Sir Howard Stringer introduced Nora Ephron at the Julie & Julia premiere at the Ziegfeld Theater on Thursday night, calling the writer/ producer/ director who is also a dynamite cook as readers of her best seller “Heartburn” know, “a woman for all seasonings.” Little wonder that she would concoct a most delicious movie combining the memoirs of the legendary Julia Child and Julie Powell, an aspiring writer who in a year cooked all of the recipes contained in Child's classic “Mastering the Art of French Cooking,” and blogged about it along the way. Fans of “Sleepless in Seattle” and “You've Got Mail” will be happily enchanted with Ephron's new romantic comedy, with the twined love stories of Julia and her husband Paul, and Julie with Eric (Chris Messina), where the worst that happens is a fight, resolved the next day. Ah, if only all marriages were so smooth. The casting of Meryl Streep and Amy Adams is perfection. Stanley Tucci in a sly performance as Child's husband from heaven characterizes him as one of our very best comic actors. He and Streep were sublime in “Devil Wears Prada,” as were Streep and Adams in “Doubt.” You simply never grow tired of them. Streep actually outdoes herself as Julia Child. Wearing period hats, ensembles with a strand of pearls, designed by Ann Roth, she's so obviously having the time of her life, as she did in last year's best bad movie ever, “Mamma Mia!” Licking beurre blanc, flipping frittatas, towering over everyone else (Child was 6'2''), affecting the weird cadences of Child's accent-it doesn't get better than this. The after party at the Metropolitan Club featured various restaurants' excellent attempts at Julia's signature dishes. Toni Morrison, Patricia Clarkson, Marshall Brickman, Mira Nair, Barbet Schroeder, Ken Auletta, Hannah Pakula, Sally Quinn and Ben Brantlee, Nan and Gay Talese, were in the crowd sampling Tribeca Grill's beef bourguignon and Mary's Coquilles St. Jacques. Perhaps Streep will be adding this one to her long roster of Oscar nods. She received very high accolades indeed: two officials of Paris's Cordon Bleu Culinary School who knew Child quite well deemed Streep a “superb fake;” she beamed with pleasure.
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