This cookbook is probably the most unusual little collection I’ve ever come across … and quite a treat for the brain as well as potentially for the stomach. The writer/chef, Nami Iijima, is a Tokyo-based food stylist who has created tasty dishes for commercials, TV, and film worldwide. She also writes a Japanese newsmagazine column, “Reel Cuisine,” which combines her love of food and film … read on!
“‘Slice of life’ is one of my favorite film genres, and in such films there’s almost always food,” she writes in her introduction. “But sometimes the food is only shown for an instant, or if it’s featured prominently I have no idea how to make it myself. I’m guessing there are other film fans out there that feel the same way.” So she began to “faithfully recreate the dishes shown in various films so as to appease film fans and movie buffs,” including 17 attempts she went through to replicate the perfect chiffon cake as shown in The Secret Life of Bees! But don’t be intimated … because she promises the recipes are “easy and accessible, even for people who are enamored with cinema but aren’t so confident in the kitchen.”
Divided into five sections, the first features dishes Iijima created for films for which she was the food stylist. Talk about behind-the-scenes: Chicken Nuggets (nothing like the fast food version!) in Antarctic Chef about a cook who creates meals to cheer up the workers in the coldest place on earth, Boiled Tripe from Villon’s Wife based on an Osamu Dazai story about the long-suffering wife of an alcoholic philanderer, Rice Balls for Seagull Diner about a Helsinki diner where the main offering is … rice balls.
In the second section, “Travel Around the World,” Iijama stops for Chicken Meatball Phở from Good Morning Vietnam, Silken Crab with Vegetables from Eat Drink Man Woman, Fish and Chips from Dear Frankie and Popcorn (!) from Welcome to Dongmakgol. She serves “Happy Brunch” in part 3, offering Spaghetti with Tomato Sauce from The Godfather: Part III, French Toast from Kramer vs. Kramer, Fried Rice from Tampopo, and Kidney Bean Soup from Red Like the Sky.
You can invite the relatives in part 4, “Delicious Family Dinners,” and serve Risotto from Big Night, Sauteéd Salmon from Life is Beautiful, Steak from My Date with Drew, and Samosas from The Namesake. You’re surely promised sweet endings with “Cinematic Sweets,” including Apple Pie from The Shawshank Redemption, Brownies from Notting Hill, and Iced Azuki from Glasses.
Hungry yet? Forget book club! I’m thinking it’s time to start a monthly (weekly?) movie night featuring one of these films with its corresponding dish! Anyone wanna join me?
At book’s end, Iijima includes a few days from her fascinating work diary with “I love cooking and eating,” written across the top of each page … and you can’t help but think, “Me, too! Me, too!” right along with her!
Readers: Adult
Published: 2011 (United States)
With the adorably acclaimed Ponyo now out in theaters nationwide with its dubbed all-star Hollywood cast (Miley Cyrus’ little sister? one of the Jonas Brothers?), a whole new young audience is enjoying the latest from anime maestro Hayao Miyazaki, creator of the spectacularly successful My Neighbor Totoro and the 2003 Best Animated Feature Film Oscar-winner Spirited Away. In this fabulous collection of translated musings, articles, interviews, even reproductions of sketches and scrapbook entries, Miyazaki devotees have almost 500 pages to get to know the master a little better.
A fabulous biography for the youngest readers about the first-ever bonafide Asian American superstar. And what a figure she was … the child of Chinese immigrant laundry workers born in Los Angeles in 1905, Wong believed she could someday become a true movie star. In spite of fighting the worst celluloid stereotypes, Wong remained committed to changing Hollywood, one role at a time.
A collection of 13 illuminating essays about the so-called “Urban Generation” of young filmmakers who came of age in post-Tiananmen Square China, creating an alternative, independent cinema eschewing the demands of the still-powerful state-owned studios. Zhang Yimou, in spite of his established talent, was so 20th-century … move over and make room for the latest group of cinematic upstarts – the latest auteurs-in-training to reveal the fast-changing, quickly developing nation that is the new China.
The long-awaited biography – even if it’s a tad bit on the academic side – on Hayakawa, a trailblazing Asian American film pioneer, who in his silent heyday was one of the most recognizable, lauded actors, regardless of ethnic background. While he distinguished himself in his later ‘talking’ career – he got an Oscar nomination for The Bridge on the River Kwai – Hayakawa, along with a handful of other stars such as Charlie Chaplin and Douglas Fairbanks, was a Hollywood fixture and bonafide matinee idol (Keanu’s got nothin’ on this brooding icon!).
Two notable Asian film scholars offer an admirable overview of more than a century’s worth of Chinese film history – including the diaspora represented by films from Taiwan, Hong Kong and even the United States – starring internationally recognized actors and filmmakers such as Gong Li, Maggie Cheung, Jackie Chan, Bruce Lee, Zhang Yimou, Chen Kaige, and Ang Lee.
Leading film scholar Marchetti confronts media depictions of China as captured on film at the end of the 20th century, caught somewhere between a revolutionary, political square on one side of the world to a commercial, capitalist square some 7000 miles away. A contemporary companion title of sorts to China on Screen (above).
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