Both actresses got nominated twice for Golden Globes yesterday. As Reuters points out, Bullock, 45, didn't appear in any movies last year and only one in 2007. But The Blind Side and The Proposal have both been hits. Meanwhile, Streep, 60, is the romantic lead in It's Complicated, a heavily-promoted movie opening Christmas day, after recent lauded turns in movies like Julia & Julia and Doubt. Speaking to Reuters, an industry analyst sees a refutation from the conventional wisdom of women onscreen and in audiences:

"Older women is a category Hollywood has written off, but this proves that nobody knows nothing. No matter all the surveys they take and all the focus groups, someone can come along and have their greatest success at this point in life," said Pete Hammond of awards website www.The Envelope.com

Leslie Bennetts' Vanity Fair cover story on Streep delves even more deeply into the issue:

Many studio executives have been privately convinced that it wasn't worth even a modest budget to make films about women, particularly older ones, and they seem stunned that a series of movies about middle-aged women racked up such enviable grosses. "The problem isn't just the fact that studios forget that movies about or aimed at women have an audience-they honestly don't know how to market them," says Nora Ephron, who wrote and directed Julie & Julia. "What they know how to market are movies aimed at teenage boys. I don't think my movie would have been made without Meryl."

Even those who are unimpressed with what Nancy Meyers has to offer women (or audiences in general) can marvel at the change, at least when it comes to Streep: Fifteen years ago she was considered too old to play Clint Eastwood's romantic interest in The Bridges of Madison County. ("There was a big fight over how I was too old to play the part, even though Clint was nearly 20 years older than me," she tells Bennetts.) Now, in what may or may not be Meyers' frothy fantasy (more on that later today, regarding Meyers' upcoming profile in this weekend's The New York Times magazine) both Steve Martin and Alec Baldwin are chasing her onscreen.

Whether all this is a sea change or just more indication of Streep's exceptional status as Greatest Living Actress (I don't have an explanation for Bullock, but I welcome theories), proving that women will go to see movies if there's something worthwhile for them to see is a good start. And if It's Complicated is the success it's pegged to be, there will be even less of an excuse for Hollywood to pass the buck on women-directed and aimed films, starring a greater range of actresses.

On a side note, the Vanity Fair piece notes approvingly that Streep is un-Botoxed and refuses to get plastic surgery. So why did they have to make her look like she did on the cover? Streep herself, looking over portraits that Brigitte Lacombe took of her over the years, says this one is her favorite, "because they scraped all the crap off my face." Ours too, but guess Vanity Fair thought newsstand buyers would balk if they saw what Streep actually looks like. Change starts at home, guys.

Something About Meryl [Vanity Fair]

Meryl Streep, Sandra Bullock Enjoy New Lease On Career Life [Reuters]

Earlier: Golden Globe Noms: Nods for Precious Actresses, Director Kathryn Bigelow
"Fuck Them": Times Critic On Hollywood, Women, And Why Romantic Comedies Suck

• Lindsay Lohan, finally addressing her disastrously received first Ungaro collection, says, "I am learning." But she will be back in Paris for the next show! "It's already in January. I thought it was in March." January? January means couture.

Could Mounir Moufarrige seriously be reviving Ungaro's couture division — which was shuttered in 2004 — with Lohan at the helm? God help us. Lohan also denies any responsibility for, or foreknowledge of, those ridiculous sparkly heart pasties that the Ungaro models purposefully flashed during the show that just walked in Paris. [People]

• Selena Gomez is launching a fashion line, called Selena Gomez Dream Out Loud. Something called Cynosure Holdings is responsible for the collection, which seems appropriate, somehow. It's not coming out till fall 2010, so if the economy gets worse, there's still time for it the whole idea to slink quietly away, like Pastelle. [WWD]
• Here are some first looks from Rodarte's Target collection, due out on December 20. It includes a lot of leopard print, lace, sequins, and tulle. [Seventeen and A Tiny Machine]
• Carmen Marc Valvo focuses on the positive: "I've survived in this business for over 20 years. And I've survived colon cancer; so a little dip in the world economy isn't enough to keep me down." [Houston Chronicle]
• Badgley Mischka are doing a lower-priced line, called Mark & James. [WWD]
• Ordinary New Yorkers speak out on Filippa Hamilton, the Ralph Lauren face who was fired for being too fat, at size 4: "It makes me angry," says Alexandria Blackwell, 15, of the Bronx. "They always want skinnier." Dr. Robyn Silverman, a child and teen development expert, says, "If a stunning size 4 model is too overweight to look good in their clothes, then they need to change their clothes, not the model." Revolutionary! [NYDN]
• Delia Ephron, on clothes and life: "Clothes have special power. I'll always remember the raspberry colored v-necked silk sweater I was wearing on my husband and my first date. If I hadn't been wearing that sweater that night, would any of it have happened?" Nora says dressing well becomes more important as women age. "Of course it does, because looking good is so easy when you're young. For openers, you're young, and that looks good." [Glamour]
• Linda Evangelista, on doing a shoot for W with chickens: "I grew up in Canada, in an area where everyone had chickens. I mean, we weren't supposed to have chickens — it was a residential area, but we did. Also, when I went back to Italy with my parents where they grew up, there were chickens. So you can say I know a lot about chickens." [W]
• Marie Claire editor Joanna Coles' limited vocabulary drew the attention of Fashion Week Daily, which provided a handy summary of Coles' questions for Hilary Swank, with every repetition of the word "assume" highlighted. [FWD]
• Crocs is opening a flagship store in Boulder, Colorado. [UPI]
• Someone, somewhere, "officially" named Ines de la Fressange the most chic woman in Paris. Carla Bruni, eat your heart out! [Telegraph]
• "I'm excited to go to Olympics in Vancouver," says former figure skater Vera Wang. "I'm definitely going. I always try to go anytime the Olympics come close to our continent!" She still thinks about her former sport. "Skating became a different sport with the magnification of television. And certainly a few exciting things happened in between, like knee clubbing and scandals to raise the sport's profile. But in the end, it's one of the most beautiful spectator sports that you can watch. It's not just about being insanely athletic; it's all being expressive and artistic. There's no other sport that combines spinning, jumping, choreography, costumes, music all in one- it's a full on press." [FWD]
• When she moved on to being an editor at Vogue, Wang had a few hairy moments. "There was a time where I put all of the furs on a Vogue shoot with Deborah Turbeville into the water, and the entire fur industry wanted to sue me," the designer recalled. "Another time we ruined a Frank Stella painting…we were shooting at night and I remember watching a model jumping up and down in front of a work of art that fell apart. It's hard to put a number on it, but that work of art was worth a quarter of a million 35 years ago. That's probably $3 billion now." [WWD]
• Vera Wang popped in to Karolina Kurkova's baby shower, which was also attended by Adriana Lima, Michelle Monaghan, Rachel Roy. Lima, who is also pregnant, compared bellies with Kurkova. [P6]
• Heidi Klum says she's not going to try and lose the baby weight just to be in this year's Victoria's Secret show. [People]
• Jason Wu is greeting his adoring public in Taiwan this week. [WWD]
• Zac Posen is dipping his toe in the churning waters of advertising. Coco Rocha stars and Ellen von Unwerth shot. [Fashionista]
• "Being fierce is a state of being, not something you can become. It's a high point of being a certain persona. Ferosh is a downgraded version of being fierce." — Leading ferocity expert Christian Siriano. [Star-Trib]
• The Gap is bringing back television advertising, after two years without. The chain will also open a flagship in China next year, but overall the company plans to reduce its retail space by 10% over the next five years. Its September same-store sales were down a relatively modest 1%. [TS]
• H&M's same-store sales slid 8% in September. [WSJ]

Here are some highlights from this year's report:

• The lead article, "Females Make Inroads Into Conducting," is actually rather depressing. Few women have ever conducted orchestras in the U.S. or abroad. Though a handful of female conductors have been making headway since the '70s, no female conductor has ever been named artistic director of one of the top-tier American orchestras, and less than 12% of orchestras of any size are headed by women in the U.S. In March, Chinese-born conductor Xian Zhang was named musical director of Milan's Giuseppe Verdi Orchestra, becoming Italy's first high-profile female conductor, and in the U.S. women have recently been named artistic director at three smaller regional ensembles: the Reno Philarmonic, the Berkeley Symphony, and the Flagstaff Symphony. "There's still a lot of sexism in this field, though it seems to be changing, albeit slowly," says Atlanta Symphony Orchestra music director Robert Spano. "Apparently, we can have female prime ministers abroad and female secretaries of State, but not female music directors. It's been quite discouraging."
  
