Personally, I wouldn't be able to get through Sesame Street's C Is For Cooking cookbook. And I certainly wouldn't know vichyssoise from Velveeta. Julie Powell, on the other hand, spent an entire year preparing every one of the 524 recipes from Julia Child's famous 1961 cookbook, Mastering The Art of French Cooking. Her blog became a book, Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen, which is now one of summer's most anticipated films, Julie & Julia, directed by Nora Ephron, who re-teams Meryl Streep and Amy Adams — last seen together in Doubt. LACMA screens a preview of the movie (opening August 7), also based on Child's memoir, My Life in France, which has Adams playing a frustrated, “lowly cubicle worker” who gets her gourmet groove back, while Streep plays the younger Child as she makes her way through cooking school in France during the '50s. The Reine de Saba avec Glaçage au Chocolat (chocolate and almond cake) alone is worth the price of admission. But if not for the recipes, watching Streep master Child's unmistakable voice and, with a little camera trickery, her 6'2″ frame, should be.

Tue., July 28, 7:30 p.m., 2009

Advertising disclosure: We may receive compensation for some of the links in our stories. Thank you for supporting LA Weekly and our advertisers.