Chef 2014 Dvd-r Download
"F ood porn": never the most appetising of terms for a film subgenre that aims for wholesome titillation. And certainly, while watching a chubby, tattoo-smeared Jon Favreau agreeably bluster his way through Chef (Lionsgate, 15), pornographic thoughts of any variety lie rather far from one's mind. But, oh, then comes the food: fat Cubano sandwiches spilling spiced pork shoulder, badger-sized clubs of juicy brisket, a garlic-laced yarn of spaghetti. Some culinary films glide over tables of exquisitely crafted food you feel disinclined to damage; this is one you actively want to bury your face in.
The film itself has its charms, too. For Favreau, after years spent labouring at the studio grist-mill with Iron Man et al, this modest character comedy represents his idea of soul food – none-too-subtly paralleled in the story of a high-end Los Angeles chef who, fed up with following the same expensive recipes, packs it all in to see America in a rusty, rustic food truck. As stories of redemption and self-realisation go, it's a pretty first-world one – Favreau's meat-curing nomad isn't giving his spectacular street food away, after all — but there's a beefy celebration of pleasure here that proves winning nonetheless. Out with Eat Pray Love, in with Eat Eat Eat.
A Michelin-starred meal underpins an especially sparkly-eyed romantic interlude in The Fault in Our Stars (Fox, 12A), but I couldn't possibly tell you what the participants ate, and neither could they. In this teenage terminal-disease drama, love is presented as the kind of titanic force that consumes all practical considerations, even death. Its two cancer-afflicted protagonists, played by Shailene Woodley and Ansel Elgort with pretty, preternatural charisma, believe their devotion is of a scale and degree of difficulty previously unmatched; Ali MacGraw and Ryan O'Neal have never existed in their world, though the film-makers would have to admit otherwise. That's the film's artless appeal though: it reflects the naively pioneering spirit of adolescent love, a surge strong enough to challenge a cruelly finite end.
If The Fault in Our Stars didn't quite reach my tear ducts, Don Draper would have coldly known exactly what strings to pull to achieve that result. It's managing real-world emotion, particularly under the bewildering new demands of the free-love era, that he increasingly struggles with in Mad Men Season 7: Part 1 (Lionsgate, 15) – the first half of the series' final season, which has been oddly bisected in the latter-day fashion of blockbuster film franchises. It's a testament to the unwavering intelligence of Matthew Weiner's Updike-acute creation that we're willing to accept this interruption, if only to forestall the grim day when there will be no more: if any unmerited superlatives have been lavished on this coolly savage dissection of American white-collar mores across the 1960s, I haven't heard them.
Nobody's going to write equivalent valentines about BBC import The Code: Series 1 (Arrow, 15), a polished, six-part political drama from down under, but it's absorbing stuff all the same. Beginning with a fatal road accident in the most parched reaches of the outback, the series builds a bleakly feverish head of conspiracy-theory steam from there, incorporating journalists, hackers and MPs – no major ground is broken, but the setting at least comes with its own rules. If you prefer your politics closer to home, the generously thorough docu-portrait Tony Benn: Will and Testament (Spirit, 12) will do the job, asserting but not sentimentalising the late Labour minister's legacy.
London's annual Jewish film festival begins next week, after a brief controversy over venue boycotts that has considerably raised its humble profile. Once again, out-of-towners can indirectly participate by streaming past festival selections on the UK Jewish Film website, whose mini-library ranges from valuable obscurities like The Vanishing Street – a fascinating 1962 documentary on the shifting social textures of London's East End – to higher-profile recent works such as Joan Rivers: A Piece of Work, which nails the comedian's barbed brilliance more vividly than any of September's obituaries.
Posted by: fiveblues-01.blogspot.com
Source: https://www.theguardian.com/film/2014/nov/02/dvds-and-downloads-guy-lodge-chef-fault-in-our-stars-mad-men-7