And they say that education is wasted on the young!
In the meta-stakes (or should that be steaks?), this is up there. You might recall last year’s Julie & Julia, the Nora Ephron-directed movie based on blogger Julie Powell’s challenge to cook all 524 recipes in Julia Child’s first cookbook in 365 days. Well Northwestern University student Lawrence Dai has, for reasons best known to himself, decided to watch it every single day for an entire year. And guess what? He’s writing a blog to document the journey. Truly, we are blessed.
(See pictures of what people eat around the world.)
At the time of writing, Dai is up to day 10 on “The Lawrence/Julie & Julia Project” and has amassed 238 followers to his feed (get it?). In sheer numbers terms, if he sticks to his task — and we’ll ignore any suggestion that students find that difficult — then the two-hour film will have consumed 745.5 hours or 31 days of his life.
Short of wanting to get a book deal himself, à la Powell, or hoping for a brief taste (sorry, that’s the last food-related pun) it’s hard to see why Dai would want to do this. The film, while perfectly watchable, did garner generally good reviews (though whatever the New Yorker‘s David Denby was on when he called it, “one of the gentlest, most charming American movies of the past decade” is anyone’s guess) but the prospect of watching it every day for a year sounds about as enjoyable as, well, undertaking that task for any movie. Indeed, films shouldn’t be treated with such contempt, neither the good ones nor bad, as the magic contained within should never be allowed to spiral out of control and make the mere act of watching seem onerous.
(See TIME’s top 10 movies of 2010.)
Apart from that slight niggle, NewsFeed is definitely behind your project Laurence and we can’t wait for day 278’s entry where you attempt to cook one of the dishes on camera and then hawk it to the Food Network, because if they aren’t in need of a show where a blogger replicates a blogger replicating a cook’s recipe, then nobody is.