52 Comments

1. Sioux Lady:

Thanks! I was looking forward to seeing this movie. Now, I won’t waste my time and money.

P.S. To Pajamas Media: What is hate speech?

Aug 7, 2009 - 2:43 am 2. Pragmatist:

Sioux Hate Speech is what Republicans and Right wingers do when ‘libtards’ do it its called ‘Telling it like it is” It helps of course if the whole MSM backs you up and tows the libtard party line and Obambi sets up a help line to report evil THINKERS . Is it really 1984 or NAZI Germany seems to be so.

Aug 7, 2009 - 5:38 am 3. Pragmatist:

I have said it before and I will say it again Bye Bye USA it was nice knowing you but you are sliding down the TOTALITARIAN slope so fast and with no visible way out I fear you cannot stop it.

Aug 7, 2009 - 5:40 am 4. Thomas L......:

Ohmigawd, the missus is determined to see this one on the big screen! It’s payback for Hellboy II.

Aug 7, 2009 - 6:37 am 5. locomotivebreath1901:

Ephron? Streep? Republican bashing??

I learned long ago that these self-absorbed hollweird types bitterly cling to their anxieties, phobias, and self-delusions, which infects their work.

They simple can’t move on, no matter what the political climate. In short: B.O.R.I.N.G.

It’s why they rarely (if ever, anymore) get my money.

~Local dinner theatre is much more enjoyable and profitable.

Aug 7, 2009 - 7:16 am 6. Joanna:

Pragmatist: Periods. Commas. Make friends with them. They will not let you down.

Aug 7, 2009 - 7:19 am 7. mishu:

While it wasn’t necessary, it doesn’t seem that bad. Actually pretty tame for a movie about someone who blogs for Salon.com.

Aug 7, 2009 - 7:30 am 8. alex:

Julia Childs worked for the OSS, precurser to the CIA for several years, with high level clearances and working directly for the leader of the OSS. She worked in various positions and distinguished her service to USA. She also met her husband in the OSS, who was an OSS officer. Julia developed several products during wartime that proved valuable as well.
The McCarthy comments were backhanded slaps, the author should understand this. Julia’s Husband was investigated by the Paranoid McCarthy as a communist, when both had served their country in wartime and helped build the CIA into the agency it is today.

https://www.cia.gov/news-information/featured-story-archive/2007-featured-story-archive/julia-child.html

Aug 7, 2009 - 9:01 am 9. Sarah Rolph:

I recently read the book Julie and Julia (one of two books from which the movie was made), and the anti-Republican stuff pretty much ruined it for me.

It’s one thing if this happens in the course of actual political content — I have no problem reading people who disagree with me. Sometimes I learn something. But in this book, the political stuff is not only completely beside the point (knowing where the food-blogger worked adds nothing to the book) but also much more offensive than ordinary political commentary. As the author of this post points out, Julie the Blogger worked at a goverment agency set up to help relatives of those who died in the atrocities of September 11, 2001. I found it quite shocking that she would make crass comments about these family members and reduce the whole situation to a source of asides about “Rethuglicans” for no apparent reason. I get that she wanted to burnish her liberal credentials, but I don’t get what that has to do with food, or with Julia Child.

I was really hoping they would leave this offensive material out of the movie. Thanks for the warning. I’ll not bother to see it now.

Aug 7, 2009 - 9:36 am 10. arhooley:

he was apparently called in for a few questions one day. Viewers might be forgiven for wondering where the horrible part is when a guy is given an all-expenses-paid transatlantic voyage to Washington in exchange for sitting through an interview.

Was the guy subjected to McCarthy’s interrogations or not? Was this former O.S.S. agent made to leave his post in France and travel to D.C. to satisfy the paranoia of Joe McCarthy?

I don’t like Nora Ephron, and I don’t like Hollywood’s anti-conservatism. But it’s silly to characterize a summons by McCarthy as a luxurious, carefree voyage followed by a brief Q&A.

Aug 7, 2009 - 9:41 am 11. Sandra:

If they don’t cling to their prejudices, then their world view changes. It means something so powerful they cannot bear it. It means:

“They were wrong.”

