Friday, January 29, 2010

Critic's Choice Friday!

My weekly "Critic's Choice" post will always feature a review of some sort.  Could be a movie, book, product, TV show, whatever!  And I'll be looking to you, dear reader's, to share YOUR reviews as well!

I've felt considerably better the past few days... my nose is draining like none other (that's a good thing, right?!) and I still have daily stomach upsets that I will not discuss here... but other than that it seems I'm on the mend!  JUST in time for a one and half hour drive to a six hour Saturday class non "Budget & Accounting for Non-Profit Organization's" class tomorrow... oh joy!

Other than my sickness, one of the most exciting points of the week (this indicates the general excitement level of our life, lately!) is that Travis and I joined Netflix!  Yes, yes, I know Netflix has been around for YEARS and the novelty has quite worn out for most of you... but it's all brand new for us!

You see, in general I wouldn't call us movie people.  We don't go to the movies often, and we don't even rent them too often.  Except that last month, we rented about six movies (because it was the holidays, perhaps?) and then last week we rented two in one week.  We were just appalled with the fact that for two new releases at Blockbuster it was more than $10 after tax.  Yikes!

So we checked out Netflix.  We're on the basic plan with one movie in and one movie out at a time... and our first month is free.  Maybe I'm a dork... but I've had  a lot of fun searching through the databases and strategically planning the order of our "queue"... and we were BOTH excited when our first movie came in the mail!  Yup... it's never-ending excitement here at the Roehm's!

Plus (and I never knew this before) with a Netflix subscription you can watch all kinds of things (tv and movies) instantly on your computer.  Love it!

I bet you're just dying to hear about our first Netflix movie, aren't you?!  Drumroll please...

Julie & Julia


Ha!  Were you expecting something a little more cutting edge?  Thrilling, perhaps?  I think Travis took pity on me because I was sick and let me choose the movie.  He's nice like that.

Seriously though... I've wanted to see the movie ever since it came out at the theatre, so I was really glad to have the opportunity to finally watch it.  I love Amy Adams, and Meryl Streep is a legend of course.  And the movie appealed to me a)  because although I wouldn't consider myself a cook by any stretch of the imagination, I have been rather "into" baking over the past year or so... and could see that maybe developing into an interest in cooking someday and b) because the storyline revolves around a blog.

In case you've been under a rock and don't know the storyline... Julie Powell (Amy Adams) started a blog in 2002 where she challenged herself to cook every single recipe in Julia Child's (Meryl Streep) "The Art of French Cooking" in 265 days.  The blog was released in book from in 2005 and then was re-written into a movie by Nora Ephron which tells the story of BOTH Julie and Julia simultaneously.  Neat-o!  The original blog is still online here:  http://blogs.salon.com/0001399/2002/08/25.html

Anyhoo... it was a good movie.  Full of laughs and life... and I could definitely relate to Julie (during the kitchen meltdowns, perhaps, Travis?!)  I certainly recommend this to all of you... cooks or not!

What movies have you seen lately?  And are you a Netflix friend?  Let me know the secrets of the Netflix and movie rental world!

Have a great weekend!

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