The Forbidden Zone

The Forbidden Zone... The Forbidden Zone... Who recommended that I watch the Forbidden Zone? Step forward and get your spanking.

As a movie, Forbidden Zone is bad. It succeeds as a musical, or as an act of unrestrained creativity. The music is very good. The screen is full of the bizarre and original. This is what happens when very talented, very creative people get together and make a movie with no budget and no script. As I watched Forbidden Zone, my jaw dropped and I constantly thought "What the Hell!" But, I never wanted to stop looking. It's endlessly inventive.

I finished watching the included documentary about the Forbidden Zone. It makes a little more sense now. The Forbidden Zone is a series of musical numbers and performance art pieces. The plot was added afterwards.

Mark and I saw the Forbidden Zone through Netflix which recommends movies based on your ratings. We couldn't decide what to rate Forbidden Zone. Should it be one star, or five? Five stars because it is distinct, original and endlessly watchable. One star because it is a piece of crap. It's like watching an accident that doesn't end. You know that what you are watching isn't good, but you can't look away.

Roger Ebert likes to give great trash two and a half stars. The idea being that great movies come along so rarely that there must be room for great trash. In that spirit RO and I gave Forbidden Zone three stars.

Tomato Sauce

I finally bought "Mastering the Art of French Cooking." It's a great reference on technique and tricks as much as it is for recipes.

Case in point... tomato sauce. My old recipe is good, but the sauce is dark and more liquid than I'd like. I've always assumed that premade sauce from the store could be light and thick because they use industrial food additivies.

Skimming through MAFC, I ran into a tomato sauce recipe. What's different about this recipe is that it calls for sweating the veggies, not sauting and for the addition of some flour. These two changes seem to have lightened and thickened my sauce. I double checked with the "Joy of Cooking" No mention of adding flour.

Good job Julia.