Thirteen Ways of Looking at a Review

Tuesday, January 30, 2018

Porno Burrito! I Was Suddenly Disconcerted That I'd Only Pointed You at Male Restaurant Critics


First here's the porno burrito guy.

Here's a first-rate conversation on the topic of the paucity of women in the job.

Here's a sample:

• What, If Anything, Is Missing From the Restaurant Conversation If a City's Major Critics Are All Men?
Ruth Reichl (New York Times, 1993-1999): Are we missing something if we don't have female critics' voices? Absolutely. I do think that women often look at the world in a different way than men do ... If you're going to make a generalization about how men and women experience a restaurant, men tend to see it much more food-first, and women tend to see it more experientially.
S. Irene Virbila (Los Angeles Times): Editors aren't looking as much for thoughtful, nuanced reviews, but something that's provocative and in-your-face. There are more men with a writing style like that than there are women. I'd say of the women critics I've read, they tend to be more alert to what's going on around them and the life of the restaurant.
Mimi Sheraton (New York Times, 1975-1983): The men write differently. They write in a more brazenly, sure-footed tone of voice. I don't want to say belligerent, but there's a hard edge. And yes, I think a woman does see things a man doesn't see.
Besha Rodell (LA Weekly): I probably talk a little bit more about emotion in my reviews than my male counterparts, but that's just me. I wouldn't say another woman would necessarily do that. I know some female critics who use, for lack of a better word, masculine language. I love that writing. I strive to make my writing feel stronger and more powerful.
Devra First (Boston Globe): It's not as if women like salads and men like red meat. But it's not always not true, either. I wonder sometimes, in my writing, if I gravitate towards lighter food, or away from giant food. I think it's possible that women critics think more about the health aspects than men do ... [But] chefs of all genders are becoming more interested in vegetables and the possibilities that they present.

Steven Winn, Our Monday Visitor

A brief bio of Steven Winn

Steven Winn is an award-winning journalist and fiction writer who spent many years as a staff writer at the San Francisco Chronicle. A Philadelphia native and founding staff member of the Seattle Weekly, he held a Wallace Stegner Fellowship in fiction at Stanford University. His work has appeared in Good Housekeeping, National Lampoon, the New York Times, Parenting, Prairie Schooner, Sports Illustrated, and UTNE Reader. He lives with his family in San Francisco. 

Everyone come up with a question for him which you send to me beforehand.

A dance performance

the dancers’ bodies would compress with hunched shoulders, sunken necks and sharply angled elbows, then burst and flower open to connect with each other in feverishly inventive ways — hooked ankles, a head gripped and rolled in someone else’s hands, fluttering finger holds.

a touring play

Cusack’s line readings can make a romantic rival’s name or an offbeat phrase like “dirty biscuit” sound wonderfully overripe. She delivers a mediocre song (“I Had a Vision”) with the same brandy-voiced conviction she does the wrenching “Please Don’t Take Him” or her surging 11 o’clock number, “At Long Last.” In one choice scene, as touching as anything in the show, Alice joins her aging father (Stephen Lee Anderson) for a shot of moonshine. When he asks her about something for which he’s carried a load of guilt for decades, you can see and feel Cusack toggle away from the truth to tell him a merciful lie. She’s the single best reason to catch “Bright Star.”

a book

passages about a planned mating session with another dog (“The Rape of Rosie”) and her pet’s decline into incontinence are vividly done. So, in a very different, comic meter, is that imagined talk-show interview of Rosie by Oscar the puppet. “The pathetic thing about humans,” a wry and eloquent Rosie observes, “is they think that everything is in their hands, and their hands are in or on everything. Pat, pat, rubbing behind the ears, looking in your eyes for years.”

The Davis Wine Aroma Wheel

An agreed-upon vocabulary for communicating information about wine.

Food Studies - An Academic Discipline

Illustrations of appetizers in the Victorian era
Illustrations of appetizers in the Victorian era (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Food scholarship has also been hindered by another Victorian relic, the “separate
spheres” – the idealized bourgeois division between the private female sphere of
consumption and the more public male sphere of production. While the concept
did not reflect the daily realities for most women – to this day women are major
food producers across the globe – the ideological polarization certainly influenced
the development of middle-class academia, for it effectively segregated women
professionals in less valued “domestic” disciplines, particularly dietetics, home
economics, social work, and nutrition education (along with elementary school
teaching, nursing, and library science). Conversely, the male-dominated realms of
industrial agriculture, food technology, mass retailing, and corporate management
have generally received more public respect and academic prestige.

