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電影食堂
Excellent Book
112 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2009
4 people want to read
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Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews
February 23, 2012
Packaging
This being a book by a film food stylist, its strongest point is the photographs that accompany the recipes. They’re not just shot in appealing manner; each dish is presented in a way that re-creates the feel of the cinematic scene that inspired it.
Unfortunately, the format Vertical chose to release the book isn’t ideal for the content. It’s a small paperback so it’s not impressive to be a coffee-table book, and the binding is on the flimsy side for a cookbook. Cookbooks are typically sturdier stuff, made to withstand being propped open multiple times on the kitchen counter. This little book would not be up to that task; I was only part way through my first read when a couple pages detached from the spine.
The Review
This is the first Vertical cookbook I’ve reviewed. When I read its summary blurb, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Now having read it, I’m uncertain what American audience it would appeal to.
The author is Nami Iijima, a Japanese film food stylist. This book is an offshoot of her newsmagazine column “Reel Cuisine,” in which her goal is to “faithfully recreate the dishes shown in various films” in a way that is “easy and accessible, even for people who … aren’t so confident in the kitchen.” This English-language edition contains seventy recipes, each of which includes a brief summary of the film that inspired it and a photograph of the completed dish. Thanks to the prevalence of Hollywood films, Americans will recognize most of the movies referenced. The book also includes four pages entitled “Work Diary,” in which Iijima-sensei gives a glimpse into her life as a film food stylist; two pages of her favorite quotes and scenes; and an index of recipes.
The book gets points for eye-candy (the cactus plate for “Green Salad” is pretty cool), but it doesn’t quite accomplish the goal of “easy and accessible.” This is primarily due to the fact that Iijima-sensei was writing for a Japanese audience. Vertical does provide measurements in US standards as well as metric, but her choices for ingredients are based off products commonly available in Japanese stores. For instance, her recipes call for “cake flour” and “bread flour” but no mention is made of “all-purpose flour.” For “Burritos,” the recipe includes instructions for making tortillas out of bread flour and butter, whereas an American version would probably instruct you to purchase tortillas at the store.
Many recipes are for Western dishes, but several distinctly Japanese foods which will require access to an Asian grocery store are also on the list. In addition, some of those dishes require a certain amount of cultural familiarity. If you don’t know what “Sukiyaki” is and how it’s eaten, you could get confused by that particular recipe. Ingredients for the “Iced Azuki” include “classic syrup,” and I still haven’t figured out what that is. (Simple syrup? Maple syrup?)
Iijima-sensei includes helpful preparation notes for some recipes, but all instructions are text. There are no figures or diagrams, only pictures of the finished product.
Occasionally, Iijima-sensei drops details about how she went about getting a dish camera-ready. Unfortunately, there is no section devoted to those techniques. Several recipes merely end with the instruction, “Plate.” Considering she’s a professional who specializes in making food look good on film, I think she missed an opportunity to impart something valuable to the reader.
In Summary
While Reel Cuisine gets points for imaginatively shot photographs, it falls short as a cookbook, in large part because of the different range of ingredients available in Japan and America. As for the book’s film angle, it’s a cute concept but would have been a better sell if Iijima-sensei included a section about her cinematic styling techniques.
This being a book by a film food stylist, its strongest point is the photographs that accompany the recipes. They’re not just shot in appealing manner; each dish is presented in a way that re-creates the feel of the cinematic scene that inspired it.
Unfortunately, the format Vertical chose to release the book isn’t ideal for the content. It’s a small paperback so it’s not impressive to be a coffee-table book, and the binding is on the flimsy side for a cookbook. Cookbooks are typically sturdier stuff, made to withstand being propped open multiple times on the kitchen counter. This little book would not be up to that task; I was only part way through my first read when a couple pages detached from the spine.
The Review
This is the first Vertical cookbook I’ve reviewed. When I read its summary blurb, I wasn’t sure what to expect. Now having read it, I’m uncertain what American audience it would appeal to.