  
• It seems Mad Men's January Jones has taken Tracy Jordan's advice to "live every week like it's Shark Week" to heart. She was honored for her work as Oceana's celebrity spokesperson for decimated shark populations. She grew up in landlocked South Dakota and was fascinated by the ocean. "I had shark book and every documentary I could get my hands on. I think they're incredibly beautiful and prehistoric," she says, "Without sharks, there is no ocean life." Jones is filming PSAs for the group and later this month she'll head to D.C. to fight for a bill that would stop finning, the process of removing a shark's fin for food then letting it die a slow death in the ocean. "You already can't bring sharks without fins intact into the Atlantic coast. This (law) would expand to the Pacific, effectively stopping finning in American waters," she says.
  
  
• Maria Bello, who has starred in A History of Violence and ER was honored for her work with the Save Darful Coalition. "In 2003, when the genocide started happening, I thought it was my duty and my right and my privilege as a human being, as a woman living in a democracy, and as a public figure to speak out and use my voice to talk about the injustice," she says, "I found out through being a part of Save Darfur that it is the women and mothers who are transforming and changing the face of the peace process in Darfur and in other countries. We're working on creating a council of women from D.C. and the media and business — real women leaders who can work to promote issues of social justice and be involved from the ground level up."
  
  
• Sigourney Weaver was recognized for her work with The Flea Theater in New York City, an Off Off Broadway theater that produces noncommercial work in a professional atmosphere, and gives young thespians the opportunity to work with established artists in various workshops and productions. "I went to arguably one of the better drama schools in the country (Yale) in the 1970s, and I came out of that school not really knowing very much," Weaver says. "I found that working in Off Off Broadway shows was a real artistic home. I learned on my feet working with new plays and writers; that's where my true training really began."
  
  
• It seemed a little odd that Tina Fey was left off last year's list, but now it seems it was for the best. Did Variety predict that Fey hadn't reached her peak yet, even before the world became aware of a certain Alaska governor? Since Fey's responses to the standard set of questions Variety asks all the women in the report are culled from previous interviews, we'll assume she's been so bombarded with accolades this year that she didn't even bother to respond. The same goes for Kate Winslet, who is recognized for finally winning an Oscar this year. Variety reports that her "career mantra" is "There's more to life than cheeckbones," which is actually just something she told Rolling Stone... in 1998.
  
  
• Alice Ripley won a Tony this year for her performance as Diana, a bipolar wife and mother who undergoes drug and shock therapy in Next to Normal. She says, "The role takes a woman onstage in a musical to a place she has never been, and takes the audience as well." Variety asks about her "philanthropic passion" and she makes a rare admission for an actress: "I don't honestly have the time or energy to support anybody else's cause but my own, which is self-expression. So I guess if I had a cause it would be education."
  
  
• Southland executive producer Ann Biderman says, "I'm just writing about people that I care about... I don't believe in those restrictions that say men are interested in copshows and women are interested in romantic comedies. In [Southland] there's this huge struggle between chaos and control. Those life-and-death stakes will always be intriguing."
  
  
• Many people were shocked that The Hurt Locker, a film about the war in Iraq, was directed by Kathryn Bigelow... a woman. "Of course I find gender typecasting more than a little old-fashioned and dated, but it doesn't bother me," she says. "Honestly, more than anything, I'm happy if people like the film. I've been around long enough to know it doesn't always go that way."
  
  
• Jane Campion, whose latest film Bright Star is about the romance of Fanny Brawne and John Keats says, "I was familiar with Keats, as many people are, as someone from long ago, dusty history, school... You don't really understand it, you don't know much about it. And I was really shocked reading Andrew Motion's Keats biography a few years ago when it came to the love story, because I found it completely compelling — mostly because of the letters from Keats to Fanny. I felt terribly touched with the tragedy and the beauty of that first love; there was something so tender about it for me. That's something I like in this world, tenderness. Something I wanted to share."
  
  
• Twilight director Catherine Hardwicke says she refused to do the sequel New Moon even after the film had the biggest opening weekend for a film by a female director ever. She explains that she's always turned down sequels but, "when Twilight made all this money my agent said, 'Maybe they'll really let you do what you want and give you more time.' I knew Chris Nolan had three years between 'Batman' movies, Jon Favreau had two years between 'Iron Man' movies." However, "Since the kids are not supposed to age they wanted to release the new movie a year to the date of the first. So I would have had less prep time than I had on the first one."
  
  
• Nora Ephron says despite her many successful films including this summer's Julie and Julia she still doubts herself sometimes. "I'd always wanted to have the career of someone like Woody Allen," she says, "but I don't know how he does it. I could never produce multiple films a year every year. Even if they paid me huge amounts of money and let me use all the unfinished scraps I have in my closet."
  
  
• CNN's chief international correspondent Christiane Amanpour will begin hosting her own Sunday news show on the network this month called, Amanpour. "We'll tackle the big issues of our time in terms that are relevant and understandable," she says, adding, "I'm apprehensive, of course... It's completely different for me."
  
  
• When asked about her "leisure pursuits" Rachel Maddow says: "I drink. I'm a hobbyist bartender. I make pre-Prohibition, classic American cocktails."
  
  
• "I think 'nice' is a very effective way to do business and always pays off in the long run," says Andrea Wong, Lifetime's president and CEO. Apparently Wong wasn't following this rule when she poached Project Runway from Bravo, but she explains she wanted the show because it's "the perfect fit for where I wanted to take this network." JoAnn Alfano, the network's executive VP of entertainment says, "Everyone knew the Lifetime name, but we had become so synonymous with victim movies that if a woman was experiencing a bad situation, people would say, 'You sound like a Lifetime movie.' Look, it's a marathon, not a sprint. Changing that perception will take time."
  
  
• In addition to making Joan Holloway and Betty Draper look fabulous on TV, Mad Men costume designer Janie Bryant's work is so popular that "Mad Men style" has crossed over into real life. We've noticed the show's huge influence on women's clothing, but didn't realize it's having an even bigger effect on men's fashion, which usually changes very slowly. Arthur Wayne, director of communications for Brooks Brothers, says menswear is "more evolutionary than revolutionary, but for the last two years we have seen a real shift in men wearing slimmer suits. I think what Janie has done for the show plays right into that." Brooks Brothers made some of the suits worn on screen in season three and Bryant designed a "Mad Men edition" suit for the store. It comes out later this fall and is expected to be a big hit with both men, and women forcing their significant other to dress like Don Draper.

Women's Impact Report '09 [Variety]

Earlier: Variety Honors, Offends Women In Entertainment

• Oprah's been gushing about meeting Shawn Carter:

"Jay-Z is my new best friend!" Oprah told Gayle King. "He was so charming and delightful - and he smelled so good." [People]

