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Category archives: Movie

Kings of Pastry and Boiling Point

Do you want to drool over some super delicious-looking pastries and cakes?

Or do you want to see the inner workings of highly-skilled French pastry chefs?

If you say yes to any of these questions, then Kings of Pastry may be the documentary for you!

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This film was about the pastry section of the once every four-year Meilleur Ouvrier de France competition, open for all ambitious pastry chefs who want the title of the best craftsmen in France.

The Meilleur Ouvrier de France is a French government-recognized honor for not only pastry chefs, but clockmakers, glassmakers, wood workers, hairdressers to name a few, out of the 15 categories of skills that can be awarded at this highest honor.

In short, they referred to this honor as MOF, and apparently it is a prosecutable offense in France if one was caught impersonating as MOF.

Sixteen finalists are selected every four years, and this documentary followed three of them, with one of them particularly at length since he is one the faculty members of the French Pastry School in Chicago.

In the Greater Seattle area, we have pastry chefs from Crumble and Flake and Midori who graduated from this prestige pastry school.

Scenes after scenes of the amazing pull sugar sculptures, mini mouth-watering pastries, chocolates, lollipops and cakes, I was ooing and ahhing a lot. Continue reading →

Parfait and Food Chain

Just released in Netflix, I was expecting to watch a movie on the usual food related subjects such as animal mistreatment, environmental damages, unhealthy American diet and neglect from agriculture etc.

I was pleasantly surprised that this documentary was about the social impact on people, specifically farm workers.

It was about the historic exploitation of different migrant farm worker group, and the documentary gave an overview of the current supply chain structure that had perpetuated this exploitation.

The tomato industry was the focus for this movie, but problems existed all across our different agricultural products including grape harvesting for California vineyards.

Continue reading →

Fed Up and Sweet Potato Chili

This food documentary was narrated by Katie Couric.

Her soothing voice guided us along a scary journey following 3 teenagers who were morbidly obese.

The solution to weight loss in America had been exercising, yet there was rarely any mention in governmental policy to change what we eat.

Film maker brought up the known fact that the food companies and industry were to blame with their continuous and inexhaustible advertising campaign on unhealthy food such as sugared cereal, sodas and convenient process food.

The food companies were compared to the tobacco companies in the way they used to advertise, and their refusal to admit potential health problems caused by cigarettes and tobacco. Sugary foods were all around us at check out counters in stores, and added in many processed food. Continue reading →

Sushi: The Global Catch and Il Corvo

Sushi: The Global Catch

The documentary presented the dilemma caused by increasing popularity of sushi around the world.

The first third to half of the movie was a little unfocused: started with interviews with famous sushi chefs in Japan and sushi chef apprenticeship; Tsukiji fish market auction and interviews with the auctioneers;  how the fish wholesaler picked fish, their skills and knowledge.

There was a part about traditional knife making; and a part on the history of Japanese Airlines when they used to import fish to Japan for sushi because they were carrying empty cargo back to Japan from foreign destinations.

The movie also followed fishermen, showcasing the different fishing method: line versus net.

From there on, the movie finally landed in the discussion of overfishing blue fin tuna, and its effect on the ecosystem.

There was the attempt internationally to limit tuna fishing but unfortunately seemed like the policing ability was low so illegal fishing were still prevalent.

There were interviews with entrepreneur farming blue fin tuna in the ocean using baby blue fin tuna, making the argument that it was more sustainable than current fishing practice.

However, this method did not address the fact that baby fish were still required and the fish were not living in their natural state and environment as they were netted or caged in.

Continue reading →