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When Julie & Julia hits theaters on August 7th, it's going to make audiences everywhere hungry! Luckily, I recently attended the Julie & Julia Blogger Event in New York City and got to snack on some Julia Child-inspired dishes right after the movie. The food was seriously good, but talking to Julie Powell, the author of Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously, and the director, Nora Ephron, was even better.

Right after the movie (which, by the way, was adorable!) bloggers from all over the city trekked down to The Lighthouse at Chelsea Piers just in time to watch a cooking demonstration by Chef Brian Malarkey, a former finalist on Bravo's Top Chef 3 Miami. He whipped up Julia Child's classic recipe for boeuf bourguignon, a rich beef stew with sautéed mushrooms, caramelized onions and some pancetta. Julie Powell joined him in the kitchen and helped make Julia's recipe for chocolate cream pie while they chatted about the movie.

Before she was a famous author, Julie Powell was miserable, working a dead end job and living in a cramped apartment with her husband, Eric. When she spontaneously started "The Julie/Julia Project" in 2002, her life took on a new meaning. She gave herself one year to make every recipe in her old copy of Julia Child's cookbook, Mastering the Art of French Cooking, blogging about her experience every step of the way. The online response was huge, and her blog became a book three years later.

"I would never have gotten through this if I didn't have all my blog readers saying, 'Go, go, go!'" Julie said. Although it seems like she was an overnight success, Julie admitted that she often considered quitting the project during the first few months, but turned to Julia Child's story for inspiration. Julia paved the road for every Food Network star out there and didn't even start cooking until she was nearly forty! "She never tried to cover up her mistakes or be something she wasn't," Julie said fondly.

Although the movie is centered on passionate foodies, there is also a strong love story at its core. Julia Child's relationship with her husband, Paul Child, is depicted as loving, full of laughter and support. Similarly, Julie's marriage with Eric was one of the biggest reasons Nora Ephron decided to write and direct the movie.

"Nobody gets to write movies about marriage. If you do, it's marriages that are about to break up," Nora explained. "I got so excited at how sweet it can be to have a husband who thinks it's great that something happens to you." She was also drawn to the connection between Eric and Julie's love for food and each other. "If you're married to someone and you both love food, it's a big player in your marriage."

Between the drool-worthy dishes and real-life love stories, the movie and event left me craving seconds. Don't miss Julie & Julia when it premieres on August 7th... just make sure to bring lots of snacks!

--Sarah Levy

500 Days of Summer is one of those movies that starts out so promising and subversive, but just wimps out along the way and ends up reinforcing all the old romantic comedy clichés we've grown tired of. A shame, too, because it could have been so much better, and the cast deserved a script worthy of them, but hey, I know better than to expect anything new from these movies, especially one that was so ubiquitous and relentlessly advertised.

The problem with the film, and this is spoilery, but I really can't tell you what's wrong with the movie without discussing its ending, is that it abruptly changes its mind about what kind of movie it wants to be in the third act. It starts out establishing that trauma in one's formative years (either a nasty divorce or too much exposure to Smiths albums and romantic movies) can cause people to be too staunchly on either side of the issue of love: either a) it's a farce not worthy of pursuing that always ends in disaster, or b) it's a magical force owed to everyone, soulmates are real, and love means never having to say you're sorry. Obviously, neither is completely true, and it's foolish to align yourself unwaveringly with either side. That is what this movie starts out being, and it's interesting for a while. Until it completely contradicts itself and just becomes the latter option at the end, that is.

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Can you believe it's been two years since the last Harry Potter film came out? ...You can? Yeah, it does feel like a long time, doesn't it. Well, it's time to refresh your memory about what happened last time, and who everybody is, so you can go into the new film and know what the hell's going on. Because there are a lot of characters in these films. Between the students and the teachers and the parents and the Death-Eaters, nobody gets more than five minutes of screentime, and it's hard to keep their stories straight. Luckily, we've created a handy-dandy Harry Potter Character Guide with pictures of all of the old characters and a few new ones, plus info on what happened last time and what their status is at the start of this one.