• If I'm reading this story correctly, Lily Allen's "brickie boyfriend" ran away down the street to avoid being snapped by the paparazzi and she was left holding some Indian food and a pair of pants. [The Sun]
• The latest on Jon and Kate Gosselin is that he's still trying to appear on that show Divorced Dad's Club; which does not make TLC happy. And they're not happy about his conduct lately; apparently his contract has a "morals clause" that does not include being seen going in and out of bars and drinking. Kate's been "pulling up the slack" Jon's created. Plus! All the money made last season from Jon & Kate Plus 8 went into a joint account. Kate put some into a college fund for the kids; Jon spent his share. "Kate's people say Jon is making money
  on the side by selling pictures and stories of him and the kids to the tabloids." [TMZ]
• "When pictures emerged of Kate Moss looking haggard as she sunbathed in St Tropez, nobody was more shocked than the supermodel herself… now she has planned a '10 years younger' health plan to regain her youthful complexion." [Daily Mail]
• Survivor winner Richard Hatch was sent to jail after doing an interview for the Today show, even though the interview was cleared by the Bureau of Prisons. (Hatch had been on house arrest.) [AP]
• Naomi Campbell, Queen Rania, and Jacques Chirac are in Saint-Tropez, and you are not. [Page Six]
• Pregnant Penelope Cruz: Avoiding the spotlight. [Page Six]
• Mariah Carey's album has been pushed back to September 29, which means that she'll miss the Grammy cutoff date by just one day and won't be in the running. She also won't hit shelves the same day as Whitney Houston's new album, which comes out September 1.
• You know how Dr. Conrad Murray has released a video statement? Columnist Courtney Hazlett points out that Michael Jackson really pioneered the scripted, recorded statement. [MSNBC Scoop]
• "Michael Jackson 'self-harmed' to get painkillers"… "He'd bang his head against the wall, hit his fists and arms against furniture, anything to cause a cut or bruise." [Mirror]
• Michael Jackson's funeral could cost $50,000 when you add in police and pther city services. [TMZ]
• Cue screams: Joe Jonas will be one of the celebrity judges on American Idol. Victoria Beckham, Mary J. Blige and Shania Twain will also appear in the spot vacated by Paula Abdul. [People]
• Yesterday, a judge ruled that Paris Hilton won't have to pay investors from failed flick Pledge This, who were claiming she didn't promote the movie enough. [Page Six]
• "Russell Brand shows off sex moves." [UKPA, Twitter]
• Ask Katy Perry a question her manager doesn't like, and he will pull the plug on your interview. Literally. Like, the lights will go out. Despite this, Katy was "delightful." [News.com.au]
• Inglourious Basterds prequel? "If the movie proves to be very popular, then we'll do it," says Quentin Tarantino. [Gatecrasher]
• Kim Kardashian and Reggie Bush went to dinner together on Monday — strolling into a Ruth's Chris Steak House in New Orleans. Back together? Just friends? [People]
• "Kourtney Kardashian Agonized Over Whether to Keep Her Baby." [People
• Susan Sarandon's daughter Eva Amurri took pole-dancing lessons to appear as a stripper in the third season of Californication. "I have such a respect now for women who do this. It's very athletic, I mean, they're athletes!" she says. And her mom came to a few classes: "We didn't, like, do it together, although I'm sure that's a nice visual for people." Of appearing naked on TV, Amurri says: "You basically see boobs and butt. It's the same as you would see on a European beach. It's nothing scandalous… Men are naked as much as the women are on that show, which I really like. If you're going to be naked, at least it's equal-opportunity nudity." [Observer]
• Bruce Willis and wife Emma Heming took a tour of L.A.'s "megapricey" Carlyle Residences, where apartments start at $2.9 million and penthouses go for as much as $15 million. [E!]
• A Leona Lewis track leaked on to the Internet, and Simon Cowell, quite naturally, called the cops: Looks like her record label was being targeted by hackers. [The Sun]
• Jon Hamm has joined the cast of Sucker Punch, an action fantasy flick with Vanessa Hudgens, Abbie Cornish and Carla Gugino, among others. It's set in the 1950s and directed by 300's Zack Snyder. [The Hollywood Reporter]
• American Idol's David Cook, 26, has an "older woman" in his life: She's 35. [Page Six]
• Liam and Noel Gallagher no longer speak to each other. "He doesn't like me and I don't like him, that's it," Liam says. Nevertheless! Oasis will headline the V festival this weekend. [Independent]
• "Mindy McCready Wouldn't Leave My Daughter's House Says Kari Ann's Mom." [Radar Online]
• Rhea Perlman and her daughter, Lucy DeVito, will appear in Love, Loss And What I Wore, an Off-Broadway production produced by Nora and Delia Ephron. [Variety]
• The surviving members the iconic British comedy troupe Monty Python will be presented with a special BAFTA honor this fall. [UPI]
• "I'm a fan of the traditional Speedo. I think it's time to bring back the ass cleavage." — Vivica. A. Fox. [WWD]
• "This is the first time someone gave me a part where I'm strong, where I'm the engine, the motor of the scene. Many times actresses are an accessory to a story line. To be handed intelligent dialogue was nice. It was a very new experience for me." — Diane Kruger, on Inglourious Basterds. [Reuters]
• "I love the way my mother wore clothes. She used to cut her own hair and wore very little make up and she just did things differently. She used to wear odd, different-colour argyle socks but then she also wore beautiful British tailored suits and little tea dresses with platform shoes. That's sort of how people dress now so she was very modern and ahead of her time in many ways. She really didn't give a damn about what people thought and back then it was all about conforming. It really wasn't the done thing to reflect your own personality through your clothes. She was also an amazing photographer. Much of her work launched Rolling Stone magazine and at the same time she was very modest. If she had met the Queen she would probably have been more interested in talking to the butler. That's just the way she was." — Stella McCartney on late mother Linda, to Harper's Bazaar. [Daily Express]
• "It's awesome and has great margaritas and tacos... How fun is that? I just go and sit on a bar stool and it's fun, like, 'Oh, I'm hangin' here at my place.'" — Renee Zellweger, on the East Hampton taco bar, Blue Parrot, she co-owns. [Daily Express]
• "I'd be out there, and it would be scorching hot, so I would take off all of my clothes and garden. And then I would jump in the pool and swim — and I always get in the pool naked. I used to spend a lot of time with Woody Harrelson, and he's not afraid to get naked." — Alicia Silverstone on gardening naked. [Page Six]
• "[Our relationship] was amazing… [But] Jon said he couldn't be seen having a girlfriend, so he told me to drive to a neighbor's house after midnight, when the kids were asleep. He said he'd pick me up in his four-wheeler, take me to his house and drop me off again at 6 a.m." — Kate Major on seeing Jon Gosselin, with whom she claims she had three sexual encounters. More in Midweek Madness. [Gatecrasher via Life & Style]
• "HIV/Aids is a huge pandemic that to be fair, to be honest, governments have not responded to effectively enough. Churches can do a tremendous amount, and I know they do, but then again they can do tremendous harm, because when the Pope goes to a country in Africa and tells them that they shouldn't be using condoms when we know that HIV is a sexually transmitted disease, I don't think that makes any sense at all. I'm comfortably wealthy, white, educated — I'm one of the lucky ones. I have had good healthcare and my children have good healthcare. I want that for everybody, I want people to have fundamental access to the most basic things. Everybody can do something, I really believe that, that each of us have a sphere of influence, whether it be your friends, your family or workplace, or colleagues." — Annie Lennox, at the Festival of Politics at the Scottish Parliament in Edinburgh. [BBC News]

First, the numbers: While G.I. Joe made $56.2 million, according to Time, it cost $175 million to produce and more than $100 million to market worldwide. Will the studio recoup those costs?

On the other hand, Julie & Julia cost $38 million to make. And Time's Richard Corliss notes that the Julia Child-oriented movie got loads of free publicity: "Nora Ephron, the movie's writer-director, was the subject of 15 New York Times articles in the past month."

Next, Women & Hollywood's Melissa Silverstein offers some other numbers for perspective:

Nora Ephron's Sleepless in Seattle opened in 1993 on over 1700 screens to a approx $17 million gross. It earned $126 million domestically. You've Got Mail opened in 1998 on over 2600 screens and earned a little over $18 million. Film went on to earn $115 million domestically.
And from Meryl Streep. The Devil Wears Prada opened in 2006 on 2,847 screens and grossed $27 million. The total domestic gross was $124 million. This film made more overseas with a total box office cum of $326 million. Mamma Mia opened on over 2900 screens and grossed approx $27 million on opening weekend. The domestic gross topped out at $144 million and the worldwide total is an astounding $600 million.

These women make hits.

But even more noteworthy is the fact that the true star of Julie & Julia is not a slinky young ingenue (coughMeganFoxcough) but 60-year-old Meryl Streep. Corliss writes: "With The Devil Wears Prada and Mamma Mia! both earning well over $100 million domestic, and her new picture on its way to hit status, she is arguably the movie's top female star. And she's 60. That's never happened in Hollywood history." (Yet who's on Vogue's August issue? G.I. Joe's Sienna Miller.)

Lastly, and maybe most important: Julie & Julia is a movie about two women whose romantic lives are secondary in the plot. While other comedies focus on beaus and babies, the movie manages to acknowledge that women have other hopes, dreams, desires and things to talk about. Which is, of course, something to savor.

Box Office Weekend: G.I. Just-OK, Julia Delicious [Time]
Julie & Julia By The Numbers [Women & Hollywood]

[Image via Sony Pictures]

The film, which comes out today, was written and directed by Nora Ephron and cuts between scenes based on Julia Child's memoir My Life in France and Julie Powell's 2005 book Julie and Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen. Both Julie and Julia are happily married, but not sure what they want to do with their lives. The film depicts Julia's life in France in the late '40s and '50s, as she enrolls in Le Cordon Bleu, discovers her passion for cooking and publishes the seminal cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking. About 50 years in the future, Julie Powell lives in an apartment in Queens and works in a government job she hates, tending to the families of victims of the World Trade Center attacks. In 2002 she decides to cook her way through every recipe in Mastering the Art of French Cooking and writes about it in a blog originally published on Salon.com.

