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Streep cooks up a hit
DVDs out this week.
MERYL Streep serves up a treat with delicious comedy JULIE & JULIA (12: Sony), the heart-warming tale of a culinary legend and a frustrated office worker.
Streep is hilarious as Julia Child, America's answer to Fanny Cradock, who was Britain's queen of cuisine in the '50s and '60s.
The film follows separate timelines as it details Child's experiences in late '40s Paris, which led to the publication in 1961 of her book Mastering The Art Of French Cooking.
Four decades later, the book inspired fledgling writer Julie Powell (Amy Adams) to whip up all of its 524 recipes in 365 days and introduce a new generation to Child's food.
Powell, a New Yorker, recorded her exploits in a blog which eventually became a best-seller and is the joint source of inspiration for the script along with Child's own memoirs.
As well as appealing to all those Nigella wannabes, this fun-filled movie has a few lessons to impart to the modern woman trying to balance personal and professional ambitions.
> Warmly nostalgic and psychedelically colourful, TAKING WOODSTOCK (15: Universal) is a simple story of self-discovery played out against the backdrop of the most iconic music festival ever staged.
The gentlest movie yet from Oscar-winning director Ang Lee is based on the memoir of Elliot Tiber, a young gay Jewish man who in 1969 became a key player in the rock festival in Bethel, New York, where his immigrant family's dilapidated motel became the centre of operations.
The festival itself takes a back seat, with the music mostly heard from a distance as the film focuses on cultural collisions on the sidelines.
Deadpan funnyman Demetri Martin plays Elliot as a wide-eyed innocent abroad as hippies descend in their thousands upon the dairy farm of laid-back Max Yasgur (American Pie dad Eugene Levy).
Imelda Staunton and Henry Goodman are a riot as Elliot's confused and initially disapproving parents, but their roles are played largely for easy laughs in a script which meanders through the freewheeling vibe of peace and love.
> AMELIA (PG: Twentieth Century Fox), the biopic of 1930s aviatrix Amelia Earhart, the first woman to fly solo across the Atlantic, sees Hilary Swank (Boys Don't Cry, Million Dollar Baby) in tomboy mode again.
But unlike the famous flyer, this film from Monsoon Wedding director Mira Nair fails to really take off.
Earhart goes on about living as free as a bird, but we never discover what really made her tick and an extraordinary life feels like a series of random blips on the radar screen.
Also, it's not made clear why she is willing to risk her marriage to publishing magnate George P. Putnam (Richard Gere) to circumnavigate the globe in a flying tin can, while her extramarital jaunt with Gene Vidal (Ewan McGregor) lacks tension. Even the basic dangers of aviation in the era are not conveyed.
> Uninspired British gangster flick DEAD MAN RUNNING (15: Revolver) misfires at every turn, not least the hackneyed script and lifeless direction.
The credit crunch means American loan shark Mr Thigo (rapper Curtis '50 Cent' Jackson) is feeling the pinch. He flies to London to give reformed villain Nick (Tamer Hassan) 24 hours to repay the ?100,000 he borrowed or his dear old mum gets "taken out".
Nick, aided by best friend Bing (Danny Dyer), embarks on an increasingly desperate and unlikely series of scams and capers to recoup the money.
Neither Hassan nor Dyer have the acting chops to pull off the light-hearted buddy-movie elements and old hands Brenda Blethyn (Nick's mum) and Phil Davis (her would-be killer) struggle to bring any weight to the proceedings.
> A film of pictorial beauty, period drama BRIGHT STAR (PG: Pathe) reveals the inspiration behind some of the finest work of English poet John Keats (a misty-eyed Ben Whishaw).
It picks up on his life when the 23-year-old is living in Hampstead, where his creative juices are reanimated by teenager Fanny Brawne (Abbie Cornish), who lives next door.
An artistic talent herself, only in the area of fashion, the headstrong Brawne soon becomes a muse for the ailing Keats and an intense relationship begins.
But the poet's ill-health casts a shadow over the picture-perfect romance, while his disapproving room-mate Charles Brown (Paul Schneider) adds a touch of menace.
> TOP TEN: 1 Jennifer's Body; 2 The Time Traveler's Wife; 3 Couples Retreat; 4 Cirque Du Freak The Vampire's Assistant; 5 Up; 6 The Ugly Truth; 7 The Invention Of Lying; 8 Surrogates; 9 Pandorum; 10 The Hangover. Chart from Blockbuster.
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Weather for Leighton Buzzard
Tuesday 22 May 2012
Today
Sunny spells
Temperature: 10 C to 24 C
Wind Speed: 17 mph
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Tomorrow
Sunny spells
Temperature: 12 C to 22 C
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