Going beyond life-skills, cooking could be perceived as a source of pleasure and well-being. However, it can be complicated to master such a craft. We’ve put together a selection of movies for those who are still Googling how to cook pasta, but are desperate to develop their culinary skills.
1. Julie and Julia: Cooking Happiness by Recipe (2009)
Frame from the film “Julie and Julia: Cooking Happiness by Recipe”
The film revolves around an aspiring writer, Julie Powell, who works as a call center operator, and Julia Child, author of the cult book Mastering the Art of French Cooking. At the same time, the viewer can watch how the career of Mrs. Child herself begins in the 1940s and 1950s. It becomes obvious that the stories of the two women are similar not only in their love of cooking, but also in their attitude to difficulties and even to their own marriage.
2. Spices and Passions (2014)
Frame from the film “Spices and Passions”
A family of Indian immigrants, who live on wheels, decides to open a small oriental restaurant in the French province. However, the building where the restaurant is planned to be located is directly opposite the Weeping Willow restaurant, a Michelin-starred restaurant that regularly hosts the President of France himself for dinner. A cold but exciting war breaks out between the owners of the two restaurants. For guests, food and, to some extent, even for love.
3. Toast (2010)
Frame from the film “Toast”
A family of Indian immigrants, who live on wheels, decides to open a small oriental restaurant in the French province. However, the building where the restaurant is planned to be located is directly opposite the Weeping Willow restaurant, a Michelin-starred restaurant that regularly hosts the President of France himself for dinner. A cold but exciting war breaks out between the owners of the two restaurants. For guests, food and, to some extent, even for love.
4. Chief Adam Jones (2015)
Frame from the film “Chief Adam Jones”
A few years ago, Adams Jones worked as a chef in a first-rate restaurant in Paris, but drug abuse forced him to resign. Now he works in a small bar in the U.S., where his main duty is to pull oysters out of the sink. Tired of the meaninglessness of life, Adam decides to return to Europe and conquer the culinary world of London. From there he gets his 3 Michelin stars all at once.
5. Chocolat (2000)
Frame from the film “Chocolat”
This is an adaptation of the novel by British writer Joanne Haris. A young woman named Vianne Rocher arrives in a provincial French town. The appearance of new people in the city already excites the inhabitants, and when Vianne opens his own chocolate shop, they are completely lost in guessing what kind of strange guest has come to their city. Together with his daughter Anouk, the pastry chef is trying to establish a life in a new place, and at the same time introduce the locals to the exquisite taste of chocolate.
We have always watched the same New Year’s films every year. However, sometimes it is necessary to put DVCs of “Irony of Fate” and “Home Alone” on the shelf and find something new. Here is a list of films in the New Year’s Eve and Christmas mood, which you might not notice when scrolling through the thematic collections.
1. “Trapped in Paradise”, 1994. Director: George Gallo
A scene from the film “Trapped in Paradise”
Bill Firpo arrives in the provincial town of Paradise on Christmas Eve. He’s an honest restaurant manager, but the brothers whom Bill picks up from prison on Christmas Eve morning aren’t. Convicts Dave and Alvin Firpo tricks Bill into robbing a bank. In the absence of an alarm and the ever-sleeping guard doing their job the crime can be committed successfully. But a problem immediately arises: how to leave a small town with a huge amount of money, if a snowstorm is raging on the street, and the police are already seeking after robbers?
2. “Klaus”, 2019. Director: Sergio Pablos
A scene from the film “Klaus”
To educate a lazy and spoiled son, the owner of the postal empire sends him to Smirensburg, located in the far north. Jesper is instructed to set up a postal service in the city and process at least 6,000 letters a year to prove his independence to his father and return home. However, the city does not accept the new postman very cordially, and it seems that no one has heard of sending letters there. But everything changes when Jesper meets a mysterious lone lumberjack named Klaus. Who, as it turns out, keeps a lot of old toys at home and is willing to handing them out to the bored children of Smeerensburg.
3. “The Apartment”, 1960. Director: Billy Wilder
A scene from the film “The Apartment”
Baxter is a humble employee of an insurance company. To speed up his career progression, he lends the keys of his apartment to colleagues and even his boss to retire with their mistresses. Baxter’s plan works until he meets Fran, his boss’s secret lover. A new feeling is born between the characters, and Christmas night puts everything in its place.
4. A Very Murray Christmas, 2015. Director: Sofia Coppola
A scene from the film “A Very Murray Christmas”
Bill Murray is planning a brilliant TV show for Christmas, with celebrity guests and a packed program. But the plans are thwarted by an unexpected snowstorm which led to the absence of the eminent guests. However, in the snow-covered New York hotel where the show is scheduled and where Bill is so unsuccessfully stuck, there are a lot of random people. And Bill still manages to throw a party, just for a different audience and with new entertainment.
5. “8 Women”, 2001. Director: Francois Ozon
A scene from the film “8 Women”
The family gathers at an estate in the French outback to celebrate Christmas. But upon arrival, the guests find the owner of the house murdered in his bedroom. 8 women, each of whom is somehow connected with a dead man, begin their investigation. At the same time, they are all under suspicion, because each had the motive to commit a brutal murder. The darkest family secrets begin to unfold in the house, and the identity of the killer becomes the main Christmas entertainment.