And if they were wrong about the way they treat one group or another, they can be seen as wrong in other issues. Internally they know that so they cling to their hatred. They have to.

Aug 7, 2009 - 9:42 am 12. Mark in Texas:

Dang.

And I was planning to see this movie this weekend. Oh, well. I guess it is out to dinner instead.

Aug 7, 2009 - 9:56 am 13. Blackwater:

We’ll see who gets the last laugh. One day we conservatives are gonna take over the entertainment industry and it’s going to create some sweet sweet justice. Movies that don’t make Christians, U.S. soldiers, conservatives, etc, look like retarded monsters. Lots of Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, John Voight movies. And maybe some more family friendly movies that leave out the lesbian parents and global warming preaching. I can’t wait.

Aug 7, 2009 - 10:47 am 14. Laura in Tennessee:

Count me in as another person who was planning to see this movie and after reading this changed my mind. I’ve gone to see two movies in the past seven years, mostly because I am so tired of these people.

Aug 7, 2009 - 10:50 am 15. PtrkBeam:

Thanks for the review.
Was on, now off the list.

Aug 7, 2009 - 11:00 am 16. wnaegele:

As long as Hollywood feels the need to flavor its creations with lefty political turds, their bottom line will continue to head to wards the putrid…

Aug 7, 2009 - 11:17 am 17. Cheryl:

I can’t understand why conservatives don’t make movies to counter the liberal point of view. I realize that Hollywood today is 99% libtard but maybe the conservative movement should find a way to generate the money to form its own industry. It’s a shame that the left has to spoil every movie with an obnoxious political message that alienates its potential audience.

Aug 7, 2009 - 11:49 am 18. La Lydia:

Rats. I wanted to see this movie, I have cooked my way through her recipes, but I don’t want to pay $10 to be gratuitously insulted. Do they think Republicans never go to movies? Or do they just want to insult half their audience? No wonder Carl Bernstein cheated on her.

Aug 7, 2009 - 12:05 pm 19. DavidN:

OK, a couple of observations. First the “A Republican would fire you” comment is a cheap shot that actually sounds a bit funny. I’m fond of saying, when my wife makes a bad joke, that it was “so lame it needs a crutch”, and I think this one qualifies.

Second, as to Streep’s performance. You reviewed her without making one salient point, which I saw her make herself in an interview. She wasn’t playing Julia Child, exactly: she was playing Julie’s *idealization* of Julia Child, in her dreams or mind or whatever. As a result, she felt she *should* play it over the top a bit, because what everyone remembered of Julia Child was a caricature of who she really was, at least a bit. So your criticism of her being over the top is a bit off the mark…it was intended that way, and they have some justification for it.

Aug 7, 2009 - 12:06 pm 20. Bob Schwalbaum:

Cheryl wonders why conservatives don’t make movies.. it is one thing to make a movie.. quite another to distribute it. GOOD LUCK!

Aug 7, 2009 - 12:16 pm 21. Caroline:

Personally, I’m calling the marketing department of the studio to tell them why I’m not going to a movie I was dying to see. Then, I’m telling all my friends to call. I’m sick and tired of passively accepting this stuff. Even if I’m the only one they hear from, they’re hearing from me!

Aug 7, 2009 - 12:48 pm 22. Войска ПВО:

13. Blackwater writes:

“..One day we conservatives are gonna take over the entertainment industry and it’s going to create some sweet sweet justice. Movies that don’t make Christians, U.S. soldiers, conservatives, etc, look like retarded monsters. Lots of Bruce Willis, Clint Eastwood, John Voight movies. And maybe some more family friendly movies that leave out the lesbian parents and global warming preaching.”

..the box office for them will go through the roof and these clueless Hollywood liberal types will still be making their stumbling, ambiguous films, showing them in their dark, fetid, dank art houses, and murmuring their poisonous hate-America crap over in their rank coffeee-houses.

I have a similar fantasy about blacks. They will discover conservatism and self-empowerment, utter a collective, “Where has this been all of my life?” and throw off the shackles of the race pimps forever. If it happen to Eldridge Cleaver it could happen to anyone.

