Skip to main content You've reached your article limit Registration is free and only takes a moment. Once registered you can read a total of 6 articles each month, plus: Sign up for the editor's highlights Receive World University Rankings news first Get job alerts, shortlist jobs and save job searches Participate in reader discussions and post comments Sign in now if you are already registered or a current subscriber. Sign In or Join to save for later Running Time: 81 minutes What parents need to know Parents Need to Know Top advice and articles What parents and kids sayFred Armisen and Bill Hader spoof the Talking Heads, D.A. Pennebaker, the Maysles Brothers and more in the new trailer for Season Two (or "Season 51") of Documentary Now! The clip opens with host Helen Mirren reintroducing the "long-running" documentary showcase and offers a peak at Hader and Armisen's absurd parodies. Among the highlights are the duo's expertly retro takes on the Maysles' Salesman, in which Hader and Armisen play inept globe salesmen ("It says 'Bermuba' instead of 'Bermuda,'" a young boy points out).

The trailer finds Armisen and Hader playing political foes in a parody of The War Room, Pennebaker and Chris Hegedus' 1993 doc about Bill Clinton's presidential campaign, and staging a farewell concert for an art-pop band in an homage to the Talking Heads' Stop Making Sense (that episode will reportedly guest star Maya Rudolph and feature songs written by Armisen). The pair will also offer takes on Spalding Gray's one-man show, Swimming to Cambodia, food documentaries like Jiro Dreams of Sushi and the Robert Evans doc, The Kid Stays in the Picture, about a filmmaker who keeps making awful Oscar-bait pictures.returns to IFC September 14th at 10 p.m. ET. Blue Jean Committee Help Hall & Oates Announce Summer Tour Watch Blue Jean Committee's Sun-Soaked 'Catalina Breeze' Fred Armisen on 'SNL': 3 Sketches You Have to SeeIt costs about $400 and you can be in and out in as little as 15 minutes. You can only get it at a secluded spot in a Tokyo subway station—and, no, it’s not illegal.

It’s the price you pay for a meal at Sukiyabashi Jiro, a tiny restaurant consisting of a bar-like counter with 10 chairs. (Reservations are a nightmare.) When and if you do manage to secure a seat, you will select nothing: there’s no menu, no appetizers, no dessert. It’s dealer’s-choice sushi, and according to its tony disciples—including the French snobs of Michelin and that American wiseass Anthony Bourdain—there is none better. First-time director David Gelb explores the world of Jiro Ono, an octogenarian chef whose daily routine is as predictable as the fruits of his labors are transcendent. From haggling with the early-morning fishmongers, to the last-minute taste-tests, all his senses are focused yet none are ever really satisfied. A pair of compliant heir-apparent sons add background pathos: no matter how far they surpass the artistry of the father, they will forever remain in his shadow. (You can catch glimpses of that sobering realization on their faces.) Ono may be the center of this universe, but the real star of the film is the sushi, and the exquisite yet frustrating beauty with which the camera has captured it.

You can’t eat what you see on screen and, even worse, the next time carefully prepared raw fish actually sits before you, it will pale in comparison. To repurpose David Thomson on Robert Bresson: to watch Jiro is to risk conversion away from sushi. © 2012 by The Film Society of Lincoln Centerjiro dreams of sushi stream english From the March/April 2012 Issuejiro dreams of sushi download with subtitles Trivial Top 20: Worst Winners of Best Picture Oscars®sushi las condes santiago Subscribe to the magazinejiro dreams of sushi documentary downloadSince its release just a few years ago, Jiro Dreams of Sushi has already become something of a food-movie classic, not only for its impressive ability to capture what makes sushi so fascinating, but because filmmaker David Gelb shared the human-interest story of someone with a passion — who just happened to be a chef.

That, in Gelb’s opinion, is how the best food television shows handle their subjects, and the filmmaker’s new Netflix series, Chef’s Table, follows suit. In six individual hour-long documentaries, each devoted to one chef, Gelb offers an intimate glimpse into the lives of Ben Shewry (Attica in Melbourne), Magnus Nilsson (Fäviken in Järpen, Sweden), Francis Mallmann (Patagonia Sur in Buenos Aires), Niki Nakayama (N/Naka in Los Angeles,), Dan Barber (Blue Hill at Stone Barns in New York), and Massimo Bottura (Osteria Francescana in ModenaGrub sat down with Gelb to discuss the show, which premieres on April 26. Will Chef’s Table resemble Jiro Dreams of Sushi? It’s sort of an expansion of Jiro: It’s very character-driven, and it’s about chefs who are forging their own paths, creating their own types of cuisine, and defying the normal expectations. For example, Massimo Bottura in Modena — before his restaurant had three Michelin stars, and became the third-best restaurant in the world — he was despised by the locals because he was messing with old recipes.

