The Rob Simone Talk Show

Filed under: Box Office, Tech Stuff, Politics

We’re all well aware of the subtle and subjective art of the cinematic rating system. Remove a word here, take out an innuendo or slip of the nip there, and suddenly that risque adult fare becomes palatable for familial audiences. But here’s a new goodie to consider: With the rise of 3D, will we start seeing the same film receive different ratings between the second and third dimension, and what will that mean for the ever-important box office take?

It seems that overseas in Sweden, the country’s Board of Film Censors doled out two different ratings for Cats and Dogs: The Revenge of Kitty Galore. The 2D version was rated G, meaning everyone could see it without adult supervision, while the 3D version was rated PG, requiring adults to accompany tykes under the age of 7.

Continue reading Do 3D Movies Deserve Higher Ratings?

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Filed under: New Releases, Movie Marketing, Cinematical Seven

I’ll admit that on the surface there’s nothing terribly deep to this topic of discussion, which is fairly self explanatory. But there’s something powerful in the well-composed film title that can evoke that visceral hunger in your stomach with just the right words. Words that represent foods you’ve tasted, tastes that trigger food memories that can water your mouth like a Pavlovian dog, trained to take notice subconsciously at the mere suggestion of an idea.

Such was my immediate response to this week’s A Woman, a Gun, and a Noodle Shop (international title: A Simple Noodle Story), Zhang Yimou’s colorful Chinese remake of the Coen brothers’ Blood Simple. The film itself has little to do with food, save being set in a remote noodle shop and its adjoining estate, where a bitter old shop owner (Ni Dahong ) plots to kill his much-younger wife (Yan Ni) and the employee she’s having an affair with (Xiao Shenyang). But the title — simple, evocative, suggesting the elemental nature of all three of its parts — well, it got me.

I love noodles, see. Yimou had me on the hook at “noodle shop,” and thankfully he includes a single scene of noodle-making in his screwball thriller. In said scene we see the shop’s three lowly, buffoonish employees spring to action as a dynamic noodle-making team: they roll the dough, flip and flatten it in the air between them like jugglers, slice the noodles into strips to cook, and cover the delectable thick slabs in steaming broth before serving them in comically giant bowls.

Just reading the title of Yimou’s film brings back my memories of that scene, which in turn makes me hungry. Such is the power of the well-composed film title. With food and film on the brain, I offer seven more movie titles that make me salivate.

Continue reading Cinematical Seven: Movie Titles That Make Us Hungry

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