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.
Filed under: New Releases, Movie Marketing, Cinematical Seven
Continue reading Cinematical Seven: Movie Titles That Make Us Hungry
Television gets its share of replacement actors. When a series goes into one, two, or many years, not all of the cast is going to stick around. That might mean seeing David Tennant replace Christopher Eccleston as Doctor Who, Kirstie Alley replacing Shelley Long on Cheers, or Cheryl Ladd taking over for Farrah Fawcett on Charlie’s Angels. There have been high points, low points, and shocking new faces … but this new one might take the cake.
Too soon? It’s true that tragedies such as the Titanic and AIDS have had musicals. And I’d go so far as to say Trouble the Water is like a Katrina musical, even if it is a documentary. But September 11? Someone made an indie rock musical about September 11. Yes. Whether or not it seems so wrong, it exists, it’s titled 
Remember 2004 when Robert Zemeckis brought us The Polar Express and we recoiled at the disconnect between motion capture and the final product? The animation was more human than hand drawings, but still quite artificial. For many audience members, it wasn’t life-like enough. But the technology has come a long, long way over just a handful of years. In a post-Avatar world, it can be pretty darn realistic, and offer up characters who almost seen real. In fact, now it’s more than just the art that’s painted onto the captured movement.
While no official casting has been announced by 20th Century Fox, rumors of contenders for roles in the 
