"films" news and stories

Brittany Murphy is the American noodle princess in the film The Ramen Girl. Media8entertainment gives a plot summary of the film explaining that it's about an American girl who gets dumped by her boyfriend and finds solace in her neighborhood ramen shop. She eventually persuades the Japanese chef to take her on as an apprentice. Brittany Murphy's character then decides it's her lifetime goal to become a ramen chef.

Josh Friedland of The Food Section states: "this might sound like a bizzarro "Saturday Night Live" skit (or just a bad dream). But, it's apparently for real, as this trailer for the film will attest." Serious Eats asserts that the film is Tampopo meets Lost in Translation. Tampopo is Juzo Itami's 1985 cult comedy that as Friedland describes is "a 'noodle Western' interspersed with a series of satirical vignettes about food culture."

The film is already playing in theaters in Japan. When will it come to the U.S.? I have to admit...I'm sort of dying to see it. Make sure to check out the trailer, which is embedded after the jump.

As a documentary lover, I am so excited about two food documentaries coming out this fall. Both Flow and Food, Inc. deal with the way two basic necessities, water and food, are handled by big industry.

Food, Inc. sets out to expose the truth about the food industry. Most of it will probably be familiar to anyone who's read anything by Michael Pollan, who is featured in the film. The film delves into who makes food, how it's made, and what the consequences are to various groups of people. Eric Schlosser (author of Fast Food Nation), Gary Hirschberg (the head of Stonyfield Farms), and Joe Salatin (the head of Polyface Farms) are also featured.

Flow looks into similar issues with water. I heard about this the other day on Bob Edwards' Weekend on NPR, and saw that it is opening in a few weeks at my local art cinema. It is about issues surrounding water and whether it should be a public asset or privately controlled. Flow also delves into what is in our water, what is in the bottled water, and what local communities are doing to take back their water supply.

[via Serious Eats and Bob Edwards]