Film Fest

With another film festival in the books, we look back on a season of cooks, dishes, and legendary screen performances. Plus: Hot Topic, 4DX, crowning Top Chef, and announcing the next thrilling season of Film Fest!

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays on movies.

In the pantheon of bad movie haircuts (wigs??), one film rises above. We reach the end of another great festival with a new comfort classic, the double biopic Julie & Julia. Is the Julie half really all that bad? Is Chris Messina so hot it excuses his rude behavior? Does this movie hit different in a Substack's America? We get into all of it, plus a lot of Adam and Streep talk, with food reporter Madeline Wells!

Read Madeline's reporting at SF Gate here.

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays on film.

Bonjour madames et monsieurs et bienvenue a le cinema du Sexy Chocolatiers hon hon hon! It's time to get down and dirty with Swede king Lasse Hallstrom's ode to all things cocoa: the great (?) 2000s time capsule Chocolat. Marie Sicola joins us to help break down the careers of Binoche, Dench, Molina, and oui, le sigh, un petit Johnny Depp, as well as the wacky ins and outs of post-war provincial France. This one's a little darker than you might remember!

Film Fest if brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays on film.

Ayyyy I'm making pizza heah! Journey with us to the world's most famous Italian neighborhood: Little Italy, Toronto, with one of the world's famous famous Italo-Americans: Tara Giancaspro. We try our hardest to get into a truly wild movie, from the great Danny Aiello to frappuccinos and figs, and try not to have a total breakdown in the process.

Visit and subscribe to xoxo Gossip Giancaspro here.

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays on film.

If you've ever wondered what it would feel like to live inside a Renaissance painting, today's episode is for you. We all fall head over heels in love with Peter Greenaway's lush and disgusting 1989 confusingly titled classic The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover, thanks to pastry chef and internet icon Sadie. The very long and British careers of James Gambon and Helen Mirren...Michael Nyman's perfect score...the myriad uses for a merkin...we leave no bustier laced and no plate unclean!

Follow Sadie on Twitter here

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays on film

The Loeb Boathouse...Katz's Deli...Cafe Luxembourg...grapes and paprikash and dressing on the side... Who says When Harry Met Sally's not a food movie??

Certainly not the great Hooman Yazdanian, who brought the iconic Reiner/Ephron collab to Film Festatouille so that we could go on and on about a perfect movie. More importantly, if pesto is the quiche of the eighties, then what's the pesto of right now? Don't worry: we get into it!

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays on film.

Remember when Bradley Cooper trained to be a professional chef so he could play Anthony Bourdain on TV, and then when his TV show bombed he was like wait...what am I supposed to do with all of these chef skills now? We certainly do! The great Kyra Kaufer returns to Film Fest to chat all things Bradley, plus Sienna Miller's iconic Architectural Digest house tour and Matthew Rhys with a nasty goatee: it's time to get BURNT.

Subscribe to The Clove here.

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays on film.

Nicolas Cage goes to Portland in search of his pignapped best friend: a logline that kind of sells itself. Underground sous chef fight clubs, Alex Wolff's little mustache, a beautiful swine named Brandy...we get into it all with librarian and recipe writer Taylor Hunsberger, plus the deep dive into the Naked Brothers Band you've all been waiting for(?). It's time to talk Michael Sarnoski's PIG.

Subscribe to Taylor's food and culture substack, Go Crisp Girl, here.

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag, a home for personal essays about movies.

Welcome to FILM FESTATOUILLE: a celebration of movies about food!! 🍽

The long-awaited fourth season of Film Fest is officially here, and what better way to kick things off than with iconic baker and James Beard Award winning (!) cookbook author Abi Balingit, who brings the lost but not forgotten 1999 Sarah Michelle Gellar gem Simply Irresistible to the table.

In Simply Irresistible, a young chef struggles to keep her Tribeca restaurant afloat in the wake of her mother's death, until a mysterious stranger and his magical crabs give her the power to cook her emotions into her dishes...which makes people...uncontrollably horny? And terribly sad? And also at one point people start floating? Honestly this is one of the more confounding movies we've seen, and we get into ALL of it!

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Pick up a copy of Abi's essential Mayumu: Filipino American Desserts Remixed at your local bookstore or right here!

Another awards cycle comes around as we draw this season of nightmares to a close - goodnight, Scaredy Cats of the world! Find out who's taking home the gold and which of this season's spoooooky movies is crowned Scariest. Plus: what Miya, Brad, and Adam are most afraid of, and an update on season 4 (...maybe...kind of)!

Follow Film Fest @filmfestpod

Film Fest is brought to you by wig-wag: personal essays about movies