What did you think of "Julia and Julie"? Was that a charming movie or not?

I haven’t seen it yet, but hope to soon. I do like Meryl Streep and most of the movies she has been in.

@gailcalled Did you read the book as well? I really enjoyed the book, and wonder how the movie compares. I’m glad to hear a favorable review of it!

My boyfriend and I saw this movie by chance while he was visiting and we were both in love with the movie. I’m reading the original blog in my downtime at work, and I think they really sweetened up Julie for the movie. The real Julie Powell has quite a mouth on her!

I’m a huge fan of The Devil Wears Prada, so it was sort of odd to see Meryl Streep and Stanley Tucci in this kind of relationship at first, but it didn’t take long for me to forget the Miranda/Nigel chemistry from the other movie while watching them. Entirely brilliant film.

I spent two years (1965–1967) reading every page of_Mastering the Art of French Cooking_. I made four recipes from it. One must train over a period of several weeks for that kind of cooking.
(Navarin printanier, Bouef bourguignon, Coq au vin, Charlotte Malakoff.)

I never head about Julie Powell, but think her book would be fun to read. Streep really stole the show, but young Amy Adams held her own.

The marching orders and recipe for the Navarin (spring lamb stew) are under the Poulet au porto here (Printanier is misspelled…prob. a typo.)

I loved the movie despite Amy Adams. I had never seen her in anything before, and honestly, I just thought she was a terrible actress. Something about the way she said all of her lines just never let me forget that she was an actress, acting in a movie, instead of me being engrossed in the plot, and not thinking about acting, or sets, anything like that. Still a great movie though!

@gailcalled: Probably so, there appear to be several typos in the link. I guess NPR is better with the spoken word. ;-)

@La_chica_gomela: If you had to peel American potatoes so that they were uniformly 2¾” long and had rounded corners, you’d make typos too.:-)

I cooked that lamb stew sometime around 1966 and can still remember the experience. Of course, it was delicious.

I absolutely love it! Maryl Streep deserves to win an oscar for best actress for this one!
Amy Adams was also very good. The movies was very charming and it made me want to cook French food, so of course I went and bought the cook book after seeing it!

In answer to the height query.

Yes the did hire shorter folks. I heard a discussion about this on show I can’t remember. Evidently this proved to be rather challenging for shooting the local market scenes in France. Can’t remember if it was Streep or Nora Ephron making those comments.

I enjoyed the movie despite the Julie story. Amy Adams was totally miscast. If only they had stayed solely on Meryl Streep’s mundanely brilliant performance of Child and Tucci’s formidably deft turn as her husband.

I think, rather than forcing the two stories together, if we had focused on Julia’s story while the narrative was bookended and contextualized by the Julie Powell story, it could have been phenomenal.

I didn’t really like the book. So I wasn’t going to see the movie. But it does seem to be getting raves. Andrew’s comment makes sense to me—I am much more interested in Julia Child than I am in the very common Julie, whose book was finishable but not remarkable. It was the fact that she actually followed through on her intention of doing all the recipes that was her claim to fame.

I really adored the movie and I actually enjoyed both parts of it – I think the link was wonderfully supportive husbands as well as the cooking. I like Amy Adams a lot; anyone ever see her first (?) movie “Junebug?” Haven’t read the blog but I am in Paris now and reading Child’s book “My Life in Paris.” Paris is certainly still lovely now but the book and the movie make it seem even more magical back then. BTW, I read that Streep wore platform shoes to make her taller as well as the shortness of any of the actors. I thought Meryl was a little over-hammy in places but then Julia Child was pretty jambonesque herself.

@janbb: Julia was always in flats during her TV shows, but you could tell that Streep was wearing platforms in the movie. The shoes gave her about 4,” but imagine boning a duck in stilettos.

Jambonesque gets cinq cuillières d’or.

@gailcalled I have tried to seem tall most of my life by wearing stilettos. I finally gave it up, as I WILL NEVER be tall, and my feet were screaming at me.

It was a great movie. Even my SO who is very picky, enjoyed it!
I thought it would be risky taking him to see this, but he said what he always does when he enjoys a movie. “What a production!”

@gailcalled: I had no idea she was wearing platforms! That makes so much sense!

@scamp: My SO and another male friend liked it too! I was so surprised!

@chyna: My feet love wedges. Not that I need the height, but they sure are fun.

@La_chica_gomela I really thought he would want to walk out because it was a ‘chick flick”, but he loved it!!

By the way, I’m reading her book now (that is, Julia Child’s “My Life in France”) and the movie hews quite closely to it. (Go, Nora Ephron!)

Try reading or rereading “Mastering the Art of French Cooking.” Now there was the book of the sixties. American women were using cake mixes, Campbell’s Cream of Mushroom Soup, Lipton’s packaged Onion Soup mix, canned peas and margarine.

My sister has the library copy of My Life in France. I am next on the list. My sis also found HER copy, stains and all, of MTAOFC. Her husband used to put us all in a diabetic coma when he made Julia’s Mousse au chocolat.