Julie & Julia is a rarity: A movie about the mentoring relationship between two women that doesn't focus on them trying to find a man. Both Julia's husband Paul Childs (Stanley Tucci) and Julie's husband Eric Powell (Chris Messina) are supportive of their wives' pursuits. Paul Childs accepts his wife's need to find her calling at a time when that was not considered a necessity for women. Eric Powell has to learn to take his wife's cooking seriously when many people consider cooking oppressive housework rather than a liberating activity. As one critic notes, the film makes "deboning a duck a feminist act."

Every review said the scenes featuring Julia Child were far better, as a modern day woman cooking in her apartment and blogging can't really compete with the iconic cook, her odd but passionate marriage, and the romance of post-war Paris. While critics said Amy Adams performance was good, they found her character Julie Powell hopelessly whiney and narcissistic. Or, as the Wall Street Journal review put it, her scenes were "dollops of margarine that barely hint at butter." (As noted on the blog Humor Slays Me, the reviews were teeming — or maybe boiling over — with bad food puns.) Many thought the film would have been better as just a Julia Child biopic, and one reviewer even suggested someone should make a bootleg edit excising all the Julie scenes. Below, we check out the reviews for Julie & Julia.

Salon

Streep isn't playing Julia Child here, but something both more elusive and more truthful — she's playing our ideaof Julia Child. When Streep's Julia nearly loses that omelette on TV, she pooh-poohs the possible dangers of dropping food on the floor: "You're alone in the kitchen. Whoooooooo's to see?" The line, and the way Streep draws it out, is just one measure of the intimacy of this performance. We're not observers here, but conspirators: We know exactly where the food has been, and we're not telling.

New York Magazine

That's the case with Meryl Streep as the middle-aged Julia Child in the comedy Julie & Julia: What begins as a great impersonation becomes a marvel of sympathetic imagination. The performance is transcendental. Streep's voice is deeply musical, starting in the chest and erupting into that burbling falsetto with its trills and diphthongs. The voice is Streep's way into Child's pleasure centers, and the body-stiff-shouldered, sloshing around like an ocean liner-follows along in a kind of daffy interpretive dance. Streep isn't tall, but she's photographed carefully and projects height; she understands that the six-foot-two Child learned not to be ashamed of her size but to go with it. Her Julia is a force. At one point, she falls into bed with her husband, Paul (Stanley Tucci), and one's instinctive response-"Julia Child having sex … Ewww …"-gives way to, "Julia Child having sex … Awesome!" Anything to hear that voice in full, happy throttle!

But when Ephron cuts between Paris in the fifties and Queens in 2002 to show Julia and Julie as they both achieve autonomy through cooking, The Godfather Part II this ain't-the connection is strained. (The Child material is based on her memoir My Life in France, written with her nephew, Alex Prud'Homme.) Julie's character doesn't even track. She's referred to as a "bitch," but all we've seen is the patented Ephron adorable klutz. (Adams is too good to waste on Meg Ryan parts.) Ephron should make a film about the person she herself is (smart, acid) instead of the cutie-pixie of her dumb fantasies.

Associated Press

The Julia parts in Julie & Julia are a delight. The ones about Julie? More like an annoying distraction.,,,Julie, by contrast, isn't so well-defined; it isn't so easy to connect with her. The deeper she delves into her cooking project and the more she withdraws from her enormously supportive husband (Chris Messina), the more whiny, narcissistic and unlikable she becomes - which is surprising given Adams' seemingly boundless charm. Working her way through Julia's groundbreaking tome (co-written by Louisette Bertholle and Simone Beck) feels more like a tedious chore or a source of wacky slapstick than a proud accomplishment, as Ephron focuses on Julie's culinary screw-ups. Despite the clever idea of juxtaposing both women's lives, this really should have been a biopic of Julia Child, if only to hear Streep say more things like "beurre blanc" in that distinctive, high-pitched voice. Now that would have been a meal worth sinking your teeth into.

Hollywood Reporter

Powell's story about her single-minded engagement with Child's cookbook has an almost unpleasant taste of self-absorption. And by sharing that story with Child's, Ephron throws the wrong emphasis on Child's delightful memoir of the early years in her ideal marriage to Paul Child. True, the movie shows that Paul — played with modest self-effacement by Stanley Tucci against Streep's larger-than-life Julia — encourages his beloved wife's every experiment in the kitchen and the writing of her seminal book. But by contrasting that memoir with Powell's, the movie somewhat distorts the life the Childs share as they revel in their love for la belle France and each other....Adams' Julie is more of a lost soul. She lives with a "saint," as she often calls her husband, Eric (Chris Messina), in an iffy apartment above a pizza parlor. She works in a federal government office overlooking the World Trade Center crater and laments that she has never finished anything in her life. Thus her determination to complete the cookbook marathon. She suffers for her blog. She drags herself to that cramped kitchen whether sick or well. She refuses to quit because it has become her identity. Without the "Julie/Julia Project," she'd revert to a frustrated wife with a dead-end job and another unfinished project. No joie de vivre here.

The San Francisco Chronicle

The movie just assumes that Powell is a sympathetic figure. Then it goes about justifying the juxtaposition of the two women by finding shallow parallels between them. In fact, their differences in moral stature and achievement are staggering: Julia Child passionately applies herself in an effort to do something worthwhile and finally achieves a foothold in success after 13 years of hard work and setbacks. Meanwhile, Julie, piggybacking on the efforts of a great woman, tries to get famous by writing a blog - and succeeds inside a year. On the way to her book and movie deals, she whines, throws tantrums and puts her poor husband (Chris Messina) through utter hell.

The Village Voice

The tome is an absolutely delightful read in which Powell uses Child and, in particular, Child's 1961 cookbook Mastering the Art of French Cooking, to discover "what it takes to find your way in the world," as she wrote. Yet all Ephron saw in that tale was just another dreary romantic comedy about a woman, played by a slow-simmering Amy Adams, who hates her job (tending to the families of people killed in the World Trade Center attacks-Powell's office was perched over the gaping wound), hates her friends (climbers as self-obsessed as she), hates her apartment (in Queens, over a pizzeria), and escapes into cooking and writing about cooking till she leaves behind her supportive husband, Eric, played by Chris Messina, but only briefly, whew. The book, originally shopped as a stand-alone project, could have made for a scrappy, scrumptious indie-all the outer-borough funk and main-course "fucks" of the book left intact, Bridget Jones doused in Béarnaise sauce and vodka gimlets. But Ephron has excised the heart (and gizzard and liver and so on) from Powell's tale. How could the writer-director not see that she had rigged this patently unfair game of Compare and Contrast?... Perhaps someone will do forJulie & Juliawhat one enterprising Star Warsfan did for Episode I: The Phantom Menace, when he released a bootleg shorn of that annoyance named Jar-Jar Binks and titled it The Phantom Edit. Surely there's room enough in this world for two Meryl Streep movies named Julia.

The Wall Street Journal

The remarkable thing about the Julia segments, given Ms. Streep's daring flirtations with caricature, is how full and affecting they prove to be. Yes, Julia's windmill arms are outlandish; so is her awkward, stentorian French and her religious belief in the miracle of butter. Yet she's an endearing figure, a woman who digests the life around her with enormous gusto while she's breaking the gender barrier at a Cordon Bleu cooking class or, much later, after fame has struck, digests with incredulity her husband's advice that she ought to be on TV. Mr. Tucci's Paul plays a subordinate role in the story, but his dry wit and calm love are perfect counterpoints to the intensity of Julia's enthusiasms.

Entertainment Weekly

Amy Adams nails the obsessiveness of Julie's devotion to her muse, Julia. She also captures the tactile pleasures, and challenges, of cooking (how in God's name does one bone a duck?). And Ephron gives us nothing less than the first full-scale Hollywood portrait of the life of a blogger, in all its creative fire and solitary, caffeinated, how many comments did I get?midnight narcissism. Yet the movie wants to make Julie an edgy ''bitch'' and soften her at the same time, which doesn't exactly jell.

