) And the expected love affair between Fatima, the Palestinian cashier, and David, the Israeli soldier.

Watch the trailer here.

Food-Themed Flick Wins Oscar

Dueling falafel joints on the West Bank, a concept that seized me by the tastebuds.  A short documentary by Ari Sandel titled West Bank  Story , (cute,) won an Oscar Sunday night in the Best Short Documentary category. Of course I'm dying to see it--falafel is a stellar vegetarian food, right, and, extra points, this film is a musical.

Here's what oscar.com says: "A musical comedy set in the fast-paced, fast-food world of competing falafel stands on the West Bank."

Now I did see The Queen and don't recall QEII eating anything....maybe the corgis chowed down. And The Departed did feature a scene in a greasy spoon but the characters were so riven with violence I don't recall much eating. Loved Little Miss Sunshine a film wherein the Mom plops pizza and a bag of salad on the table, right?

But for real food, I think WBS is the foodie winner! Now how in hell can I get to see it????

"Eating" ---The Movie

All in the line of duty, I finally watched an overly long flick called Eating. It was made in the early 1990's by Henry Jaglom, an English-born indy director much lauded by some as idiosyncratic. ( Evidently he achieved early fame with a faux food film called Can She Bake A Cherry Pie?)

Eating centers on a Southern California birthday party honoring three women of different ages. Untold numbers of mostly thin, svelte women show up for the event, including a young French filmmaker who is doing a documentary on the California American scene or some such.

The women drift hither and thither, admiring others' bodies, loathing their own, and eventually they go before the French gal's camera and whine about food, sex, men, love, mostly the lack thereof, and so on.  The sole voice of sanity is expressed by Frances Bergen,  astonishingly lovely at 70-something.  ( She's  Candice Bergen's mom.)  She plays the lead character's mother and is repeatedly flabbergasted by the absurd notions these pampered neurotic gals have about good old food.

At one point the guests do dive into a big spread on a buffet table, a scene that inexplicably appears after they have all recoiled in horrific clucks from the obligatory birthday cakes. ( One character, God bless her, chows down throughout the film. )

I started doing whatever you call "fast forwarding" in DVD parlance right away--fortunately, I caught this one line:

" I'm still looking for a man who will excite me as much as a baked potato."

More Than Gay Guys with Coffee--"Brokeback"

Recently we inherited a Charles Marion Russell  repro bronze of two cow guys hunkered down by a campfire having coffee, with a horse hanging around above them. We had always enjoyed the piece at our friend's house-- coffee pot front and center, probably one of those deep blue speckled enamel jobs, two hardworking guys facing each other, talking, taking a break. The horse is still saddled up, blandly looking into the middle distance, maybe wondering when the oat bag will be strapped on.  ( Russell first worked as a cowhand at age 18 in Montana in 1882.)

After the film "Brokeback Mountain" came out we began flippantly referring to the statue as "The Gay Guys Having Coffee."  Having seen the remarkably fine flick,  we can report that the guys were heavily yet reluctantly into beans, as well as coffee, and improved their larder immensely when they dried meat from an elk(?) one of them shot.

In truth BBM is not a foodie movie, and we are now respectfully calling the statue: "A Coffeepot, Two Guys and a Horse."

Meatrix II--They're BAAACK!

So many people have emailed Foodie the latest re Meatrix that she succumbed and clicked on Play Movie 2, hoping her antique Windows 98 system would bring it forth. ( Movie 1, keyed off the film The Matrix, was perfectly timed.)

It worked---Meatrix II ( still keyed to the now passe Matrix films,) is a short punchy on-line animation about the horrors of factory farming, in particular, dairy farming.

"The Meatrix is a product of the first-ever Free Range Flash Activism Grant. In February 2003, Free Range Graphics, a cutting-edge design company, invited hundreds of non-profit organizations to apply for a grant that included production of a free Flash movie. After carefully reviewing more than 50 applications, the grant was awarded to GRACE’s Sustainable Table program. "

And the Meatrix project is derived from : "Sustainable Table ,  a consumer campaign developed by the Global Resource Action Center for the Environment (GRACE). It was launched to help fill in the gaps in the sustainable food movement, and to help direct consumers to the leading organizations who are working on the issue. Instead of becoming overwhelmed by all the problems surrounding our food supply, Sustainable Table celebrates the joy of food and eating."

One of the best aspects of Sustainable Table's on-line presence is its Eat Well Guide to places in the US and Canada where you can buy  and eat sustainably raised food. The Guide was first developed by the Minneapolis-based Institute for Agriculture and Trade Policy as a search engine for consumers looking for meat raised without antibiotics. The IATP supports "resilient family farms."