Aug 7, 2009 - 12:53 pm 23. MaureenTheTemp:

Sigh. I am **so** disappointed — I had really, really been looking forward to seeing this movie, it looked so cute, now I won’t go. And I would think I would be in the filmmakers target demographic: I am a 52 year old woman who doesn’t go to the movies that much. Does anyone know how you can write the financial backers of the movie?

Aug 7, 2009 - 1:22 pm 24. trigeek:

I was watching a new series called The Philanthropist this week, and it seemed like a decent enough show, then they started having the philanthropist interview with a “typical angry right wing talk radio host”, and it ruined everthing. These folks don’t even listen to conservative talk radio, they just listen to Air Amereica and assume the rightees have to be just as crude an obnoxious as their “progressive” bretheren. I should have known better since this show was on NBC!

Aug 7, 2009 - 4:47 pm 25. AtheistConservative:

” But it’s silly to characterize a summons by McCarthy as a luxurious, carefree voyage followed by a brief Q&A.”

It’s far more disingenuous to continue to allow McCarthy to be framed as a paranoid right-wing nutjob, particularly when evidence like that from the Venona Project and other declassified Soviet documents show that Communist informants, spies, and agitators WERE prevalent in both our government and Hollywood at the time.

Certainly it’s proper to speak out against heavy-handed tactics and blacklisting. But it’s also proper to respect the necessity for vigilance. In the grand scheme of things, the worst these ‘victims’ of McCarthyism had to suffer was not being able to work in their first chosen field, and it was generally because of their voluntary anti-American associations. I do not defend every result that came from these inquiries, but I do most definitely defend the inquiries.

People tend to forget how bitter the enmity between the US and USSR was. But don’t worry, with the current administration I’m sure we’ll get a replay soon enough.

Aug 7, 2009 - 5:38 pm 26. PoodleSkirt:

Thanks for all the gruesome details. I’ll be taking a pass on this movie. I loved Julie Child, but can happily live out my life without imagining her in a bubble bath. Nora Ephron can’t write anything but fluff.

It sounds as though Julia befell the same fate as Under the Tuscan Sun, which was completely rewritten to include a gay subplot, starting with a gay bus tour and a gay best friend couple, and ending with a gay pregnancy, none of which were in the book.

Liberals just can’t seem to pass up the chance to brainwash, brainwash, brainwash.

Aug 7, 2009 - 11:06 pm 27. alex:

McCarthy was an extreme Paranoid Nutjob that was finally reigned in by his own Party, among them Senator Prescott Bush. There is a reason his name is synonym for paranoia, innocent people had their lives ruined by Joe running amok with blind power madness

When Vigilence becomes guilt by accusation, the scales tipped too far, there is no avenue to defend the actions of political Paranoia and damage caused by Joe MaCarthy

Aug 8, 2009 - 6:39 am 28. NahnCee:

I sighest. I had rather thought this would be a good movie to rent on Netflix, since I have a fondness for both Julia Child and Streep (even if I can’t wrap my mind around obsessions with food preparation — if God had meant us to strain stuff through nylon stockings, He would have never invented the microwave).

What’s a poor little neocon to do? Avoid every single thing with a derogatory Republican reference in it? I’m already reduced to ordering old TV shows like the Avengers and Moonlighting, and old movies from the 1980’s like “Black Widow” and “Blood Simple” because I refuse to watch what Hollywood is producing now.

I suppose I *could*, in desperation, quit watching movies altogether and (gasp) read a book. I’ve never managed to plow my way through the whole dreary story of the Hobbits that everyone keeps referencing, nor Ayn Rand to find out just exactly who this John Galt guy is. So ta ta, Ms. Ephron, I guess — it would have been nice.

Aug 8, 2009 - 11:06 am 29. Greg:

There is NO historical evidence to show that Paul Child’s creditabilty was “in question” by the US State Dept. When producing a movie about such an American iconic force as Julia/Paul Child’s life–stick to the facts!!!!
Too bad time wasn’t taken to show Julia’s attempt to perfect a shark repellent to prevent sharks from damaging under water U-boat explosive devices.
Hey Hollywood, wake up and smell the coffee. My wife and I saw this movie yesterday (Fri., 07 Aug.) and due to its political agenda, I can’t recomment it to anyone.

