A Place at the Table: A Heart-Hitting Documentary About Hunger in America

Categories: Food in Film

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"My dream is to be an honor roll student. My other dream is to be on Home Makeover: Home Edition. I just wish they would come and rescue us from our house...I want my kids to have a better life than I do: have more food, a bigger house with no mold. Get to do what they want to do, and need to do, and never be hungry." -- Rosie, Fifth Grade, Collbran, Colorado

The movie A Place at the Table opens in Collbran, Colorado, a town of fewer than 1,000 people that lies about an hour from Grand Junction, and it is here that we meet Rosie. Rosie is a bright, friendly fifth grader whose family can't afford enough to eat. They rely on Pastor Bob's soup kitchen to survive. That Rosie doesn't really dream all that big -- enough food so she can concentrate long enough to make honor roll, and a stint on a reality show that includes a trip to Disney (what 11-year-old doesn't dream about that?) -- makes the reality of her hunger all the more heartbreaking.

A Place at the Table introduces us to what hunger and food insecurity mean in America today, and in a historical perspective. We meet the players -- the food insecure, the legislators who legislate their hunger, the non-governmental organizations whose efforts can hardly staunch the tide of need, and anti-hunger experts and activists -- in a 90-minute exploration, and indictment, of what is being done to stop hunger in the United States.

The short answer: not enough.

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5 Fictional Foods That I Wish Were Real

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Me, in my dreams.
As a child, I dreamed of diving head first into Roald Dahl's famous chocolate river. As an adult, I still do. Every. Single. Day.

Here are five other Fictional Foods That I Wish Were Real (in no particular order because truly, I want them all):


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What Would 90210's The Peach Pit Be Like If It Were Open Today?

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Ironic mustaches abound.
Last week, as I sat in my candle-lit bubble bath sipping champagne, I got to thinking about the Beverly Hills, 90210. And then, the gang's hangout -- The Peach Pit. Why, what do you do on a Sunday morning?

Anyway, the champs got me thinking; What would The Peach Pit be like if it were open today?

Although it was remade and shown in the first season of the newer series, I think the creators did a shitty job. So here's how I'd imagine The Peach Pit 2.0:

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12 Celebrity Chefs Who Have Cartoon Doppelgangers

We've already noted Emeril's uncanny resemblance to Grandpa Munster and determined that Eric Ripert and Mr. Jay may just be twins. Now we'll take a look at the celebrity chefs that have a different kind of doppelganger:

Check out our list of 12 Celebrity Chefs Who Look Like Cartoons:

12. Alton Brown vs. Dexter

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If the boy genius from Dexter's Laboratory pulled a Pinocchio and became a real boy, he'd definitely grow up to be Alton Brown.


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The Avengers: Rise of the Shawarma

Categories: Food in Film

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screenrant.com
Anyone who has ever watched a movie based on a Marvel comic knows you've got to stay put until after the final credits roll. There's always a clip that alludes to the sequel, prequel or a spin-off -- but no one would have imagined that the post-credits scene from The Avengers would spark a major shawarma buzz. The less-than-a-minute scene shows the Avengers team at an unnamed restaurant eating shawarma. The setup takes place toward the end of the movie, when Iron Man (played perfectly by Robert Downey Jr.) suddenly craves a shawarma.

"Have you ever tried shawarma?" he asks Captain America (Chris Evans). "There's a shawarma joint about two blocks from here. I don't know what it is, but I want to try it." And with that, sales at Middle Eastern restaurants around the country and particularly on the West Coast are supposedly skyrocketing. People who have never heard of shawarma before are clamoring to find it.

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A Taste of Reality: Top 5 Food Documentaries

Categories: Food in Film

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Lights, camera...eat!
Tommy Lee Jones once didn't do a film because there was a scene in which he was supposed to eat on camera. Tommy Lee Jones doesn't eat on camera. Ever.

That film was Man of the House, and it's a good thing that the producers caved to his demands, for the world would be a far, far worse place if that film had never been made.

