Saturday, June 2, 2012

98% Jiro Dreams of Sushi

All Critics (63) | Top Critics (23) | Fresh (62) | Rotten (1)

By the time this graceful film is over you understand why Japan has declared the bald, bespectacled Jiro a national treasure. Even if you've never tasted sushi, the man's singleness of purpose will inspire you.

Gelb apparently understood that his subject was itself so taking that he wouldn't need filmic embellishments to keep his viewers alert.

Obsessive, we were saying? Oh my, yes, and that's what makes the film so compelling.

The most interesting moments, however, belong not to the chef but to those who labor in his shadow.

As exhausting as Jiro may be, he's also inspiring.

Would you be willing to massage an octopus for 45 minutes, until its flesh possesses just the right amount of chewability? Jiro is.

The movie functions well as high-end food porn, but it's also an insightful character study of the single-minded Jiro.

It's an interesting exploration of a particular aspect of Japanese culture, which is fathers and sons working together. It's a very likeable film, and sometimes, that's enough. If you're a Japanophile or a sushi nut, you'll likely be in heaven.

Even after you've eaten your fill, Gelb's film is memorable not just as a foodie paradise, but as a lovely, insightful portrait of a man in a lifelong search for perfection.

Watching Jiro work with the decades of experience on his side is like watching a master painter adding strokes to a masterpiece.

I can imagine that if you are a sushi lover, then you'll be drooling over the delicious looking scenery, and it maybe even convince you to make a trip to Japan just to try some of the food.

The film similarly guides us smoothly from opening credits to closing without complaint or concern, and before you know it, you've dreamily submitted to 80 minutes of raw fish preparation.

If you ever wondered what is the Art of Sushi, David Gelb's intriguing portrait opens up a whole new world, in which we learn about simplicity, balance and what defines 'deliciousness'

The centerpiece is a gorgeously photographed sequence showing a dinner at Jiro's restaurant, a "concerto" of the many courses (all sushi, no appetizers) that will make any foodie's mouth water.

Thoughtful, gentle and wonderfully restrained, David Gelb's brief documentary Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a portrait of an artist in full flower, a master who has achieved a species of perfection.

Since few (if any) of us will ever be able to actually taste sushi chef Jiro Ono's cuisine -- minimum cost per person to dine there is roughly $300 -- we'll have to console ourselves with the visual bliss of this entertaining documentary.

As artful as it is appetizing.

The parade of dishes is like one note after another in a symphony meant to be appreciated by all the senses.

Yes, it will make you hungry, but it also supplies an understanding of skill and care that's largely lost in today's mechanical world. It's a simple story, yet one with fascinating levels of behavior and expertise to examine.

As simple and elegant as Jiro's preparations, "Sushi" alternates between the master musing on his cooking philosophy (good food, he says, makes him feel "victorious") and footage of the three chefs at work in their minuscule kitchen.

You don't have to like sushi to appreciate a master

This documentary strikes a balance between storytelling and food porn that's hard to come by in foodie flicks. Like a proper sushi meal, "Jiro" left me feeling sated, not stuffed.

Savory documentary, which is especially appetizing for foodies.

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Andy Samberg Thinks Russell Brand Will 'Kill It' At Movie Awards

'It's going to be a real stretch from the VMAs,' Samberg joked about Brand hosting the Movie Awards, airing Sunday at 9 p.m.
By Terri Schwartz, with reporting by Josh Horowitz


Andy Samberg
Photo: MTV News

UNIVERSAL CITY, California — We already have a good idea of how the 2012 MTV Movie Awards, but will the rest of his show be up to snuff? This will be the two-time Video Music Awards emcee's first stint , and we're hoping he will live up to his previous performances.

During the , MTV News turned to former Movie Awards host Andy Samberg to hear his prediction on Brand's hosting prowess. Samberg said that it probably wouldn't be too different from Brand's other times hosting MTV awards shows.

"It's going to be a real stretch from the VMAs," he joked.

"What's he going to do? I just wonder if in the beginning he's going to have some short film about how he's got to make it to the Movie Awards in time. Is he going to make it? He's in this film, how's he going to make it? Every host seems to have this problem," Samberg continued sarcastically.

