two movies

A while ago we checked out Julie & Julia, an impulse 'rental' from one of those grocery store dvd kiosks inspired by a brief dry spell in the Netflix pipeline.

I wouldn't call it a good movie, but parts were excellent- the ones about Julia Child.
Merl was fantastic, Stanly Tucci was splendid as ever and they nailed the period perfectly. Great character, great story, fascinating movie.

Unfortunately someone in the pipeline felt the need for modern 'balance', which got us a horribly mis-cast Amy Adams struggling to make us care about a frumpy blogger with a job she hates & a boring, unappealing boyfriend we kept hoping she would dump.
Free advice for Hollywood:
if you need a human stand in for post-9/11 enuii, don't cast Amy Adams. She wears 'glum & frumpy' about as well as Judy Holliday.

I'd recommend it with the caveat that you skip over the contemporary bits, TIVO style.


I added Edward Norton's take on the Hulk to my Netflix a million years ago and forgot all about it until it showed up in the mail.
The best thing about it was the setting of the first reel, a favela in Rio. Great idea, they should have stayed there so the audience would have something interesting to look at.
The main failure was that someone in the production pipeline was SO determined not to fuck things up like Ang Lee they overcorrected. The whole backstory was set up during the credits and reminded me of nothing so much as those (Famous Movie) in 30 Seconds with Bunnies things.
Okay, you probably don't want to drag it out over two hours like Ang, but treating it as a throwaway didn't do them any favors. There was no sense of plight or tragedy, which should drive any decent Hulk project. And aside from Norton himself the casting was execrable. William Hurt as the blood and guts general Thunderbolt Ross? Not even Nietzsche-esque prosthetic eyebrows could save that performance.
Not recommended, even as a low bar hangover rental.