Julie & Julia.

Or, A Movie Not To Watch If You Are In Any Way Hungry. That kind of makes it sound bad and it's not, I loved it. But whether you are fasting or just ate a three course dinner, your mouth will be watering before you get very far here so maybe get some snacks or something ready, I don't know.

Blogs, and specifically, blogs about food are a common occurrence now on the internet. Whether your thing is the cooking of food, the photographing/Instagramming of food, the feeding of others around you, stalking out the best places for coffee or a certain kind of sandwich or just (who are we kidding?) the best kind: the eating of it, there is a blog made just for your specifications. Here is the link to the last food blog I discovered - it's amazing by the way - after googling a recipe for bacon and chocolate chip cookies (don't even ask). I want to live in a world where all anyone ever eats is cooked by this woman.

http://iamafoodblog.com/ <-- Click it. It will change how you think about cookies forever. Oatmeal and bacon, that's all I'm saying.

Julie Powell was (is?) one of these success stories. Her blog "The Julie/Julia Project" about her adventures in cooking her through Julia Child's recipe book, written from her home (and tiny kitchen) in NYC, resulted in the popular book: Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, published 2005, followed by the 2009 Nora Ephron penned film: Julie & Julia. Every blogger's not so secret fantasy.

And due in part to my love of both Nora Ephron and food, I decided to watch the movie for the purposes of having something to write about. Not that I don't have many, many other things I could be doing with my time, or indeed writing about, or anything. Its sort of like that feeling when your fridge is full of food and even though you're hungry, you don't feel like eating any of it. That's how I get when I'm trying to decide what to write - and I though the analogy was suitably food-related. 

So, onto the movie. Firstly, it's Meryl Streep. There is very little else I can say here, except that Meryl is The Best. Jennifer Lawrence was so astounded and excited to have even been nominated for an Oscar in the same category as Meryl Streep that it was the first thing she mentioned in her acceptance speech, and wouldn't everyone? She is kind of Completely Amazing in this and also did I mention her husband is played by Stanley Tucci. Yes, you did read that correctly. Stanley Tucci. Emma Stone's dad (Easy A), Anne Hathaway's fairy-godmother (The Devil Wears Prada, duh) and now Meryl Streep's husband: can he get any cooler? Its like an alternate universe where Miranda Priestly and Nigel realise they are obviously meant for each other and get married, leave fashion, gain 15 pounds each and move to 1950s France. (They might also have to change the whole string-of-ex-husbands and being-gay thing too to fit with the plot of this.) But save a little bit of your excitement for this movie because... wait for it... Chris Messina is also in it... as Amy Adams' man! Yes, Danny Castellano is here and instead of being all cute and grumpy and moody about Mindy's love of romantic comedies and cynical about Meg Ryan he is here and being cute and adorable with Amy Adams and her beautiful red hair and saving her from a pot of still-very-alive-and-trying-to-escape boiling lobsters. You'll have to watch it; I can't do all the amazingness justice in this sentence. 

Moving on again to the number one best thing about Julie & Julia: It's a Nora Ephron movie. Which means not only do you get MasterChef-worthy, drool-inducingly delicious food and the choice of two equally delightful leading men, you get writing equal to that of When Harry Met Sally - arguably THE best movie ever - from the undisputed queen of romantic comedies that are actually both realistic and funny, insightful, touching... I could go on but you get the idea. While Julie (or Julia, for that matter) is no Sally, and the romance aspect takes a bit of a backseat here with both the protagonists being happily (minus the odd wobble) married, it is nice to see a film in which relationships and/or the having, getting and maintaining of them is not the principal motivating factor in the heroine/s life and choices. Basically, its really good and I now have the weird desire to Go Cook Something... Probably not a good idea, given the last time I was duped into following a healthy-yet-tasty recipe from Tumblr. Post to follow when I recover from the embarrassment of baking something containing three kinds of actual fruit but still resembling cardboard more than, well, literally cardboard?

I don't really have anything else to say about Julia & Julia, except please watch it and tell me if you also inexplicably really like it too. I can't quite sum up what it is about it, there's just something very lovely about a story in which unhappiness is mysteriously and mostly either pretty absent from the plot or soothed by cooking a chocolate pie and smushing it into your (adorable) husband's face, in a good way. This isn't a domestic violence situation here or anything, just to clarify that. Also who doesn't want 53 comments on a post about murdering some crustaceans? Enjoy... or Bon, um, Watching?
xoxo