In honor of the upcoming Oscars, Cooksden has created its own Culinary Cinema awards. Categories include "Best On-Screen Feast," "Sexiest Food Movie," "Best Food Documentary," "Best Restaurant Industry Movie," "Funniest Food Movie," "Most Disturbing Food Movie," and "Best Leading Actor/Actress in a Food Movie." Nominees for the big award, "Best Food Movie," include Big Night, Chocolat, Eat Drink Man Woman, La Graine et le Mulet, Tampopo, Babette's Feast, Ratatouille, and The Scent of Green Papaya. Check out the site to see the results.

Personally, I think Like Water for Chocolate - the movie that had thousands of home cooks attempting to make quail in rose petal sauce - should have been in the running. What's your favorite food flick?

Last week, someone brought up the movie Babette's Feast in conversation. I was immediately swept back to the first time I saw it. I was 12 or 13 and it was a Saturday night. My mom had heard good things about it and so checked it out from the local library. We settled down on the couch in the family room to watch it and were completely swept away. I remember that at one point we paused VCR (ah, the good old days) in order to run to the kitchen and make tea. We weren't regular tea drinkers, its just that the film, with it's chilly, windswept settings and visuals of tea poured from pots, made us long to be holding steaming mugs of our own.

Thinking about that movie got me thinking about other food movies and as luck would have it, Cinematical just recently put together a list of seven movies that appeal to the foodie in all of us. Oddly, Babette's Feast (or Tampopo for that matter) isn't on the list, but I heartily approve of all the other offerings (although I recommend that you make sure you get Mostly Martha and steer clear of the American version, No Reservations). If you're looking for film that will inspire you and make you just a little bit hungry, this list is an excellent starting place.

The last thing on your mind once you slowly slip into a food coma after the Big Feast tomorrow is getting up and doing anything active. In my family, it invites all kinds of things like the same stories from relatives, arguments, and questions from Mom and Dad about each of our plans for our futures. The best thing for my sanity, then, is to pop in a DVD to keep everyone quiet and entertained. While there are plenty of movies out there, we at Slashfood are, naturally, particularly fond of movies that have to do with food. Blogger Sean Timberlake has compiled a list of his favorite food movies, some of which are pictured above (each box links to Sean's review).

There are a few more on his list, but what are your favorites? Or are we just overdoing it a little, since the last thing you want to do after stuffing yourself is watching someone else do it on the screen for another two hours?

If you've ever had the pleasure of renting Spanish director Luis Buñuel's The Discreet Charm of the Bourgeoisie, you'll understand exactly why this is another Food Movie We Love.

What's so "charming" about this film is that it basically lacks a plot or a narrative structure. In fact, the whole 102 minutes of this film center around a single, simple conceit: the thwarted dinner party. With a cast of snooty French citizens and a surrealist ax to grind, Bruñuel takes the viewer on a wild, winding trip through the absurd distractions in the everyday life of the French bourgeosie.

Just don't try to watch it on an empty stomach...

Just in time for the Golden Globes, the Food Network aired a special on their work behind the scenes of Queen Latifah's movie, Last Holiday. The special, creatively entitled Food Network Goes to Hollywood, was a fun behind-the-scenes expose of how food is styled for the silver screen.

In Last Holiday (which, Cinematical tells us, receives raves from all the critics), Queen Latifah plays a housewares saleswoman with a heart of gold and a love for Emeril, whose dishes she cooks up for the kid next door. But the plot's not so important here: we care more about how many chickens they had to be purchased so the Queen could make Chicken Tchoupitoulas along with Emeril (on TV in her kitchen). They never actually said, but it was clearly dozens. We care that the actors usually don't get to eat the food in restaurants scenes, but in this movie? They did, and ate cassoulet and roasted quail with brioche and chorizo stuffing and spiced lamb shanks with blood orange relish. Oh my.

The funniest part of the whole show, though, was one of the chef consultants explaining that, because Queen Latifah's character ate Lean Cuisines for dinner, she was making a red wine sauce to go over the frozen entree: "so it will taste better for Queen Latifah." That's so sweet.