I had a chance to catch an advance screen­ing of Colum­bia Picture’s new film, Julie & Julia and, quite frankly, I’m speech­less.  It’s a movie that just res­onated with this gal, that being one per­son find­ing their voice through cooking. 

I remem­ber that often I would catch Julia Child’s show on PBS grow­ing up and would watch fas­ci­nated as she would take ordi­nary ingre­di­ents and bring them to life in some­thing absolutely divine.  Julia Child was often paradied but there was no deny­ing the con­tri­bu­tion that she made to cook­ing.  I often would look at her cook­book and go “Who are you kid­ding, Lys – YOU can’t do that”.  And, quite frankly, if you heard my ex’s whin­ing, I was a hor­ri­ble cook and had no idea what to do in the kitchen.  How­ever, after much prac­tice and weld­ing of my Global knife, like Julia, I have “no fear.”   Well - except for when it comes to cook­ing a lob­ster – I’ll pull a Bare­foot Con­tessa and buy it pre-cooked, thanky­ou­very­much.  I even picked up a copy of “Mas­ter­ing the Art of French Cook­ing” this week­end with the intent of try­ing it – not just to have it col­lect dust on my new cook­book shelf.

Any­how, back to the movie – as I told some­one at the the­ater, Meryl Streep could act out the dic­tio­nary and I, much like the rest of the audi­ence, would sit trans­fixed.  She is THAT good of an actress.  I felt that the audi­ence was given a glimpse into what made Julia Child – JULIA CHILD.  Stanley Tucci, a devout foodie him­self, played the role of Paul Child per­fectly.  Not hav­ing read Julie Powell’s book, I found myself agree­ing with the sto­ry­line of work­ing a day job and com­ing home to cook to get away from it all.  I remem­ber the first com­ment I ever got and the joy I felt when I pub­lished some­thing that meant so much to me.  I also under­stood how some­times blog­ging gets in the way of the day to day when you also view it as a “must do” rather than “want to do” (hence while I’ll NEVER sign up for Blog365 again).  All in all, I thought this film was very well made and I will see it again (and get the DVD).  

Appar­ently Cook­ing in Stilet­tos was fash­ion­able back then.  Who else can rock a Chanel Cap Toe pump while check­ing her Le Creuset – clearly a movie after my own heart.