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| Julie and Julia | |
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| Topic Started: Aug 7 2009, 09:10 PM (306 Views) | |
| Laughing Gravy | Aug 7 2009, 09:10 PM Post #1 |
Revered in the UK
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A charming little film; Meryl Streep plays Julia Child as she writes her famous cookbook teaching American women ("servantless American women", that is) how to cook like the French; 50 years later, Amy Adams is Julie Powell, a blogger who is cooking every recipe in the book (524 of them) in 365 days, including de-boning a duck. I love it when Miss Streep does broad comedy, and she is terrific here, as she always is. Miss Adams comes across as such a sweetie, as usual. Not a great film, but 3 stars out of 4, and very entertaining with a lot of laughs supplied by Meryl as Julia. |
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| Frank Hale | Aug 8 2009, 02:32 PM Post #2 |
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Balcony Gang, Foist Class
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I may actually break my post-1967 rule and go see this one. Let’s hope it sells more tickets than G. I. Joe this weekend! Call me cranky, but at some level the Julie character annoys me. If cooking all of Julia Child’s recipes is enough to make you notable these days, maybe one of you guys should blog watching all 231 or whatever sound serials and land a contract for a film about William Witney. Tim Russell used to do a great Julia Child imitation on Prairie Home Companion. Julia would always be making something with 2 pounds of butter, while waving a bottle of wine in the air, chirping in that horrible voice. She would invariably pass out on the floor before completing the dish. BTW, Julia’s recipe for chicken with port and mushrooms is excellent! |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 8 2009, 03:46 PM Post #3 |
Mouth Breather
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I'm either the perfect person to review this movie or the worst. I've cooked all my life, am a chef and owned a restaurant where I was head cook. To do that, I had to learn a lot, and much of what I know I learned from Julia Child, because when her cookbook came out it was the only book that taught technique; it wasn't just recipes, it taught the proper way to brown meat, to prepare fish for the pan, and, yes, to bone a duck. I owe her, so for me a lot rode on this movie. If anything rang false, I would have been up in arms. Fortunately nothing did. Some reviewers say Steep "channels" Julia, but she doesn't imitate her at all: she stylizes her, a fine choice because, among other things, it kept me from throwing popcorn at the screen. Nobody could have brought off a mere imitation, but Streep makes Julia a tiny bit bigger than in life, and it works. She should get another Oscar nomination, though of course some 25-year-old blonde who plays a clubfooted Inuit lesbian will win. The movie tells of two women in two different eras who make it through life crises by learning and then writing about food; about how nurturing and supporting your partner is vital to marriage; about hero-worship: how it can be inspiring, but also how heroes can let you down; and how to deal with that productively. It's a positive, humanist film, damn funny, and at several points will grab your emotions and squeeze. The theater was full of men and women and the audience laughed and applauded. A major comeback for worldly-wise writer-director and (dare I say it?) auteur Nora Ephron, who prior to this had a decade in the wilderness after years of well-deserved success. I give it 5 stars out of 5. So far, the movie of the year in a good year. Panzer recommends it without qualification, but if you cook, there's foodie porn here to knock your sox off. The roast chicken Julie pulls out of the oven actually made me hungry, and the boned duck en croute must have taken up a food stylist's whole afternoon. Oh, and by the way, that there Julie is easy on the eyes and gives a sparkling performance, and the guy who plays her hapless but lucky husband is convincing. Most women in the audience were drooling over Stanley Tucci as Paul Child. A splendid performance by a guy the Grand Duchess describes as a "serious hotty." I guess we old folks have our own standards of hottiness: damn good thing if you ask me. Just go. It's a sweet-natured movie for people who know what's what. Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Aug 9 2009, 07:43 AM.
