By http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/kim_severson/index.html?inline=nyt-per Published: July 28, 2009WHEN the director http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/e/nora_ephron/index.html?inline=nyt-per  began shooting a pivotal scene in her new movie “Julie & Julia,” it quickly became clear that the sole meunière might become her food stylist’s Waterloo.http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/julia_child/index.html?inline=nyt-per ’s first lunch in Paris centered on Dover sole sputtering in butter sauce. It was, she wrote in her memoir, “the most exciting meal of my life.”For that scene, Ms. Ephron — an accomplished cook who wrote the screenplay, directed the film and personally tested every recipe in the movie except the aspic — would accept nothing short of perfection.“I wanted that sole to look to the audience the way it had looked to Julia when it caused her famous epiphany,” she said.But hey, no pressure.Susan Spungen, the movie’s food stylist, had spent a dozen years as http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/s/martha_stewart/index.html?inline=nyt-per ’s food editor. She had been a caterer before that. She understood pressure. But she knew she was in the weeds the moment she arrived at a Manhattan restaurant to shoot the scene.For starters, the chef that Ms. Ephron had recruited to cook the sole was instead pressed into service as the scene’s waiter. That left Ms. Spungen uncharacteristically unprepared. The restaurant didn’t have a nonstick pan, and the chef forgot to tell her that the secret to the dish was a light coat of Wondra flour.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/07/29/dining/29movie.html?_r=1

Aug 5 2009, 8:29 am by http://food.theatlantic.com/author/julie-powell/ Being Julie, Not "Julie"PHOTO BY STEPHEN LOVEKIN/GETTY IMAGES"How surreal must this be for you?"In the last month or so, as the hoopla surrounding the upcoming release of the movie Julie & Julia(based on both http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/031604251X/ref=s9_simb_gw_xu_s1_p14_t3?pf_rd_m=ATVPDKIKX0DER&pf_rd_s=center-2&pf_rd_r=02F2F4E7G2YVCDT6CZD1&pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=470938631&pf_rd_i=507846  of the same name and Julia Child and Alex Prud'homme's http://www.amazon.com/France-Movie-Random-House-Books/dp/0307474852/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1249417814&sr=8-1 ) has taken over my life, this has become the single question I am asked most often, now on a daily basis. My answer is, usually, "Yep. Pretty crazy." That seems the most diplomatic thing to say, not to mention the simplest. I'm not lying--it is surreal, the whole thing. But the truth is more complicated than what can be evoked by one overused adjective.The truth is that I've had a movie made about me--or, rather, a version of me that's been made up by a very famous and accomplished person I've met only a handful of times--and I find the whole thing thrilling but also occasionally upsetting and hard to come to terms with. Clearly, one cannot complain about a movie based (in part, anyway) on one's very first book, at least not without coming off as hideously ungrateful. A movie written and directed by Nora Ephron. Starring Meryl Streep, for cripes' sake. There is no bad here. And I'm not--complaining, that is. In any way, shape, or form.That said, I have seen the movie six times now, and there are things about it that scare me a little. The "Julie Powell" of Julie & Julia: The Movie! has things to teach me, and the lessons are not all easy ones.  http://food.theatlantic.com/cooking-for-julie-and-julia/being-julie-not-julie.php