The Los Angeles Times

Though both women have loyal and encouraging husbands (played by fine actors Stanley Tucci and Chris Messina) who are crucial to their success, this is the rare Hollywood film where it's the men who are the support team, not the women. Julie & Julia is very much a female coming to power story, which is one of several reasons why the producers were fortunate to get Ephron to write and direct.

Though a bit overshadowed by Streep (who isn't?), the gifted Adams is essential in making this two-part story work. Playing a character that is more ordinary than the actress' past efforts (think the princess in Enchanted) but still a tad eccentric, Adams turns Julie into someone we always care about no matter what shenanigans she is going through.

The New York Times

Julie & Julia proceeds with such ease and charm that its audacity - a no-nonsense, plucky self-confidence embodied by the indomitable Julia herself - is easy to miss. Most strikingly, this is a Hollywood movie about women that is not about the desperate pursuit of men. Marriage is certainly the context both of Julia's story and of Julie's (about whom more in a moment), but it is not the point. The point, to invoke the title of a book whose author has an amusing cameo here (played by Frances Sternhagen), is the joy of cooking.

The conceit of parallel lives is undone by the movie's condescending treatment of Julie and also by its ardent embrace of the past at the expense of the present. From the very start, Paris in the late '40s and early '50s is - well, it's postwar Paris, a dream world of fabulous clothes, architecture, sex, food, cigarettes and political intrigue. And New York in 2002 is made, a little unfairly, to seem drab and soulless by comparison. Queens, demographically the most cosmopolitan of the five boroughs and something of a foodie mecca, is treated with easy Manhattanite disdain, as a punch line and punching bag. The unevenness of Julie and Julia is nobody's fault, really. It arises from an inherent flaw in the film's premise. Julie is an insecure, enterprising young woman who found a gimmick and scored a book contract. Julia is a figure of such imposing cultural stature that her pots and pans are displayed at the Smithsonian. The fact that Ms. Ephron, like Julie herself, is well aware of this gap does not prevent the film from falling into it. All the filmmaker's artful whisking can't quite achieve the light, fluffy emulsion she is trying for.

The Boston Globe

People who knew or worshiped Child will question some of the movie's details. Did she and Paul, for instance, really have this much sex? Was he this romantic? ("Where's my big sprig?'' Paul says to his wife.) But that misses the larger point of these scenes. When in an American movie do regular people have that much sex? Plus - and this is important - Stanley Tucci is very sexy.

A few people have worried that Adams's half of the movie isn't as lively or as brightly lit as Streep's (it isn't) - or that Adams isn't Streep. But it isn't that the Adams half suffers from Adams not being Streep. It's that Julie suffers (as all American cooks do) from not being Julia. And this is why the Powell parts of the film work. It's Ephron's way of coming to terms with a real consequence of post-feminism. Powell is a woman in a job she hates who finds a source of liberation doing something certain liberated women still see as oppressive housework. She turns to Child's book partly as therapy, partly as anthropology. Cooking used to be about cooking, but in so many ways it's became about politics, and the politics loosely start to take their toll on Powell's marriage. Powell's loving husband, having been trained to accept her as a professional equal, now has to learn to take his wife's kitchen work seriously. Paul Child is just as fully evolved, but free of any angst over his wife's success. He's rooting for her.

Slate

Because the movie turns on plot points no bigger than "Will my book be published?" and "Is the boeuf bourguignon overdone?," Julie & Juliamay be dismissed as insubstantial fluff, a ditzy "women's picture." And it's true that Nora Ephron doesn't rank among our nation's deepest thinkers, though she shows a surer directorial hand here than she has before. Still, the relationship at the heart of this movie-between a female mentor and pupil who never meet but who share a common passion and a drive to reinvent themselves-is one you don't often see depicted in the movies. Julie & Julia makes deboning a duck a feminist act and cooking a great meal a creative triumph.

The Worst Julie & Julia Puns [Humor Slays Me]

• Rihanna will appear on the September 14 launch of The Jay Leno Show — her first performance since being assaulted by Chris Brown in February. But she won't be alone:

She's performing "Run This Town" with Jay-Z and Kanye West, which is a track from Jay-Z's new album. [People]

• Matthew Broderick: "I am truly shocked and saddened by the news about my old friend John Hughes. He was a wonderful, very talented guy and my heart goes out to his family." [E!]
• Molly Ringwald: "I was stunned and incredibly sad to hear about the death of John Hughes. He was and will always be such an important part of my life. He will be missed — by me and by everyone that he has touched. My heart and all my thoughts are with his family now." [ET, People]
• Jon Cryer, aka Duckie from Pretty In Pink, on the death of John Hughes: "This is a horrible tragedy. He was an amazing man to work for and with. He respected young actors in a way that made you realize you had to step up your game because you were playing in the big leagues now. That's why he got such great performances out of his actors. My heart goes out to his wife Nancy and their children." [ET]
• Old habits die hard: Amy Winehouse "is still clearly emotional, and seems to suck her thumb when times are bad." Yes, there are pictures. [Daily Mail]
• Paula Abdul may make a deal with American Idol — if they give her what she wants, which is $10 million a year. [TMZ]
• Meanwhile, Paula says: "At this point, there are so many wonderful things that are being offered to me. And I got to take a deep breath, sleep a little ... and go through everything." [AP]
• Um, Constantine Maroulis got his ass kicked trying to defend Paula Abdul's honor or something. [Gatecrasher]
• Blech: Heidi Montag is oompa-loompa orange on her Playboy cover, and covered in dirt. [Perez]
• Hotter than Heidi is 51-year-old Sharon Stone, topless in Paris Match. In the immortal words of Cassie: Stop acting like you haven't seen a titty before. [TheLifeFiles]
• "Jon Gosselin's guide to being a lothario: manipulation and neediness." LOL. A psychotherapist says: "He's picking up a lot of women who are trying to rescue him… Jon's not the faithful type. Men like him are very good at connecting with women, and the woman starts to feel as if he is there for her. But he's just there to boost his own ego." [NY Daily News]
• Despite what was reported in the Post yesterday, Kristin Davis denies that she cut ties as a goodwill ambassador for the human rights group Oxfam. [NY Daily News]
• Paris Hilton and Doug Reinhardt are back together, and were seen on an Air Pacific Flight to Red Bull Island. Yes, Red Bull Island. Not a joke. Can't wait to see them do this again. [Page Six]
• If you have tickets for Madonna's concert in Ljubljana, Slovenia, you are one of a select few: The show's been canceled, and poor ticket sales are reportedly the reason. Although her peeps say "unforeseen logistical difficulties" are the reason. [Reuters]
• From a profile on Charlene Yi: "Ms. Yi walked the short red carpet in wet brown suede shoes and a red cardigan sweater. After posing for pictures, she picked up the olive-drab Army backpack she had left with a publicist after posing for pictures. Ms. Yi told reporters that she had never dated Michael Cera. 'Gossipers!' she yelped. 'You are all gossipers!' Well, why did she pick him to play her onscreen boyfriend in the first place? 'Martin Lawrence passed,' she quipped. Touché!" [Observer]
• Charlene Yi says of Michael Cera: "We were never together. If we were, I'd like to know when that was. And thank God, because it would be devastating to promote this film if I was heartbroken." [The Daily Beast]
• Bethenny Frankel is trying to get pregnant. [Page Six]
• Leonardo DiCaprio: Spotted hanging out with Sports Illustrated swimsuit model, Anne Vyalitsyna. [Page Six]
• Ashton Kutcher and Demi Moore were flying to New York when their plane had to make an emergency landing in Las Vegas after the engine overheated. No one was injured, and both actors Tweeted about their experience, because if you don't put it on Twitter, it never happened, right? [People]
• Jermaine Jackson is "cashing in" on Michael Jackson's death by releasing a recording of "Smile," the song he performed at the memorial. Plus, he's working on a series of tribute concerts. [MSNBC Scoop]
• Jermaine says: "In his death, I have found a mission for my life. My existence is now dedicated to spreading Michael's message." [Mirror]
• "Michael Jackson was scheduled to undergo a second physical by an insurance company doctor at the time of his death." [LA Times]
• David Letterman has beat Conan O'Brien in ratings for the fourth week in a row. i'll admit it: I'm on team Dave. [NY Daily News]
• Nora Ephron writes "In Defense of Ryan O'Neal": "Ryan O'Neal had not seen his daughter Tatum in years. He thought she was a Swedish person. I completely understand. The truth is that had I been gay, I might have accidentally made a pass at my own sister in a mall in Las Vegas. So who's to judge? Not me." [HuffPo]
• Queen Latifah and five ladyfriends hit a lesbian party in NYC on Wednesday, and this is news. [Page Six]
• The woman suing Morgan Freeman for flipping her car will have her day in court next year. [USA Today]
• This report claims that Patrick Swayze's fuller face and full head of hair prove that his battle with cancer is going well, even though he is still smoking. [NY Daily News]
• Congrats to SNL's Bill Hader, who will be a dad; his wife is pregnant. [People]
• Aerosmith concerts are postponed while Steven Tyler recovers from falling off of the stage. [USA Today]
• "I had to turn him down. I really hated the idea of Channing Tatum. I told di Bonaventura that this is not the guy to play one of the most feared killers of the 20th Century. I think Mickey Rourke would really be good. He's got that sense of danger, and there's a similarity between the two. But it's not Channing Tatum." — Phil Carlo, who wrote The Ice Man: Confessions of a Mafia Contract Killer. [Page Six]
• "To me, the idea of being an actor and being stuck in Los Angeles — a city that's totally based on one job — is so uninspiring. New York completely fulfills every need I have on a daily basis. I'm madly in love with this city." — Josh Lucas. [Page Six]
• "Resident Evil started out as this fun project. I went in for it as a joke. 'Sure, I'll go make an action movie,' I thought, 'This'll be cool, because my brother loves the video game so much.' It's turned into a steady job. See? [making a fist] The knuckles? They're all cut up. They used to be really soft, but they can't use them any more [in L'Oreal ads]. They use someone else's." — Milla Jovovich. [Guardian]
• "My mom [Bebe Buell] and gran were models and took such good care of their skin I couldn't help but learn. My dad is also full of great beauty advice, like wear your perfume in your belly button and on the soles of your feet so it becomes part of you." — Liv Tyler, to Elle. [Daily Express]
• "I'm always shocked that there's an interesting, full-fledged, ambitiously wrought role for somebody like me, that somebody's willing to put in a movie, it's unusual, that's what I mean by shocked. I'm not shocked because … 'Gosh, me? How do I know how to act?' [Laughs] But there's so many unbelievably talented, richly talented women and men that are older, that just don't get a chance." — Meryl Streep. [Salon]
• "I have this phobia of becoming someone's 'girlfriend.' I have guy friends who have been dating a girl for six months and our other friends don't know her name. They just ask, 'Hey, where's your girlfriend?' And I want to scream, 'OK, her name is Sally, and she's awesome, and you've known her for months. Where did her identity go?'" — Charlene Yi. [The Daily Beast]

