Julie & Julia

Warning to everyone: when you finish watching this movie you will want to eat! It is a good idea to have some fruit, crackers, crue d'ete, and such waiting for you complete with a good bottle of full-bodied French Wine. I am having a sip now.
Like the Joy of Cooking, Julia Child's predecessor in the cooking world, this movie contains all the elements of the joy of movie watching. The most crucial ingredient us one of America's treasures, Meryl Streep, who seems to be having the time of her life bringing us an ebullient charicature of Julia Child. Next, we can delight in the magical illusion of cinema. Just as King Kong was 3 feet tall, so Streep is 5'6" - not nearly the alpine exaggeration of a woman's physique that was Child's 6'2". But Streep owns the frame in every scene, relentlessly physical and broad, and her stature is embellished by tricks of perspective and set dimension.
But what about the sauce for this film? Simple! Period piece in Paris. And Streep looks so fabulous in those hats. The side salad is the sumptuous and sexy Stanley Tucci as the perfect, doting, supportive, long-lashed and all knowing Mr. Child. And the bread and butter? Amy Adams, also a remarkable actress, plays Julie, the doting blogger who cooks every single recipe from Child's famous cookbook in one year, and earns fame doing it, providing both the counterpoint for Child's fantastical, imagined, eternally positive character, and also a ground in the real present.
Or is it so real?
Adams plays "straight man" to the more interesting (I think) Julia Child life-story as Julie fancies it. Julie has arguments, embarassments, and frustrations never entertained by her hero, Julia. But even the protrayal of her life is based on her book, based on her blog, and then translated by Nora Ephron into a screenplay. A memoir, a cookbook, a blog, a book, a screenplay, a film - all layers of movie construct tenderly baked together into a lovely escapist souffle! Yum!

Taking Woodstock

This was easily one of my favorite films of 2009. Based on the memoirs of Elliot Tiber, the title of this comedy says it all - "Taking ...stock". That is what the main characters do. That is what our generation was doing at the time of Woodstock. That is what the music was about. Everyone was taking stock. They were re-evaluating the ideals of loyalty, love, commerce, beauty, lifestyle, everything! They dreamed a better world.
And, ironically, every step of the way, Woodstock was about making money. It is the secret we don't acknowledge when we think about that era. It is the darkest secret of the Teischberg family we follow through the biggest event of their lives. The stock of Woodstock was not just the music, but the hope of young people in 1969 for a better world. And smart people were able to make a fortune with it.
Kudos to Ang Lee for letting us experience, just for a brief moment, the love and hope that brought us together in that era. I had the privilege of sitting in an audience of older people. They seemed to be 55 - 70 years old. I wondered why they might be interested in this film about youthful lust for life and grand expectations. Then the feet started tapping, the heads nodding, an occasional uh-huh escaped from the movie enthusiasts. I heard a man's voice behind me say: "I was there", and I realized that I was surrounded by this same generation of people I was watching on screen. I wondered what they had really hoped for then, whether they lived their lives with certain ideals in mind, and how their fortunes had panned out. I wondered if they were disappointed. And I was grateful I could be there with them, once again, experiencing Woodstock.
Taking Woodstock is directed by Ang Lee.