;} catch(e) {})
here, I have to say that Julie & Julia really is my favorite movie at the moment. I watched it for the second time last weekend, and will probably watch it again if Steve is in the mood for it (he hasn’t seen it yet).
I don’t talk much about movies here on the blog, but I suppose I should, because a good chunk of movies were once books. I haven’t read Julie &Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously (someday I will), but for now can I just say that I really liked the movie?
Julie Powell is a wanna-be writer living in New York who is, of course, not working as a writer. Instead she has what she describes as a “dead end government job”. So she cooks in her tiny little Queens kitchen to release stress. Somehow she gets the idea that she’ll cook all of the recipes in Julia Child’s Mastering the Art of French Cooking cookbook (500 plus recipes!) in 365 days, and blog about the entire experience. The movie parallels Julie Powell’s life in NYC with Julia Child’s life in Paris, where Julia Child, an American expatriate, struggles to learn how to cook French food.
What I love about this movie is not just the food and cooking scenes (of which there are plenty – and they’re delectable, you can practically smell the butter emanating from the TV screen), it’s also the fact that Julia Child had a really, really hard time getting her cookbook published. What a fascinating glimpse of the publishing world in the 1950’s! Plus it was interesting to see how Julie Powell’s life changed as her blog grew in popularity (not something I can relate to, as I think maybe six people read my blog) and she found herself becoming more and more invested in her project (this I can relate to).
Personal journeys are always so interesting to me. When I meet somebody, I always want to know where they’ve been, both literally and metaphorically. I always want to figure out why they’re here and not there. Why they turned left instead of right, and why they meandered instead of going straight.
And I always want to know where they’re headed… and if I can come, too.