Remember that little film festival called Sundance? Yeah, it came and went with a little less fan fare this year due to...oh, I dunno...the inaguration! Well, anyway, Cleveland has their own special film festival. The 33rd Annual International Film Festival runs March 19-29 at the Tower City Theatres in downtown Cleveland.
Last Thursday I had the pleasure of attending the Cleveland Film Fest's, Film Feast titled Food for Thought. It is one of many Feasts hosted prior to the festival opening. The event kicked off in the studio of Barney Taxel of Taxel Image Group. My comrade (Erika) and I were a bit late due to a tire blowout on the way (another story another day) and unsure what to expect. We walked in to a vivacious crowd, of all ages, chatting it up and enjoying both food and drink.
Around 8, the meat of the program began. As everyone got situated, Laura Taxel, food critic for Cleveland Magazine (and blog) began to MC. The Feast, and it definitely was a feast, featured three of the Cleveland area's top chefs: Jonathan Sawyer of Bar Cento (and soon to be Greenhouse Tavern on E. 4th St.), Rocco Whalen of Fahrenheit and Jill Vedaa of The Wine Bar at Rocky River. The program began with a brief introduction of each chef and then the mike was turned over to them to discuss favorite movies and whatever else they fancied.
Jonathan kicked it off with his Top 5 movie choices as follows:
5. Big Night
4. Scotland P.A.
3. Babette's Feast
2. Mostly Martha
1. Spanglish
Rocco followed with a much more robust, meandering list of his top picks (in no particular order):
Out for Justice
Fargo
L.A. Confidential
Drugstore Cowboy
National Lampoon's Vacation
Silence of the Lambs
Pulp Fiction (the $5 milkshake)
The Shawshank Redemption
Sex, Lies & Videotape
Two Days in the Valley
Raising Arizona
Stand By Me
The Big Lebowski
The Shining
Platoon
The 10 Commandments
Jill rounded out things with adding her three favorite food related movies:
Ratatoulle
The Cook, The Thief, The Wife and Her Lover
The Wizard of Oz
And lastly, as Laura took back the mic, she added a few of her own:
Vital
Waitress
The Q&A portion was lively with some great questions (themes of the Film Festival) and some more obscure ones (comparisons of CL to Ontario). A nice, unexpected highlight was Bill Guentzler coming up to talk about his recent excursion to Sundance. He said it was interesting, this year, while all the tickets were sold out, there were not as many people there, specificially it seemed, celebrity spotters. His guesstimation was that it's due to the economy and, of course, the inaguration. He gave us a great tidbit, in this year's film fest, be sure to check out Dean Spanley...while I did not see it on the film fest list, if you see something like it, be sure to check it out!
Lastly, before they set up free to more fantastic conversation and great food we were left with this: To achieve great things, two things are needed; a plan, and not quite enough time. -Leonard Bernstein
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