Obligatory New Year's post
Friday, January 1, 2010 by Darryl
I don't normally partake in the ritual of New Years' resolutions - my life is a series of false starts and abandoned goals, why begin the year with a bunch more? - but if everyone else is doing something, so must I, unless it's Twittering or wearing those nasty earlobe stretchers. (Why? Why?) So I came up with four big ones: Cook more often, start a savings account, work out regularly, and write something daily. My writing muscle (much like its physical counterparts) is in dire need of some stretching and toning. While writing the previous sentence I wondered if the part in brackets should actually be between commas. Probably not a good sign.
Regardless, the cooking thing will be slightly more difficult to stick to, if only for my off-the-wall work schedule and the fact that I work at a restaurant, meaning a hot meal is only a few minutes away when I'm there. And it's free. But cooking is my therapy - it grounds me, makes me feel less straggled and flighty, and I'm in an immeasurably better mood during and after whipping up something for lunch or dinner. (Breakfast is another issue entirely. I have no patience. Cereal and coffee, please. Save that cooking crap till I've mainlined some espresso.)
Speaking of cooking, I watched Julie and Julia over the Christmas break. I expected better, because it seems like it should work: Blogger Julie Powell cooking her way through Julia Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking while we glimpse episodes of Julia's life in France in the late '50s. But the movie doesn't give us a clear sense of Julie Powell as a person, let alone why she'd dedicate a year of her life to cooking every recipe in a doorstop of a cookbook and writing about her experience to an unknown, unseen audience. Rather than convey how frazzled and disenchanted with her life Powell had become, to the point that only the therapeutic power of cooking (and the encouraging spirit of Julia Child) could bring her back from the edge, the movie paints Powell as a whiny, stubborn drama queen who needs to get out more, and makes her blogging project seem arbitrary rather than the passion-driven mission it was. Near the end of the film, when Powell talks about how cooking through Julia's book "saved her", my immediate response was, "From what, exactly?" The movie doesn't show us. The role needed more muscle, more backstory, and a more self-assured, earthier actress than Amy Adams to play it. I've loved Adams in other roles, but she just doesn't have the presence to make Powell's occasional tantrums and snarkiness tolerable.
The Julia Child half of the film works much better, but perhaps that's because it focuses on a larger-than-life persona known to a generation of readers and television viewers, rather than a niche blogger with a greater need for context. Meryl Streep, unsuprisingly, does an excellent job in the role, nailing Child's warbly voice and spirited demeanor without making her a caricature.
The movie does score some points by making neither of these women out to be saints, and for depicting blogging (and cooking) as having worth and deeper meaning beyond its mundane methodology. But it's still thin, underwritten, and lacks a clear focus.
And that's my New Years' brain dump. Hope your 2010 is all puppies and flowers.
Regardless, the cooking thing will be slightly more difficult to stick to, if only for my off-the-wall work schedule and the fact that I work at a restaurant, meaning a hot meal is only a few minutes away when I'm there. And it's free. But cooking is my therapy - it grounds me, makes me feel less straggled and flighty, and I'm in an immeasurably better mood during and after whipping up something for lunch or dinner. (Breakfast is another issue entirely. I have no patience. Cereal and coffee, please. Save that cooking crap till I've mainlined some espresso.)
Speaking of cooking, I watched Julie and Julia over the Christmas break. I expected better, because it seems like it should work: Blogger Julie Powell cooking her way through Julia Child's seminal Mastering the Art of French Cooking while we glimpse episodes of Julia's life in France in the late '50s. But the movie doesn't give us a clear sense of Julie Powell as a person, let alone why she'd dedicate a year of her life to cooking every recipe in a doorstop of a cookbook and writing about her experience to an unknown, unseen audience. Rather than convey how frazzled and disenchanted with her life Powell had become, to the point that only the therapeutic power of cooking (and the encouraging spirit of Julia Child) could bring her back from the edge, the movie paints Powell as a whiny, stubborn drama queen who needs to get out more, and makes her blogging project seem arbitrary rather than the passion-driven mission it was. Near the end of the film, when Powell talks about how cooking through Julia's book "saved her", my immediate response was, "From what, exactly?" The movie doesn't show us. The role needed more muscle, more backstory, and a more self-assured, earthier actress than Amy Adams to play it. I've loved Adams in other roles, but she just doesn't have the presence to make Powell's occasional tantrums and snarkiness tolerable.
The Julia Child half of the film works much better, but perhaps that's because it focuses on a larger-than-life persona known to a generation of readers and television viewers, rather than a niche blogger with a greater need for context. Meryl Streep, unsuprisingly, does an excellent job in the role, nailing Child's warbly voice and spirited demeanor without making her a caricature.
The movie does score some points by making neither of these women out to be saints, and for depicting blogging (and cooking) as having worth and deeper meaning beyond its mundane methodology. But it's still thin, underwritten, and lacks a clear focus.
And that's my New Years' brain dump. Hope your 2010 is all puppies and flowers.
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