Description

Dorris Dörrie’s jazz-inflected documentary should come with a disclaimer: Don’t watch on an empty stomach. While it doesn’t cover the basics of food preparation, How to Cook Your Life offers a delectable introduction to Buddhist living. Yes, subject Edward Brown is both pastry chef and Zen priest, but Dörrie’s approach is more holistic than instructional. (For culinary specifics, viewers can always pick up Brown’s bestselling how-to guide, The Tassajara Bread Book.) In other words, home cooking–as opposed to fast food and pre-packaged goods–isn’t just healthier and better for the environment; it connects the creator to the product of their efforts. And it helps if they know more about the tools of their trade. Hence, the director of 2000’s Enlightenment Guaranteed and a Buddhist practitioner herself, also interviews organic gardeners, cookware salespeople, and the like. Throughout, Brown shows students in the US and Austria how to prepare vegetarian pizza, fruit tarts, and other wholesome delights. All the while, he talks about the connection between the body and the spirit. Fortunately, Brown isn’t some kind of holier-than-though type. Little things, like hard-to-open packages, can set him off, but he’s just as quick to laugh. To him, cooking is a way to nourish yourself and others. As he likes to say, “When you wash the rice, wash the rice.” (True, he sounds like Yoda at times; it’s actually quite charming.) Like Super-Size Me, How to Cook Your Life is an elegy for those long-lost days of leisurely dinners with loved ones.— File Information —File Name:                          How To Cook Your Life (D. Dörrie, 2007)-aNaRCHo.aviDuration (hh:mm:ss):          1:32:56File Size (in bytes):              1,000,425,472— Container Information —Base Type:                          AVI(.AVI)— Video Information — Video Codec Name:             XviD ISO MPEG-4Video Duration:                   1:32:56frame Width (pixels):          640frame Height (pixels):         336Pixel Aspect Ratio:               1.000Display Aspect Ratio:           1.905frames Per Second:            23.976QF (bits/pixel)/frame:         0.239Video Bitrate (kbps):           1234— Audio Information —                                                       Audio Codec:                     0x2000 (Dolby AC3) AC3Audio Sample Rate:            48000 Hz Audio BitRate Type:            CBRAudio Channels                  2Audio Bitrate(kbps):           192