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| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Aug 8 2009, 08:38 PM Post #4 |
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Revered in the UK
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Oddly enough, the food didn't do it for me, one of the reasons I subtracted a star from the review. It was not appealing to me; of course, I do not eat red meat, so the beef stew just looked disgusting, but even the food she made that I DO like was treated as props, not as something to savor. People tasted it and made "yummy" noises but it didn't make me drool. Sorry, Mr. P! |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 9 2009, 06:54 AM Post #5 |
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Mouth Breather
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Yeah, Mr. G, but your food ways are, um, highly individual. I eat red meat once a month or so, and that there bouef bourgignon didn't scare me; in fact, I'm making Julia's version this week, lard and all, and expect to love it. Since I never eat French any more, it'll taste exotic. You took a star off for WHAT? That makes about as much sense as taking a star off a baseball movie because it's not about your team. I thought I made it clear that this ain't a movie about food: it's about building a successful life and having a marriage that works for you. As I keep saying, the good movies these days are chick flicks, and this is the best one since Harry Met Sally. If they still made noirs and westerns, that might be different, but all we get now is bang bang CGI movies for boys and romantic comedies for unmarried women, with the rare liberal-slanted sermon thrown in as Oscar material. What I wouldn't give to see a nice, amoral Hitchcock flicker, or, better yet, a nasty Fritz Lang, Joe Losey or Robert Aldrich! Why are current filmmakers such money-grubbing wusses? Robert Zemekis: pooey. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Aug 9 2009, 10:18 AM Post #6 |
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Revered in the UK
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It's a movie about cooking and cooks, and the food turned out to be a MacGuffin, so it loses a star. Imagine if a baseball movie didn't show any baseball (forget about not showing the Cleveland Indians). Or a boxing movie had no boxing in it. Anyway, that is my subjective review. I think this is a good movie and entertaining, and I liked it better than Roger Ebert or the local Sacramento reviewer did, but roughly 75% of its entertainment value comes from Miss Streep as Miss Child, and I'm not saying that critically, only that it's true. I tended to find myself waiting for the Amy Adams sequences to end so we could get back to the "really good part". |
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| Laughing Gravy | Aug 9 2009, 10:20 AM Post #7 |
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Revered in the UK
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P.S. Ya wanna know how good an actress Meryl Streep is? She plays a 6 ft. 2 in. woman (I think that's how tall Julia Child was, if memory serves) and LOOKS like a 6 ft. 2 in. woman. The old basketball edict "you can't coach height" is hereby demythed, because you CAN apparently ACT height. |
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| Laughing Gravy | Aug 9 2009, 11:57 AM Post #8 |
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Revered in the UK
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Dana Stevens does a good job reviewing this picture at http://www.slate.com/id/2224414/. |
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| Laughing Gravy | Aug 9 2009, 12:17 PM Post #9 |
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Revered in the UK
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Oooh, I just reread YOUR review... Ms. Ephron had "years of well-deserved success"? Huh? The woman who directed (let me just go look this up)... Julie & Julia (2009) Bewitched (2005) Lucky Numbers (2000) You've Got Mail (1998) Michael (1996) Mixed Nuts (1994) Sleepless in Seattle (1993) This Is My Life (1992) THAT Nora Ephron? I couldn't finish either Sleepless in Seattle or You've Got Mail, dreadful films. I did finish Bewitched and Mixed Nuts, dreadful films. That leaves Lucky Numbers and Michael, and I guess they may well be great movies; I ain't seen 'em. Amongst the films she wrote but didn't direct, Heartburn and My Blue Heaven are not good at all, and I haven't seen Silkwood. So all in all, she has turned out what I would call "a lot of shit" in her career. Thank heaven for Meryl Streep, who saves this picture! |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 9 2009, 03:20 PM Post #10 |
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Mouth Breather
