I knew a girl and her name was Julie...

I was on a plane recently (Perceptive readers may be able to guess where from) and so had a bunch of movies to chose from to watch. I ended up watching Julie & Julia or, as it might be titled, Women With Supportive Husbands Learn About Food And Their Feelings. Snark aside, I did enjoy it. The movie follows Julia Child and Julie Powell. One of them is a famous chef who served in the OSS in China during WWII, wrote a groundbreaking cookbook and became, perhaps, the first television cook. The other is a food blogger. So there is a bit of a disparity in terms of interestingness – certainly I did muse during my viewing that it might have been more interesting as a Julia Child biopic rather than cutting back and forth with Ms. Powell.

Still, as a food blogger, it is kinda neat to see a movie about a fellow food blogger. Now, in terms of blogging we are very different: she scorns vegetarians and I think she uses way too much butter and other unhealthy stuff [also, she had lots of readers --ed]. It is interesting what the movie shows about this type of blogging though. Her blog had a schtick, she would make every recipe in Julia Child's cookbook. That means that her blog had a lot more influence on her life than mine does. It's really a tail wagging the dog type thing, where she is always preparing meals to suit her blog. I don't really do that, if I haven't made an interesting bloggable item than I'd do something like, y'know, put up a post about a movie I saw. That said, I have made some meals to have something to blog about when I otherwise would have made something simpler.

The movie also shins a light on the inherent narcissism of blogging. Although, if you think about it, there is an inherent narcissism in writing. At least with food blogging you get, say, a recipe for chickpea soup rather than "Putting my tweets on facebook! #twitter #facebook". Julie becomes more and more obsessed with the blog and her readership that she neglects the real life relationship she has with her husband. I don't really have any comparable incidents, though I do like looking through the site statistics to see where my readers are coming from.

Amy Adams did a good job as Julie Powell and Meryl Streep did an excellent Julia Child. There was a lot of physical comedy just based on Child's height relative to everyone else. The food looked good too, there was an interesting article in The Atlantic by the person who made the food for the movie on her tricks of the trade (though I would be interesting how they did the scene where Julia Child cuts a small mountain of onion). I don't know if it's as entertaining as this (I linked there before, but it's still funny).

Julie & Julia & Food Photography

Mere months after I started food blogging, a movie about food blogging is coming out! Coincidence? Yes. The movie has been over-hyped in the NYT but there have been some interesting articles. In particular, there have been two fascinating articles in The Atlantic by the lead food wrangler (not her actual title) for the movie. There are a lot of stories in food photography about glue-for-milk and the such but all the food in Julie & Julia is real.

It made me think a bit about the food photography I do for this blog. I think the photographs have improved (although the one from the Indian restaurant wasn't great). I've not though it necessary to include the whole plate in the picture which gives it a better look than the miles-of-ugly-tablecloth-and-the-food-in-the-middle look of the early blog (also, I have a better tablecloth). I mean, compare this early pasta picture and this later one. One looks like something you'd want to eat, the other does not. I usually snap a few photos and pick the best one.

I think even the early pictures that I liked could do with some cropping. this was one of my favourite early pictures... but I think I prefer this version: