Noodle Canoodling: Alamo Drafthouse Micro Roadshow Presents Tampopo

There is a fine line between loving your food and loving your food. Well, actually no, it's a big, fat freakin' line, one which the Japanese are not afraid to catapult themselves over with gusto filled oyster/face licking, giving pork slices the ole' bedroom eyes and even some egg yolk fellatio. (Yes, the school yard taunt "Go suck an egg" has never been more inappropriately erotic.) We will be educated in this passionate reverence for food on Saturday as the Alamo Drafthouse present their film feast Micro Roadshow screening of the Japanese spaghetti noodle western Tampopo.

We would love to tell you much more about Tampopo and even tried to rent it for research, but alas, the VHS copy at I Luv Video has been stolen (for shame!), Vulcan Video's DVD copy was checked out, and Netflix doesn't have a copy available, so we can only go from the couple of clips that we saw on YouTube. Our summation from those few minutes is that this movie is most likely 110% AWESOME. Surprising and satirical, it appears to be in complete adoration of the Japanese culture of eating, lovingly laughing at the serious manner in which food is dealt with in the east, while referencing Japan's love affair with all things western. It contains the essence of a crime drama, a western, a samurai film, erotica and strangely enough, a widow who is trained in a Rockyesque manner to make an ass-kicking bowl of ramen.