amburadul imagenes: Day 138 - Julie & Julia Mash-Up

Day 138.

So last night, I went to a Girl Talk concert here at Northwestern. It was kind of awesome.

Fucking Epic.

Clearly, good times were had by all.

If aren't familiar with the work of Girl Talk, basically all you need to know is that he's a mash-up artist and he's probably the best in the business.

I mean, you wouldn't think that watching some guy just scrolling through his itunes on stage would be that exciting--BUT IT WAS. 24 hours later, I can still barely hear anything and my voice is completely gone. Totally worth it.

And since mash-ups have been on the mind as of late, I couldn't help but view Julie & Julia in a different light today as I sat down to watch it for the 138th time. As far as movies go, it's probably the most obvious example of a mash-up, right? I mean, it's essentially a movie that combines parts Julia Child's My Life in France with parts Julie Powell's Julie & Julia, which is kind of cool. Not that many movies try to do that and probably for good reason too--because it's difficult to pull off.

But Julie & Julia does have a lot of the ingredients that belong into a good mash-up--the dueling narratives, the multiple parallels, the clever cutting--all potentially brilliant. But then there are those moments while listening to Girl Talk when you hear the weirdest, most random pairing of two songs, but they just simply work together, even though they have absolutely no right to. You close your eyes, throw your head back, and all you can say is "Shieeeetttt, that's good mash-up."

And also, you jizz a little.

Well, Julie & Julia is not that kind of mash-up. One, because that's pretty difficult to achieve in a movie, especially when the two stories never actually intersect. And the reason we never get any Amy Adams/Meryl Streep overlap is because that never happened in real life, which is pretty stupid. Basically you just end up with two people whose journeys are just sort of related to each other, so each person takes turns being in the limelight.

Which brings us to the core problem of the film. When you are directly juxtaposing two stories over the course of two hours, they better be equal in quality or else you will draw inevitable comparisons between the two. Of course Julia Child's parts were infinitely better than Powell's--that's like if someone just played 30 seconds of "Stairway to Heaven," followed by 30 seconds of "Mambo No. 5." and expected everyone to enjoy them equally. Lou Bega is clearly going to outshine those hacks Jimmy Page and Robert Plant.

So anyway, Julie & Julia fails miserably as a mash-up movie. But then again, I can't really think of any others... so maybe it's the best one? Please, let me know if you can think of any others. In the meantime, I will try to replicate what a true Julie & Julia mash-up would sound like for you via "play all these youtube videos at once."