The author is Nami Iijima, a Japanese film food stylist. This book is an offshoot of her newsmagazine column “Reel Cuisine,” in which her goal is to “faithfully recreate the dishes shown in various films” in a way that is “easy and accessible, even for people who … aren’t so confident in the kitchen.” This English-language edition contains seventy recipes, each of which includes a brief summary of the film that inspired it and a photograph of the completed dish. Thanks to the prevalence of Hollywood films, Americans will recognize most of the movies referenced. The book also includes four pages entitled “Work Diary,” in which Iijima-sensei gives a glimpse into her life as a film food stylist; two pages of her favorite quotes and scenes; and an index of recipes.
The book gets points for eye-candy (the cactus plate for “Green Salad” is pretty cool), but it doesn’t quite accomplish the goal of “easy and accessible.” This is primarily due to the fact that Iijima-sensei was writing for a Japanese audience. Vertical does provide measurements in US standards as well as metric, but her choices for ingredients are based off products commonly available in Japanese stores. For instance, her recipes call for “cake flour” and “bread flour” but no mention is made of “all-purpose flour.” For “Burritos,” the recipe includes instructions for making tortillas out of bread flour and butter, whereas an American version would probably instruct you to purchase tortillas at the store.
Many recipes are for Western dishes, but several distinctly Japanese foods which will require access to an Asian grocery store are also on the list. In addition, some of those dishes require a certain amount of cultural familiarity. If you don’t know what “Sukiyaki” is and how it’s eaten, you could get confused by that particular recipe. Ingredients for the “Iced Azuki” include “classic syrup,” and I still haven’t figured out what that is. (Simple syrup? Maple syrup?)
Iijima-sensei includes helpful preparation notes for some recipes, but all instructions are text. There are no figures or diagrams, only pictures of the finished product.
Occasionally, Iijima-sensei drops details about how she went about getting a dish camera-ready. Unfortunately, there is no section devoted to those techniques. Several recipes merely end with the instruction, “Plate.” Considering she’s a professional who specializes in making food look good on film, I think she missed an opportunity to impart something valuable to the reader.
In Summary
While Reel Cuisine gets points for imaginatively shot photographs, it falls short as a cookbook, in large part because of the different range of ingredients available in Japan and America. As for the book’s film angle, it’s a cute concept but would have been a better sell if Iijima-sensei included a section about her cinematic styling techniques.
February 7, 2017
2.5. I cannot see myself giving this more than a 3-star, which I really hate to do when it comes to cookbooks... To be honest, this book has so much potential, but personally I see a gigantic oversight that lead to this book's downfall. It has nothing to do with the recipes themselves, while I would rant about not having images of preparation steps, this book at least took the lead on one specific aspect, EVERY DISH gets a photo! You'd be surprised how many cookbooks don't do that, to a point I'm no longer surprised lol.
So what went wrong? IDK if it's just the edition I read that has this problem, but for a cookbook that's about food featured in films, the Chinese edition failed to provide the film titles in their native languages. That's a big inconvenience as I don't give an EFFING FIG about the translated Chinese film titles, when most of the time they are horribly named! That being said, while that's a con for me, I can see it as a pro for people who only understand Chinese and prefer to refer films by their translated title; I'm just not one of them.
This book is also inconsistent when it comes to providing extra information, very little number of book-to-film adaptation gets their source material mentioned, while the majority doesn't; for the sake of being fair, I had to manually Google the provided "translated" film titles to check how many are adaptations. I'm actually surprised how many of them were adapted from books! Seems like there could be a potential increase of TBR.
The Chinese edition contains 66 dish from 64 titles (supposed films). I'm not sure if it's because personally I apparently don't watch enough movies (only watched 5 of the ones this book featured), so most of them are unfamiliar to me, therefore it was hard for me to get excited when reading this book. What's worse, even with the 5 I watched, I mostly drew blank when I saw the food chosen to be represented... Sighs.