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Yeah, that Nora Ephron. She was a hot property before her bad decade. In the pink section of the Chron today there's a letter to the editor about what a piece of heck Casablanca is, and you can't go to IMDb without finding some brilliant post called "I can't see what's so great about Citizen Kane/Stagecoach/The African Queen/etc." Success attracts detractors. But back to Julie and Julia: the movie doesn't lack food, Mr. G, it just lacks what YOU eat, and you have unusual eating habits. Does it make sense to put down a movie because it has beef stew in it? The movie isn't "about food," anyway, but about how to deal with a dead end situation, as I mentioned. I didn't find myself waiting for Streep to come back on screen because I was watching a story, not a star turn, and without the Julie character there would only be the cliché "Star Is Born" story, which is not what makes this movie interesting. The real story is about how Julie learns to think about her own actions by following the lead of someone she admires, Julia, and eventually learns that the person she admires isn't the real Julia but the Julia in Julie's head. A story about a person who matures as a thoughtful artist is a damn sight more interesting than "lady writes successful cookbook, becomes icon." If you don't like Ephron, that's your business. We all have our affinities and our blind spots, and it's evident there's a disconnect between you and her. There are scads of guys (and maybe three or four women) who think Sergio Leone was a great director, and I don't even know what they're talking about. That doesn't make me or them stupid, it just means we have different affinities, and I can live with that. I'm also blind to the virtues of Jacques Tati, Fred Zinneman, William Wyler, Vittorio De Sica, Jean Cocteau, Harry Langdon, David Lean, Carol Reed, Robert Zemekis, and everything Billy Wyler did after The Apartment. None of this makes me a bad person. So leave us cool our jets, OK? A chick flick is nothing to argue about, especially since we both liked it. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| Black Tiger | Aug 9 2009, 04:26 PM Post #11 |
Charter Member
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As a kid I loved to watch the antics of Julia Child and riff on her gaffes and humor with my cousins. Years later, I had to do a little reseach on Julia for a commerical and watched the Biography special on her. She really recaptured me anew with her sense of humor and I was surprised to learn of her military intelligence activities during WWII (who would have thought?!). A really neat lady on many levels. Today in Washington DC, you can go to the Spy Museum to see a writeup on Julia and see the medal she was presented by the military. Also you can go to the Museum of American History to see a full-sized replication of her tv kitchen with various loops of footage with guests on her show from over the years that really show off how genuinely funny she was. There'a a great one of a very young, slim Emeril being corrected on a recipe and saying "Yes, Mrs. Child". |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 9 2009, 06:05 PM Post #12 |
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Mouth Breather
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There's a scene in the movie showing the museum kitchen that brought a king-sized lump to my throat. I love Julia Child beyond reason. She gave me a career and a life, and this movie is about another person who had that experience -- of course I love it...beyond reason. |
| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Aug 9 2009, 06:12 PM Post #13 |
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Revered in the UK
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Mr. P: I love arguing about movies with you, because I respect you so much. It occurs to me that I neglected to mention "When Harry Met Sally...". Apparently, Ephron needs a better director than she is to make something out of her scripts. But anyway... I had a good time, and loved Meryl Streep as Julia Child. |
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| panzer the great & terrible | Aug 9 2009, 08:01 PM Post #14 |
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Mouth Breather
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Glad to argue anytime with anybody on this site, because they're all the real deal and won't go nutso on me. One reason I don't miss the Serial Squadron. Actually, I think Julie and Julia is Ephron's best-directed flicker . Some graceful stuff -- at times she reminds me of Mitchell Leisen: she's good at detail and has a sense of how human relations can be conducted gracefully. Watch Midnight and then watch Sleepless In Seattle: they both have an appealing sense of the dignity of regular folks. That's one of the things I love about Julie and Julia. Julie lives over a pizza parlor, as I once did, and has a shit job, as I did then, but is able to learn from Julia the millionaire aristocrat how to become a swan, as I did except for the swan and million part. I was more of a pen. (is that a kool pun or what?) It's a nice story that gives people hope. Julia worked for me, and people should hear about her again. That's what I think. Anyway, it's a swell feel-good movie. Edited by panzer the great & terrible, Aug 10 2009, 08:17 PM.
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| We Wear Short Shorts Flying Purple People Eater | |
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| Laughing Gravy | Aug 11 2009, 07:27 AM Post #15 |
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Revered in the UK
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And her French cookbook, last time I looked, was #1 in sales on amazon.com. That the kind of "rediscovery" ya wanted, Mr. P? |
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