And Sustainable Table is an offshoot of:  "GRACE,  a nonprofit organization that works with research, policy and grassroots communities to raise public awareness and promote solutions to preserve the planet for future generations."

All intertwined, these organizations are chipping away at the mountain that is public and private apathy about food sources, eating, environmental issues, child obesity et al.

Fat Suits Featured/Lay off the Diet Sodas

Foodie is a bit late in viewing Dodgeball, an amusing if predictable flick about a rivalry between neighborhood workout joints that comes to a head in a major dodgeball tournament. Yes, the game we all played with pink rubber balls on rainy days in what used to be called "gym," is elevated to almost pro status in this movie.  Anyway, at the end, the repugnant narcissistic fitness freak character played by Ben Stiller in his usual crazed style has retrogressed from lean machine to fat guy, stuffing himself with snack foods. Stiller in a fat suit is memorable indeed, wallowing, nay billowing in his fatitude.  ( Earlier in the flick we see Stiller teasing/testing himself with pizza and other dietary no-no's.) 
Foodie confesses she  is hot to try on a fat suit but isn't sure she could bear the accompanying fat face....oi vey.
And , in case you missed it, a new study indicates that diet sodas make you fatter. Seems that by not receiving the satisfaction of real sugar in the drink, the dieter eats/drinks more to achieve satiety.

Movie Makes Merlot Plummet, Pinot Noir Rise?

"Sideways," the buddy flick for oenophiles,  seems to have singlehandedly boosted the sales of Pinot Noir in the U.S.  Sales jumped 16 percent from Oct 2004 to January 15, 2005, and 135 percent in  California's Central Coast  supermarkets  in a one year period ending Jan. 15.
The movie's lead character, an English teacher with a passion for Pinot Noir, detests Merlot and is adamant he will not even sit down to dinner if his companions order the stuff.

( Be sure to see this film,  if only for the lovely explanation Miles ( Paul Giamatti ) gives as to why he pursues Pinot Noir.)

So has Merlot sunk? Not according to Progressive Grocer.  Merlot still leads Cabernet Sauvignon as the country's "largest" red varietal.

Stars Peckish for Puckish Treats--and--Your Pick of Top Food Scenes of 2004

Super chef Wolfgang Puck has been pictured on several websites holding a tray of Oscar-shaped smoked salmon on toast hors d'oeuvres that evidently have already been scarfed down by the glitterati at events leading up to tonight's Oscars. 

As in past years, Puck is overseeing a banquet for 1600  in Hollywood just after the show and his signature offering there will be chocolate Oscar-shaped delectations.

As for top Oscar-rated foodie scenes of 2004, we can only attest that "Ray" features the blind performer cooking up fried chicken in the dark, and wine-tasting is central to the film "Sideways."  Waitressing evidently gets some play, both in "Sideways" and "Million Dollar Baby," where Hillary Swank takes home a partially eaten steak for dinner. "Vanity Fair" had a few dining room moments but what did anyone actually seem to be eating? " Only "Vera Drake" comes to mind as a movie where people sit down to eat together. Of course there's the documentary "SuperSize Me," a flick about a fellow eating McD offerings for 30 days that put me off eating altogether for days.

Any other foodie scenes from 2004 films, anyone?

Grand Guignol foodie film....

The blurb on the DVD case tossed together the words "food," two women, thriller and so on....a Korean film named "301/302," by Chul-Soo Park. We perused the blurb, noted the grim faces of the stars, and decided that this could well be a foodie thriller, and therefore worth having a look at.
Well. The moody shots of high tech, high end Korean apartment interiors were elegant, the flashbacks a bit daunting but acceptable, and when ringing phones ignored by one main character began to feature, hey--is this a French film? All it needed was a car scene in the rain with a tight and very lengthy shot of the windshield wipers.
But no,back to the food--it was gorgeously Korean--brightly colored, made from squeakingly fresh ingredients--the "loach" or what looked like eels, had just emerged from the water until our heroine, the crazed cook, tosses them into a bowl and adds a handful of salt.  The other main character is her neighbor, across the hall, an anorexic with a painful past.
Suffice it to say that the crazed cook, newly divorced and struggling with her weight, attempts to entice her standoffish loach-thin neighbor with dishes. Big trouble ensues.
A detective comes around when the anorexic disappears......
Look for long shot of dead canines in a market.......( duh... foreshadowing) Adorable Fluffy the dog plays a pivotal role in the film.
Remember the musical, "Sweeny Todd?"
Yes, this is a foodie thriller indeed. Bon appetit.

Tell us about any other foodie films you know of in this category, please.