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The trailer for I Love You Beth Cooper may make it look like your standard teen comedy, but there's just something about it that I can't put my finger on. Sure, it follows the same "beauty and the geek" pattern of films like Can't Hardly Wait, but the premise, the sets, the characters... something about it just screams "1980s" to me. I'm getting a little bit of Who's That Girl?, but I'm mostly getting a lot of Weird Science, which is, well, weird, because the film does not appear to involve two teenagers creating the perfect woman using their computer. (Although, if two nerds were to build their ideal woman today, she would probably look a lot less like Kelly LeBrock and a lot more like Hayden Panettiere, if not exactly like her.)

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... And that's when RunPee.com comes in handy. The Website, which has been featured on NYTimes.com, lists movies currently in theaters, and offers handy suggestions for exactly when during the movies' run times you can slip out to the bathroom or the concession stand without missing anything important. And if you want to know exactly what you'll miss, RunPee provides a summary, which is scrambled in case you don't want the spoiler.

Is this the best idea ever?! Actually, the site is only accessible via the Web for now, but the site promises it's "coming soon to an iPhone near you," which will absolutely make it one of the best, most helpful, ideas ever.  

Apparently very few moviegoers, since Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen made killer box office dollars since opening last Wednesday. $201.2 million, by studio estimates, which puts it behind only The Dark Knight for the biggest four- and five-day openings ever.

Box Office Mojo's estimates for the June 26-28, 2009 box office weekend top five:

Rank | Movie Title (Distributor)
Weekend Gross | Theaters | Total Gross | Week #

1. Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen (Paramount (DreamWorks))
$112.0 million | 4,234 | $201.2 million | 1

2. The Proposal (Buena Vista)
$18.5 million | 3,058 | $69.1 million | 2

3. The Hangover (Warner Bros.)
$17.2 million | 3,525 | $183.2 million | 4

4. Up (Buena Vista)
$13.0 million | 3,487 | $250.2 million | 5

5. My Sister's Keeper (Warner Bros.)
$12.0 million | 2,606 | $12.0 million | 1

Source: Box Office Mojo

Looking ahead, the big releases for the July 4 weekend: Public Enemies (Johnny Depp and Christian Bale), Ice Age: Dawn of the Dinosaurs (which looks adorable) and I Hate Valentine's Day (or, My Big Fat Greek Wedding, Part Deux, as I like to think of it).

What will you be seeing, besides fireworks, during the holiday weekend?

When you go to the Fandango page for Jack Black and Michael Cera's Year One there's a small box where they list "Similar Movies You Might Like." Now, this box assumes that you like the movie whose page you're on. Considering that most people who go to Fandango haven't even seen the movie they're looking up yet, it's a strange feature. In this context, they're more like recommendations for movies you should stay home and watch instead of the movie you're about to buy tickets for. Dear God, how I wish I'd taken that little box's advice.

Instead of seeing Year One, the box told me to see Caveman, The History of the World Part I, National Lampoon's Stoned Age, Encino Man and Erik the Viking. Now, I can't speak for Stoned Age -- a movie I will likely never see, even if David Carradine is in it -- but the rest of the suggestions are not only apt, they're all much better than Year One, if only because Year One swipes elements from all of these films, including specific jokes. Mel Brooks should be particularly offended, since History of the World seems to have served as a major "inspiration" here.

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Here at TWoP, cheesy romantic comedies are like our Kryptonite. We can take high-school musicals, twee indie dramedies and mindless mega-octane actioners, but have someone do a pratfall into a wedding cake or wind up accidentally naked in front of someone's grandma, and we get the dry heaves. So we're torn over The Proposal, which on the one hand looks like Green Card Redux, and on the other hand... looks kind of awesome. While you Green Card fans may be right there with us, the rest of you may wonder if we've lost our senses. But here's five reasons we're actually thinking about putting on some sunglasses and a trenchcoat and sneaking into this movie.

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In the grand tradition of Jackass, from the guy who brought you Borat, it's Bruno! ...You know, if you like that sort of thing. "That sort of thing" being Sacha Baron Cohen pushing the buttons of real-life Americans, and discovering that we don't like having our buttons pushed. I, for one, can take it or leave it, but Omar and Pablo take it and loooove it! To celebrate the release of the Bruno trailer, the Gallaga brothers put on their finest mesh shirts to break down the comedy (and the words that take up valuable comedy space) for us.