By http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/stephanie_clifford/index.html?inline=nyt-per Published: August 23, 2009Almost 48 years after it was first published, “Mastering the Art of French Cooking” by http://topics.nytimes.com/top/reference/timestopics/people/c/julia_child/index.html?inline=nyt-per  is finally topping the best-seller list, bringing with it all the butter, salt and goose fat that home chefs had largely abandoned in the age of http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/health/diseasesconditionsandhealthtopics/lipitor_drug/index.html?inline=nyt-classifier .The book, given a huge lift from the recently released movie “Julie & Julia,” sold 22,000 copies in the most recent week tracked, according to Nielsen BookScan, which follows book sales. That is more copies than were sold in any full year since the book’s appearance, according to Alfred A. Knopf, which published it.The book will make its debut at No. 1 on the New York Times best-seller list of Aug. 30 in the advice and how-to category.“In a month, I’ve sold almost seven times what I sell, typically, in a year of ‘Mastering,’ and it’s going to get even higher,” said Lee Stern, the cookbook buyer for http://topics.nytimes.com/top/news/business/companies/barnes-and-noble-inc/index.html?inline=nyt-org . “It’s amazing.”Amazing not just because the book is almost half a century old, costs $40 and contains 752 pages of labor-intensive and time-consuming recipes — the art of French cooking is indeed hard to master — but also for what those recipes contain.In a decade when cookbooks promise 20-minute dinners that are light on calories, Ms. Child’s recipes feature instructions like “thin out with more spoonfuls of cream” (Veau Prince Orloff, or veal with onions and mushrooms, pages 355-7) or “sauté the bacon in the butter for several minutes” (Navets à la Champenoise, or turnip casserole, pages 488-9). And for a generation raised to believe that Jell-O should have marshmallows in it, there is plenty of aspic — the kind made with meat.  http://www.nytimes.com/2009/08/24/business/24julia.html?_r=1&hp

By http://online.wsj.com/search/search_center.html?KEYWORDS=LAUREN+A.+E.+SCHUKER&ARTICLESEARCHQUERY_PARSER=bylineAND This fall, Warner Bros. is trying to reinvent Sherlock Holmes, with Robert Downey Jr. starring as the fictional sleuth. Spike Jonze, who directed "Being John Malkovich," will put a modern twist on the storybook classic "Where the Wild Things Are." And some recent best sellers, including Walter Kirn's "Up in the Air" and Alice Sebold's "The Lovely Bones" (in an adaptation from "Lord of the Rings" director Peter Jackson) will hit the big screen.Hollywood is racing to adapt novels, comics, and children's stories, as the ability of movie stars to draw audiences wanes. Popular books, with built-in fan bases, pose less risk for Hollywood studios trying to eke out a profit in a tough economic climate. One of the most-anticipated adaptations is the November sequel to "Twilight," based on the best-selling book series by Stephenie Meyer.A wave of animated films based on children's stories are scheduled for release over the next several months, including Disney's revision of the age-old fairy tale, "The Princess and the Frog"; Wes Anderson's "Fantastic Mr. Fox," a mostly stop-motion animation version of the Roald Dahl novella; and "Cloudy With a Chance of Meatballs," a 3-D take on the popular children's book.One giant exception: Oscar-winning director James Cameron returns to feature filmmaking for the first time since "Titanic" with his new movie "Avatar," a sci-fi epic with an original story that's not based on a book. The 3-D movie follows a war veteran (played by Sam Worthington) on his journey to an alien planet.After a summer that saw box office revenues soar ahead of old records, there are far fewer films coming out in the U.S. this fall and winter season, with just 135 films currently planned for release through the end of the 2009. That's down 32% from 2008, when 199 films were released during the same period, according to data compiled by Jeff Bock, an analyst at box-office tracker Exhibitor Relations. That number could climb slightly higher after the studios acquire films at fall festivals, but it's still a significant drop from previous years, when as many as 240 films were released during the period.  http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204731804574390600167135462.html

http://www.newsweek.com/id/216997 is a great discussion on Where the Wild Things Are from Newsweek. You can read the full article http://www.newsweek.com/id/216997  but here's a taste - wonderful stuff:The monsters were based on adults, right? Sendak: The monsters were based on relatives. They came from Europe, and they came on weekends to eat, and my mom had to cook. Three aunts and three uncles who spoke no English, practically. They grabbed you and twisted your face, and they thought that was an affectionate thing to do. And I knew that my mother's cooking was pretty terrible, and it also took forever, and there was every possibility that they would eat me, or my sister or my brother. We really had a wicked fantasy that they were capable of that. We couldn't taste any worse than what she was preparing. So that's who the Wild Things are. They're foreigners, lost in America, without a language. And children who are petrified of them, and don't understand that these gestures, these twistings of flesh, are meant to be affectionate. So there you go.Maurice, what did you think when you first saw the movie?Sendak: I thought it was never going to end. [Laughter] I say that to be funny. The truth of the matter is, I saw immediately a combination of things that I wanted and I loved. The courage of the child, the danger of the situation—it could turn on a dime. They could have eaten him. All of that was apparent right from the start. The artistry was something they would have to take care of. I was happy right from the beginning. I didn't have to suffer like they did—schlepping from this place to that place, dealing with the studio. 