It's true, we've seen a host or 10 do that familiar sketch in the past, though Samberg managed to avoid falling into that trap with his hilarious spoof on "Slumdog Millionaire," "The Reader," "Twilight" and "Star Trek" during his hosting gig. We're sure Brand also has something different up his sleeve this year, and Samberg seemed to genuinely be looking forward to seeing what madness the Brit will concoct.

"So many ingredients in a Movie Awards stew. I mean, celebs, spoofs, great performances," he said. But the key ingredient? "A great host. That's going to kill it, man. Russell's hilarious."

Samberg took some time to reminisce on his own year hosting the Movie Awards, which apparently earned him $5 (well, in addition to whatever his salary was). Since he hosted back in 2009 — the first year "Twilight" was a nominee — Samberg said he was a little overwhelmed by the fan hysteria.

"My year was like the first year of 'Twilight,' so you couldn't hear anything. It was just a din of screaming girls," he said. "At one point, I walked out and I had a bet with somebody backstage and I just went, 'Twilight,' and everyone went, 'Wahh!' and I was like, I just made five bucks."

Head over to MovieAwards.MTV.com to vote for your favorite flicks now! The 21st annual MTV Movie Awards air live tomorrow at 9 p.m. ET.

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Here's a Closer Look at the Ikea TV That Shows It's Even More Awesome [Video]

The nice thing about the upcoming Ikea TV, other than being smart and cheap, is that it blends the television into your furniture to completely banish unsightly cables from your living room. Here's how it would look like in a "real life" setting. More »


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Friday, June 1, 2012

Dodgy tales of 'research' swirling the globe

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For a few hours last week, I had planned to write a column about the "five-second rule." Scientists at Manchester Metropolitan University in England had released a study showing that some foods (ham, cookies) were safer to eat than others (dried fruit, pasta) after being left on the floor to collect germs. The Huffington Post picked up the story, as did Gizmodo and Good Morning America and the TODAY Show. But the research ? if that's even the right word to use here ? was rotten from the start.

The first warning sign was the subject matter: The five-second rule has been tested, explained and at least partially debunked over and over again, for at least as long as I've been a journalist. The most notable example was a 2006 study by Paul Dawson of Clemson University, South Carolina, who published his findings that germs can hop right onto a slice of bologna in the peer-reviewed Journal of Applied Microbiology. The following year it was again debunked by a couple of undergraduates at Connecticut College, then once more by a seventh-grade science-fair project in 2008. And did I mention the nine-year-old in Kentucky? "A lot of bacteria grew on the cheese," explained little Courtney Mims to a science correspondent for the Lexington Herald-Leader.

More damning was the story's overseas origin. The five-second study arrived in the American press by way of the Daily Mail, which explained in its own coverage that the work had been funded by a manufacturer of cleaning products. It then advised readers to replace their mop heads every three months to "minimise risk" from dangerous bacteria. When I contacted Manchester Metropolitan University for more details, I learned that the "researchers" and "scientists" described in media reports amounted to one person ? a lab tech named Kathy Lees, who did not respond to my inquiries.

Faux research

Let's not single out the Mancunians, though: industry-funded science fluff litters the whole of the British Isles. Also in the past few weeks, the UK press fawned over a comely chip-shop girl from Kent who was found by a national television network to have a scientifically validated, perfect face. The British version of The Huffington Post reported on a mathematical formula for the "perfect sandwich" ? produced by a University of Warwick physicist in collaboration with a major bread manufacturer.

Spurious mathematical formulae concocted at the behest of PR firms compose their own journalism beat in England: In recent years, we've seen the perfect boiled egg, the perfect day, the perfect breasts, and many more examples of scientists getting paid to turn life into algebra.

As a naive magazine intern, I once took an assignment to write up one of these characteristically English equations ? a means of calculating the perfect horror movie. The team of mathematicians behind the research turned out to be a couple of recent grads from King's College London, who had watched some movies and gotten drunk on vodka on behalf of Sky Broadcasting. "We only spent a couple of hours doing it," one of them told me, "and didn't put all that much thought into whether it works or how accurate it is."

