You can’t get much more mainstream than “Julie & Julia,” a feel good summer of 2009 release starring Meryl Streep, directed by Nora Ephron and aimed at the kind of broad female audience a $40 million production and August release date is always aimed at. “Julie & Julia” ain’t no edgy indie, ain’t no Oscar bait, and yet throughout the last two-thirds, the screenplay (written by Ephron) salts the proceedings with one gratuitous and divisive shot at Republicans after another. And for no reason that serves the overall story. The insults are so jarring and out-of-place that it’s not far-fetched to assume that Ephron’s conscious goal was to spoil the good time of those unsuspecting moviegoers who made the dual mistake of paying the price of admission and not voting for Obama.

I missed “Julie & Julia” when it was first released … kind of on purpose. Meryl Steep’s acting of late — well, the last 15 years,  has become increasingly unbearable to sit though — which is why God invented Redbox. For a buck, I’ll try most anything — except sushi.

Surprisingly, both me and the misses (whose birthday is today — Happy Birthday, Pretty Wife!) were immediately drawn into what started out as a well-structured and charming based-on-a-true-story about two women in two different eras learning to love the art of cooking and coming of age as writers. 

Set in post-war France, Streep plays Julia Child. She’s married to an American diplomat (the always superb Stanley Tucci) and finds herself increasingly restless with all the time she has on her hands. In love with the local cuisine, she decides to fill the hours with a French cooking class and the rest as they say is history. (more…)

BEST PICTURE – DRAMA

Avatar
The Hurt Locker
Inglorious Basterds
Precious
Up In the Air

BEST PICTURE – COMEDY OR MUSICAL

(500) Days of Summer
The Hangover
It’s Complicated
Julie & Julia
Nine

BEST DIRECTOR – MOTION PICTURE

Kathryn Bigelow – The Hurt Locker
James Cameron – Avatar
Clint Eastwood – Invictus
Jason Reitman – Up In The Air
Quentin Tarantino – Inglourious Basterds (more…)

Celebrated actress Meryl Streep’s latest project “Julie & Julia” is out in theaters. I have not seen the film and am not sure if I will. I did see the trailers, and admit to being tickled by Streep’s uncanny portrayal of Child’s mannerisms and unusual voice. (For Big Hollywood reviews of this film, click here and here.)

Streep is one of those rare thespians who truly morphs into the character she is playing. You forget for a while that you are watching Meryl Streep (as opposed to never forgetting it’s Tom Cruise in “[insert film title here]“), and for that she deserves heaps of praise.  But her off-screen silliness is ripe for mocking.

Take, for example, her declaration during a promotional interview for “Julie & Julia” that she was “disappointed” in Child because 20 years ago, Child refused to take part in Streep’s efforts to get organic produce into supermarkets: (more…)

It’s rare enough these days to see a movie in which one story is well-told, much less two stories. It’s even more rare when a filmmaker is able to balance two completely different plotlines and make both equally enjoyable and compelling. Yet with her new film “Julie & Julia,” writer-director Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail”) pulls off such feats so impressively that the movie could possibly wind up with an Oscar nomination at the end of the year now that the Academy has expanded the awards to ten nominations and will likely finally include a couple of comedies each year.

“Julie & Julia” follows the amusingly parallel lives of chef Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep), who achieved worldwide fame while revolutionizing the art of cooking starting in the ‘50s, and Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a young New York City woman searching for identity in 2002. Powell longs to be a successful writer like her friends and yet is trapped processing insurance claims from victims of the World Trade Center attacks. (more…)