Wednesday premiered on Netflix on October 23, 2022. In the first week, he broke the English-language viewing hours record. Took away the championship from Stranger Things (season 4), Wednesday became the absolute leader of the platform. Many viewers and critics noted that Jenna Ortega (main role) played a key role in such a bright start. Her Wednesday Addams turned out to be a deep and atmospheric character, the personification of a mixture between canonical and modern image.
But what is this “canonical image”? And how much has it changed since the first appearance of the Gothic Addams family? Let’s figure it out.
First appearance
Fragment of the original comic by Charles Addams
The Addams are a fictional family conceived and drawn in 1938 by American artist Charles Addams for The New Yorker magazine, which is still popular to this day. Addams’s idea was to portray a “perfect” American family through the lens of satire and black humor, which resonated with the magazine’s readers. Wednesday, who is the daughter of Morticia and Gomez Addams, is obsessed with causing pain to others and surprisingly serious for her age.
In the original version of Charles Addams, Wednesday has not acquire her pigtails for a modern audience, and her famous school dress is completely pink. However, such an atypically “bright” image for a member of the Addams family began to crumble very quickly. The catalyst was the emergence of a television series.
First film adaptation: “The Addams Family”
Wednesday in the series “The Addams Family” 60s
The comic about Addams family was first adapted for television in 1964, then began airing regularly on ABC. Here Wednesday already acquired characteristic and recognizable features – two pigtails in the middle, a strict black school dress, and a heavy look from underneath. We heard the name “Wednesday” for the first time – Charles Addams picked up the name of his little heroine only when he received an offer to make a family TV show. As it turned out, the name was derived from an old English nursery rhyme “Monday’s Child”:
Monday’s child is fair of face
Tuesday’s child is full of grace
Wednesday’s child is full of woe
Thursday’s child has far to go
Friday’s child is loving and giving
Saturday’s child works hard for his living
And the child that is born on the Sabbath day
Is bonny and blithe, and good and gay.
Since grief and misfortune are exactly what pleases the artsy American family, it was decided to name the girl Wednesday.
Cultural Phenomenon: The 1991 Addams Family Movie
Wednesday performed by Christina Ricci
The film “The Addams Family”, which released in 1991, gave the world the most famous image of Wednesday Addams performed by Christina Ricci. It’s an image about the girl look from a strange family, making two black pigtails and a black school dress with a high white collar one of the most popular Halloween costumes of the 90s. In the New Yorker comic and the 1960s sitcom, although Tuesday dressed in dark colors and had strange and characteristic Addams hobbies, she was essentially an adorable child, the standard image of a little girl in a family television series. Whereas 1991’s Wednesday is a heroine with a high intellect followed by a serious and sometimes stern demeanor, and all lines are delivered in a monotonous voice with a deadpan expression on her face. In the film, the character of Wednesday was revealed the most, she ceased to be “one of the two children” of the Addams couple and became an independent and bright character – with a memorable gloominess and cruelty.
Christina Ricci’s performance did not change much but finalized the canonical image of Wednesday Addams. Subsequently, the authors of all subsequent adaptations began to rely on it. This is because Wednesday of 1991 has become not just a minor character, but the main character in the eyes of the audience. Her feminist statements and honesty added depth to the heroine, and the external image became more in line with modern cinema than the version of the girl from the 60s.
Conquest of the world of animation
The image of Wednesday from the cartoon
In 2019, the feature-length cartoon The Addams Family was released on the big screens. The animation exaggerated the image of Wednesday, adding to her pale, the ability to move silently (thus frightening unprepared characters), and the lack of a smile throughout the cartoon. Wednesday was voiced by American actress Chloe Grace Moretz, who did not look like her heroine in appearance, but talentedly conveyed the girl’s lack of emotions and gloominess verbally.
Wednesday from the animated film is naturally based on the image that the audience loves, embodied by Christina Ricci, so there were no significant changes in it.
The hit of autumn-winter 2022: A series on Netflix
Wednesday performed by Jenna Ortega
The final stage of character development to date is Wednesday Addams, played by Jenna Ortega, in the Netflix series. What immediately catches your eye is the appearance of bangs on the heroine. In an interview, Jenna admitted that she and the director of the project, Tim Burton, wanted to add something new to the famous image that could distinguish it from previous versions. The outfits for Wednesday have also changed. The classic school uniform was replaced by a black zip-hoodie, striped long sleeves, and rough black platform boots. But most of all, the attention of the audience was attracted by the dress that Wednesday wears to the school prom – yes, everything is just as frilly but elegant and not typical of previous generations of Wednesday.
Dress Wednesday in one of the episodes of the series
In addition, the series also changes the age of the heroine. In the Netflix hit, she becomes a teenager, which, although done rather develop the plot, nevertheless gives a look at the heroine from a new, previously unknown side.
One thing is for sure – a heavy look and love for black remain the eternal companions of the heroine. For more than 80 years, Wednesday has changed significantly on the outside, but inside she always remains a gloomy and mysterious girl, as Charles Addams intended.