Modena is a very traditional kind of place, so he was bold in defying those traditions, and he came out victorious. Now, he’s a celebrated figure in Italy, and so we looked for stories kind of like that about chefs who kind of took the hard route by choosing to follow their vision. Did making Jiro help you get access to these chefs? How did you convince them to take part?Chefs are so obsessed with their work that they don’t necessarily have the time to have their kitchens invaded by myself and my crew, so there was certainly a degree of wooing involved. Having made Jiro Dreams of Sushi helped because it showed them what kind of film we were making — that this isn’t your normal kind of food reality show, or a travel show. These are serious documentary films that are really portraits of artists and their journeys. What is your shooting process like? Each shoot is about 10 to 12 days: We don’t have a host, we don’t have a formula, and we don’t say, “Pack up your knives and go.”

The burden is really on the filmmaker to engage the audience right from the beginning. Any of these episodes can be watched individually. It’s challenging to make a documentary when you don’t have those kinds of structural crutches, like a competition or a host, but we made it work. What through lines did you start to notice about your subjects? Did anything particularly surprise you about their lifestyles? One of the things that surprised me was how similar a lot of them actually are, in terms of obsession, passion, and stubbornness. That’s true of a lot of artists — that they really have to believe in what they’re doing and shake off criticism and the naysayers. I was pleased, thematically, by the amount of similarities, even though their stories and types of food are completely different. Having worked in a small kitchen at Jiro’s, where there are 3 other chefs in the restaurant, it was interesting to capture Massimo and his 30 chefs. [The restaurant] has more staffers than it has customers.

That’s interesting because that’s not how you make money, but making money is not a concern. They just want to make ends meet so they can continue to do their thing. I think that’s really cool. In general, what do you think about the state of food television these days? How do you want your show to be different from what’s already out there? There is some good television that I like a lot — particularly, I like Parts Unknown with Anthony Bourdain, because I love how he’s funny and entertaining to watch, but it’s always about the people. He takes you to these places and you get to know the characters, and for me, I’m really interested in characters.What my show does that’s a little bit different from other shows is we don’t have a host. The stories are being told by the chefs themselves, and the people that know them: food intellectuals or critics that are close to them. As the filmmakers, we’re just translating their experiences. I’m grateful to the chefs for opening themselves up, because making a documentary film isn’t easy, and nobody gets voted off.

So how do we keep it exciting and gripping? The trick is, we just follow the stories. It’s a combination of the origin stories of these chefs — where they came from and what they’re doing now — and it’s all about trying to find the “why?” It’s very much a character study and a portrait of an artist. Yes, from what I’ve watched, there seems to be a sense of intimacy and stillness. In many food shows, it’s just sensory overload. Yeah, it’s because those shows are competing. If the audience changes the channel, they’ve lost viewers. I think that Netflix provides an environment where someone can click on something different with no consequence: It doesn’t cost $4 to rent something, because you’re a subscriber already. You can click on it, you can watch as much as you want, and Netflix doesn’t have to pander. We have a lot respect for the audience.We certainly have our share of food porn, but what we try to do is make the food porn emotional, and instill it with the context of the character.

For example if you look at Jiro, you have the story about how Nakazawa had attempted to make the egg sushi 200 times, and then he finally got it right. At the moment, when you see the beautiful egg sushi landing on the table, you have an emotional connection. So it’s more than just porn — it’s feelings. When Jiro came out, it suddenly became this Western goal to make the pilgrimage there. Are these restaurants ready for that kind of international fame? These restaurants are all very popular already in their regions, and they’re really famous within foodie circles, but there are a lot of people who still don’t know about them. The downside to making a film about a restaurant is that it’s going to increase the popularity, so it’s going to be even harder to get into. I want lines around the block for all of of these chefs, because they deserve it, and I want them to be able to continue to take risks and know that the customers are going to keep coming. Some of these chefs have been written and talked about extensively.

How did you find a new way into their stories?For example, with Dan Barber, there’s been lots of stuff on him. He does TED Talks, and he’s a very famous guy, but we were excited to go in and tell his origin story, and try to figure out exactly what drives him. Why does he — when he could easily make delicious food a lot more easily than he does — have this whole ethos about the farm-to-table, slow-food movement? It’s all about how he feels, and then that makes the food delicious. When there’s a sustainable ecosystem, it makes the meal taste better.One thing we’re also really interested in is the balance between work and family. Different chefs have different takes on it, and, we found, in order to create great art, you need to be in a place where you can enjoy life. A lot of these chefs work themselves into a hole, and have to claw themselves back up. They aren’t really grateful for what they have around them, so we look at the family stories of the chefs. The hours are crazy — opening a restaurant is one of the riskiest things you can do.