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So America is really excited about this remake of The Taking of Pelham 123... right? Aren't they? Well, maybe they wouldn't be so excited if they knew that this was the second time they've remade it! The last time was a 1998 TV movie starring Edward James Olmos and Vincent D'Onofrio, and although that sounds frickin' awesome, we haven't seen it, so we can't say for sure. We'll assume that it was horrible, which is why they decided to remake it yet again. There are a lot of remakes out there like that -- ones that are not only worse than the originals, but actually worse than most films, thereby necessitating yet another remake just so we can get the taste of the last one out of our mouths. Here are ten movies we loved whose remakes we simply can't stand, and could use a third (or fourth, or fifth) attempt to put a new spin on things.

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I was lucky enough to see The Hangover the other night, and while sometimes getting to see screenings in advance feels a lot like work, this one was actually a pleasure. It was quite the welcome change of pace after my recent outings included Terminator: Salvation, Fighting and Ghosts of Girlfriends Past.

The Hangover is your standard buddy comedy. It involves a raucous bachelor party in Vegas where some very bad things happen, but not quite as bad as the ones in Very Bad Things. Doug (Justin Bartha) is the groom-to-be and he's excited for his weekend away with his pals, and has the coolest father-in-law ever (played by Jeffrey Tambor) who not only happily loans his prized Mercedes, but also doles out advice about how herpes is the one thing that doesn't stay in Vegas. True. Very true. The only downside to Doug's whole awesome in-law thing is Alan (Zach Galifianakis) who is brother to bride Tracy (Sasha Barrese). He's a little ... off. And he's tagging along on the trip. Doug's groomsmen, Stu (Ed Helms, of Office fame) and Phil (Bradley Cooper, of Alias, and some other movies too, fame) are also along for the ride. Phil's a schoolteacher who is married and claims to be totally miserable in his life and can't believe that his best friend is stupidly getting hitched. Stu's a dentist who is dating the shrewish Melissa (played by the awesome Rachael Harris), and in order to go on the trip he has to lie and tell his girlfriend that they are really going to Napa for a weekend of tame wine tasting. Which, if she'd seen Sideways she'd be skeptical about, but she hasn't so she sends him on his way with strict guidelines.

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When did it get cool to not like Will Ferrell? It seems like a growing number of people (including a few inside the TWoP offices) have had enough of him. Now, I'm not saying all of his movies have been great -- I still have not met anyone who saw Semi-Pro -- but a lot of them make me laugh just thinking about them. The mental image of Ferrell running around thinking he's on fire in Talladega Nights, putting his scrotum on the drum kit in Step-Brothers, or screaming in a phone booth in Anchorman is enough to make me at least chuckle. Maybe that makes me some sort of dimwit. I don't know. But I certainly don't think I'm a "Ferrell follower," or part of some Ferrell-worshipping cult. I just like things that are funny.

Which is why I enjoyed myself watching Land of the Lost. It has some incredibly funny moments, and not all of them are Ferrell's. As cave tour guide Will, Danny McBride is kind of a jerk, and it's still the most likable character he's ever played. While he has his moments of ridiculousness, he actually plays the Abbott to Ferrell's Costello in a lot of his scenes, which was interesting to see from him. The big surprise was The Lonely Island member Jorma Taccone as monkey-man Chaka. I expected his chattering monkey-talk to get annoying, but the subtleties that the fur-covered and tooth-enhanced Taccone injected into his body language and his gibberish let him hold up his side of several conversations (via translator, of course), and actually earned him a few completely untranslated laughs. Anna Friel (Pushing Daisies) gets a few laughs for translating Chaka's monkey monologues, but the dinosaur, Grumpy, gets more, and deservedly so. That's one funny CGI dinosaur.

