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Overlooked & Underrated Docs & Features
(click on broll or dschwartz for all his posts)
The Raw and the Cooked: A Culinary Journey Through Taiwan
If there was an Academy Award category for best culinary documentary film—which there should be—“The Raw and the Cooked” would, at the least, be nominated, and the likely winner.
Prolific, if not legendary, documentary filmmaker Monica Treut, tours Taiwan, filming and enjoying a great variety of cuisine—their dishes’ preparation, presentation, and consumption. Her cinematography is utterly sensational. The people she meets—growers, distributors, restaurateurs, chefs, and hosts—charming.
Along the way Treut introduces viewers to several of the nation’s sub-cultures, their histories, and their respective culinary traditions. She briefly explores issues of organic foods, urbanization, pollution, and nuclear waste.
I added Treut’s tour of Taiwan to my ‘bucket list’.
Ebert and Siskel introduced me to this expression: No bad movie can be too short, and no good movie can be too long. Truet’s film is so engaging, I could have taken... twice as much.