myDylarama

The Wolf of Wall Street - Leo's Cheeks

James Skipp — 2014-03-02T15:39:57Z

REVIEW: THE WOLF OF WALL STREET
By James Skipp
@JamesSkipp

There was one thought that kept gnawing at my brain during a recent trip to see Scorsese's The Wolf of Wall Street: was it possible to cook a three-course meal inside Leonardo DiCaprio's cheeks?

It was a question I resolved to answer as soon as I returned to my flagship restaurant in Maidstone, Kent. With the assistance of my good friends Donald Chegwin (the poet) and Charlton Bloom (the critically-acclaimed film critic), I crafted three lifesize replicas of Leo's cheeks from beef marrow.

Into the first ‘Leo's Cheeks', I poured a hot pea soup (the starter). Into the second, I placed a plain jacket potato (also known as a JP) to act as the main. And inside the third Leo's Cheek I placed an unwrapped Boost Bar – the dessert.

It's worth pointing out that unlike so many other experimental contemporary chefs, I pride myself on inventing dishes that are as tasty and accessible as they are innovative. And so to test out the recipe's success, I invited several of my most loyal customers to my restaurant to enjoy ‘Leo's Cheeks'.

Feedback proved to be somewhat mixed. The actor Daniel Radcliffe found the concept behind the dish “truly thrilling”, but felt the jacket potato (or JP) “might have benefitted from cheese”. For the four members of the pop band Little Mix, the problem lay in the Boost Bar, which they all deemed to have been left “languishing” in the fridge too long (a pertinent point). Two members also felt that the meal was overpriced at £35. However, the group was unanimous in describing the JP “cooked close to perfection”.

Home Secretary Theresa May, on the other hand, said she had “absolutely no complaints at all”.

So while the dish wasn't perhaps an unqualified success, everyone present agreed that it had been an experiment worth undertaking. After a few minor tweaks to the recipe, the three-course meal shall be rolled out across all my restaurants later this year, priced at £35.

Dir: Martin Scorsese, 2013

James Skipp is an award-winning restaurateur and food critic. He owns over 900 restaurants worldwide.

HERO CORP

Kwet — 2011-04-11T13:02:51Z

En France, les fans de séries télé se sont fait une raison : la plupart des bonnes séries ne sont pas de chez nous. Le paysage télévisuel français a effectivement tendance à nous fournir une quantité incommensurable de choses inqualifiables en prime-time, sous prétexte que ça plait à l'audimat, monstre vénal pour qui le mot scénario n'est qu'un lointain et vague souvenir...
Heureusement ces dernières années ont vu éclore plus ou moins difficilement quelques perles, et Hero Corp en fait définitivement partie.

L'histoire commence quand John (Simon Astier) débarque dans un petit village perdu en Lozère afin d'assister à l'enterrement de sa tante Mary (Agnès Boury). Mais ce village n'est pas un simple coin perdu, ses habitants sont loin d'être de classiques villageois, et sa tante n'est pas aussi morte qu'annoncé... En effet, cet endroit est en fait un lieu de retraite pour Super-Héros vieillissants ou défaillants, ou aspirant tout simplement à retrouver une vie plus calme suite à la grande guerre qui vit s'affronter les Super-Héros de l'agence Hero Corp et les Super-Vilains.
Et justement, le plus grand d'entre eux, le terrible The Lord, a réapparu alors qu'on le croyait mort, et il semblerait que John soit destiné à le combattre et à sauver les villageois qui ont pour seule défense leurs pouvoirs tout moisis... John va devoir tout apprendre sur les Super-Héros (en composant avec leurs personnalités ... particulières !) et sauver le monde alors qu'il n'avait jusque là aucune idée de l'existence même de tout ça !