[Tokyo, August 3. Image via Getty]

Members from People for the Ethical Treatment of Animals (PETA) Asia-Pacific wear outfits made out with real lettuce leaves and hold signs that read 'Save the Planet, Go Vegetarian,' as they greet passersby in downtown Tokyo on August 3, 2009. PETA said that switching to a vegetarian diet is the most effective way that anyone can do to fight climate change and reduce environmental destruction. AFP PHOTO/Kazuhiro NOGI (Photo credit should read KAZUHIRO NOGI/AFP/Getty Images)

• Jude Law got someone pregnant, but not Rachel McAdams' sister Kayleen — her rep (she's a makeup artist) says "She has never even met him." [Star]
• So. The mother of Jude Law's unborn spawn is:

Samantha Burke. She's an actress/model. Naturally. [TMZ]

• A source says that Samantha Burke wants Jude's cash! She expects "a large maintenance payment and financial costs, including a percentage of Jude's future earnings, agreed in writing." [The Sun]
• According to this report, Samantha Burke is from a wealthy family. Also, she looks good in a retro swimsuit. [Daily Mail]
• "Even Seth Rogen Now Hating on Katherine Heigl." He's talking shit about how she talks shit. And dissed The Ugly Truth: "That [movie] looks like it really puts women on a pedestal in a beautiful way." Plus: "I gotta say, it's not like we're the only people she said some batshit crazy things about. That's kind of her bag now." [NY Mag, LA Times]
• Carrie Prejean is planning to sue the Miss California USA organization for slander, libel, public disclosure of private facts, religious discrimination, intentional infliction of emotional distress and negligent infliction of emotional distress. This should be a big old mess. [Perez]
• Need beach reading? Three celebs have "written" new memoirs: Slumdog Millionaire's Rubina Ali; former Playmate Kendra Wilkinson and Good Charlotte's Joel Madden. [NY Daily News]
• Haterade Headline of the Day: "Tony Romo and Nick Lachey rebound with Jessica Simpson look-a-likes while she's left smooching a dog." [NY Daily News]
• Police chiefs suspected of "snooping" at Sarah Jessica Parker's surrogate's home have been arrested. [NY Post]
• Emma Watson is related to a 16th century witch! Her distant relative Joan Playle was excommunicated from the Church of England for witchcraft in 1592. [E!]
• Eminem's new track, "Warning," is an answer to Mariah Carey's song, "Obsessed." He raps: "You probably think since it's been so long if I had something on you I woulda did it by now, on the contrary, Mary Poppins, I'm mixing our studio session down and sending it to mastering to make it loud, enough dirt on you to murder you, this is what the fuck I do... Mariah, it ever occur to you that I still have pictures?" [Yahoo News via E!]
• Amy Winehouse's wedding album: Found in trash. Seems Blaaaaake threw his copy away. [The Sun]
• Nora Ephron says she hopes Julie & Julia will remind everyone that before EVOO, there was BUTTER, which has now been demonized. "I just do not get that at all," Ephron says, since Julia Child and her husband lived into their 90s. "And they drank like fish," she says. "I don't believe that anything has to do with what you eat, if you don't overeat. All these people who think they can cut down on their cholesterol by eating those awful egg-white omelets. There's something I really hate. It is simply not going to make any difference if you have a couple egg yolks in your omelet." [USA Today]
• Will Katie Holmes be in the Sex And The City 2: Electric Boogaloo? A source says: "The character they want her to play is a really ballsy, high-powered company executive who tangles with Samantha." Sometimes you sort of forget she's an actress, for Xenu's sake. [The Sun]
• Jeepin' jeewillickers! Even though Jim Bob and Michelle Duggar named each of their 18 children a name beginning with the letter J, their first grandchild (from son Josh) will be named Mackenzie. Whether Josh and his wife will have 18 kids with M names remains to be seen. [Star]
• So much sadness: This report claims that Michael Jackson may have had collapsed veins and needle marks all over his body — plus — he may have been dead as early as 8:30 a.m. — four hours before paramedics were called. [ET]
• Warrants filed yesterday allege that Michael Jackson was an addict. It's a violation if Dr. Conrad Murray was "prescribing to an addict." [Yahoo News via AP]
• The Michael Jackson autopsy report: Delayed. [TMZ]
• How will TLC balance Jon & Kate's popularity with the family's right for privacy? Network exec Eileen O'Neill says: "It's a sensitive situation and we navigate that as we go along… It's the family's decision to be involved in the show… We want to stay with them as long as they want to stay with us." [Variety]
• What you'll see when Jon & Kate Plus 8 returns: "Jon and Kate have never said they were perfect," Eileen O'Neill says. "You're still going to see two parents that love their kids, but you'll see them parenting separately." [People]
• This columnist asserts that the return of Jon & Kate will help Kate's image. [MSNBC Scoop]
• And, because no one is sick of these people: Jon Gosselin (and Michael Lohan??) brainstormed a new show: Divorced Dads Club. [Page Six]
• Leonardo DiCaprio's ex, Bar Refaeli, has a new man: multi-millionaire Teddy Sagi, who is among Israel's top 30 richest men. [NY Daily News]
• BREAKING: Katy Perry and Rihanna have become inseparable. [Page Six]
• Mario Lopez says the Saved By The Bell reunion was a long time coming: "Everybody knew the 20-year anniversary was coming up. This People story has been in the works for over a year, long before [late night host] Jimmy Fallon started talking about it. We were all excited about it." But what's next? "Everybody is fired up. People keep coming up to me saying 'When are you guys going to do a show?'" [People]
• Mark Paul Gosselaar says of Dustin "Screech" Diamond: That's a disaster on so many levels… I don't know where his head is. I know probably as much as you know from watching things on TV." Plus, Gosselaar says that when he played Zack on Fallon last month, there was a reason he looked young: "I read a blog [where] some guy said, 'Dude, lay off the Botox.' I've never had Botox before. The wig was so fucking tight, it gave me a mini face-lift." [Newsweek]
• Penelope Cruz looked amazing at the premiere of Broken Embraces, but the airline had lost her luggage. [People]
• Penny Cruz: "I love London... but I have difficulties with the rainy weather." [Telegraph]
• Lost spoilers! CHARLIE. [E!]
• Details of the sort-of Seinfeld reunion on Curb Your Enthusiasm, at the link. [LA Times]
• Lawyers are getting involved in that Twilight recasting drama involving Rachelle Lefevre. [E!]
• Viva la revolucion? Benicio del Toro, Bill Murray, Robert Duvall and James Caan were in Cuba yesterday. [Reuters]
• Paul Giamatti calls some scenes from his new film, Cold Souls, "sort of awkward and painful." [WSJ]
• Billy Crudup will join the cast of Eat, Pray, Love the movie, which also stars Julia Roberts, Javier Bardem and Richard Jenkins. [Variety]
• "Bandslam's account of a teenager's awkward attempts to settle into a new school remind former Friends star Lisa Kudrow of her own adolescence." [Telegraph]
• "Singer Peter Andre has accepted "substantial" damages over a newspaper claim he was unfaithful to his estranged wife, model Katie Price." [BBC News]
• "I really felt this film, which had a love affair with boeuf bourguignon, should come out in winter." — Meryl Streep on Julie & Julia. [USA Today]
• "I heard what he had to say and I knew at this moment my life would never be the same. Life no longer seemed like a series of Random events. I also began to see that being Rich and Famous wasn't going to bring me lasting fulfillment and that it was not the end of the journey." — Madonna, on first hearing about Kabbalah when pregnant with Lourdes. [AP]
• "Phoebe was so spiritual and 'out there' — and I wasn't at all. Not. At. All. If anyone was it was Jennifer [Aniston]. She introduced me to certain books that gave me an insight into that world – Phoebe's supposed world – which was a more spiritual realm." — Lisa Kudrow. [Daily Express]
• "My mom and dad were big hippies and I spent time on communes. I just remember the smell of soybeans everywhere. People were making all sorts of strange things out of soybeans: food, clothing, paper, everything. I suppose if I'd gone to military school, maybe I'd be pining for something like Woodstock. But I'm certainly pining for what it represents, and I think that's what Ang was really after with the film." — Liev Schreiber, on Taking Woodstock. [Style.com]
• "I don't watch Jon & Kate, but I still want to punch that Jon douche in the face.his smarmy,fat alcoholic bloat&Ed Hardy wear piss me off" — Rose McGowan. [Twitter]
• "The Jay-Z controversy is great. We couldn't buy P.R. like this. I think Jay-Z said he saw Auto-Tune used in a Wendy's commercial, and that pushed him over the edge." — Marco Alpert, vice president of the company which markets Auto-Tune, on Jay-Z's latest single, "D.O.A. (Death of Auto-Tune)." [NY Times]
• "Fuck you Katy Perry, you fucking stupid, maybe 'not good for the gays,' title thieving, haven't heard much else, so not quite sure if you're talented, fucking little slut." — Jill Sobule. [The Rumpus]