Aug 8, 2009 - 11:41 am 30. Anonymous:

Looks like we have a new moonbat. His name is Alex. The sorry product of our dolt-producing educational system

Aug 8, 2009 - 12:19 pm 31. arhooley:

AtheistConservative, the activities of Communist informants, spies, and agitators don’t justify the activities of Joe McCarthy. You do realize that George Kennan himself was subjected to hostile interrogation by one of those stupid Boards? You like Ann Coulter? I like Dorothy Rabinowitz, a conservative writer with far more discipline than Ann Coulter. Rabinowitz has no use for Ann’s pseudo-scholarship on McCarthy.

I stand by my original statement. It’s silly to characterize a summons by McCarthy as a luxurious, carefree voyage followed by a brief Q&A.

Ephron and Streep are insufferable, elitist, shallow, topical, dull excuses for artists. They’ve helped to degrade the public discourse with their promotion of non-achievers and their “Everyone’s a champion!” simple-mindedness. It doesn’t surprise me that they can’t resist the chance to throw in some mixup with McCarthy in a film that’s supposed to be about some silly Oprah-esque thing like self-empowerment through stunt-blogging. I’ll attack them on their considerable demerits. No need to defend Joe McCarthy over it.

Aug 8, 2009 - 12:57 pm 32. arhooley:

And to those who are saddened that they’ll miss a film that promised such “cuteness”: don’t you see John Boot’s description? “Unbearably cute.” How much cute can you guys and gals bear? I’m curious, because I think excessive cuteness is one of the things that’s destroying popular film.

Aug 8, 2009 - 1:03 pm 33. donnywonny:

I, too won’t be buying the DVD for our home theater; plan to spend the money on a purchase at my nearby sporting goods store instead.

Aug 8, 2009 - 4:30 pm 34. clarice:

Casting Streep the NRDC flak who hurt the apple growers to fill that group’s coffers was another deft Ephron touch. http://www.americanthinker.com/2008/03/meryl_streep_and_julia_child_a.html

Nora actually deserved Bernstein I think.

Aug 8, 2009 - 5:45 pm 35. alex:

Post 30. Anonymous;

People that post personal attacks instead of sticking to the theme and facts, are the product of a dolt producing educational system.

Aug 8, 2009 - 7:09 pm 36. Sharper:

Saying she was associated with the OSS and worked closely with it’s leader isn’t exactly a defense against her being a communist sympathizer. It’s fairly well known that Donovan (who ran the OSS) was a soviet sympathizer. It just happened to be considered ok at the time (WW II) because the soviets were allies against the Germans and Roosevelt has adopted a policy of complete cooperation with soviet intelligence agencies. Donovan’s sympathies (along with others in the allied leadership) caused all sorts of frictions with people like Patton when the war in Europe was ending.

There’s even a serious scholarly suspicion that Donovan helped the soviets assassinate Patton because he was afraid Patton was going to try and continue the war in Europe by going after the Russians. It’s suspicious because the accident records all vanished and although Soviet records say they were trying to assassinate him at the time, only some of Donovan’s wet work guys are actually recorded to have been at the scene of the accident. At this point, no one really knows what happened. Truman disbanded the OSS in large part because Donovan wasn’t considered reliable anymore once the cold war started. See http://www.amazon.com/Target-Patton-Assassinate-General-George/dp/1596985798/ for all the heavily researched details.

Aug 8, 2009 - 8:02 pm 37. Bob:

Conservatives, in Ephron’s world, are like the monsters in a children’s book

You mean just like the big lovable monsters in Maurice Sendak’s book, “Where The Wild Things Are”?

Aug 8, 2009 - 9:16 pm 38. vivo:

13. Blackwater:

“We’ll see who gets the last laugh. One day we conservatives are gonna take over the entertainment industry and it’s going to create some sweet sweet justice.”

You forgot that people don’t pay for things they don’t want to see.