La série compte deux saisons, la première diffusée en octobre 2008 sur Comédie ! et en juillet 2009 sur France 4, la deuxième en janvier 2010 sur Comédie ! et juillet 2010 sur France 4. Si vous avez raté leur diffusion, je ne saurais que trop vous conseiller de vous jeter littéralement sur les dvds de cette petite merveille. Simon Astier et Alban Lenoir ont créé là une série drôle et très bien faite, servie par des acteurs toujours justes, drôles et même émouvants. Inspirée de l'univers BD et comics, les codes du genre sont là, des identités secrètes aux costumes délirants en passant par les poses « regard au loin et port de tête héroïque » et les pouvoirs plus ou moins puissants, plus ou moins utiles d'ailleurs... On retrouve d'ailleurs même la forme des comics dans les génériques et dans la série sous l'aspect d' « archives historiques » d'Hero Corp.
Malgré un très grand succès rencontré notamment sur internet, le producteur Comédie ! ne semblent pas enclin à poursuivre avec une 3e saison, prétextant trop peu d'audience (et tandis que revoilà ce vilain audimat), mais Simon Astier a affirmé vouloir aller au bout de son histoire quelque soit la forme qu'elle prendrait.

Comme tous les fans j'attends ça avec une impatience non dissimulée, car cette série fait partie de celles qui m'ont réconcilié avec la télévision française, comme Kaamelott (encore un Astier tiens, je pense qu'on peut envisager une étude très scientifique sur le gène du talent).

Kick Ass

Judy Harris — 2010-07-18T13:08:22Z

Superheroes are something else; it's what makes them super. The premise of Kick Ass is to make ‘the superhero' just another performance that any geek in a wetsuit can pull off. In fact, white nerd Dave Lizewski's turn as Kick Ass is almost as easy as the ‘homo' persona he adopts in order to get into the bedroom and under the bra of the school hottie, Katie Deauxman.

What makes Dave Lizewski's metamorphosis from everyday nerd to crime-fighting ‘Kick Ass' so pathetically offensive is that in order to re-appropriate the cult of the superhero in the name of his socially frustrated, girl-hungry cronies, every other character in the film is forced to inhabit the clichéd archetypes that the film supposedly subverts.

In this trade off female subjectivity pays the highest price. Dave's high-school crush Katie, who has long ignored him is either covering herself in fake tan or, once she's instantly reconciled herself to his faux-homo ploy, offering up her breasts for his consumption in her pretty yellow bedroom. Especially vomit-inducing is a scene atop her quilted bed where she jiggles her breasts towards him in a move that is less ‘come hither' and more ‘ah, sweetheart, I know this is what you've been waiting for!'. Confronted with a televised broadcast of real-life violence she whimpers helplessly while the other sidelined females turn away from the screen and throw themselves into the arms of Dave's nerdy male friends. By the end of the movie they're all happily sucking face in the comic book store.

As Dave attempts to slaughter black drug dealers by day and succeeds in wrapping his paws around his hot girlfriend's big tits by night the movie apparently breaks through the age and gender requirements of superheroics. Hit Girl is an 11yr old vigilante extraordinaire, awesomely adept with guns, knives, night vision goggles and all manner of martial arts. Raised by ex-cop Big Daddy the duo's sole purpose is to avenge the death of her mother (whose drug overdose is pithily depicted as a self-pitying act of female hysterics) by going after Frank D'Amico and his gang. She blasts her way through every scene in a maelstrom of (mostly) magnificent arcade violence. Typically, quite a fuss has been made about Hit Girl's ‘foul mouth' and her hyper-violent antics . However the true horror of this film is that after eleven years in pursuit of D'Amico (who has killed both her parents) and an entire movie in which she is depicted as an untouchable killer of bad guys- blasting, kicking, stabbing and shooting her way through every confrontation, who is that finally kills her nemesis? Dave fucking Lizewski. At the most crucial moment in the movie and the culmination of her life's work Hit Girl is suddenly infantilised, floored by a single kick. Thus, Kick Ass sweeps in, shoots D'Amico in the head with Hit Girl's bazooka and carries her off into the sunset a la Richard Gere and Debra Winger.

Kick Ass is like the worst aspect of Glee, a TV show that sells itself on its inclusive, pluralistic, margin-busting agenda, when in almost every episode the same two white, able-bodied, handsome heteros sing the lead in every song . The mindless audacity with which Kick Ass reneges on its own promise and sings ‘all hail the white male nerd' at the expense of every other character is nauseating. But it's the plight of Hit Girl that's the real slap in the face.

Dir: Matthew Vaughn, 2010