Okay. I'm not sure why Amy Adams' hair looks filthy, and her shoes look too narrow for her feet (I know the lateral squash all too well) but digging on the crisp frock!


Obviously Julie Powell and Amy Adams looks absolutely nothing alike (and it can't be fun to have to dress for one of these things as the token non-actor, I always think.) But Julie looks terrific, and her shoes fit way better, too.


It took me a moment to determine whether Giada De Laurentiis' top had a weird kangaroo pocket or just a weird fan ruffle, sur-crotch. Methinks it's the latter. But can I say how much I love the food celebs here?


I despise so many things about the lovely Ashley Greene's ensemble that an itemized list would rival the Key to All Mythologies in length.


I'm not normally a major fan of the Valley of the Dolls-style evolution of maternity-chic - and this fabric is pretty susceptible to wrinkling, considering it's gotta sit through a film - but Jane Lynch looks comfy, happy.


I don't think I've ever seen Mary Lynn Rajskub look better than she does in this soft Grecian.


I'd sort of like to see Meryl Streep's easy jersey sans cardi, but heck, a gal's gotta protect against the drafts.


Okay, this is from his website and I don't think I can improve on it: "Suave, sophisticated Emrhys Cooper delivers a one-two punch of brooding good looks and versatility with a dash of playfulness." He also adds a dash of Tab Hunter hair.


You know who this event needed? Brittny Gastineau. And, thank goodness, she's also showing her bra. Now everyone can relax and enjoy the movie!


As regards 80's nostalgia: I don't remember the 80's being that good. It involved a lot of graham crackers and a severe limit on the amount of TV I was allowed to watch. (I chose David the Gnome.) Nina Bergman disagrees.


I kind of love how Kate Flannery always does "approachable but commanding boss" on the red carpet.


When, Yvonne Strahovski, did it become okay to wear a transparent shirt on the red carpet? Or did it...not?


I can't tell whether Maria Menounos is headed to a disco, a playpen, a tractor or a Mormon temple. I guess this really is all-purpose!


Rob McElhenney, meanwhile, can apparently go fly-fishing directly from the premiere.


Nora Ephron may feel bad about her neck, but there's certainly no reason to worry about her classic uniform of clean basics! (Yes, that was cheesy. And made no sense.)


The Alice Waters seal of approval! I'd love to see her closet and touch all the silks. I'll bet it smells of sage. Sorry, creepy!


I'm starting to think it's not a premiere until perma-guest Kat Kramer shows. How? Why? Maybe she's become such an institution that all the PR people figure everyone must know something they don't. Whatever, I love her.


Looking at Molly Sims' myriad straps gives me sympathy pangs: Can you imagine wrestling with this in a store dressing room, breaking out in a cold sweat and wondering if you'll ever extricate yourself?


[Images via Getty, Bauer-Griffin]

While the film is something of a love story (blogger Julie Powell cooks chef Julia Child's recipes and goes on a journey of self-discovery) Ephron — known for films like Sleepless in Seattle and When Harry Met Sally — considers food right up there on the same level as romance. John Horn, who spent an afternoon baking with Ephron, writes:

"The truth is that most marriages have food as a major player in them, and certainly mine does," said Ephron, who is married to author and screenwriter Nick Pileggi (Goodfellas, Casino) and wrote about her earlier marriage to journalist Carl Bernstein in the caustic roman à clef Heartburn, a novel that included recipes. Ephron's best-selling 2006 memoir, I Feel Bad About My Neck: And Other Thoughts on Being a Woman, shares an almost equal fascination with gastronomy.

Of course, many human relationships revolve around food: Dating often involves going out to dinner; catching up with friends can mean lunches and brunches; family get-togethers and reunions mean picnics and barbecues.

But Ephron's love of food may go beyond the norm: She says her postgraduate cooking phase was "obsessive. It was competitive. It was pathological." And Horn describes shots of food in Julie & Julia as " adoring close-ups of fish, duck and even an Everest of chopped onions." The question is, will the movie inspire women who don't know a turnip from a radish to get in the kitchen and try out recipes? Perhaps not. "No one seems to cook anymore," Ephron says. Maybe we'll just walk out of the theater with an insatiable appetite.

Nora Ephron Tries To Find The Perfect Recipe For 'Julie & Julia' [LA Times]

The study, as noted by the BBC, says Rom Coms promote unrealistic expectations in their viewers. The research behind this conclusion involved "100 student volunteers [who] were asked to watch the 2001 romantic comedy Serendipity, while a further 100 watched a David Lynch drama." First off, 200 students is a pretty small sample, and secondly, a David Lynch drama will seriously fuck with your head. It's not just a regular non-rom-com. It's usually a twisted, terrifying ride through the deepest recesses of the psyche and the soul.

One of the researchers who worked on the study tells the BBC, "The problem is that while most of us know that the idea of a perfect relationship is unrealistic, some of us are still more influenced by media portrayals than we realize." I'm sure that's true to an extent, but what's telling is that the research participants were all college students. Usually people grow out of expecting their love lives to mimic a Julia Roberts movie by age 24 or so. Or they eventually buy Disney Princess wedding dresses.

