Julia & Julie is the rarest of all things from Hollywood: a movie that does not equate a woman’s personal fulfillment with getting married.

Both Julia Child and Julie Powell have already achieved that societally acceptable benchmark when each of them begins searching for meaning in her life.

This is a sweet, charming film about women learning about themselves.

If you’ve ever taken medication, know someone who has taken it, or expect to ever have to take medication in the future (yes, including over the counter stuff you don’t need a script for) read this book.

Crister exposes the perfect storm of deregulation, profiteering, and supply-side economics that has turned us all into BigPharma’s live action experiments. What they don’t tell you about the meds they advertise during prime time tv shows is something that everyone should know.

We got the unrated version from Netflix which means more skin I suppose. It’s an amusing, highly sexual film that doesn’t seem to take itself too seriously.

Fitch’s first book, White Oleander, was populated by damaged women, some poisonous, some merely confused, but all interesting. This second book features a series of weak, incomplete characters who aren’t especially interesting. The revelatory event: that someone you love and think you know could have been lying to you about everything isn’t all that revelatory. It doesn’t help that Fitch chose to take on a huge subject: how to cope after the suicide of someone you love. She bit off more than she could chew, I think.

The title pretty much says it all as this film falls squarely in the “we made a movie with ‘characters’” independent film box. You wonder at the end why you spent two hours with these people all of whom are self-centered and not very interesting.

The only good thing: it does show that Jennifer Anniston can do more than be Rachel from Friends. On the other hand, The Good Girl did the same thing only better.

There’s a lot of style here and not much substance, and the style is…well, just as weird as the cartoon on MTV was. If you realize it’s going to be eye candy, like Ultraviolet was eye candy, it’s not that bad.

Morgan takes an interesting concept, the feminization of society and the attendant breeding out of aggression, and beats it to death. The writing is good, spare, and his word usage is excellent, but the book is full of filler with characters having basically the same conversation over and over and over again.

Billed as a “madcap novel” this book contains way too much character business “And then I climbed the stairs…” “The elevator doors pinged open…” If this book were a film it would be overlong by at least 30 minutes and, ultimately, it all gets wrapped up in the last 10 pages which the author ends by preaching that we should follow our true selves and be with a passion. First person writing is no excuse for bludgeoning your reader with your personal life philosophy.