Julie & Julia

[javasaurus]

Fabulously delightful movie. A not-really-parallel pair of loosely connected stories. We get to see Julia Child in post-WWII France, housewife to an ambassador, who takes up cooking on a whim. Meryl Streep's performance is as rich and creamy as the culinary delights her character prepares. Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, an underachieving author who has failed to publish, so works a phone-line in a cubical, in post-9/11 New York. She decides to work her way through Julia Child's famous cookbook, and blog about it. The two women -- their situations, their marriages, their personalities -- couldn't be much more different, I think, but they are drawn to food the same way, and they both achieve success by simply choosing to "do" rather than "do not."

The foods in the movie were a marvel to behold, and I now want to eat a block of real honest-to-goodness butter. I love movies like this, or Ratatouille, or Chocolat, or No Reservations, that remind us that even in an age of diets, there is still sometimes room for culinary wonderment.

Afterwards, we hit Borders and bought a copy of Julia Child's cookbook (there are different printings of it out there -- we found a two-volume boxed set for $20, but the version that just came out as one volume is $40). I had to laugh after getting the receipt -- there was a coupon attached so that we could save 20% on Julia Child's cookbook during our next visit!

Comments

[cozit.livejournal.com]

I almost strangled DH on Sunday when he went from saying "we should go out to lunch after we see the movie" to if we're going home for the kids anyway, why don't we do tuna salad. (yes, we went out.. though it was supposed to be a sandwich shop and ended up Taco Bell... sigh.. at least it was better than tunafish at home).

I hadn't expected *that* good a movie, so was very pleasantly surprised. DH had been reading her blog, so he also commented that he really liked how some of what she'd wrote about had been expanded and presented.