02 December 2010

Julia and Julie

(Photo credit: (C) Michael P. McLaughlin)
I've had the movie DVRed for ages and I finally watched it and all I wanted was to see more of Julia Child's life. I read the book this is based on some years ago as an advance reader copy, and what I found most amusing was that the soul destroying agency for which Julie Powell worked was a sub-agency to the place that I was working at the time.
Reading Powell's book made me go out and buy and read several books by Julia Child (starting with My Life in France and moving forward into Kitchen Tips and Wisdom— I've got the videos and Mastering the Art 1 & 2 waiting in the US as I ordered them through WGBH for my next trip).
The movie is worth seeing for the Julia Child portions; it's unfortunate that Amy Adams wasn't able to make Julie Powell more interesting, but there wasn't a lot of there there for her.

3 comments:

fiona said...

I bought the DVD here a couple of months ago, but to date have only seen small portions of it due to child interuptions. Of what I did see, I loved Meryl Streeps Julia Childs interpretation, and she is certainly an interesting character. It did inspire me to buy Julia Powell's second book, 'Cleaving', where she trains to become a butcher. By half way through I was struggling with it because I just didn't like her at all as a person. Butchery isn't exactly that exciting a topic, but primarily the brazen account of her affair and her failing marriage just made me feel terribly sorry for the other people involved (primarily her husband) who would have to put up with seeing it all in print.

Anonymous said...

I, too, felt annoyed at Julie Powell's affair, but it was such an aside as I was totally mesmerized with Julia herself. My gourmet cook daughter and I saw it in the the theater soon after it came out, and if it hadn't been so late we would have gone home and made bruschetta for a midnight snack. I waited until the next day instead and made it just like Julia did. YUMMMMMM!

Anonymous said...

Oh, I'm dying to read Julia Child's books (I kind of can't believe I haven't yet). I think you may have given me inspiration for a Christmas present request!