Jiro dreams of sushi

From Andrea  Kalinowski
Author:  David Gelb
Jiro dreams of sushi [videorecording DVD]
Jiro Dreams of Sushi is a DVD which chronicles the story of a Japanese master sushi chef. He owns a small, 10 seat sushi restaurant in a Tokyo subway station. He is teaching  his sons and apprentices the craft of sushi. He explains the relationship between fish and rice vendors and the excellence of his finished product. Due to overfishing and bottom trawling, he and his sons are worried about the future of both sushi and fishing. They have noticed a decline and/or extinction of certain fish. He is 85 and so enamored of his work that he has no plans to retire even though he has been working for 78 years. His pursuit of perfection and his dreams of new forms of sushi has earned him a loyal following and three stars in the Michelin guide.

Forbidden Lie$

From Ellen Druda
Forbidden Lie$ 
This one is very much of interest to libraries, since it’s about the author Norma Khouri and her 2003 best seller “Forbidden Love.” The book was presented as a true story about a young Muslim girl caught in an unapproved love affair who was then murdered by her brother.   A year after publication, an Australian journalist examined the details in the story and proved it all to be a figment of the author’s imagination. The film tells the story of Khouri’s rise to fame and her response to the accusations about the book.  What makes it so delicious to watch is the onion-peel method the film uses to tell us the story: we see Khouri dig herself deeper and deeper with lies and deceptions; explanations that seem logical at first reveal themselves to be truths about other falsehoods even more bizarre.  The DVD comes loaded with extras, including deleted scenes, featurettes, and terrific commentary with director Anna Broinowski and Khouri herself.

The art of the steal [videorecording]

From Chris Garland
The art of the steal [videorecording]
The documentary film; “The Art of the Steal;” tells the story of the multi-billion dollar Barnes art collection. In 1922 Dr. Albert Barnes established an educational institution around his priceless art in suburban Philadelphia. In his will he directed that his foundation should always be an educational institution and that the artworks should not be moved. Over the last fifty years there has been an ongoing battle over the fate of his treasure. Do the Philadelphia politicians and cultural power elite get their way or will the terms of Dr. Barnes’ will be honored?

Forbidden Lie$

From Ellen Druda
Forbidden Lie$
This one is very much of interest to libraries, since it’s about the author Norma Khouri and her 2003 best seller “Forbidden Love.” The book was presented as a true story about a young Muslim girl caught in an unapproved love affair who was then murdered by her brother.   A year after publication, an Australian journalist examined the details in the story and proved it all to be a figment of the author’s imagination. The film tells the story of Khouri’s rise to fame and her response to the accusations about the book.  What makes it so delicious to watch is the onion-peel method the film uses to tell us the story: we see Khouri dig herself deeper and deeper with lies and deceptions; explanations that seem logical at first reveal themselves to be truths about other falsehoods even more bizarre.  The DVD comes loaded with extras, including deleted scenes, featurettes, and terrific commentary with director Anna Broinowski and Khouri herself.

Full Frame Documentary Film Festival

From Ellen Druda
Full Frame Documentary Film Festival
A brilliant collection of short documentaries, this latest anthology
covers an eclectic mix of subjects. “Afloat” visits a senior
village in Florida, where 90-year-olds reflect on the good times while
they swim in the center’s pool. “The Angelmakers” tells the tale
of a group of isolated and ignored women in a tiny village in Hungary who
got the ultimate revenge many years ago-they poisoned their husbands-and how the current generation of women now reap the benefits of more freedom.
“High Plains Winter” is a smeary painting on film that evokes
the chill and stark beauty of Western America’s lonesome plains in winter.
It features the unusual sport of ski-joring, people on skis being pulled
by horses. “Send Me Somewhere Special” follows the spontaneous
trip of the filmmaker to a randomly chosen English village, where he gets
involved in the lives of the locals. Funny, sad, quirky, and daring, the
film shows how surface politeness peels away for deeper meaning. “
Stand Still Like Living” speaks of the courage and coping of
two people in Botswana who discover they have AIDS. The pervasiveness of the disease into their everyday lives makes the tragic commonplace and
puts a human face on the epidemic. In “The Intimacy of
Strangers,” real snippets of overheard cell phone conversations are
brilliantly edited together to tell a story of love and loss. The new
intrusion of private lives in public spaces is dissected and woven into a
film we all star in at some point.

The Cove

From Chris Garland
The Cove (DVD)
Part espionage, part environmental thriller, The Cove is the
documentary record of   Ric O’Barry’s quest to stop the slaughter of
dolphins in a remote cove in Japan.  O’Barry (a former dolphin trainer on
the show Flipper) is seeking redemption for his part in creating the
concept of captive dolphins as entertainment in aquariums around the
world.  Through his work with dolphins, he realized that these deeply
sensitive, highly intelligent and self aware creatures must not be
subjected to captivity, nor be slaughtered for school lunch programs.

Aside from the obvious humanitarian reasons, dolphin meat is high in
mercury and detrimental to the health of young school children.  He has
made it his life’s work to stop this practice.  O’Barry is joined by
filmmaker Louie Psihoyos and the Ocean Preservation Society in a
clandestine mission to expose the truth about the secret doings at the
remote hidden cove.