I'm not the first to notice this trend ? see Ben Goldacre's excellent "Bad Science" column in The Guardian, for example ? but it has started to worry me. A great garbage patch of science journalism has been forming across the Atlantic, and bits of flotsam are washing up on our shores. What makes the Brits so susceptible to these ginned-up studies and publicity stunts? And what happens when their faux research starts drifting across the internet?

This sounds like jingoism, I know. Vince Kiernan, a veteran reporter who now studies the history and practice of science journalism at Georgetown in Washington DC, doesn't see much difference between the coverage in Britain and the US. Science journalism is globalised, he told me, and US businesses employ their own set of PR shenanigans.

Maybe he's right: Even the New York Times makes a practice of letting companies tout their self-serving, unpublished research from time to time in its opinion pages. But it seems to me the Times would never run the shameless "labvertisements" that get play in the British press. More to the point, I don't think you'd find these cash-for-science stories even in our smaller, less scrupulous newspapers (television news may be a different story). And I can't remember ever seeing a product-sponsored mathematical formula that showed up first in the American press. Why not?

History of science coverage

I posed this question to a few of my favourite science journalists in both countries and got some vague answers. Not all British newspapers operate according to the same (low) standards, my sources told me, but even at the best venues it can be a struggle to stay out of the gutter. "When I was at The Times [of London], I judged my success as much by what I kept out of the paper as what I got into it," said Mark Henderson, former science editor and author of The Geek Manifesto (he also claims to have taken a hard line on dodgy formulae). The Daily Telegraph, now one of that nation's most egregious purveyors of junk science, by all accounts maintained a solid reputation until a few years ago, when two of its best reporters left.

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Home Elder Care ? A Look at the Advantages Involved

Family members watching their loved ones get older will soon have to start considering what type of senior care they will need to provide them. With the first wave of baby boom now entering retirement, this trend is expected to continue into the foreseeable future. In the past, two of your main options for sending your loved one to a nursing home or letting a family member care for them. In-home care may be a great option in today?s world.

What is In Home Elder Care?

If you have never heard of the homecare profession, then you may not know exactly what a caregiver does. You can find a homecare provider that will perform a wide range of services based on what your loved one needs. Your family member may simply need a bit of companionship or someone to drop in every now and then to ensure that they are fine. In other cases, people will need many more services performed for them. And still others require round the clock care because of deteriorating health and/or conditions like dementia and Alzheimer?s. Whatever level of elder care the client requires, and in home care agency is ready to accommodate them.

Some of the Many Benefits of Senior Homecare

If someone in your family is getting older, there are quite a few reasons why you should consider hiring a homecare provider. You should know that one of the main benefits is flexibility. Your loved one can be provided with any type of services that they are in need of. This is nearly impossible to achieve in a medical facility like a nursing home, simply because of the way these types of facilities are structured.

Another reason why you should consider using homecare is because of the cost involved. While an in home care agency can be pricey compared to doing the care yourself, it is still usually far less costly than putting your loved one in a nursing home. Many seniors have been financially draining after staying in a nursing home. In-home care can put your mind at ease if you are worried about the finances involved with nursing care.

Your family member?s quality of life will also be much better with in-home care. Most people would prefer to stay in their home if given the choice. You certainly shouldn?t be surprised to find this out.

Kristie Brown writes on a variety of topics from health to technology. Check out her websites on health care staffing St. Louis Park.

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Travel Metasearch, Review Sites Gain as Supplier.com Stagnates ...

Medium

In 2011, vacations were enhanced with some of the frills that went missing in 2010. U.S. travelers spent more time on vacation, ventured beyond their borders more often, and stayed in pricier accommodations. A new PhoCusWright Global Edition study reveals that this increased spending and complexity of travel stimulated more online shopping. Almost all online channels, including OTAs, travel metasearch and general search engines, travel review websites, flash deal websites and even social networks, experienced a healthy bump in usage for travel shopping ? roughly 2-5% across the board.

However, according to PhoCusWright's U.S. Consumer Travel Report Fourth Edition, one key online channel failed to expand its consumer reach over the past year: supplier websites. The percentage of travelers who shop for travel products through provider websites was stagnant, dipping slightly by 1%.

