Salon.com > Julie & Julia

“Up in the Air” leads Globes nods

Tue, 15 Dec 2009 08:01:00 +0000

The recession-era tale "Up in the Air" led Golden Globe film contenders Tuesday with six nominations, among them best drama and acting honors for George Clooney, Vera Farmiga and Anna Kendrick.

Other drama picks were the space fantasy "Avatar," the Iraq War tale "The Hurt Locker," the World War II saga "Inglourious Basterds" and the Harlem drama "Precious: Based on the Novel 'Push' by Sapphire."

The musical "Nine" ran second with five nominations, including best musical or comedy and acting slots for Daniel Day-Lewis, Penelope Cruz and Marion Cotillard.

Also competing for musical or comedy are the romance "(500) Days of Summer," the bachelor-party bash "The Hangover" and two Meryl Streep films, "It's Complicated" and "Julie & Julia."

"Up in the Air" generally has been considered a comedy, but its inclusion in the drama category could give it more weight as a potential favorite for the Academy Awards, where dramatic films tend to dominate.

Playing a frequent-flyer junkie in "Up in the Air," Clooney had a nomination for best dramatic actor, along with Jeff Bridges as a boozy country singer in "Crazy Heart," Colin Firth as a grieving gay academic in "A Single Man," Morgan Freeman as Nelson Mandela in "Invictus" and Tobey Maguire as a prisoner of war in "Brothers."

“Julie & Julia”

Fri, 07 Aug 2009 10:18:00 +0000

When an actor plays a real-life character we know and love, we always hope for verisimilitude, for body movements that capture the physical essence of a person we feel we know pretty well, for line readings that conjure the tone and timber of a particular voice and its speech patterns (that is, for line readings that make us forget there's such a thing as "line readings"). A good actor can usually give us an exacting impersonation, a strictly followed recipe with every ingredient appropriately calibrated, and sometimes that's good enough. But watching Meryl Streep as Julia Child in "Julie & Julia" -- as she only semi-successfully flips an omelette, in a re-created clip from Child's seminal '60s-era television show "The French Chef"; as she stands at a table with her classmates at Le Cordon Bleu, her elbows crooked jauntily and a little awkwardly behind her; as she sits down to dinner with her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), the two of them having so much to say to each other that they sometimes chatter with their mouths full -- goes beyond recipe reading. Streep isn't playing Julia Child here, but something both more elusive and more truthful -- she's playing our idea of Julia Child. When Streep's Julia nearly loses that omelette on TV, she pooh-poohs the possible dangers of dropping food on the floor: "You're alone in the kitchen. Whoooooooo's to see?" The line, and the way Streep draws it out, is just one measure of the intimacy of this performance. We're not observers here, but conspirators: We know exactly where the food has been, and we're not telling.

Recipe for success

Wed, 12 Oct 2005 11:00:00 +0000

In 2002, on the eve of her 30th birthday, depressed and dreading another year as an office drone, Julie Powell decided she needed a hobby. But while knitting or yoga might have appealed to some, Powell's tastes ran to the absurd -- and perhaps the self-destructive. Sitting at her kitchen counter thumbing a well-worn copy of Julia Child's 1961 cookbook classic, "Mastering the Art of French Cooking," Powell had an epiphany. She would cook every one of the 524 recipes in the book. And -- damn it! -- she would do it in one year.

And so the Julie/Julia Project was born. For 365 days, on a Salon.com blog of the same name, Powell chronicled her adventures in aspic, her battles with live lobsters, and her catastrophes with crepes in a frank and fearless style that quickly earned her a following. With her husband, Eric, by her side as resident drink-mixer and dishwasher, and from within the tiny confines of her Long Island City, N.Y., kitchen -- with cracked walls, cramped countertops and maggots (yes, maggots!) collecting under the drying rack -- Powell stewed and sautéed, sliced and diced, every kind of fish and fowl imaginable.