This institutionalized bias delayed serious attention to food even after the women’s
movement obliterated the separate spheres. While more women began to enter all
fields of academia in the 1960s, it took several decades before scholars could begin
to consider the traditional female ghetto of domesticity without Victorian-era
blinders and prejudices, and even today, feminists who do treasure their cooking
heritage and skills may risk the hostility of colleagues who feel that women should
move on to more “serious” pursuits

The Only Food Writer to Win a Pulitzer Prize




Notice how Gold relates his review to LA car culture.

Monday, January 29, 2018

Last Year's James Beard Winner

Makes me want pancakes.

Karen Brooks holds one of the most prestigious titles in the food world: winner of the James Beard Craig Claiborne Distinguished Restaurant Review Award for 2017. This was her second time as a national finalist. After this, it’s all gravy.

Brooks eats, drinks and thinks about food for Portland Monthly, where she continues her journey as Portland’s opinionated, trend-spotting food critic. She pens monthly restaurant reviews, writes and photographs the print magazine’s Word of Mouth column (aka: what I’m obsessing over now), drives the annual Best Restaurants issue, contributes to various food-cover packages, and breaks news for the magazine’s food blog, Eat Beat.

Tuesday, January 23, 2018

A Model for Our Review Writing? Or Not?

Sand dunes in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region...
Sand dunes in Inner Mongolia Autonomous Region, China (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
In this paper, I shall attempt to explore the broad discursive formations of hegemonic masculinity, and its relation to race, ethnicity and crime. For this, I will situate R.W. Connell’s concept of hegemonic masculinity in the critically acclaimed HBO TV show, The Wire (2002-2008), which primarily explores the drug culture and the political decadence and corruption of the city of Baltimore in early 21st century America.

My focus shall be on the reading Connell’s, as well as other theorists’ discussions on hegemonic masculinities, and focus specifically on locating multiple masculinities in geography of The Wire. For this, I shall specifically explore the relations within genders (masculinities) as relations between them, and proffer an understanding of what I call the patriarchal political-moral economy.

Monday, January 22, 2018

A Sample Student Restaurant Review with Comments

Macaroni and cheese is an American comfort food
Macaroni and cheese is an American comfort food (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
Macaroni and cheese pizza from Cici's Pizza, a...
Macaroni and cheese pizza from Cici's Pizza, an American buffet-style restaurant. (Photo credit: Wikipedia)
This is a thoughtful  approach, but it doesn’t have a ‘bang’ moment when you provide a specific that really grabs me, that makes me want to keep reading or rewards me for sticking with the review in spite of being just a little bored. Can you be more excited,  about … something?  The phrase I am going to use is “drill down.” Is there a moment at which something reminded you of earlier dining experiences or your life as a student? Perhaps, that’s my point. This is a bit of a generic review. I read it and I don’t know *precisely* who the writer is. Student? Experienced food reviewer? Guy who has never had to do this before? Is there a moment where the fact you are reviewing rather than experiencing  caused you to look at things or taste things or think about things in a new way? Arguably, if it's your first restaurant review, you will learn something about yourself. You will 'interrogate yourself,' as we talked about in class. Any light bulb moments?? You have some good detail, but the writing lacks energy and personality, both of which you have in abundance. On third read, I realize that you need to think more about the lead - Chronological approach often produces weak leads.  That first sentence does not make me want to keep reading, nor does any of the first paragraph. Don't assume the headline writer - which if you are a blogger is you - can save the story by dragging the most compelling detail or moment  out of the review and put it in the head. Frequently, a powerful head identifies the info that should be the lead. A good exercise would be for you to go through your review and identify what you think the most important bit is, the old 'Tell your roommate' approach: I went to this restaurant last night, and you would not believe the ....  We can probably find publications where the food review leads are as bland as white rice. Perhaps, the publication's reputation is so well established that readers do not need to be coaxed into stories. We will not assume we are writing for such a publication. We are fighting for eyeballs.

