Zen

With no bird singing, the mountain is yet more still. Zen saying

Here's your Zen koan for today: Is it possible to create something so pure in its simplicity that it disappears? Sure it is, answers "Jiro Dreams of Sushi," a new documentary by David Gelb. Just come down to Jiro Ono's tiny restaurant in the basement of a Tokyo office building, near the Ginza subway stop. There you will be presented with what many food connoisseurs consider the finest sushi on the planet, gastronomic objects unparalleled in their unadorned elegance. Seconds later, they'll be gone.

It's called "Chocolate," but "Cheese" would have been just as good. Soaked with tears, full of schmaltz, and yet strewn with bodies, Prachya Pinkaew's new kick-'em-up is extreme action, extreme melodrama, and extremely hard to resist. Were I to make a movie about a young autistic Thai woman who goes on a martial arts rampage to collect outstanding debts owed to her ill ex-gangster mother who needs the money for chemotherapy, I hope I'd end up with something like "Chocolate. " It's part karaoke video, part "Kill Bill.

With no bird singing, the mountain is yet more still. Zen saying

WATERTOWN -- This weekend's Beantown Tapfest made it resoundingly clear -- tap dance is alive and kicking in Boston. Enthusiastic fans flocked to workshops and packed the house for Friday night's "On Tap!" showcase highlighted by the reunion of hometown boy Derick Grant, Michelle Dorrance, and Aaron Tolson in their first appearance together since "Imagine Tap!" The lively, well-paced show, produced by beloved teacher/performer Julia Boynton, also included two new companies: the Japanese troupe Zen and Tolson's New England Tap Ensemble (N.E.

Humiliation is a daily fact of life if you're a 50-year-old headbanger whose band never made it big. You attract 174 fans to an arena that holds 10,000. Your day job is delivering hot food to public schools in the greater Toronto area. You get a part-time gig working as a telemarketer for one of your longtime fans - and you last three days. "I've been trained my whole life to be polite," explains Steve "Lips" Kudlow about that last mishap, which seems unduly modest given that we've seen him playing slide guitar with a dildo in the opening scenes of "Anvil!

"Doctor Who" meets "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" in this lively and unholy pilgrimage through Cambodia. Stephen T. Asma was a thirtysomething professor of philosophy and interdisciplinary humanities at Columbia College in Chicago when in 2003 he was invited to teach a graduate seminar to Cambodian students at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh. In "The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha," Asma takes us through this bewildering, war-torn country in search of traces of the oldest form of...

GYEONGJU, South Korea -- In the middle of a bamboo grove, a monk clad in a loose gray tunic and pants did a perfect split in midair, his feet splayed against two pieces of bamboo. "Oh my God," I whispered, watching him levitate. One of the monks came up and imitated my American accent and girlish wonder: "Oh my Go-od. " We both laughed. This was not a scene out of some artfully filmed martial arts movie. It was the culmination of my day as a Korean Buddhist monk after an overnight stay at Golgulsa , a small Buddhist temple about three hours southeast of Seoul.

They are giddy. Drunk on knowledge. High on the conceit of what they are trying to do. Finest dining, here in Fort Point — modern yet lavish, refined and formal and beyond expensive. You are in their sights, and Menton’s minions are coming for you. From the right! A woman armed with more information about the wine she will pour than anyone would ever need to know. She is grinning. She is talking perfume and acid and soil and philosophy. She is pouring liquid, golden, into your glass.

End Games , By Michael Dibdin, Pantheon, 335 pp., $23.95 There has probably been a tad less interest in whether Aurelio Zen was going to meet his maker in his last adventure than if J.K. Rowling would kick Harry Potter's bucket in whatever the name of that book was. In this case Zen's maker is Michael Dibdin, who died in March after finishing the ominously titled "End Games," his 11th Italian-based crime novel featuring the crusty detective...

Humiliation is a daily fact of life if you're a 50-year-old headbanger whose band never made it big. You attract 174 fans to an arena that holds 10,000. Your day job is delivering hot food to public schools in the greater Toronto area. You get a part-time gig working as a telemarketer for one of your longtime fans - and you last three days. "I've been trained my whole life to be polite," explains Steve "Lips" Kudlow about that last mishap, which seems unduly modest given that we've seen him playing slide guitar with a dildo in the opening scenes of "Anvil!