The Notting Hill Effect: How Romantic Comedies Can Harm Your Love Life [Daily Mail]
Rom-coms 'Spoil Your Love Life' [BBC]

If you're a desperate person reading these books as a panacea, as Book Slut's Jessa Crispin points out in the Smart Set, these tomes can be quite dangerous. She reviews two self-help books —The Passion Test: The Effortless Path to Discovering Your Destiny by Janet and Chris Attwood, and Stuck: Why We Can’t (or Won’t) Move On by Anneli Rufus — and finds them potentially devastating. "The first thing I recommend to someone shaking in the wake of a tragedy, or feeling stuck in their lives, is throw out these self-help books," Crispin writes. "They fill your head with lies and make it harder to move on. Recovery, however, is different for everyone, and unfortunately, the next step is up to you."

Ultimately yes, the onus is on an individual to help his or herself deal with any situation. But honestly, even after major traumas, many people have a strong enough sense of self to read advice from strangers and not fall for every piece of it hook, line, and sinker. It's a pretty pessimistic view of the intelligence of self-help readers to assume that they believe every bit of crap they're sold.

Many commenters at Jezebel have admitted sheepishly to being helped by He's Just Not That Into You, and as a teenager I took solace in Reviving Ophelia: Helping You to Understand and Cope with Your Teenage Daughter. Though it's geared towards the parents of teenagers, reading the anecdotal experiences of other teenage girls and methods of coping definitely helped me feel less alone. And if you're still embarrassed about it remember this: in When Harry Met Sally, Harry and Sally become bffs and then get married and have ten thousand babies after reuniting in the self-help aisle of a book store. If Nora Ephron says it's ok, that's good enough for us.

Jessica Simpson Confesses Her Love of Self-Help Books [People]
Help Wanted [The Smart Set]

I agree with the Ephron choice (Heartburn is a must read), and would like to add 1984 Pulitzer Prize winner Foreign Affairs by Alison Lurie, and many things by Anne Lamott, who has been tenderly funny although slightly less so ever since she found Jesus. What fiction-writing females would you nominate for funniest novel ever?

What's The Funniest Novel Ever? [NY Times]
Hitchens Take Heart: NYTBR Also Finds Women Unfunny [Mediabistro]
Monday, September 15, 2008 [Moment Of Jen]

MOE: Yo sorry I'm late I had massive insomnia last night. What's going on? I feel like I read 759 different "think pieces" on the election last night.
MEGAN: Yeah, believe me, I tossed and turned for kind of a while last night and then woke up in the middle of the night and was up for a while. I think there are a ton of fucking think pieces out there because there's no actual news to report.
MOE: What do you mean? Obama totally went bowling! And drank Yuengling.
MEGAN: I'll guarantee that he's a better bowler than me. I once got a gutter ball in a bumper lane instead of hitting actual pins.
MOE: Okay, so I read the entire fucking Kelefa Sanneh piece on Jeremiah Wright in the New Yorker. I read the entire elegy to the Republican party in the Times Magazine. I read probably 28 pieces calling on Hillary Clinton to bow out of the campaign, about 25 of which came with the disclaimer "I know she won't but." Nora Ephron's may have been my favorite. Shit, now I can't find it.
MEGAN: I mean, I don't understand why everyone all of a sudden wants her to drop out except for the polls last week that show Democrats are all getting pissed enough at the other guy's people to vote for McCain, and thus also don't understand why the other guy's people would continue pissing off her people by calling on her to drop out.
MOE: She should drop out because, at this point, she's been beaten, and she's been beaten by a candidate who had a lot more to prove.
MEGAN: Well, but she's not quite beaten yet and she's bloodied him pretty damn well in the last couple of weeks.
MOE: She's bloodied herself worse on imaginary sniper fire
MEGAN: I mean, I just think that the calls all started because of the polls that show Nader taking votes from both of them and McCain beating either one of them, but that's a stupid reason. What she ought to do is Fire Mark Penn.
MEGAN: And then stop improving her negative rating
MEGAN: I mean, I guess I sort of wish it was over, but that's mostly because I'm fucking sick of talking and writing about it, but that's not really a good enough reason. And, also, calling for her to drop out is pissing off a lot of her supporters, which is worse than keeping going.
MOE: I dunno. I feel like a lot of her supporters are over it too. I mean, look, when was the last time we had a knockdown dragout with Sinister Rouge? Here, by the way, is the Nora Ephron piece.

She is me, and then again she's not. I used to love her and I no longer do, but unlike what usually happens when love dies, I still think about her far too much. When she tells a big lie, like her recent Bosnia episode, I can lose hours trying to figure out why. I mean, why? Was it one of those things that she'd said so often that she'd come to believe it? Was it a story that had worked in the past so she thought she'd gotten away with it? Did she honestly think that no one would rat her out? Does she not understand that if you're famous, there's almost nothing you do that someone doesn't have a picture of? I have no idea what the answer is to any of this because I'm not a liar and she is. (By the way, I don't think she was always a liar, the way some kids are born liars and never get over it. I think she was once a truthful person and her lying skills were forged in the early years of her marriage, forged in the crucible of Bill's infidelities and in her role as point person in dealing with them. This is what happens when you marry a narcissist: he spills the milk, you clean it up and your love grows. And then you end up a liar, just like him.)

Many conservative activists have become so dissatisfied with the party's heresies, particularly on immigration and government spending, that as Cole's staff took over, the committee's fund-raising pleas were being ignored and, on at least one occasion, returned in an envelope stuffed with feces.

"You go back to the Reagan years, and even before that, and we always had a three-legged stool: anti-Communism, anti-abortion and tax and spend," Dan Mattoon, the Republican lobbyist and former deputy chairman of Cole's committee, told me. "The first leg dropped off when the Berlin Wall fell, and after 9/11 we've tried to do the same thing with terrorism, but it's not as strong. The second leg, tax and spend, was pretty strong until George Bush. Then we had just one leg of the stool, which was social issues, and I think that you look at the makeup of the younger generation and there's more of a libertarian view on social issues." Cole says that the party's rhetoric on issues like gay marriage has cast Republicans as too reactionary for many suburban districts. "My problem on social issues is the tone — sometimes we have been too shrill, and that has alienated voters who might otherwise have joined us," he told me. The challenge, then, is finding a new generation of candidates who aren't.

"I don't need the nominee to win; I just need him to be competitive enough that we can win behind him in the places that should be ours," Cole said. "I need him to be Gerald Ford."

When I asked the House minority leader John Boehner how he assessed the committee's fund-raising so far, he told me: "It stinks. No other way to put it."

No. I'm thankful I got fired when I did, so that I didn't have to be associated with what they subsequently did.

McCain recently confessed in public that his grasp of economics is limited.Yeah. That's a great place to start from, isn't it?

• He's kind of a slut, reports the Post: "The period he spent studying Hillary Clinton may well be a personal record in the category of 'Longest Time With The Same Woman.' 'I might have made seven years once before,' he says, looking down at his plate, 'but I'm not going to go into it.'"
  
• He's a drunk. (In the wake of one DUI arrest, his former Post colleague Bob Woodward bailed him out of jail.)
  
• He reeeally sucks with money.
  
• He dropped out of college after two years. ("Sometimes I flunked, sometimes I quit.")
  
• He procrastinates. Just a bit.
  
• He's okay with all of this. "I know there are things I can't control."

"Dressed in a dark sport jacket and a white Oxford shirt, Carl Bernstein looks like an aging Italian tycoon."

"I was living a full, wonderful life," he explains. The full, wonderful life isn't cheap, however, and Bernstein has told friends that he long ago burned through the roughly $3 million he earned from Watergate-related books and movies. He was somewhat notorious for borrowing money from friends and not paying them back, a habit he developed as a kid.

It's not as if Bernstein disappeared. There was a family memoir, "Loyalties," in 1989, and a decently received biography of Pope John Paul II in 1996, "His Holiness," which he wrote with an Italian journalist, as well as authoritative magazine pieces. But when he wasn't writing, Bernstein often seemed at the mercy of his appetites. There is nothing like an all-you-can-eat buffet to bring out the glutton in a man, and acclaim brought with it an aromatic heap of temptations...

"'You get to a certain point in your life and you say, "Wow," says Bernstein. 'I did some terrific stuff, took some hard knocks. But basically, the cliches are true. You're on a journey. All the cliches are true.'"