*

Republicans do and say crazy things. Writers & screenwriters know what will make the public laugh. Just count the jokes written about Bush. Nobody is picking just on them, what’s funny is funny. President Obama went untouchable for a long time, not anymore: the jokes are flowing.

So you skip a movie because of a couple of jokes. You sound like the people who won’t go to see the statue of David by Michelangelo because he’s totally nude. Lighten up people!

Aug 9, 2009 - 3:21 am 39. Republican:

I loved the movie….found it very cute and very entertaining, but was blown away by what I thought was a totally inappropriate and very random (seemingly out of place) attack on Republicans. When will Hollywood understand that they are alienating half the moviegoing population with these nasty slights?
…Maybe they will get it when we stop going…I am getting closer to that all the time.

Aug 9, 2009 - 11:14 am 40. Shawn F.:

Re: alex

Alex, when you use terms like “an extreme Paranoid Nutjob” it is hard to be credible when you complain about people making personal attacks. You may have had a point, but you used a derogatory term instead of listing facts.

McCarthy WAS a patriot and MAY have been guilty of overstepping. You mentioned that “innocent” people had their lives ruined. I know that the threat of Communism was and is real. The country was under attack and is under attack now. I am curious to know who were these innocent people? Government workers? I don’t think that people who receive tax dollars can hide behind the term “innocent”. If they are receiving tax dollars then they must not forget that they are servants of the people who provide the tax dollars. Who else might be the “innocent”? Oh – could it be those poor, poor writers and directors in Hollywood? There is nothing – and that is an Absolute – nothing innocent about the people in Hollywood. I will refrain from getting into the carnal worship and other results of the religion of Humanism but I think it is not too much trouble to ask that I be given the point that the people who were blacklisted in Hollywood were not working middle-class Americans who simply wanted to raise their families to have decent lives. Or babies – maybe you were talking about babies that were aborted..? Oh no – wrong side of the debate – I forgot, McCarthy was not an advocate for killing babies.

Sorry, I cannot think of who these “innocent” people were.

That being said, I do agree with you on “When Vigilence becomes guilt by accusation, the scales tipped too far”. You might be a little off, but you are someone that is trying to have a logical debate and that is respectable. I did not feel that you deserved to be labeled either.

Aug 9, 2009 - 11:40 am 41. C. Paul Barreira:

So what’s easy about the recipes in “Mastering the Art of French Cooking”. Some, true, are less difficult than others. But the difficult ones are truly that–with wonderful results. Perhaps that’s the difference. Child had to learn to cook. The blogger has only to read. The question is: why banalize great cooking and food with such an idiotic premise, one recipe daily. I remember spending two days just finding ingredients for a fillet of beef braised Prince Albert–thirty five years ago! Unfortunately I have not become much less fussy. Equally, I find, my cooking remains enjoyable in itself and many of the results more than satisfying.

Aug 9, 2009 - 4:28 pm 42. NavyMom:

In spite of the few swipes at conservatives (which I’ve come to expect from anything with Nora Ephron’s name attached to it), I really liked the movie. Meryl Streep’s portrayal of Julia Child was fabulous. Unlike some of the comments above mine on this page, I thought the relationship between Paul & Julia was touching and sweet. It’s always a joy to see a married couple express their love and admiration for each other. The packed movie theater I was in erupted into gales of laughter (me included) and even applauded at the end. I refuse to let a few insipid comments about Republicans prevent me from enjoying what was otherwise a fun movie.

Aug 10, 2009 - 5:04 am 43. Free Quark:

I saw the movie, and though it was diverting, there were several jabs at Republicans. If these jabs were in the original books, or Julia Child did indeed feel that way about Republicans, then they are justified in being in the movie. However, the fact that there were so MANY jabs, indicates an agenda, and in that sense these jokes fell flat.

Now, I don’t know how true the movie was to the books. Movies made from books tend to be letdowns. More often than not the result is dumbed down, the dialogue changed, sex scenes added that never existed, the violence made more sadistic than originally written, and the ending altered. I’d rather they just left the book alone.