It's called "Chocolate," but "Cheese" would have been just as good. Soaked with tears, full of schmaltz, and yet strewn with bodies, Prachya Pinkaew's new kick-'em-up is extreme action, extreme melodrama, and extremely hard to resist. Were I to make a movie about a young autistic Thai woman who goes on a martial arts rampage to collect outstanding debts owed to her ill ex-gangster mother who needs the money for chemotherapy, I hope I'd end up with something like "Chocolate. " It's part karaoke video, part "Kill Bill.

ROCKLAND, Maine - The omakase (chef's selection) at Suzuki's Sushi Bar is often made up entirely of local fish. This week chef Keiko Suzuki Steinberger is offering surf clams, sweet shrimp, scallops, gray sole and its engawa (the muscle that controls the fin on flat fish), monkfish, oysters, and line-caught mackerel. The tiny Suzuki's, which opened two years ago, is unlike other sushi restaurants. The chefs are women. There is no fried or grilled food - in fact, there are no stoves, no ovens, and no deep fat fryers.

End Games , By Michael Dibdin, Pantheon, 335 pp., $23.95 There has probably been a tad less interest in whether Aurelio Zen was going to meet his maker in his last adventure than if J.K. Rowling would kick Harry Potter's bucket in whatever the name of that book was. In this case Zen's maker is Michael Dibdin, who died in March after finishing the ominously titled "End Games," his 11th Italian-based crime novel featuring the crusty detective...

WATERTOWN -- This weekend's Beantown Tapfest made it resoundingly clear -- tap dance is alive and kicking in Boston. Enthusiastic fans flocked to workshops and packed the house for Friday night's "On Tap!" showcase highlighted by the reunion of hometown boy Derick Grant, Michelle Dorrance, and Aaron Tolson in their first appearance together since "Imagine Tap!" The lively, well-paced show, produced by beloved teacher/performer Julia Boynton, also included two new companies: the Japanese troupe Zen and Tolson's New England Tap Ensemble (N.E.

GYEONGJU, South Korea -- In the middle of a bamboo grove, a monk clad in a loose gray tunic and pants did a perfect split in midair, his feet splayed against two pieces of bamboo. "Oh my God," I whispered, watching him levitate. One of the monks came up and imitated my American accent and girlish wonder: "Oh my Go-od. " We both laughed. This was not a scene out of some artfully filmed martial arts movie. It was the culmination of my day as a Korean Buddhist monk after an overnight stay at Golgulsa , a small Buddhist temple about three hours southeast of...

ROCKLAND, Maine - The omakase (chef's selection) at Suzuki's Sushi Bar is often made up entirely of local fish. This week chef Keiko Suzuki Steinberger is offering surf clams, sweet shrimp, scallops, gray sole and its engawa (the muscle that controls the fin on flat fish), monkfish, oysters, and line-caught mackerel. The tiny Suzuki's, which opened two years ago, is unlike other sushi restaurants. The chefs are women. There is no fried or grilled food - in fact, there are no stoves, no ovens, and no deep fat fryers.

The big movie news this week is Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill, Vol. 2," a glitteringly busy antihero sandwich of borrowed Eastern and Western elements. Opening much more quietly is its polar opposite, Korean writer-director Kim Ki Duk's Buddhist fable "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring. " The film is as spare and unvarnished as a wooden temple floating on a lake, but its reflections run deep, and it can ripple your thoughts for months. If Tarantino's film is built to thrill, "Spring, Summer" is made to last.

"Doctor Who" meets "Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance" in this lively and unholy pilgrimage through Cambodia. Stephen T. Asma was a thirtysomething professor of philosophy and interdisciplinary humanities at Columbia College in Chicago when in 2003 he was invited to teach a graduate seminar to Cambodian students at the Buddhist Institute in Phnom Penh. In "The Gods Drink Whiskey: Stumbling Toward Enlightenment in the Land of the Tattered Buddha," Asma takes us through this bewildering, war-torn country in search of traces of the oldest form of Buddhism, known as...

The big movie news this week is Quentin Tarantino's "Kill Bill, Vol. 2," a glitteringly busy antihero sandwich of borrowed Eastern and Western elements. Opening much more quietly is its polar opposite, Korean writer-director Kim Ki Duk's Buddhist fable "Spring, Summer, Fall, Winter . . . and Spring. " The film is as spare and unvarnished as a wooden temple floating on a lake, but its reflections run deep, and it can ripple your thoughts for months. If Tarantino's film is built to thrill, "Spring, Summer" is made to last.