While a range of factors can influence a traveler's preference for one website over another, the types of websites that attracted more shoppers share one key characteristic: they all aggregate content. In fact, some of the biggest content aggregators in online travel ? metasearch and travel review websites (i.e., Kayak and TripAdvisor) ? demonstrated the largest year-over-year growth. Metasearch jumped 5% and was used by one third of all online travel shoppers in 2011, while just under a third of online travel shoppers used travel review websites ? up 4% over 2010.

"It's no wonder that TripAdvisor's stock has been performing so well," says Carroll Rheem, senior director, research at PhoCusWright. "Review websites have consistently been able to expand their audience, as have metasearch sites. Unfortunately for the metasearch market leader Kayak, however, wooing investors has been far more challenging, despite the company's large and loyal consumer following. Based on today's marketplace, they have a compelling proposition. But as Kayak is reportedly gearing up for another IPO attempt, questions remain about how Google's metasearch products will impact the competitive landscape in the long run."

PhoCusWright's U.S. Consumer Travel Report Fourth Edition explores online behavior across four distinct phases of the online travel process: destination selection, shopping, booking and sharing. Based on a survey of more than 2,000 U.S. travelers, the report exposes and explains key trends in leisure travel, including overall travel incidence, travel expenditure, trip frequency and duration, types of trips, consumption of travel products and more. The study draws upon three years of longitudinal data, along with an analysis of travelers' intentions for the upcoming year, to provide a comprehensive picture of the current health and future direction of leisure travel.

Key topics include:

  • General traveler behavior, including incidence of travel, trip frequency and duration, travel party composition and travel spend
  • Travel component purchase incidence, with detailed analysis of air and lodging spend, and types of accommodations used
  • Websites used in various stages of online travel planning ? destination selection, shopping, purchasing and sharing
  • Trip motivation and information sources used in destination research
  • Traveler shopping behavior, including types of websites used, online and offline sources of information, and influence of various types of online content
  • Most popular travel purchasing channels, online versus offline purchasing, and typical purchase methods by age and travel segment
For fresh insight into the trends driving consumer travel, and to find out if and how travelers put their money where their mouse is, purchase PhoCusWright's U.S. Consumer Travel Report Fourth Edition.

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Today's Honoree is Self Publishing Expert Ivin Viljoen | Today's ...

My claim to fame is that I have? written my first book in 3 days and published that book in two weeks? paving the way for me to become a self publishing expert. If you Google
my name, you will find many entries and articles I either wrote or? hosted. They are some of the many resources I have either written of or? preached about in my ministry career. I have also built and moderated? two websites that formed part of my youth work. Hey, you?ll even find? one or two negative articles about me on Google, but I?m sure all of us
who has spent over a year in their niche have had some kind of? persecution.

I have ever been trying to start a Church and after my seventh year? realized that perhaps that was not what I was supposed to do. Even? though ministry has always made me excited, and preaching even more, my struggles have made me realize that I am in the wrong business. I have a? dream, as Dr. Martin Luther King once said, and that is to write.

I am of the opinion that to have published ones work is the pinnacle in? writers? success. And that I have set out to do. I have been blogging? since 2006 and forged a successful blog by the end of 2007 writing a? column from a Christian perspective. I have written thousands of? articles, many of them published on the internet, wrote a Bible College
curriculum, wrote scripts for a Cartoon series and wrote a couple books
of which one is already published.

My dream since I was little was to become a writer. Always trying to? preach the way I write, I realized even though I have pretty much honed? the craft of public speaking, I had many mountains to conquer in this? business. I figured since I have a passion for it, and it formed such a? big part of my ministry, I might as well pursue doing it for a living
writing with a purpose.

Going through around a month of planning, I eventually started my self? publishing blog, Authopublisher. I hope to provide immaculate value here? as I put my passion into what I do.?

Ivin Viljoen has been a student of Commenting for close to seven years. During his many year of blogging he has formulated a blueprint to build new brands and launch new websites or blogs by simply using commenting as a marketing tool. The Commenting Blueprint is a course jam packed with more than 50 videos that delves into every single commenting strategy available online today. Get the 411, find strategies, tools and even get help with your commenting admin. Launches soon, sign up for a free video today!

Visit Ivin Viljoen for more information.

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