"meryl streep" news and stories

Although the film adaption of "Julie & Julia" isn't coming out until August, Julia Child fans are already excited at the prospect of seeing America's most iconic cooking superstar served up onscreen. Following last weekend's sale of the film's props, your devoted Slashfood staff has been searching for images of the upcoming film.

Everything about Julia Child was outsized, from her flamboyant cooking style to her rich, fluttering falsetto, to her famously dry humor. This, after all, was the great chef who started her professional life as a purported spy in the OSS during World War II, became one of the few women to attend Paris' Le Cordon Bleu cooking school, and ended up spearheading a home-cooking movement that transformed American cuisine with her TV show "The French Chef."

Given Child's impressive height (she was 6-foot-2), it's perhaps unsurprising that the majority of her imitators have been men. The most famous was probably Dan Aykroyd on "Saturday Night Live." His repeated exhortation to "Save the liver!" captured Child's forceful personality and occasional tendency toward self-parody. An even better tribute was offered by John Candy, with a spot-on impression of Child boxing with Fred Rogers in "Battle of the PBS Stars" on "SCTV."

Click for more Julia after the jump.

Yup, it's true. Oscar-winning actress Meryl Streep is going to play the famous chef in the film adaptation of Julie Powell's bestseller Julie & Julia: 365 Days, 524 Recipes, 1 Tiny Apartment Kitchen (retitled Julie & Julia: My Year of Cooking Dangerously for the paperback on the right).

The film is going to be written and directed by Nora Ephron, who sometimes gets unfairly put down by film fans. Not only is she a really good essayist, all of her films are enjoyable (haven't seen Bewitched...). I particularly liked You've Got Mail.

If you haven't read the book yet, it started as a blog by Powell, who decided to take Childs' book Mastering The Art Of French Cooking and makie every recipe in her small kitchen.