Txt Critic on Julie & Julia

My insatiable moviegoing friend was back to his old tricks, texting me last night with a message regarding the new Amy Adams / Meryl Streep film Julie & Julia. Here he is...

in spite of its ghastly trailer, it was quite good, solid. in typical ephron/meyers/etc fashion, it's a bit too long for a film without much plot (exactly 2 hours), but it was pretty well paced, while rarely-to-never wading into unnecessary sentiment or cheap stupid humor

meryl's great (duh), but it's really more of a "fun" performance than anything substantive -- they throw her an extremely short "oscar clip" dramatic scene where she responds to her sister being pregnant, but almost everything else she has is fun/light/funny/enjoyable. that said, i'm sure she'll still get a nomination. i have no idea how they're going to campaign her when the time comes, but it's unquestionably a co-lead. Streep and Adams both evenly split the screen time, and if anything, Streep gets a bit more. Also the movie opens and closes with her, so it feels a bit more like "her" story

Well, technically her famed Miranda Priestley performance in The Devil Wears Prada only had one traditional "clip" scene also and were it not for Helen Mirren's awards steamroll in 2006, I'm guessing Streep would have actually taken the statue. Exactly how many times has Meryl been in the runner up position on Hollywood's High Holy Night? Four times, I think. Though it's highly debatable.

Oscar vote totals are never released but wasn't she probably runner up for:
French Lieutenant's Woman (81), Adaptation (02), Prada (06) and Doubt
(08)? Maybe even Out of Africa (85) and Bridges... (95)

But back to my point: "fun/light" isn't really an Oscar detriment for Streep in the way it is for other performers. The campaign issues on the other hand might be. The current studio plan is a supporting campaign for Julia (presumably to avoid competiting with her lead role in the Untitled Nancy Meyers Project) but there is a very slim possibility that the drawn out Kate Winslet Rev Rd/Reader situation from last year may signal that the Academy is a little less willing than in years past to honor forced categorizations... even when the precursor voting blocks urge them to do so. Another possibility is that the studio will go for double leads or switch Adams to supporting once they have a better idea of their competition. We'll know when we know.

Oscar predictions updates on the way (working on them right now)
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