None of the dish was particularly memorable, and had I not made the following list, I wouldn't remember what films were referenced; none of it was too memorable. To me, the only beneficial thing after reading this book, is that through my manual extra research, I now know some films and books I may look into in the future. xP
Listing films that happened to be adapted from books:
ハンサム★スーツ by 鈴木おさむ
面白南極料理人 by 西村淳
ヴィヨンの妻 by 太宰治
東京タワー 〜オカンとボクと、時々、オトン〜 by リリー・フランキー
[MANGA] のんちゃんのり弁 by 入江喜和
[MANGA] プール by 桜沢エリカ
かもめ食堂 by 群ようこ
カフーを待ちわびて by 原田マハ
[MANGA] ホテル・ハイビスカス by 仲宗根みいこ
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Tutta colpa di Fidel by Domitilla Calamai
Kramer vs. Kramer by Avery Corman
[MANGA] きょうの猫村さん by ほしよりこ
西の魔女が死んだ by 梨木香歩
食堂かたつむり by 小川糸
父へのレクイエム by 野上照代
[MANGA] 三丁目の夕日 by 西岸良平
デッドエンドの思い出 by よしもと ばなな
[MANGA] 天然コケッコー by くらもちふさこ
[MANGA] 深夜食堂 by 安倍夜郎
纪念 by 鲍十
[新作落語] 歓喜の歌 by 立川志の輔
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
[NOVELLA] Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
So what went wrong? IDK if it's just the edition I read that has this problem, but for a cookbook that's about food featured in films, the Chinese edition failed to provide the film titles in their native languages. That's a big inconvenience as I don't give an EFFING FIG about the translated Chinese film titles, when most of the time they are horribly named! That being said, while that's a con for me, I can see it as a pro for people who only understand Chinese and prefer to refer films by their translated title; I'm just not one of them.
This book is also inconsistent when it comes to providing extra information, very little number of book-to-film adaptation gets their source material mentioned, while the majority doesn't; for the sake of being fair, I had to manually Google the provided "translated" film titles to check how many are adaptations. I'm actually surprised how many of them were adapted from books! Seems like there could be a potential increase of TBR.
The Chinese edition contains 66 dish from 64 titles (supposed films). I'm not sure if it's because personally I apparently don't watch enough movies (only watched 5 of the ones this book featured), so most of them are unfamiliar to me, therefore it was hard for me to get excited when reading this book. What's worse, even with the 5 I watched, I mostly drew blank when I saw the food chosen to be represented... Sighs.
None of the dish was particularly memorable, and had I not made the following list, I wouldn't remember what films were referenced; none of it was too memorable. To me, the only beneficial thing after reading this book, is that through my manual extra research, I now know some films and books I may look into in the future. xP
Listing films that happened to be adapted from books:
ハンサム★スーツ by 鈴木おさむ
面白南極料理人 by 西村淳
ヴィヨンの妻 by 太宰治
東京タワー 〜オカンとボクと、時々、オトン〜 by リリー・フランキー
[MANGA] のんちゃんのり弁 by 入江喜和
[MANGA] プール by 桜沢エリカ
かもめ食堂 by 群ようこ
カフーを待ちわびて by 原田マハ
[MANGA] ホテル・ハイビスカス by 仲宗根みいこ
Fried Green Tomatoes at the Whistle Stop Cafe by Fannie Flagg
Tutta colpa di Fidel by Domitilla Calamai
Kramer vs. Kramer by Avery Corman
[MANGA] きょうの猫村さん by ほしよりこ
西の魔女が死んだ by 梨木香歩
食堂かたつむり by 小川糸
父へのレクイエム by 野上照代
[MANGA] 三丁目の夕日 by 西岸良平
デッドエンドの思い出 by よしもと ばなな
(*I'm like so effing confused by this, was this adapted into a film or not? This cookbook actually just listed this book, not the supposed film)
[MANGA] 天然コケッコー by くらもちふさこ
[MANGA] 深夜食堂 by 安倍夜郎
纪念 by 鲍十
[新作落語] 歓喜の歌 by 立川志の輔
(*Confused as EFF. The cast and crew listed in this book doesn't seem to match the film I found on Wikipedia, it does however match a TV series adaptation... WTF? Does this book made an exception for this adaptation, or did the editors just messed up and provided the wrong info?)
The World According to Garp by John Irving
The Jane Austen Book Club by Karen Joy Fowler
Bridget Jones's Diary by Helen Fielding
The Namesake by Jhumpa Lahiri
Chocolat by Joanne Harris
The Secret Life of Bees by Sue Monk Kidd
[NOVELLA] Rita Hayworth and Shawshank Redemption by Stephen King
Displaying 1 - 2 of 2 reviews