By Risa Nye
It’s hard not to give in to the urge to use the onion as a metaphor when writing a story that centers on onion rings. But the truth is, The Ringmaster tells a many-layered story that resembles nothing so much as an onion in that it begins by telling one story which gradually peels away to reveal another, closer to the central core of the filmmaker and the main subject of this documentary.
Compiled by Gary Meyer
The Internet can be a dangerous place to find the good, the bad and the ugly. Thanksgiving as a search subject is especially rewarding. We present a sampling, mostly from the past. We found vintage greeting cards, Hollywood stars, ads for disgusting sounding foods, awkward family photos and all around nostalgia.
By Joyce Goldstein
This is not an unbiased review of the new movie A Chef’s Voyage (now available on Virtual Cinema). I am an admirer of David Kinch and Manresa. Over the years he and I have become friends, chefs with vastly different cooking styles and of different generations. (He is the same age as my son, Evan.)
David Kinch is the owner-chef of Manresa, a three-star Michelin restaurant in Los Gatos, California. Kinch took the entire crew for a one-of-a-kind collaboration with three legendary French chefs at their iconic restaurants in Paris, Provence, and Marseille. Continue reading
By Cari Borja
“tell me and i forget, teach me and i may remember,
involve me and i learn.
from salon #58 in Berkeley, CA studio, from SF Chronicle article
Ahh, the idea of being in a kitchen again ~ not mine, but someone else’s with others, (or even the kitchen I once had in my design studio in Berkeley, above) ~ apprenticing, learning, collaborating in the same tactile real space as other human beings (that I’m not related to)… making things and tasting things and giving others something they never knew they even wanted? I didn’t think I would actually have to imagine this, crave this even, as much as I do right now.
By Patricia Unterman
To tell you the truth, my dear film buffs, I’m a reader, not a moviegoer, and I only read fiction. If I watch a movie, it has to be in a movie house on a big screen and it has to promise a good story, ideally involving sex. Documentaries, for me, are a bore.
But despite all odds, I was mesmerized by a new documentary on the life of Diana Kennedy, the grouchy, 97-year-old writer of regional Mexican cookbooks, by first-time movie director Elizabeth Carroll. The film felt novelistic to me—nuanced, revealing, true. It picked me right up from a desk chair in front of my little computer screen and dropped me in the upland forests of Michoacán. Continue reading