Aug 10, 2009 - 9:49 am 44. Jillian:

I was enjoying the movie until the proverbial Hollywood Republican-bashing reared it’s ugly head, as it often does through this medium. It was so obviously just thrown in there as a dig (not to “spice up” the writing), and perhaps to add “flavor” to the social engineering of America. It was irrelevant and offensive and after the “a Republican would fire you!” scene, I lost my “appetite” for the movie, the actors and the writer. In fact, half the country is Republican, so what are they trying to do – turn off half their audience? We’re not THAT hungry for what’s on Hollywood’s menu…

Aug 10, 2009 - 2:59 pm 45. defiant1:

Silly republicans,its only a movie. Go have a good time and forget all the problems you have all caused. NO MAS BUSH-IT!

Aug 10, 2009 - 8:26 pm 46. Susan Katz Keating:

Snorrrre… I would SO much rather see a film about Julia’s days in the OSS. This flick sounds like a whole lot of standard liberal claptrap. Thanks for the warning.

Aug 12, 2009 - 11:42 am 47. New Republican:

When will the movie, television and music industries learn that they are alienating half of their audiences when they show overt political bias? I want to be entertained, not indoctrinated.

Aug 12, 2009 - 3:47 pm 48. grandma:

I just saw the movie with a bunch of my “greatest generation” friends, all of us Republican, and we loved it. I have to agree with Vivo…we need to “lighten-up”. Actually, after reading some of Julie Powell’s blog I think she was portrayed more pleasantly in the film. I don’t think “cursing”, as she terms it on her blog, a necessary part of life and simply illustrates a decline in manners and morals. The “shock value” words in the film did draw embarrassed laughs. Both Julies in the film were delightfully portrayed, and I’d see it again… probably looking for the Republican bashing that never registered with me the first time around. (Couldn’t have been too excessive if I cannot even recall it)

Aug 13, 2009 - 9:59 am 49. Page:

I saw this movie with a friend in Northern California. We both gasped when Julie’s employer told her he would have fired her if he was a Republican. That said, as in many of Meryl Streep’s recent movies, Streep carries the movie. While her performance is entertaining, the movie focuses on Julie who is portrayed sufficiently but is not a notable performance by any stretch of the imagination.

I regret having paid to go to a movie whose producers have used it to unabashedly force their political views on unsuspecting paying viewers. Does being tolerant mean we have to pay to see liberal views espoused and pay to hear them disparage conservatives?

The divisive and sophomoric political remarks in this movie are doing nothing to bring this country together. A kingdom divided cannot stand. Why doesn’t Hollywood try patriotism for a change and make a movie that celebrates our great historical figures and events? Our history is not perfect (show me a country that is), but we certainly do have an illustrious history based on honest endeavors to do what is right in the world. Let’s make movies about that!

Aug 24, 2009 - 11:15 am 50. Mark:

Saw it today. The slap at Republicans was gratuitous, unneccessary and offensive. McCarthy was an unexpalined menace.
I’d have walked out if not treating my wife;
Otherwise a charming film.
Too bad for Meryl Streep; her acting is amazing but now any Oscar talk will simply be assigned to Liberal taffy-pulling.

Aug 29, 2009 - 9:10 pm 51. o-kat:

Last week Van Jones’ calling Republicans *** ***** was publicized. Sat. night I paid to see propaganda disguised as a chick-flick. Then Sun morning on Meet the Press parents who object to Obama’s assignment of writing an essay on “How Can I Help the President” were indirectly called “stupid” by a guest commentator on the show. Add this to all of the previous name calling by Pelosi and others, and it reveals a disturbing pattern.
History shows that “labeling” is one of the first steps to oppression of a group. Nazi Germany and Rwanda are only two examples from the last century. When there is a pattern of name calling it is much more serious than verbal “bashing.” It is indoctrination and brainwashing of one group while dehumanizing the targeted group.

Sep 7, 2009 - 8:32 am 52. bob:

Just saw the dvd julie and julia and although it was a quaint movie which carried me along- the blatant anti republican comments stood out like a sore thumb and kind of soured the recipe for me… hollywoods way of indoctrinating the public… I thought of the recent white house pushing the NEA to “do what they can to further the cause” but don’t think this was directly connected.

Jan 1, 2010 - 9:17 pm