Bounty hunter Stephanie Plum is finally coming to the big screen. The heroine in the New York Times bestselling series by Janet Evanovich will be played by Katherine Heigl. The movie will be titled One For the Money. Variety http://www.variety.com/article/VR1118014889.html?categoryid=1236&cs=1 : Reese Witherspoon was previously attached to take on the role, but the project has been dormant for several years. Heigl's interest has put the project back on the fast track, with Andrea Giannetti overseeing for the studio. Col and Lakeshore will next look to attach a director. Lakeshore's Tom Rosenberg and Gary Lucchesi are producing "One for the Money" with Wendy Finerman ("The Devil Wears Prada"). Karen McCullah Lutz and Kirsten Smith penned the screenplay, and Liz Brixius has been brought onboard to do a polish. There are fifteen Stephanie Plum novels so far, the latest being Finger Lickin' Fifteen. The 16th novel will be released thisContinue reading http://www.shoppingblog.com/blog/209109

One of the great things about blogger conferences is being introduced to new bloggers.  At Mom 2.0 I met Gayle Weiswasser and fell in love with her and her blog, Everyday I Write The Book, where she reviews books.  Gayle has a post up in anticipation of the Oscars that I thought everyone here might enjoy.   Here's the start of her post:  We are 9 days away from my favorite night of the year: Oscar Sunday! I love the Oscars - the hype, the drama, the dresses. While I see fewer movies than I used to, I do try to get to as many of the nominees as I can. My favorite categories are always the screenplay categories, because (surprise, surprise) I treasure good writing in a movie. I am especially interested in screenplays that are adapted from books, as I enjoy scrutinizing how the adaptation differs from the original and why the changes were made. Apparently, I am not alone - I have written a number of posts comparing books to the movies they were adapted for, and those posts seem to generate the most traffic from search engines.  http://everydayiwritethebook.typepad.com/books/2010/02/draft.html

The movie, Eat Pray Love is coming this summer, but the trailer was just released, with Julia Roberts.  If you liked the book, you might like getting an advance look.  

Are you going to see Eat Pray Love?! Deciding whether to go and would love your thoughts! Here's the NY Times review: The double standard in Hollywood may be stronger than ever. Men are free to pursue all kinds of adventures, while women are expected to pursue men. In a typical big-studio romantic comedy the heroine’s professional ambition may not always be an insurmountable obstacle to matrimony, but her true fulfillment — not just her presumed happiness but also the completion of her identity — will come only at the altar. This paradigm is, of course, much older than the movies, but it can be refreshing, now and then, to see something different in the multiplex: a movie that takes seriously (or for that matter has fun with) a woman’s autonomy, her creativity, her desire for something other than a mate. The scarcity of such stories helps explain the appeal of movies like the two “Sex and the City” features, “Julie & Julia,” “The Blind Side” and now “Eat Pray Love,” a sumptuous and leisurely adaptation of Elizabeth Gilbert’s best-selling memoir of post-divorce globe-trotting. Directed by Ryan Murphy, who wrote the screenplay with Jennifer Salt, the film offers an easygoing and generous blend of wish fulfillment, vicarious luxury, wry humor and spiritual uplift, with a star, Julia Roberts, who elicits both envy and empathy. http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/13/movies/13eat.html?src=me&ref=general