Tag Archive for 'stanley tucci'

The Best view | Julie & Julia - Savouring the joy of Streep and the tastes of France

Published
by
Jason Best
on September 11, 2009
in Cinema Releases and The Best View
. 0 Comments

Julie & Julia - Meryl Streep plays the irrepressible Julia Child, the first American woman to train at the Cordon Bleu cooking school in Paris

First, some advice: don’t go and see Nora Ephron’s delicious comedy Julie & Julia on an empty stomach. Inspired by the lives of two celebrated American foodies, her movie is one long feast of cooking and eating. Unless you’re a vegetarian, the gastronomic delights on display here, from boeuf bourguignon to Lobster Thermidor, will tickle your taste buds from start to finish. And when the film finishes you’ll need sharp elbows to survive the stampede to the nearest restaurant.

Ideally, that restaurant will be French. In its two parallel stories, the film salutes the life-affirming effects of French cuisine on two very different women: the Julie and Julia of the title. The Julia is the woman who introduced Americans to the joys of French cooking in the 1960s with her books and TV appearances – Julia Child (played by Meryl Streep). The Julie is Julie Powell (Amy Adams), a frustrated office worker in post 9/11 New York searching for an outlet for her stifled ambitions. What she came up with was the idea of a blog chronicling her attempt to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s classic book Mastering the Art of French Cooking in a single year.

Julie & Julia - Amy Adams plays Julie Powell, the New York office worker who resolved to cook her way through Julia Child’s epic book Mastering the Art of French Cooking

The blog took off in a manner beyond her wildest dreams, attracting thousands of devoted readers and going on to become first a successful book and now a film from romcom queen Ephron, creator of When Harry Met Sally…, Sleepless in Seattle, You’ve Got Mail et al.

Ephron relates Julie Powell’s efforts in tandem with the story of Julia Child’s life in post-war France. Living in Paris in 1948 with her diplomat husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), Child was another restless woman looking for an outlet for her energies. This she found by becoming the first American woman to train as a chef at the renowned Cordon Bleu school and then by co-writing her trailblazing book.

Julie & Julia - Meryl Streep plays famous American cook and author Julia Child

To be honest, it’s the Julia half of the movie that makes Julie & Julia worthwhile. Notwithstanding the charm and skill of Amy Adams, the scenes of Julie’s culinary mishaps in her tiny kitchen in Queens can’t compete with the sheer joie de vivre of Julia’s Parisian experiences. And these Streep conveys with infectious delight.

Now Meryl Streep’s acting isn’t always to my taste. In some films, I find her impossibly mannered and camp, but the role of the larger than life Julia Child fits her perfectly, even though Child was famously 6’2” tall and Streep is only 5’6” – a discrepancy the film overcomes with impressive sleight of hand and foot. Streep is mannered and camp here too, gleefully impersonating Child’s eccentric demeanour and hooting voice. Yet her performance brims over with such joy and mirth and love that it’s hard not to be won over. Yes, the movie goes on too long, and it’s a bit too sweet for my taste, but Julia and Meryl’s appetite for life is hugely seductive. As Child herself would say, “Bon appetit!”

On general release from 11th September.


To activate the sound in the trailer: hold your cursor over the screen to reveal the control panel and click on the volume control in the bottom right-hand corner.

The Best view - Swing Vote

Published
by
Jason Best
on September 26, 2008
in Cinema Releases and The Best View
. 0 Comments

Swing Vote - Kevin Costner & Madeline Carroll

With the American presidential race getting scarier by the day, surely only the savage iconoclasm of Hunter S Thompson could do justice to the election’s madness and mendacity. Just imagine the ferocious spleen the author of Fear and Loathing on the Campaign Trail ’72 (his account of that year’s Nixon-McGovern contest) would have unleashed on god-fearing, moose-hunting, hockey mom Sarah Palin, aka “Caribou Barbie”.

In the absence of the great Gonzo journalist, who you will recall blew his brains out with a .44 calibre pistol in 2005, it appears we will have to make do with Swing Vote, a good-natured and mildly satirical comedy from little known writer-director Joshua Michael Stern, maker of 2005’s Neverwas (Neverwhat?).

Stern’s movie stars Kevin Costner as a loveable loser named Bud Johnson, a boozy slacker who lives with his precocious 12-year-old daughter Molly (played by the equally precocious Madeline Carroll) in a battered trailer in the town of Texico, New Mexico (which sounds made up but does in fact exist). Bud has promised the civic-minded Molly that he will vote in the upcoming presidential election but passes out drunk in his truck instead.

Swing Vote

A series of contrivances then unfold, with the outcome that the entire election hinges on Bud’s un-cast vote. As a result, the media descends on Bud’s home, and so do Republican incumbent Andrew Boone (Kelsey Grammer) and Democrat challenger Donald Greenleaf (Dennis Hopper). In the days that follow, as swarms of reporters hustle for a scoop, Boone and Greenleaf, and their slippery campaign managers (Stanley Tucci and Nathan Lane), bend themselves out of shape in an effort to sway Bud’s decision.

A series of hilarious spoof campaign ads show the consequences. Bud babbles a half-baked thought; the politicians pounce on it; and end up flip-flopping their most deeply held values. So Republican Boone comes out in favour of gay marriage and ecological preservation, while liberal Democrat Greenleaf starts making anti-abortion and anti-immigration pronouncements.

In the end, though, the movie is too frightened of alienating half its audience to take sides; so cautious about offending either the Red states or the Blue states that it sits on the fence. (Can a political satire be apolitical?) A bruising scene involving Mare Winningham as Molly’s estranged mother hints at the true desperation of America’s “working poor”, as Molly accurately describes Bud, but overall the movie prefers to aim for a mood of Capraesque uplift. Ultimately, Swing Vote, like Costner’s protagonist, is too benign to go for the jugular and settles instead for tickling us gently in the ribs.