From Breakfast at Tiffany's to Diner, film has followed food to great celluloid success.

Reality, however, is far different from what Hollywood would have you believe, so skip the Audrey Hepburn and Steve Guttenberg (two equally prolific and talented actors) and get right down to the nitty-gritty of the food world with these stunning documentaries about what we eat, how we eat and why we eat.

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You Have to Love Your Job: Jiro Dreams of Sushi

Categories: Food in Film

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Photos courtesy of Magnolia Pictures
This is not a movie about sushi.
Before you go to see Jiro Dreams of Sushi -- which you absolutely should, and at your earliest convenience before it leaves town on April 22 -- know one thing: This is not a movie about sushi.

One could be forgiven for thinking that it is. After all, there are roughly 100 shots -- many of them verging on pornographic -- of deftly constructednigiri sighing down onto a plate, the sushi itself the focus of a lens with such a narrow depth of field that it makes the edges blur out into something ethereal and dreamlike.

There are similarly duplicated shots of Jiro Ono's weathered 85-year-old hands making and remaking these bites for enthralled audiences at his 10-seat sushi restaurant in a Tokyo subway station, all of it scored by the woozy strains of Philip Glass's famous symphonic cycle. Metamorphosis has never met a better match for its unsettling diatonic harmonies than Jiro Dreams of Sushi's story of the underlying tensions that come with becoming the best at something in the entire world.

And at the heart of it, that's what Jiro is about: mastering something. The idea that you're witnessing the artistry of a living master. The master of what almost doesn't matter -- only the fact that he mastered something. Ono's impeccable sushi nearly takes a backseat to the awe that he inspires in people purely for choosing a job and devoting his entire life to that one task.

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Science Fixins': A Dream Meal Made of Fictional Foods

Categories: Food in Film

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Was he a replicant?
What's the greatest science fiction film of all time?

If you didn't just go, "Oh, Blade Runner," I want you now to imagine me shooting you the bird as I walk away.

As I was re-watching it for the ump-teenth time the other afternoon, I couldn't help but get hungry when Deckard was eating at the noodle bar at the start of the film. The design of the set is so iconic, there's a local food truck, The Rice Box, which was inspired by it.

From Blade Runner's dystopian noodles to the weird little biscuits that Luke eats on Dagobah, culinary wonders abound in the realm of science fiction. One could plan a whole menu, a sci-fi chef's tasting menu, of futuristic foods.

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Foodies, Your Photo Show Is Here

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Chuck Cook Photography
A photographer and his show
Alex Gregg is not only an award-winning bartender at Anvil; he is also a professional photographer, and he recently put his skills to work last October at the very popular Les Sauvages Supper Club dinners. The fruits of his labor are now on display at Catalina Coffee on Washington Avenue.

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The 5 Dirtiest Lines from Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory

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Willy Wonka wants you to ride his boat into this fudge tunnel. What?
Like a lot of kids, I grew up watching Willy Wonka & the Chocolate Factory all year round -- but especially during the holidays.

The movie is, to me, the best adaptation of a Roald Dahl book so far (just barely ahead of Matilda, of course). Gene Wilder plays the manic Willy Wonka with that perfect blend of childlike vision and humor along with twisted, dark, adult drives and desires -- a duality which was often explored in Dahl's books.

I rewatched the movie over the holidays with my parents, who'd never seen it before. Showing the classic children's movie to adults had some unintended consequences, however. Namely, the fact that a large majority of the lines in the movie seem to have been written purely as cheeky set-ups for the old "That's what she said!" punchline. That's Dahl for you, though.

As I noticed double entendre after double entendre, I started keeping track of them while I tried not to laugh too inappropriately in front of my parents. After all, we'd just gotten back from church.

5. "You can suck 'em and suck 'em and suck 'em, and they'll never get any smaller." -- Willy Wonka, on his newest creation: the Everlasting Gobstopper

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