Food, Film

I don't go in for official reviews much, but I wish I'd asked a few opinions before seeing Dark Shadows (2012), which reinforced the fact that I haven't enjoyed a Tim Burton film since Sleepy Hollow. I'm not sure I remember what Johnny Depp looks like without bizarre makeup. But the company was excellent, as was the Hot House, which offered to grill my calamari, when I asked if there was an option with the fried stuff.

DEE-lish.





































We visited the TIFF Lightbox, Toronto's excellent home for all things film, and home to the Toronto International Film Festival.

 













Jiro Dreams of Sushi (2011) is a beautifully constructed documentary. The photograph above is from the movie. 85-year-old Jiro runs a hole-in-the-wall sushi bar in Tokyo, which seats 10. He has dedicated his life to taking one thing and doing it well. How well? Michelin gave him three stars and you have to be prepared to book a month in advance, at least. The film was lovingly shot. I will never look at sushi the same way again and afterwards, we did what we had planned to do (thank goodness) and visited Fune. We consumed sushi at their lovely bar, where small boats float by on a little moat, carrying plates of food. So much fun, so delicious. An excellent evening.

I also saw Monsieur Lazhar (2011). I'd heard a lot of good stuff about this one. Here is the synopsis from www.imdb.com:

At a Montréal public grade school, an Algerian immigrant is hired to replace a popular teacher who committed suicide in her classroom. While helping his students deal with their grief, his own recent loss is revealed.

It seemed to be neither one thing nor another, and decidedly stopped short of excellent. Children can be remarkably intuitive, but in one scene, a student expresses the sort of perfectly composed insight that felt highly unnatural. One of my companions, a teacher, felt the same way. All three of us were left expecting more. What can I say... my favourite teacher/student film remains School of Rock (2003).

With the intense burst of work recently, and the hot weather, there hasn't been much interesting cooking going on at home, other than the regular fare, but I find baking relaxing, and this was Sunday's result.