After seeing the same restaurant always jam-packed every time I walked down Clement Street, I decided to see what all the fuss was about.  An idea you drop. You raise the question. Answer it. The outside of Q is very unassuming and has a look that would make you think it was a nice quiet little restaurant. Specifics? Flowers? Misspelled sign? Also, you said it is always jam-packed, which suggests people waiting. Waiting where they can be seen? But, once you pass through the curtain covering the entrance, placed here, this sounds like a thesis statement - and it doesn't mention the food it comes alive with a very lively atmosphere, upbeat workers and fascinating wall decorations.  
            The dangers of the chronological approach! As a rule when I go out, I care more about food than the decor of the restaurant. Perhaps your lingering on the decoration would work if you had a transition like, "Good thing the look of the place kept our interest because the food sure didn't." The walls of Q are unlike anything I have ever seen before in a restaurant. For starters, there is a giant half moon on the ceiling, adding some mood lighting to the restaurant. Below the moon and on all the walls, there is new age art hanging on the walls. There are some very abstract pieces and sculptures hanging as well as drawn art. In the back of the restaurant is a table for a bigger party, that has Real tree? a tree growing through the middle of it. Christmas lights and bicycle chains hang from the tree. Somehow the tree table fits right in and does not seem at all out of place. Because? I have no idea what would come after “because” but go for it My favorite oddity was the magnetic letters next to each table with which you make words with while you wait for the food.
            I'm starting to think, "What about the *food*, dude. The wait staff is very friendly, and our server Alex was very upbeat. I even caught him flirting with the bartender male \or  female? and singing along to some of the indie songs playing over the speakers. Throw in a lyric here?? When we sat down, he started us with almost shot glass-sized cups of water. Knowing I wouldn't be ordering a soft drink or alcoholic beverage (still no fake I.D),  good detail I asked if I could upgrade my shot of water. Alex returned with pint sized beer glasses. Good detail
            The menu of Q seemed to have a little of everything. Alex described their eclectic menu as "American funky comfort food" with a touch of the Southwest.  They also had a very extensive wine list - a xxxx for $x and a couple of yes ranging from $y to $y. Sadly, all I could do was admire. Nice little payoff on the ID thing
            I decided to be adventurous and try something I had never eaten before; the "Slammin' Loch Duart Salmon Burger on Potato Eocaccia with chili-lime aioli and garlic Kennebec fries." Price? The chili-lime sauce put a spin on the salmon that was new and different, however I felt that it left something to be desired because ???? try for a ‘taste’ description: my tongue was. .. On the other hand, the garlic fries were out of this world delicious and rivaled the infamous garlic fries sold at the San Francisco Giants baseball games.  Good comparison
            My girlfriend how does she feel about this? Supportive? Checking out the waiter?????ordered the "Macaroni & Cheezy with tater tots. Price? One thing Q is very good at is naming their entrees. This dish wasn't the usual bland macaroni and cheese that you would expect. This dish includes herbs and spices that add an extra kick you are not ready for on the first bite. The dish works perfectly with the tater tots making it the "comfort food for all comfort food." As my sweet mama said???????
            Following suit with the comfort food theme, the desert menu offers ice cream, apple pie, and milk and cookies. Unfortunately we were too full to try to desert, but it sounded delicious from the descriptions on the menu. Any specifics?
            Because the kitchen is in the same room as all the diners, it both adds and detracts from Q's overall appeal. The sizzling sounds from what's cooking while you wait for your food make you anxious and excited for what is to come; however, the clanking of the dirty dishes and the dishwasher can get a it loud.  Good detail
            Overall, it was an Aha! Your review does NOT convey excitement. exciting experience, which provided artwork to make you wonder, and comfort food for the soul. 

Now add hours, credit card info, phone number, rating system

Summary: This is a somewhat disappointing B, but I’d like to see you let loose a little. The chronological structure doesn’t help. It suggests that nothing in the experience made a strong impact. You are simply presenting  things as they happened, like beads on a string. This is workmanlike, but not exciting. The implication is that the food was the least important part of the experience. If so, say so, which could lead to a meditation on those instances when the look of a restaurant matters more than the quality of the food. Maybe you have to admit that your have taste buds of wood and really can't tell the difference between the good, the bad and the burned to a crisp. If that's so, say so. Tell your readers to look elsewhere for that kind of judgment.