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I feel I should start out this review with a little PSA: If you scare easily, do not allow your vindictive gorehound friends to sweet-talk you into going to this movie. It ain't frickin' Gothika. It's a horror film made for horror fans by somebody who knows what he's doing. It will scare the living sh*t out of you if you're not properly desensitized to this type of thing. And for the rest of us? It's still effectively scary! I jumped in my seat, I laughed a lot, I thought I might vomit a few times -- to sum it up, I had a fantastic time. This is the measure of a successful horror film, friends.

Of course, you'll have some hang-ups (why doesn't the gypsy curse the entire bank, all the way up to corporate as well? And there's a scene where the evil could easily be eliminated but someone like, slips, basically, and the entire opportunity is over, which was enraging. And why do gypsies get to be in charge of Hell anyway? These were just a couple I had), but the movie wastes no time getting started, and it sprints at such a break-neck pace until the end that you don't have the time or inclination to dwell on them. Another nice thing? Alison Lohman has an unrealistically perfect love interest (Justin Long), because it's a Hollywood movie so of course she does, but he actually serves a purpose and is a key part of the plot. I know, crazy, right? There isn't an inconsequential character or moment wasted in the entire thing (even Lohman's kitten serves a damn purpose), and the plot is unabashedly simple for all the right reasons and refreshingly non-convoluted.

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Grrr. My editor blood boils every time I type the misspelled title of Inglourious Basterds, but then I remind myself that it's all for art, or whatever passes for it in Quentin Tarantino's pop-culture-soaked brain. While we're mostly looking forward to this sure-to-be gory war film, we're wary of the promised horror of Eli Roth scalping Nazis, and we taste bile every time we see Brad Pitt's neck. Omar and Pablo Gallaga are similarly unnerved, and have broken down the film's trailer for easy digesting and regurgitating. Check out the newest episode of "Trailers Without Pity" below!

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My casting dreams came true this week when Chace Crawford was announced as Zac Efron's replacement in that completely necessary remake of Footloose we're getting. Since this is irrefutable proof that I am psychic, I thought I'd toss out some other random '80s movies the Gossip Girl kids will most definitely be remaking in the near future. Because why let the rest of the decade's pop culture go by unbastardized, you know? Oh, and remember -- the theme is '80s movies. Say Blair should remake Breakfast at Tiffany's in the comments and you will be ridiculed. Alright, let's go, people! It's fan fiction time!

Chuck Bass as James Spader's A-Hole Yuppie Character in Pretty in Pink
Colorful blazers? Check. Gleeful snobbery? Check. Faaaabulous hair? Check again! Imagine Chuck Bass looking some girl up and down and declaring she "was, is, and will always be nada."

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I know I'm pretty much alone on this, but I have to admit that I'm a Night at the Museum apologist. People like to rip on this franchise a lot, and they're not wrong -- it ain't high art, or high comedy, and it doesn't even remotely try to be historically accurate or believable in any way -- but, to be frank, whatever. I think the first movie is fun for what it is, and I enjoy it every time I watch it for its stellar cast and shiny effects. I'd rather save my knee-jerk hatred for things like Paul Blart and Dance Flick, is what I'm saying. And while the previous installment was a heist movie, this one promises to be a battle! At the Smithsonian! I am so in! And I don't even know who's fighting who or what they're even fighting about! Which doesn't matter much -- I suspect a great reason for the battle won't even be given during the film, but nevertheless let's take a look at the new army and see where they fall in battle usefulness.

Al Capone (Jon Bernthal) Well he was in the Italian mafia, obviously, and that Deadliest Warrior show says they could even beat the Yakuza in a fight! I know! I couldn't believe it either! Capone's tough, street-smart and handy with an early edition automatic weapon. On a scale of one to ten -- one being Ricky Gervais's museum curator and ten being, I don't know, Chev Chelios from Crank -- I'm giving Capone a 10!

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That's right, snag two VIP tickets to an advance screening of Terminator: Salvation, which means two reserved seats and no waiting in line for a pre-release screening of the Christian Bale/McG flick, in a city near you.

All ya gotta do: Click here and enter your cell phone number for a chance to win. See ... couldn't be easier.

