Please The Palate Pick of the Week: Back to Burgundy
There are dozens of movies in which drinking wine or making wine are a central theme. There are comedy-dramas, buddy-movies and romance movies about wine. Often how wine is portrayed it not realistic and misleading. There is the fantasy of living on a vineyard, the romanticism of falling in love in a vineyard, the comedy of wine tasting with friends. But very few portray the reality of life on a vineyard, the challenges winemakers face, combined with their passion. The new film Back to Burgundy, a French film by acclaimed director Cédric Klapisch, is all of that and more and that is why it is the Please The Palate pick of the week.
I love a movie that engages me, that tells a good story and develops characters that I care about. Add to that a beautiful backdrop and Back to Burgundy is all that and more.
So much of the writing that I do is sharing the stories of people in the wine industry. I meet winemakers around the world and many, especially from European countries, are the third, fourth, fifth, six, seventh, or even more, generation in their family to make wine. They share stories about the land, the place, their families, their histories and their futures.
21 April, 2018
CITY OF GOLD is a tasty documentary on Jonathon Gold, the first food critic ever to win a Pulitzer Prize. It satisfies cravings on all five senses. Laura Gabbert’s feature-length film expertly succeeds in sharing Gold’s favorite hard-to-find, tiny mom-and-pop restaurants in L.A.’s deepest ethnic neighborhoods. She mixes cinematic tools like a chef mixes fine ingredients to create a perfect dish. Close-ups of succulent food combinations sizzle and take us into the heat. Sounds of the street pop and mingle under lively sequences of the city in action underscored by a diverse original score by Bobby Johnson. The camera rides right alongside Jonathon in his green pick-up truck as he traverses scrappy roads to get us to his favorite far-flung discoveries. Slo-mo aerials glide over snarled L.A. freeway traffic lanes at twilight, turning rear lights into mesmerizing red rivers below. We get a peek into the authentic Los Angeles that has taken him years to lovingly, painstakingly uncover with his passionate palate.