A transfusion turns a priest into a vampire and then there’s just a boatload of sex and blood and murder and vampirism and oh I did NOT like this movie at all.

In fact, of all the movies I saw in 2009, which was not really very many, this is the one I really wish I had never seen (with The Wrestler and Gran Torino as #s 2 and 3 – those reviews are spoilerific, btw).

I’ve beyond sick of hearing people whine about this movie and how much they don’t like Julie Powell. Particularly since that really ain’t the point at all. Also: Amy Adams is fantastic in this but isn’t getting credit for her performance due to the aforementioned wendy whiner whinging.

Yes, Meryl Streep is fantastic, as is Jane Lynch as her sister. Both are almost unrecognizable they’re so fully sunk into character here.

And while it’s great to honor Julia Child with her current resurgence of popularity, as my friend GirlDetective reminds people, this movie would not exist without Julie Powell (and her book)*. I like how this article puts it as well.

You know, Julie Powell didn’t have a well-off diplomat for a husband (and didn’t come from money either). She didn’t get to learn to cook on her leisure during the day, gallivanting around. She had a shitty job and a shitty apartment in a hard city to live in and frankly I say more power to her.

I loved the blog / didn’t like the book (had a very different tone / style than the blog. Maybe too heavily edited?) / loved the movie.

*I left a long comment there you can peruse as well.

Really yicky in some ways. But ends better than it seemed it would.

And it is just filmed in such a classy way. The clothes, the sets, the music. You want to visit this world only NOT with Sarsgaard and NOT with all the idiots who never step in to address a situation that is clearly bad from the very beginning.

The lead, Carey Mulligan, has a very Audrey Hepburn-esque quality. Lovely performance by Olivia Williams, nice to see her somewhere other than Dollhouse.

Nicely done but sometimes hard to watch. In the way 13 is a well-done movie but something I never, ever, EVER want to see again. This isn’t as harsh as that, but it’s in that vein.