This Friday marks the release of this year's annual crappy Matthew McConaughey rom-com Ghosts of Girlfriends Past (and further proof that my favorite lady in the world Jennifer Garner is trying to kill me -- kill me! -- with her terrible film choices). Though this time the plot doesn't seem to go near a beach, a water ski or a Kate Hudson, it is still the same crappy McConaughey movie we get every year. You can't fool anyone by dressing it up as just another unnecessary Christmas Carol remake, McConaughey. We are onto you! Let's examine the terrible evidence.

He's a womanizing manchild who is reformed by a quirky lady at the end. Admittedly, this is a formula for many romantic comedies. The problem is, most of the recent ones star McConaughey. After Failure to Launch, How to Lose a Guy in 10 Days and now this, isn't he tired of making the same movie over and over? And why aren't people tired of paying 12 bucks to see them yet?

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This Friday, the latest big-budget superhero movie hits theaters, and... well, a bunch of people have already seen it, thanks to a leaked bootleg copy, minus a lot of special effects. We haven't seen it ourselves -- and if we did, we certainly wouldnt tell anybody about it -- but we've seen enough trailers and teaser footage to give us a pretty good idea of what's going on. Plus, we've read enough X-Men comics to choke an industrial paper shredder, which makes us highly qualified to create a field guide to the super-powered mutants who will be popping up (and popping claws) in the latest X-movie. Only a few have been seen on the big screen before, and even they may not be so familiar anymore, as they're played by different actors.

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Summer is almost here! You may disagree with us, saying June is still over a month a away, but Hollywood would disagree with you. The summer movie season starts May 1, with the release of X-Men Origins: Wolverine, and it doesn't let up until August! Because we know it's so hard to keep track of what's coming out when, we've begun creating our hand-dandy photo guides to the big releases, starting with one guide for Action and Drama movies, and one for the Sci-Fi, Fantasy and Horror genres. Check them both out, and check back next week for our guide to comedies of both the romantic and non-romantic varieties!

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By now, you've all probably seen commercials for The Soloist: Jaime Foxx, Robert Downey Jr., mentally imbalanced musical genius, friendship that transcends differences, yada yada yada. Between the storyline, the high caliber of actors involved and the talent behind the camera, it's as if someone was trying to craft the quintessential Oscar movie. And even though the year is only one-third over, you just know that the folks over at the Academy of Motion Picture Arts and Sciences are already engraving the plaques on a bunch of their awards, knowing full well that this movie will surely sweep all categories. Is The Soloist the most gratuitously Oscar-friendly movie ever? We think so, and we think it offers aspiring filmmakers a sure-fire recipe for garnering awards. Follow these instructions, and you'll be hugging Daniel Day-Lewis backstage in no time.

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The commercials for this movie do it a major disservice by making it look like your average transformation Big or Freaky Friday movie starring Chandler Bing and Zac Efron. It is that, but it's also more than it appears to be on the surface. The movie is about teen basketball phenom Mike O'Donnell, who doesn't go to college because his girlfriend is pregnant and ends up 20 years later as a disgruntled pharmaceutical rep (Matthew Perry) on the verge of a divorce with two teenage kids who hate his guts. He wishes he could go back and do it over, so a magic janitor turns him into a teenager, but he stays in present day. He discovers that he's on a path to help his wife (Leslie Mann) realize that her husband isn't a total loser, and to assist his kids (Sterling Knight and Michelle Trachtenberg) in turning their lives around. There's a ridiculous number of shots of Zac Efron shirtless or playing basketball. There's obligatory near-incest moments and cougar references. There's tons of typical high-school behavior (thankfully, it's more of the Mean Girls variety and less of the High School Musical drivel). But tucked in among all of this solid, amusing, but typical A-story drama is a B-plot that really takes the entire film to a new level.

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If you're going to do the someone-magically-becomes-older-or-younger storyline, I much prefer the ones where a teen plays someone older, just because actors in their mid-30s tend to play teenagers as f*cking retards for some reason (Jennifer Garner, I love you, but 13 Going on 30 was an insult to 13-year-olds.) So 17 Again is perfect! Adorable Zac Efron, the return of Matthew Perry (who I like a lot more than I should), Thomas Lennon, Leslie Mann, Jan from The Office, Michelle Trachtenberg's pretty hair. This movie's going to be great, even if it is the most unoriginal screenplay ever. So, in the spirit of 17 Again week excitement, let's look back at a few of the films it "borrowed" from.