Provocative Quote

George Orwell

“In an age like our own, when the artist is an altogether exceptional person, he must be allowed a certain amount of irresponsibility, just as a pregnant woman is. Still, no one would say that a pregnant woman should be allowed to commit murder, nor would anyone make such a claim for the artist, however gifted. If Shakespeare returned to the earth to-morrow, and if it were found that his favourite recreation was raping little girls in railway carriages, we should not tell him to go ahead with it on the ground that he might write another King Lear. And, after all, the worst crimes are not always the punishable ones. By encouraging necrophilic reveries one probably does quite as much harm as by, say, picking pockets at the races. One ought to be able to hold in one’s head simultaneously the two facts that Dali is a good draughtsman and a disgusting human being. The one does not invalidate or, in a sense, affect the other. The first thing that we demand of a wall is that it shall stand up. If it stands up, it is a good wall, and the question of what purpose it serves is separable from that. And yet even the best wall in the world deserves to be pulled down if it surrounds a concentration camp. In the same way it should be possible to say, “This is a good book or a good picture, and it ought to be burned by the public hangman.” Unless one can say that, at least in imagination, one is shirking the implications of the fact that an artist is also a citizen and a human being.”

Thursday, January 11, 2018

TV vs. Film, or Who Cares?

English: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt at the C...
English: Angelina Jolie and Brad Pitt at the Cannes film festival (Photo credit: Wikipedia)


Dueling critics at the Guardian newspaper

Stuart Heritage: Why TV is better

Long-form storytelling - When applied correctly, the elongated storytelling opportunities afforded by television trump cinema's frayed reliance on the drudgery of 90-minute three-act plots.
TV is (currently) less franchise fixated - Hollywood is increasingly reliant on brand recognition, churning out endless sequels and spinoffs and reboots because it's easier than marketing an original idea.
TV still has the power to surprise - At its best, a TV show can be freeform, veering from comedy to thriller to horror and back again. Films, with their desperate need to be marketed properly, tend to simplify to sell.
Word of mouth - Again, look at Breaking Bad. That show started small and, thanks to new distribution methods as well as near-rabid word-of-mouth from evangelists who'd seen it and loved it, it ended up a juggernaut. What's the last film you can say that about?
Actors do their best work on TV - Because television is increasingly becoming a writer's medium, it is attracting the best acting talent. Actors who would have run from television a decade ago are now embracing it precisely because the quality is so high. Now the letdown comes when actors move from TV to film.
The biggest stars of tomorrow are on TV now - Bruce Willis started on TV. Alec Baldwin started on TV. Will Smith started on TV. Robin Williams and George Clooney and Eddie Murphy and Tom Hanks got their big breaks on TV. And this is how it'll always be – television's lower budgets and faster turnaround times make it a brilliant breeding ground for future movie stars.
The bond with characters - Because television is increasingly becoming a writer's medium, it is attracting the best acting talent. Actors who would have run from television a decade ago are now embracing it precisely because the quality is so high. Now the letdown comes when actors move from TV to film.

David Cox: Why film is better

Tell me a story - At the heart of cinema's failure was said to have been the straitjacket of the story arc: the movies' fraught timespan supposedly forced them into pat formulae requiring over-neat plot resolution but allowing no space for character development. Only the big-ticket TV series, it was argued, had space to develop intricate stories and convincing personalities. However, done right, resolution becomes a bonus, not a liability.
The power of the word – (My paraphrase) When movies don’t scrimp on script and add great writing to the visual opportunities offered by film, film wins
Unsqueezing the squeezed middle - Nowadays, Hollywood studios are supposedly interested only in vast projects guaranteed to bring vast returns: these have to be action-packed, effects-heavy sequels and prequels of familiar material easily grasped by global audiences. This, we were warned, would mean that though the microbudget sector might survive, mid-range stuff would disappear. Wrong.
Stealing TV’s clothes - Television's unique selling point used to be the intimacy of the living room. Now film is finding that small can look even better on the big screen, and it's daring to jettison its trappings to focus in on human relationships.
Cooking TV’s goose - At the same time, other films are veering off in the opposite direction, boldly going where TV cannot possibly follow. The pursuit of mindless spectacle may have yielded disappointment; intelligent spectacle, it turns out, is another matter. Eschewing CGI, Captain Phillips mobilises a 500-ft container ship, several destroyers, two amphibious assault ships and an aircraft carrier to deliver one of the most thrilling films yet made. Gravity makes you feel what it's really like to be lost in space. As television tries to scale up with bigger-budget ventures like Boardwalk Empire, cinema is showing it where it gets off.
Milking the assets - Film is also making the most of its secondary advantages. Intricate production design remains a big-screen speciality. Music from your sound bar can't quite match theatrical surround sound. Movie stars were supposed to have lost their allure, but George Clooney, Sandra Bullock, Christian Bale, Scarlett Johansson, Tom Hanks, Meryl Streep, Matt Damon, Jennifer Lawrence, Michael Fassbender, Brad Pitt, Ryan Gosling and Cate Blanchett seem to be burning brightly enough, while TV scions such as Benedict Cumberbatch and Julia Louis-Dreyfus continue to rush to join their ranks.
Making it mean something - If films used to be vacuous pap, they aren't any more. 12 Years a Slave forces audiences to confront afresh man's inhumanity to both men and women. Captain Phillips may be a classic thriller, but it addresses the political context in which it's set.




