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Easily Digestible
“Julie & Julia” whips up two well-known food lovers.
by Wayne Melton
“Julie & Julia” opens with famed cook Julia Child (Meryl Streep), but its heart is with its other protagonist, sort-of-famous foodie Julie Powell (Amy Adams), who took on every recipe in Child’s seminal book, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” while blogging about the experience.
In adapting the book the real Powell wrote about her impressive year (“Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen”) director Nora Ephron (“Sleepless in Seattle,” “You’ve Got Mail”), decided to knead in Child’s story. Her tale of transformation by the sights, smells and especially tastes of Paris, taken from her late-life memoir, “My Life in France,” is a sort of companion to Julie’s endeavor. There’s an inherent novelty factor about the film — two true stories for the price of one! — but it soon gives way to a less-agreeable reality: two intrepid women, who succeeded in reinventing themselves, both given rather ordinary presentation, with inconsistent ingredients. Read the rest of this entry »
This review first appeared on StyleWeekly.com
“Miss Pettigrew” ain’t your grandparents’ movie, but almost was.
The novel “Miss Pettigrew Lives for a Day” was reputedly first optioned by Universal in 1940. But the war came, as it does in the movie, and plans to turn “Pettigrew” into a feature were hustled out the door, just like Frances McDormand’s down-on-her-luck maid in the opening scene. The movie, then, has received a second chance, just like its character. Where the two stories diverge is important. In the book, Miss Pettigrew’s life-change happens in a day. The adaptation’s change took 60-plus years, and they haven’t been friendly to it. Read the rest of this entry »