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Despite the humorous trailers and the "From the director of Superbad" tag, Adventureland is not an Apatow-esque comedy. In fact, Judd Apatow had absolutely nothing to do with this movie. And in many ways, Bill Hader and Kristen Wiig's interludes not withstanding, comedy has very little to do with this movie. While the non-SNL-related situations in Adventureland may at times veer into the realm of comedy, they just as quickly veer out, and get very sad. Not sad as in pathetic -- I mean sad as in depressing. Adventureland is a bleak indie film disguised as a teen sex romp, and while the joke may be on the people who come to the theater looking for a good time, the last laugh may go to people like me, who go in with low expectations and are pleasantly surprised by the movie's depths.

And, apparently, I'm not the only one. A colleague informed me as we entered the theater of the movie's "positive buzz." I was surprised, as I had not heard the scuttlebutt -- it looked like a decent period teen comedy to me, that's all. I expected Superbad: The '80s Edition, but instead I got The United States of AdventureLeland, or possibly Donnie Darkocoaster. Not bad things in my mind -- at all. I would totally ride the Darkocoaster until I threw up, with "Mad World" playing in my head all the while. But the fact remains that the Hader-heavy commercials had given me no idea what I was walking into.

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That got your attention, right? Our motto is that free always tastes better (and never more so than in our current economy), so we're steering every movie fan we know to Film Metro.com, a Website that lists free movie screenings in cities all across the country.

 

FREE, people!

This movie weekend is surprisingly balanced with different kinds of movies opening. Great job, Hollywood! High five Ari Gold for me! You've got I Love You, Man for laughing, Duplicity for knowing what a farce not dissimilar to professional espionage that romance is, and Knowing for knowing that the world is an unavoidable ticking time bomb of doom and destruction.

Quick Knowing plot synopsis: Nicolas Cage plays a man of science whose young son digs up a 50-year-old time capsule that predicts the dates and death tolls of impending disasters (because of how worthwhile things are always being put in time capsules) and Cage has to stop something called "The Whisper People" who look like Krycek with a Spike dye job from ending the world. The trailer feels really Shyamalan-y with the whole there's an event happening and a man who sees no meaning in the world is taught that the world is lousy with meaning and he has to get it together to save his family and stop the world from ending thing. But really -- if the damn world is ending and there are supernatural albino fake Kryceks whispering around perpetrating it, what's Captain Corelli's Mandolin going to do about it? Make out with Penelope Cruz and hope the Nazis don't see? If that is the twist ending of the film and I just spoiled it for you I apologize. I should have written that down and put in a time capsule instead. I know that now. I have learned my lesson. Anyway, I watched the whole trailer and this movie looks a lot like these other movies:

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Who better than Michael Bay to direct the Transformers movie? Transformers are more than meet the eye, and Michael Bay movies are more than the eye can process! Seriously, Bay throws more explosions and moving robot parts up on the screen than the human eye can process, which made it difficult for the Gallaga Bros. to bring you their latest installment of "Trailers Without Pity," their video series dedicated to breaking down movie trailers for the layperson. In this installment, Omar suffers a Michael Bayeurism while helping his brother Pablo explain what's going on in the trailer for Transformers: Revenge of the Fallen. Check out the video and see whether he lives or dies after the jump.

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Are you eagerly counting down the days until next Friday's Watchmen release? Are you looking for a way to pass the time? You could gorge yourself on past superhero movies to prepare yourself for the inevitable comparisons and dissections. Or you could give these somewhat unlikely movies a gander to examine things from a slightly different perspective. Captain Blood In the Watchmen universe, pirates star in comic books rather than superheroes. Tales of the Black Freighter is the comic-within-the-comic and ends up paralleling Adrian Veidt/Ozymandias's story (among others) in some important ways. The animated version doesn't come out on DVD until March 24, so watch the 1935 Errol Flynn starrer to get another take on swashbuckling heroes.

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