Some obvious points, some original, some borrowed:

The screen looms, framed by darkness and silence. All else is peripheral.
That enormous screen is a huge canvas that gives aesthetic advantages.
Film is the older platform and has more classics.
TV viewing has been “rendered monotonous.” Movies are still events.
Old TV looks terrible, which robs us of history.
Sexism and racism still a problem but TV has more niches and thus more diversity. “What’s happened, in the years of “Empire” and “Jane the Virgin” and “black-ish” and “The Mindy Project,” is a change of both business and culture. TV audiences for everything are smaller now, which means networks aren’t programming each show for an imagined audience of tens of millions of white people. On top of that, there are younger viewers for whom diversity — racial, religious, sexual — is their world. That audience wants authenticity; advertisers want that audience.” (James Poniewozik)
Topicality – “3.5 million viewers watched the "Mad Men" premiere two weeks ago; in many parts of the country, a fraction of that could see a limited-release movie on its opening weekend. In terms of what's more likely to be talked about at the office on Monday, the show is king. Regardless of content, in terms of consumption television's coming out ahead, because it presents more of an opportunity for large groups of people to watch at the same time and share a viewing experience, even if that experience is spread out in thousands of living rooms or laptop or iPad screens. It's providing a compelling alternative to the uniting feeling of sitting together, alone, in the dark in a theater to watch something. Is it better? I don't know that I'd say that. But it's definitely winning.” (Alison Willmore)
Cultural habit – “Movies still occupy an Olympian position in the pop-culture landscape. They are bigger than television, grander than video games, more important than viral Internet videos — even if those things can often be more interesting, more profitable or more fun.” (A.O Scott)
It Doesn’t Matter. It’s just business – “The traditional relationship between film and television has reversed, as American movies have become conservative and cautious, while scripted series, on both broadcast networks and cable, are often more daring, topical and willing to risk giving offense.
“This may represent not an aesthetic fault line, but rather a corporate division of labor, since the television networks and the movie studios belong to the same conglomerates, and there is frequent crossover among executive and producers as as well as directors, actors and writers. And looked at from another angle – from your couch to the living room wall, say, or from your armchair to the laptop or other mobile electronic device in your hand – the distinction between movies and television grows more tenuous every day. The most interesting, provocative and surprising movies of the coming season may well reach you through video on demand or Internet streaming, playing in only a handful of theaters so that critics can have a chance to spread the word about them.” (A.O. Scott)


* Yes it does matter. It’s all about “cinematic language.” “How many times have you or I seen a big screen adaptation of a novel and thought, this would work better as a miniseries? But happily, there are superb exceptions to the rule. A&E’s six-hour “Pride and Prejudice” may still be the definitive adaptation for Jane Austen completists and Colin Firth devotees, but there’s no denying that Joe Wright’s 2005 film version is superior filmmaking — the mise-en-scene is richer, the cinematography earthier and more tactile, with long, luxuriant tracking shots (a Wright signature) that masterfully articulate the characters’ unspoken desires and motivations. The BBC’s seven-part adaptation of “Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy” remains one of television’s crowning achievements, but whatever Tomas Alfredson’s 2011 film lacked in narrative intricacy, it more than made up for in moldering production design and enveloping atmosphere. You walked out of the theater after that movie and felt like you’d visited another time and place.” (Justin Chang)












Followers