Nikas Culinaria

I was invited by the lovely Kathy over at StartCooking.com to attend a sneak preview showing of the Warner Brothers movie “No Reservations” last night in Boston.

As you may or may not know, Catherine Zeta-Jones is the lead with Aaron Eckhart as her sous chef, literally. Let me just say right off, I could watch Aaron Eckhart in any movie, any time, any where, doing any thing. He has a certain charisma that is hard to explain, I just really like him.

Catherine Zeta-Jones, well, I was neither a fan or non-fan before this movie. All I knew of her was that she is married to Michael Douglas and that she has dark hair and somewhat exotic looks (sorta?). She did a lovely job in this movie. The character is one that is a bit aloof in the world and this plays to Zeta-Jones’ personality as she seems to be on the less emotive side of the scale. The character suited her as did the movie.

She seemed just a bit un-natural in the kitchen with a certain flavor of attention that would not really be there if she had actually been a chef and had made any particular dish MANY times. She did have an interesting graceful way of things that made up or distracted from this, if not being all that authentic.

The story is absolutely about WAY more than cooking, food, or the restaurant life. The story line had me CRYING in several spots (I didn’t want to cry but, dang, I couldn’t help it).

There has been a lot of build up about this movie in the food blog and foodie worlds (must .. not..use..words..industry..or..community). There are some very dominant plot elements that pull it away from the foodie concept into things like women’s issues, mortality, mindfulness, etc. Its really hard to classify.

As a food blogger I was just amazed by something else, the number of bloggers than were invited and attended this special preview. My goodness, something happened last night in terms of a proof of concept around social media, blogging, and good old fashion marketing. I am hoping that Warner Brothers understands how tremendously successful last night was.

They filled the theater and then had to turn many people away at the door. Thankfully for me, as I had driven an hour and a half into Boston to see this movie, I was able to sit in a section reserved by Kathy of StartCooking.com. I got to sit next to one of the people instrumental in making the event a success, CC Chapman. Talk about a down to earth guy, very nice. He is the VP of New Marketing at “Crayon”, a marketing group here in Boston and across the US. CC, as I understand it, helped Kathy with social media outreach and, bang!, it really paid off.

Kathy’s site, StartCooking.com, is not a food blog like this one. She does these bright, shiny, and interesting food how-to videocasts that are really charming in so many ways. From what I understand, these videocasts have exploded her site onto the videophone serving arena. This is wonderful for Kathy because she gets to reach more people with her videos, something she is passionate about because she would like to teach the world to cook!

Visit her site, cruise the videos. They are a lot of fun.

My take on the movie is big thumbs up. Go see it, but eat before you go. Kathy has a recipe for scallops and saffron sauce from the movie which she video casts, check it out!

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