Five Stars for Film, No Stars for DVD Special Features Manipulation
Well, I guess it's finally happened...the consumer and film buff who does not own a Blue-Ray compatible DVD player is now officially SOL. The standard DVD release of Julie and Julia contains as special features only a commentary track and behind-the-scenes featurette. To get the full array of special features, one must purchase the Blue-Ray version of the film, AND of course, a Blue-Ray dvd player. Here are the features NOT available on the standard dvd: tour of Julia Child's kitchen in the Smithsonian; featurette "Friends and Family Remember Julia Child;" and "Cooking Lessons," with Julia Child, Jacques Pepin, and other renowned chefs preparing several of Julia Child's best-loved dishes. Why can't the studio release a two-disc special edition in the standard format for consumers like me who don't own the latest home entertainment equipment? I loved the film (especially The Divine Ms. Streep), loved Julia Child's book "My Life in France," very much liked Julie Powell's book "J &...
Behind Every Great Woman There Stands a Great Man . . .
What in the world does television and concocting-French-food-in-America pioneer Julia Child have in common with just 30-something government employee turned food blogger, Julie Powell?
Other than the love of food, oodles of butter and a big project to fill the need for purpose, the two main characters in Nora Ephron's biopic, "Julie and Julia" share great marriages with men that are not put off by their mate's desire for self-identity defined by more than a few little bouts of self-absorption. Like a good soufflé, Ephron folds the stories told in two books, Powell's "Julie and Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously" and Child's "My Life in France" without deflating the overall mixture, although this reviewer would have enjoyed more scenes with the wonderfully talented Meryl Streep who redeems herself quite well (all...
A far better film than a book.
All too often when a well loved book is turned into a film, fans of the book bemoan how the director or the screen writer got it wrong and all the wonderful things the book had that got lost on the way to the screen. And then you get the rare case when the film is so much better than the book that you wonder if you'll ever bother to look at the book again. "Julie & Julia" with Meryl Streep and Amy Adams is one of those films.
Based on Julie Powell's blog, a New York office drone, dreading the approach of the Big 3-0, breaks out of her life by attempting to go through every recipe in the first volume of Julia Child's "Mastering the Art of French Cooking" in one year. While the book focuses almost exclusively on Julie Powell in her Queens apartment, the film splits time equally between Amy Adams' Julie on her epic food quest and Meryl Streep as Julia Child in post war France, who takes cooking lessons as a way to break up the boredom of her day waiting for her husband to come...
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