Ratatouille—everyone's favorite computer animated movie about a French rat with a penchant for cooking—has been nominated for five Oscar awards: Best Animated Feature Film, Best Music (Score), Best Sound Editing, Best Sound Mixing, and Best Writing (Original Screenplay). Winners will be announced in February 24th.
Terrible rip-off of Pixar's Ratatouille: Ratatoing. [via kottke]
Posted by Deb Perelman, August 7, 2007 at 2:15 PM
Before we begin the feature presentation here, we'd like to introduce the author of this post. Deb Perelman, whose work you may already know from Smitten Kitchen, will be joining us weekly to write about current trends in the food world. Say hi in the comments. And now, on with the show. —The Serious Eats Team
Ratatouille, Babette's Feast, Chocolat and now No Reservations. Sense a theme? French cooking, French feasts, French chocolate, French restaurants—if an alien landed in the Twin Cinemas in your town, it would think we ate nothing but crepes, bonbons, and rustic Provençal fare.
A raging Francophile myself, I'd be the last to complain, and yet in my own kitchen pot-au-feus and consommés are constantly pushed aside in favor of Indian dals, Vietnamese pork and noodle salads, Russian dumplings, and Moroccan couscous.
And it's got me wondering: Why don't the most romantic gastroflicks have chopstick-crossed lovers or eyes meeting across overstuffed banh mi thit?
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Posted by Robyn Lee, July 13, 2007 at 9:30 AM
In Moviefone's virtual tours of Ratatouille's sets narrated by Remy, you can poke around Gusteau's kitchen, Linguine's apartment and soup station, and Skinner's office without the visual distraction from chefs or rodents. Zoom in to see all the details you would never notice just watching the movie.
Posted by Ed Levine, July 9, 2007 at 8:59 AM
How big is Ratatouille? So big that in the New York Times, Frank Bruni weighs in on the front page of the Week in Review on how Ratatouille signals the arrival of culinary discernment as a positive attribute and legitimate cultural aspiration. According to Bruni, "It establishes the toque as the new tiara and affirms the triumph of food snobs and fetishists, its special effects (the colorful fireworks that go off when a character bites into something wonderful) validating the idea of eating as enlightenment, of vegetable stew as revelation."
I don't think Bruni has it quite right. Food snobs and fetishists are not lionized in Ratatouille, inclusive and passionate discernment is, which is what I hope we practice at Serious Eats.
Posted by Joe Campanale, July 6, 2007 at 10:00 AM
Disney’s consumer products division has to easily double the size of its creative department. In accordance with the studio's aim to squeeze every possible dollar out of a film, it will release wines based on the movie Ratatouille: "For the first time, Disney will offer red and white wines to complement the film's backdrop, a five-star Parisian restaurant, as well as cheese platters, both from Costco Wholesale Corp."
Wine blogger Dr. Vino speculates that the whites will be Chardonnays from the Burgundy region of France. Something tells me that Thomas Keller’s palate (in use as consultant for the film) will not go into these mass-market wines.
I may breach my no-Disney movie policy for this one, but I still don’t recommend buying any wine with cute, fuzzy animals on the label.
Posted by Ed Levine, June 29, 2007 at 3:00 PM
There have actually been a lot of terrific food-centric movies, (think "Tampopo", "Eat Drink, Man, Woman," "Big Night,"and the original "Mostly Martha"). but judging from the reviews that came out today, "Ratatouille" may just claim the title of the greatest food movie ever. Here's the New York Times' A. O. Scott, who is a passionate and fair-minded but tough critic. on the film:
Written and directed by Brad Bird and displaying the usual meticulousness associated with the Pixar brand, “Ratatouille” is a nearly flawless piece of popular art, as well as one of the most persuasive portraits of an artist ever committed to film. It provides the kind of deep, transporting pleasure, at once simple and sophisticated, that movies at their best have always promised.
That's a good a pull-quote as any marketing executive will ever find. And I have to say it's working on me. I can't wait to see the film.
